Can dial up increase your productivity?
By Gavin | June 15, 2008
Can you remember what using dial up was like?
I was visiting my in-laws in France with my 4 year old son and his 6 year old nephew and 2 year old niece.
They live in an amazing house right on the Dordogne river, near Bergerac.
A side view of the house
View from Master bedroom (that’s the Dordogne river)
It’s a great place to come and visit, the only downside is that they still have dial up and not upgraded to broadband.
It’s amazing though how much I was able to do in a lot less time.
I know Tim Ferriss talks about stopping the interruptions, I’ve just had a really hard time disciplining myself to do it.
I usually get about 40-50 mails a day about a third of those I
delete without opening anyway. The remaining 30 or so I would usually open
and read. Because it takes so long to load each e-mail I found
I was more choosy about which ones I opened.
This got me thinking about how I normally work at home…
I’ve tried being ‘disciplined’
and closing my internet browser, however I’ve got a habit or
pattern of when I get ’stuck’ or finish a good section of work I think
I’ll just look at my e-mails and then get back to work. Or if I’m
being ‘good’ I might resist the temptation of the e-mail but
instead head to the kitchen for a cuppa or a handful of walnuts.
I was only away for a week and figured if it’s really important then the person
will send me a follow up message or one of my team will send me an sms message or a direct
e-mail. IT WORKED!
Usually when I’m working from home I
have from 9.15 am until 12.45 am each day as my core working hours
and then in the evenings I have available another 2 hours usually from 11Pm to
1.00 AM. I’ve got all the other pieces for the 4HWW in place just not the income yet!!
I’m going to try a different approach back in Oxford.
When I first wake up I’m going to check my e-mail and respond to anything urgent, my 4 year old son is usually pottering around at that time before he gets ready for nursery. I cant really do anything ‘proper’ at that time.
I’m then going to pack my laptop in my rucksack, we cycle to nursery leaving the house at 9.00am, he starts at he starts at 9.10 am. I’m then going to cycle to a local
library 10 minutes away which happens to be next to the gym that I have access to.
Advantage is that I get 10 minutes of hard
cycling, I do bursts at maximum intensity (10-30 seconds followed by a
rest of 10-20 secs), 10 minutes of that is a real good fat burning
work out. I also get 10 minutes on the way back from the library too
so that’s 20 mins quality fat burning exercise.
I’m choosing the library, there are
plenty of coffee shops around but I don’t want to put too much
opportunity for potential interruption and temptation of hte baked goods variety in my way.
I’m playing hardball with myself and heading for the library.
I’ll have my laptop powered up and ready to go by 9.30 am.
Let’s see how my new morning routine works out.
What tricks have you played on yourself to increase your productivity that actually work for you?
Topics: 4 Hour Work Week, Personal Outsourcing |
5 Responses to “Can dial up increase your productivity?”
Comments
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June 17th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Wow that place looks amazing. (And I live on a farm in a gorgeous location so for me to be impressed takes a lot
I like the sound of your new regime and will be interested to see how it pans out. Of course the ultimate would be if your 4 year old sons can have all the emails replied to by the time you wake up — now *that* would be outsourcing!
On a serious note — did you read Tim’s blog entry about how he outsources his email using a long list of rules… I love the idea but a few reasons why I havn’t — the main one is security — how do we know how secure out outsource workers really are?
Regards your outsource workers - would you recommend them for non-sensitive work only — or could they be delegated access to more sensitive areas like inboxes or even PayPal accounts for that matter?
Great blog post thanks.
Regards,
Ed.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Gavin, this sounds like a really good plan. I don’t check email or use social media for the first hour, devoting that to working on my most important task of the day. Then I do a 2 minute email check before tackling the next task. It seems to work for me. If I need to do phone meetings, I save those for after 1pm when my creativity is at a lull and I’m done with writing tasks for the day. However, I too am working on eliminating even more and having the 4HWW lifestyle.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Hi Ed
I’ve no problems with them using my inbox, they are copied in on a lot of e-mails anyway. I set up different emails and have the message sent to me as well as the VA, it works well. I don’t have to forward the e-mail to them.
Regarding Paypal I’ve recently set up my paypal account so they can go in and do everything except transfer money in or out of the account.
It’s working well.
LOL re Jack doing the e-mails for me, great idea it could be fun having him randomly delete mails form my inbox now.
Karen
The plan is working really well, 2 days in and I’ve managed to get heaps more done.
I open up a number of word documents and I write any email messages that come into my head or notes straight into the word doc, whereas before I would open up gmail and get side tracked.
The main thing I think is finding a way that works for you to stop the intterruptions.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
I like the ideas for email management by opening up ‘brainstorming windows’ - Of course I end up spinning around to UltraEdit or Excel or Word or Thunderbird email or a piece of paper or Visio - so many great options. None seem to be complete - but I guess any one will do for a place to start. It is interesting all the different tools (software packages) we have. This issue becomes even more pronounced when we are working on different projects.
Having a VA/virtual assistant to help keep all the different tasks in order can be key. Do you find any particular limitations on what software tools VA can handle effectively?
June 19th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
PayPal multi-user access? DOH! I didn’t realise they had that option and of course it makes outsourcing PayPal account admin a lot less worrying. Thanks for the great tip!