It’s December and one side of my brain is already thinking about presents, imagining the warmth of home, and preparing a list of “must-buys” for Christmas entertaining . The other side ois stuck with the reality of my daily life: me, at the office, dealing with day-to-day tasks. My attention has been divided and this can be seen in my results. It’s not the best situation you want to deal with, especially when the boss has clear expectations from you and reminds you that holiday starts only on  the 24th of December. Therefore, we all most refocus and get concentrate to get things done in time. If this sounds like you, the tips listed below might help.

1. Create shopping lists on the weekends. Gather with your family and write down everything you need to buy for Christmas: food, presents, etc. This is also the right moment to decide where you will go and to make reservation if applicable.

2. Beat the rush. To remain productive at work it’s important to make plans and schedule while you are home and to do this in time without delaying untilthe last moment. In this way you will not be stressed before Christmas.

3. Dedicate your after-work time to online shopping. If you are searching for gifts and sales after work then you will not be tempted to do this at work the next day.

4. Ask for favors. There’s nothing wrong in asking for help from your friends and family if you find yourself stressed by time.

5. Organize your work and get things done. Once you get to the office, forget about Christmas and organize your work. Schedule your tasks and start working.

6. Deal with important tasks first. Morning is the most productive part of the day for most of us, so it’s better to get the most important tasks done in this part of the day. Doing this you might get some free minutes for daydreaming about the holidays in the afternoon (but don’t be too obvious).

7. Steal time from your break if you want to check last-minute offers. If you know there will be a good promotional offer and you want to catch it, you can do this during you lunch break. But don’t waste all your time in front of computer eating junk food because this will definitely not increase your productivity.

8. Focus on your work not on how your vacation will be. I know the holiday spirit has caught hold of you, but stay on target. Try picturing yourself not taking that vacation because you lost your bonus due to sloppy work while you were daydreaming about your holiday trip.

9. Avoid distractions. You will receive e-cards, your colleagues will go on about their vacations, but you have to ignore all that and stay focused. Don’t get involved. Choose an e-card and schedule it to be sent automatically to all your contacts and in this way you won’t have to worry you missed someone.

10. Be consistent in your work. If you start falling behind, don’t give up! Take a 5 minute break and start over with new energy and fresh ideas.

11. Think about the consequences if you won’t finish the work. It’s not a nice approach but this might motivate you.

Like everything else, we have to find a balance between work and Christmas preparations. Managers will not accept unfinished projects no matter how badly you need to go buy gifts for your family and friends. Moreover, you don’t want spend the Christmas Eve at the office finishing tasks that you’ve put off. Choose to be productive and you might receive a nice reward for your work.

How do you stay focused at work with the holidays upon us? Share your strategies in the comments!

Elisabeta Ghidiu is an Internet marketer and advocate blogger, writing about productivity and technology on Cyclope-Series - Let’s talk about productivity - a manager-oriented blog. She is also the women behind AllAnonymity Online and Security blog.

Share This

Ten minutes ago, here’s what was going on my life: I was watching TV - “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” to be exact. I was being yelled at by my friend, who wants to go play golf. I was surfing the Web, trying to find the perfect man-bag (because those are totally allowed now). And, in the midst of it all, I was “at work,” doing some of the things I had to do for my summer internship.

Now, most productivity experts today would yell at me about this, and tell me that multi-tasking is bad, and that I should be able to pour all of my focus into one thing at a time. I’m not getting everything out of anything, they’d say, and that will ultimately make me less productive and less happy.

I say no way. Multi-tasking, which is increasingly turning into a curse word, is the single most useful tool I’ve adopted in my life. It’s allowed me to get far more done, work faster and in a more interesting way, and let’s be honest - work’s more fun when the TV’s on.

The biggest downside most people point to about multi-tasking, doing more than one thing at a time, is that you can’t pour your focus into the task you’re currently working on. But, the way I see it, who cares? For most of us, some large portion of the things we have to do don’t require our entire focus. For instance: much of my last summer was spent importing, formatting, and uploading data. It was tedious work that I literally could have done in my sleep. Why devote my whole focus to that?

The way multi-tasking works for me is this: when something demands my whole attention and focus, it usually takes it; sometimes it’s something I have to finish right now, and other times it’s just something I’m enjoying and am totally wrapped up in. For everything else, the stuff that doesn’t grab and hold my undying attention, why not do as many of them as possible at the same time?

For a lot of people, multi-tasking is hard - some people just don’t switch back-and-forth easily, and find that they actually take longer to get two things done at the same time than they would to do them back-to-back. If that describes you, don’t multi-task. You’re better off pouring time and effort into one thing at a time, and it’ll help you.

For people like me, though, it’s not only hard to single-task, it’s pointless. If I have to find a picture for an article, does that really require so much brainpower that I can’t flip between that and my favorite LOLcats? Laundry really doesn’t need my full and undivided attention, I’m sure of it.

Don’t fear multi-tasking, as many people are starting to do. In some cases, multi-tasking is bad - writing fiction while watching TV is going to lead to your story sounding an awful lot like that TV show. But in other cases, embrace it - do as many mindless things as possible, all at the same time. That way, there’s more time for the involved, meaningful things that are going to grab and hold your attention anyway.

Are you a multi-tasker? What tips do you have on how to do it well?

Photo: solcookie

David Pierce is a college student, freelance writer, and lover of all things Web-based. He blogs about the digital world at The 2.0 Life, and can frequently be found on Twitter .

Share This

That’s a funny word, isn’t it? “Scrum.” Scrum is a project management strategy for software development teams. The name comes from rugby (I guess) where it refers to the start of a new play. In the programming world, it’s a technique of coordinating a team’s work without a clear plan, working towards attainable short-term goals, and then repeating the process towards another set of goals – which I suppose is kind of like playing towards a goal in rugby. Except, you know – fewer broken bones. Hopefully.

