Best notes from the book:
“For all those who type with one finger, and for those they drive crazy.”
“Tim Urban, the author behind the fantastic WaitBut Why blog demonstrates one thing: that life is a finite resource, and far too short to waste.”
“new technology should be used to liberate us from work, rather than tie us to it.”
“THE PRODUCTIVITY EQUATION. Work Completed = (Time Spent) X (Intensity of Concentration) X (Speed of Execution)”
“As far as we’re concerned, to become super-productive, you must: 1) Get organized: allocate enough time to do each job properly. 2) Concentrate: give each task the focus it requires. 3) Accelerate: get through each task as quickly and efficiently as possible.”
“Why you should just say no. The definition of productivity is not doing lots of things’. Productivity is about strategically choosing your priorities and picking the battles that best line up with your objectives.”
“Without a doubt, one of the most useful bits of advice we received was this: If you’re not turning down at least 20 percent of meetings, you’re not managing your time properly. If you’ve ever felt that at least one in five of the people at most of your meetings has no reason to be there, well, you’re right.”
“we have a better memory of active tasks than of completed ones,… Today, we call this the Zeigarnik Effect, which, in a nutshell, states that an unfinished task takes up a lot more space in the brain than a completed one does.”
“More technical note-taking apps. Entrepreneurs we spoke with also use Google Keep, No-tion, Any.do, Trello, Todoist, and Remember the Milk. The main advantage of these apps is the ability to easily synchronize notes across different platforms, find what you need quickly, share documents easily, and filter by category.”
“Don’t spend hours looking for the perfect app. What matters is how you use it.”
“if a task on your to-do list will take you less than two minutes to complete, do it. Immediately.”
“Every time you look over your to-do list, the first thing you should ask yourself is, ‘what can I delegate here?’.”
“Every minute you spend prioritizing your time is worth ten minutes of work time. Prioritizing your tasks is one of the most productive activities you can do in your day.”
“Most entrepreneurs suggested blocking out slots of one to two hours, but feel free to choose your own length of time. For example, you might try the Pomodoro method, which was invented by Francesco Cirillo, an Italian researcher who discovered that the optimum concentration period for the human brain is 25 minutes. He suggests breaking your schedule into 25-minute work periods punctuated by five-minute breaks.”
“Offline time. Time spent in offline mode (when you’re on a plane for example represents a great opportunity to make some headway on your most important tasks. Many entrepreneurs told us that they take advantage of being cut off from emails, text messages, and other distractions to work on the tasks that require the most attention.”
“Over the long term, procrastination can poison our lives, because the most important tasks - the ones that really test us, and will benefit us most in our personal and professional development - are invariably the most difficult.”
“If you don’t do the small things, you’ll never get the big things done.”
“One of the most obvious ways of avoiding procrastination is to set yourself a precise deadline.”
“the average office employee works for only 11 minutes between interruptions [Gloria Mark, University of California, Irvine]. Alternating between tasks gives the illusion of productivity: employees believe that they’re working full-speed ahead, responding quickly to a multitude of demands… Multitasking is one of productivity’s biggest enemies.”
“Professor and psychologist Glenn Wilson led a study that showed we risk losing the equivalent of ten IQ points if we are interrupted while solving a problem. That interruption could be something as seemingly benign as receiving an email.”
“The first technique you should rely on to avoid these distractions is the to-do list”
“Mixmax is an add-on for Gmail that reminds you to follow up on an email if you haven’t received a reply within a set timeframe. An equivalent tool for Outlook is Boomerang.”
“Inbox Zero is a classic method for increasing productivity and is used by over a third of the entrepreneurs we met with. The premise is simple: keeping your inbox empty keeps your mind calm.”
“The Inbox Zero Method in three stages: 1) As soon as you read an email that doesn’t require an action, archive it straight away. 2) If an action on your part is needed and you have time, reply and then archive the email. [Enabling the ‘Send and Archive’ button in the Gmail Settings menu will bring up a button you can use to automatically archive a conversation once you’ve sent your reply.] 3) If you don’t have time, add the action required to your to-do list and then archive the email. Remember that you should have only one centralized to-do list to prioritize tasks effectively.”
“What’s important here is getting your work done, not having an empty inbox. An appropriate approach would be to aim for Inbox Zero twice a week - Wednesdays and Fridays, for example.”
“To keep your mind clear and free from distractions, keep your desk clean. Put in place a weekly ritual whereby you organize your desk properly on a Friday afternoon so that you get to work on Monday morning and you’re ready to go. The same rule applies to your virtual office: get rid of old files that clutter up your desktop and you’ll feel incredibly better (Hazel for Mac automatically moves files on your desktop that haven’t been used for a week into a dedicated folder).”
