Check out this productivity matrix I drew up last week, harnessing all my powers of graphic design

Where are you spending most of your time? What needs to change to get achieve more and feel more happy and fulfilled with less effort?

A quick distinction that may help you get more done.

One of the challenges that plagues many people is a feeling that there just isn’t enough time in the day to get stuff done.

I know myself, I’ve often been guilty of poring over my “To Do” list with a vague sense of anxiety over what do do next.

Before I know it, I’m off down a rabbit hole, checking my ClickBank sales or “researching”.   Then I snap out of it and an hour has gone.

The problem with a traditional “To Do” list is that it’s no good for managing multiple, shifting priorities and projects.  It soaks up so much mental RAM that you don’t have any left to get done what you need to get done.

And that leads to the subject of this post:  most people have to much in the “Doing” pile.

Let me explain.

There are 3 stages in the task “Life Cycle”:

1. To Do
2. Doing
3. Done

You only get paid when a task is “Done”.  There is very little value in a task that is “In Progress” (Doing), whether it be a half-finished website, a 90% completed manuscript or a three-quarters serviced car.

But by NOT focusing on one task to completion, you end up with too many tasks in the “Doing” pile and not enough in the “Done” pile.

That equals a feeling of busyness and stress without the rewards of “Getting Things Done” (to appropriate David Allen’s phrase – GTD is awesome BTW).

Not a good place to be.

One of my solutions is what I call a “Next-Best-Steps” list.  In other words, a To Do list that must be done in order.

You do item 1 to completion, then item 2, then item 3, and so on.

This helps you remain focused on only your Next Best Step to get you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

It’s also vital that you have a clearly defined outcome of what you’re trying to achieve.

Here’s an example of one of my recent Next Best Steps lists.  The outcome is boosting traffic volume to the Marketing Results website.

Next-Best-Steps ToDo List

You may find my scrawl a little hard to decypher, but number 1 refers to Google Adwords optimisation.  Number 2 is On-page SEO optimisation – specifically, making sure that we’re not canibalising results for certain keywords by optimising for the same key phrases on multiple pages.

So instead of getting bogged down on the desired outcome of “more website traffic”, I was able to remain focused on specific action steps to bring about the desired outcome.

The Next Best Steps list is one productivity hack of many, but if translating desired outcomes into prioritised tasks, then real results is a sticking point for you, you may find it useful.

Last week I stopped myself from just aimlessly doing stuff and decided to refocus on the 20% of activities that generate 80% of the results for myself and my clients. Here’s my 80/20 List:

My Critical 20 Percent List

Installing good Productivity habits [see this post] yield rapid results, but it’s easy to backslide. Staying focused on The Critical 20% is the surest path to reaching your outcomes faster and with less effort.

Despite the fact that I “know” I should be focusing on this stuff, it’s so easy to chug along just taking care of the “Urgent” without addressing Important items like systems creation, while keeping a nice balance between sales (getting the work) and production (doing the work).

[Tim Ferris has recently written about habit acquisition techniques based on Leo Babauta's Zen Habits methodology - worth a read.]

Despite numerous anti-spam laws, the quantity of spam email floating around the Internet only seems to grow and grow. I must get 200 spam emails a day, and I’m know many people get even more.

Now I’m using a great tool called MailWasher Pro to stem the tide. MailWasher Pro is a program that you open prior to downloading your email that connects to your email server and allows you to preview incoming email messages without fully downloading them. So instead of waiting 5 or 10 minutes for a whole lot of junk email to download, you can view all incoming mail in about 15 seconds.

Then it uses a number of filters and learning tools to classify your email into “good” and “bad” groups. It also has a facility to easily “report” spam emails, which feeds back into a network of other users. This means that around 90% of spam emails are already correctly flagged when they appear in the program window.

Then you hit “Process Mail” and download only the emails you want to view – deleting, blacklisting or bouncing other emails non grata.
I estimate that MailWasher Pro saves me at least 20 minutes a day – it’s definitely worth the nominal price and is a vital productivity tool.