I’m not part of a software development team. I’m not even a programmer. But when I came across an article on Scrum recently, it struck me that, while intended for big, collaborative projects, there were a lot of elements of Scrum that could be adapted pretty well to individual productivity. Although Scrum can be implemented at any stage of a project, it really excels as a way of dealing with projects that have stalled out for some reason – projects that have gotten stuck for lack of resources, lack of direction, even lack of teamwork – and that’s something that happens to all of us at one time or another. Maybe, just maybe, the principles that get teams of programmers back on track can apply to the projects every one of us has gotten stuck on.

Scrum 101

Although there are whole textbooks devoted to managing teams and their projects using Scrum, the basic principles are very simple:

• Do what you can with what you have. Projects stall because some resource – whether it’s material, knowledge, or manpower – is missing. Usually, though, there are plenty of things that can be done even without those resources – other parts of the system to build, creative workarounds, standards to devise, and so on. During the planning of each stage, and in daily “check-in” meetings along the way, these shortfalls are taken into account and work designed around them so that a lack of resources doesn’t have to create a lack of progress.
• Constant feedback. As I just mentioned, Scrum encourages daily contact between its team-members, so that a) nobody stalls and holds up the whole project, and b) the collective knowledge of the whole team can be brought to bear on new problems in creative ways. Meetings are short, as short as 15 minutes, and center around three questions:
  1. What have you accomplished so far?
  2. What will you accomplish today?
  3. What’s preventing you from making progress right now?

  These simple questions are meant to identify any “logjams” and break them up before they hold up the entire project.

• Work towards clearly-defined short-term goals. Scrum projects are, generally-speaking, point-releases of the software under development – that is, they are significant but relatively simple evolutionary improvements of the state of the project at the beginning of the project. For example, a set of new functions could be implemented, an interface designed, a database structure mapped out, and so on. “Write browser” is too big of a project, it’s realization too far off, to make for a meaningful Scrum project; “correct bug in line 1178” too small. Ideally, as each project is completed, the software under development should be in a usable state – Scrum was developed to deal with the contingencies of the software world, where projects often need to be rushed into market to combat a competing project, or just to bring in an income.
• Sprint. The basic working unit of Scrum is the Sprint – a focused dash towards the completion of the immediate project goals. At the beginning of the Sprint, the team determines exactly what resources are available to them, what they intend to achieve given those resources, and how long they’ll work on it. Then, they work on those objectives, and those objectives only. The Sprint is sacrosanct – its members work on the project they’ve put together and nothing else until the Sprint is completed. It might be a week, it might be 30 days, or anywhere in between – whatever time they’ve agreed on is dedicated solely to the Sprint. When it’s done, team members might rotate out of or into the team, or be assigned to other projects, but until then – they Sprint.

Scrumming Solo

Seems to me that, with a little modification, those are pretty good principles for anyone with some big projects on their plate – especially if you, like me, have a tendency to get side-railed. Of course, most of our projects aren’t collaborative, and they’re rarely as compartmentalized as computer programs, either. The idea of developing a project by evolutionary steps, with each step creating a potentially usable end-product, simply doesn’t apply to the kind of long-term projects most of us have as individuals – things like writing a book, learning a foreign language, or earning a promotion.

But the idea of Scrum is, I think, very applicable to our personal lives. The whole point is, through a process of constant self-awareness, to identify what’s holding us back, how we can work around it, and where the next few days or weeks should take us. Consider, then, “Scrum for One”:

• Do what you can with what you have. There are bound to be hang-ups in any project worth doing, and it’s all too easy to look at a project and despair because you don’t have whatever you need to finish it. Well, you may not have what you need to finish, but chances are you have what you need to start, to do at least some of the steps needed to get yourself somewhere close to the finish line. And you can take heart from this peculiarity of Scrum: often, when working under less than ideal circumstances without all the necessities to finish a project, Scrum teams find that either a new solution emerges that’s much more within their grasp or, just as often, that the missing element isn’t really needed in the first place. At the worst, you’ll give yourself the time you need to come up with the missing piece – and meanwhile you’ll be moving inexorably closer to your goal.
• Constant self-reflection. If you’re a fan of Allen, Covey, or Drucker, you’ve probably already accepted the importance of a weekly review. Scrum for One suggests that more frequent reflection might be helpful – nothing at the scale of a full weekly review, but a few moments of honesty each morning to define the work in front of you and any problems that might be standing in the way. Brainstorm a few minutes to see if you can solve the issue, and if not, put it in your to-do list for later action. A lot of time, just asking “What’s standing in my way?”is enough to trigger a solution – more often than not, the problem lies more in ourselves than in our situation.
• Work towards clearly-defined, short-term goals. Give yourself a time limit and set a reasonable goal – reasonable, but meaningful – to reach by the end of that period. Projects that stretch out in front of you for months or years are discouraging (which is why so few people write books) while projects that are too small often aren’t very satisfying to complete.
• Sprint. Sprinting the way Scrum teams do it won’t really work for individuals – you probably have a lot of different roles to play on a day-to-day basis, which means focusing on a single project to the exclusion of everything else is going to be difficult, if its even possible. What you can do, though, is block out a number of hours every day and use them to focus strictly on one project – no distractions, no knocking off early, no nothing until you reach your goal.

Obviously this isn’t anything like a complete productivity system, but it’s interesting nonetheless. Scrum is a very effective way of managing projects, and is used by software giants like Microsoft as well as tiny start-ups and everything in between. If nothing else, next time you’re stuck, ask yourself the simple question, “What’s standing in my way right now?” and see if that doesn’t lead to “OK, what am I going to do about it?”

Dustin M. Wax is the project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.

Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.

Share This