“An alternative would be to download an app for your smartphone, such as Headspace, Calm, or Insight Timer (the top-rated free meditation app developed by teachers the world over). Even if you only meditate for ten minutes a day, you’ll quickly notice the benefits.”
“Blocking apps. There are various apps available (such as Freedom) which you can set up to block your access to particular websites or apps for a specific amount of time.”
“We recommend Pocket, an excellent extension for Chrome, that lets you save articles and videos with one click, which you can pull up later on any device.”
“the brain is less distracted by familiar songs than by new ones [Morgan K. Ward & Joseph K. Goodman & Julie R. Irwin, ‘The same old song: The power of familiarity in music choice.’ Marketing Letters, 25 (2014): 1-11.]. It’s also worth trying out the excellent website (and Google Chrome extension) Noisli. It provides dozens of background soundscapes that can help you concentrate, from quiet riverbanks, to cafés, to a cabin during a thunderstorm.”
“CHOOSE ASYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATION”
“Synchronous communication: this is when both parties communicate at the same time, as in face-to-face and phone conversations.”
“Asynchronous communication: this is when neither party is required to respond immediately, as in let-ters, emails or text messages.”
“The key point is that synchronous communication threatens your productivity because it requires your immediate involvement and therefore interrupts your work.”
“According to The 3 Email Rule by Phil Simon, if you need to send more than three emails to someone on one subject, you should be talking. Ideally, plan your call with the other party in advance to avoid causing unnecessary interruption.”
“Don’t check your emails more than three times per day”
“do not, we repeat, do not read work emails outside of office hours.”
“We recommend using email for anything important and chat apps for the more light-hearted stuff. The added bonus here is that by systematically using emails, you’ll have automatically filed anything important in the same place, making it easier to find in the future.”
“Work remotely at least half a day every week to be fully focused and get things done.”
“Do not answer phone calls from numbers that you do not recognize.”
“Fundamentals, Automation, Speed, Twenty/Eighty Rule: welcome to the FAST method. If it works well in the kitchen, it does wonders at work.”
“Concentration requires a huge amount of energy: the average adult brain uses between 20 and 25 percent of the body’s total energy consumption despite representing only 2 percent of its weight.”
“Make sure you take enough breaks in your day - real ones. A break isn’t just time spent not working or being lazy, it is a fundamental requirement for improving efficiency and creativity. Don’t feel guilty about taking a real lunch break or about scheduling some downtime between meetings.”
“Each day we make hundreds of micro-decisions like these that take up both time and energy as we first define our options, weigh the pros and cons of each, and then make a choice. The end result is decision fatigue, a condition you may already be familiar with. The cumulative effect of all these micro-decisions is that we drain ourselves of the time and energy we need to make important decisions, like whether or not to hire a candidate, start a new project, etc.”
“Lots of our entrepreneurs endorsed morning runs or lunchtime workouts (running, yoga, CrossFit, squash …) as ways to up their concentration and productivity for the rest of the day… During exercise, the body releases all kinds of hormones into your system.”
“The digestive system is more than just a series of organs designed to process food and transform it into fuel for the body. It’s more like a second brain: our intestines contain over 200 million neurons - as many as in a dog’s brain - and more nerve cells than our eyes, ears or skin.”
“Scientists discovered that electrically stimulating the vagus nerve (the nerve responsible for communication between the brain and the digestive system) could have dramatic effects on a subject’s mood.”
“your mind is most lucid first thing in the morning, when sleep has cleared away mental clutter, leaving you equipped to tackle your most demanding to-dos.”
“The entrepreneurs we spoke to all had a clearly-defined morning routine. Here are some of the most common recommendations: 1) Define your three most important tasks. Then start with the hardest. (Remember the frog.) 2) Exercise. 7 Minute Workout, anyone? Meditate. The best chance you have of not being disturbed is when everyone else is still asleep. 3) Drink a big glass of water. You lose about 7oz of water during a night’s sleep, which is not a lot, but it’s never a bad idea to rehydrate yourself. 4) Make your bed. A simple task easily accomplished will help provide motivation for those that follow.”
“most modern software is SaaS (which means you have access to whatever you need with any web browser) and as such is available for both Mac and PC. Your call.”
“The Golden Rule: if you need to repeat the same action more than one single time, automate it.”
“Let your computer autofill forms”
“For remembering usernames and passwords, 1Password works well.”
