June 29th, 2007

(9+2)*5 a slightly more productive hack

Filed under: daily,hacks — saul @ 6:24 PM

It’s been one of those weeks, 16+ hour days, nose to the grindstone, no time to think about anything but the work that’s due RIGHT NOW kind of weeks, but thankfully it’s Friday - I think I’ve discovered one of those personal productivity gem that only surfaces when you’re busy.

All week I’ve whittled away at a list of (micro-) tasks that are easily accomplished in 10 minutes or less; the majority of them highly repetitive, and somewhat mindless, e.g. - cropping a group of 100 photos, transcribing written notes into a textfile, or tagging asset files according to project. And MUCH to my surprise I’m actually making headway, I based my approach on Merlin’s (10+2)*5 procrastination hack

Whereas Merlin’s approach gives you a two minute reward for each ten minute burst of productivity, my approach applies those two minutes towards the aforementioned small tasks - so an hour of my time now looks like:

  • 45 minutes of project work
  • 10 minutes of micro-tasks
  • 5 minutes reward time (usually spent reading RSS feeds or email)

I’ve been amazed at how much is doable in 2 minutes - wait… is that light up ahead?

1 Comment

  1. That’s no light, it;s the soft glow of my iPhone. Actually if you spent less “reward time” blogging, you’d be able to hit more of the micro-tasks :)

    Comment by Larry — 06.29.07 @ 9:16 PM

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