“Let your computer sort through your emails”
“Mixmax = Gmail on steroids”
“Mixmax is one of only two tools that has its own box in the book, and for good reason. Mixmax can unleash Gmail’s full potential, and was cited as a game changer by many of the entrepreneurs we spoke to.”
“Send later. You can set Mixmax to send an email at the date and time of your choice”
“You speak faster than you write so if you’re not already doing so, we recommend using voice recognition to dictate your smartphone messages, whether that be for texts, WhatsApp, or anywhere else. But avoid sending audio messages to your recipient because messages are still faster to read than to listen to.”
“Type faster. First things first: let’s test your typing speed (there are plenty of sites for this, but 10fastfingers is good). If you type less than 30 words per minute, you’re slower than average - so the good news is that there’s plenty of room for improvement. Just to give you an idea, a professional typist can produce between 70 and 100 words per minute,”
“There are some great online tools to help improve your typing. For us, one of the best is Typingclub, which is used by over 50,000 schools across the United States.”
“Read faster. The average reader reads between 200 and 300 words per minute, but the fastest are capable of reading closer to 1,000 in that time. There are two key secrets behind their ability to read so quickly. 1. They don’t subvocalize. Subvocalization is essentially the process of mentally speaking the words we read, which slows reading speed down to speaking speed. 2. They increase their scanning speed. Contrary to what you might think, our eyes do not read the words in a line of text in order, one by one, but in a series of five to six jumps, each one lasting about 0.25 seconds. To skim text faster, you can try reading the third word on each line and the third to last word on that same line, and let your peripheral vision do the heavy lifting.”
“Legentas offers online lessons to help you reduce the number of stopping points on a line, while Spreeder trains you to read faster by flashing sequences of words across the screen, a method known as Rapid Serial Visual Presentation.”
“if you struggle to find the time to read, try listening to podcasts - or audiobooks.”
“Warren Buffet claims to spend 80 per cent of his time reading, Bill Gates gets through more than 50 books a year, and Elon Musk claims he learnt how to build rockets simply by reading books.”
“Keith Rayner, Elizabeth R. Schotter & Michael E. J. Masson, ‘So Mụch to Read, So Little Time: How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help?’ Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17 (2016): 4-34.”
“good memory is not an innate talent, it just involves learning and mastering some techniques, like any other subject taught in school.”
“On average, your short-term memory lasts 18 seconds and allows you to store anywhere between five to nine pieces of information.”
“The second memory technique will allow you to remember sequences of numbers: building access code, credit card number, social security number, birth dates, telephone numbers of your loved ones … This is the so-called major system method. It requires quite a bit of training at first, but once you realize what you get out of it, you will be pleasantly surprised by your new ability and have a hard time doing without it! (And once you can remember the license plates of passing cars, you’ll be ready to apply to the CIA).”
“we recommend the following book by Kevin Horsley, a master in the subject: Unlimited Memory: How to Use Advanced Learning Strategies to Learn Faster, Remember More and Be More Productive.”
“just need to remember that X% of Y is the same as Y% of X.”
“Alfred is a true ninja app, capable of saving you significant time on those frustrating micro-tasks that eat away at so much of the day. Given everything it can do, the $25 price tag (a one-time payment, not a yearly fee) is pretty negligible. Some of Alfred’s most popular features. 1). Instant Searches. … 6) The One Tab extension for Chrome lets you close all your tabs with one click. You can also use it to close only a certain group of tabs, e.g. all tabs to the right of the active one. 7) Paste for Mac is the app that’s revolutionizing the clipboard by saving your entire copy/paste history. Clipclip is the equivalent for PC.”
“Parkinson’s Law, which states that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion’.”
“If 80 per cent of the effects are produced by 20 per cent of the causes, it follows that we should be concentrating most of our efforts on that 20 per cent.”
“As LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman puts it, if you aren’t embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late’.”
“Done is better than perfect.”
“The future belongs to those who work less.”
“full list, up-to-date list of tools at www.extrahourbook.com/tools”
“Manage files: Hazel (only available for Mac with a one-off payment of $32) or DropIt (PC equivalent available for free).”
“Alfred App for Mac only (the search function is free, otherwise it’s a one-time payment of $25): Run a search for a file or open an application without using the mouse. Speed up typing using Snippets, access the clipboard quickly, or instantly run a search on any site with custom web searches.”
“Swiftkey (free mobile app): Speed up your typing on a smartphone.”
“10fastfingers: Test your typing speed, then Typing-club to practice.”
“Paste for Mac (free) or Clipclip for PC (free): Save your copy and paste history for easy access.”
“Rambox: Group all your messaging, chat, and email apps into a single interface.”
No comments:
Post a Comment