From the Mailwasher website:

MailWasher works directly with your email server, exactly like your email program does. But there is one important difference: you can tell MailWasher to delete a message at the server, without downloading it – or you can bounce an email back to the sender so that it looks as though your address is not valid.

MailWasher retrieves information about all the emails on the server. With that information (some of which is also processed by MailWasher) you can decide what to do with each individual email – download, delete, or bounce back.

If you check your account with MailWasher first, you can delete or bounce the emails you do not want. Then, when you use your email program, it downloads only the remaining emails, those that you want to read.

MailWasher can be thought of as a “first line of defence” which can weed out junk, large wasteful attachments, and potentially harmful viruses.

I’ve recently come to the realisation that the concept of “productivity” is especially vital for professionals, consultants or indeed anyone involved in time-for-money income generation.

Where your time is your main productive asset, getting more done in less time – and having more than enough time for fun and relaxation – is hugely important (then there’s the issue of shifting from a time-for-money model to a more scaleable model, but that’s a whole other discussion).

In the past 2 weeks I have literally doubled my productivity by following a few simple rules.

I now work fewer than 40 hours per week and am earning 300% more than the same time last year, when I was working 60 hours per week.

Here are my…

7 Simple Productivity Tips

1) Only check email at 12 noon and 4pm (thanks to Tim Ferriss for this tip). This one simple step has been massively powerful and liberating all at the same time. This one saves me an hour a day, minimum.

2) Every evening I write a “For Action” list for the next day, outlining my 20% items that produce 80% of the results for the next day. Every day I attack my most important item first.

3) I keep my “For Action” list on my desk and when small “to do’s” or distractions pop into my head I make a side note so I can deal with small items in batches later on and not break my focus from the task at hand.

4) When checking email or attending to other smaller tasks, if a task will take 2 minutes or less I do it then and there (thanks to David Allen of GTD fame for this one)

5) I’ve replaced my mobile phone message with the following:

“Hi, you’ve reached Will Swayne’s phone. I’m unable to take your call right now. Please leave your name and number, plus the reason for your call so I can get to work on it before I call you back. Thanks for calling.”

This simple distinction avoids the common scenario of playing phone tag just to find out the reason for a call before you even get around to doing something about it.

6) Being mindful of non-value adding steps in processes and working to reduce or eliminate them. In the past, when I was working on, say, a 5-step process, I might have been responsible for sequential steps A, C and E and a designer responsible for B and D.

I would often find myself supplying step A only, creating an extra communication loop in the process when C was required later on. Now I try to supply ALL information to eliminate the non-value adding steps in the middle.

Obviously this can’t always be achieved (for example, proofreading has to take place at the end), but just being mindful of this and taking action where possible has yielded some positive results and cut down on wasteful back-and-forth emails.

7) I’m in the process of implementing David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. While this is very much a work-in-progress (and something that I’ll write about in greater detail in future), some of the concepts have already come in useful for freeing up mental RAM. For example, I’ve closed off a few outstanding projects (what David Allen calls “open loops”) that had been occupying my headspace for some time, leaving more mental bandwidth for the important stuff. I even surprised myself the other day when I located 4 separate documents for my accountant in less than 5 minutes!

Try the 7 steps

I’ll wager that these 7 steps will yield big results for you too when you try them. Do you have any additional low-effort, high-reward productivity tips you’d like to share? Leave a comment!

Like many people, I’ve fallen into the bad, bad habit of over-checking email. A While email is a great tool (although some people like Dan Kennedy would argue, a non-essential one) – it is a huge time-waster if not managed carefully.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been experimenting with a new email management strategy:

Don’t open your email program until 11am

The theory behind this is that if you check email first thing (as I used to do), you tend to get caught up in a range of non-essential, non-urgent busywork that can take up most of the morning and get your day off to a bad start.

By getting started on your most important item first thing, you make real progress and build up unstoppable momentum for the rest of the day.

Although this tip sounds simple, I estimate this one idea alone has boosted my productivity by at least 10% (although I was a heavy user to start with Your mileage may vary.)

Give it a go and let me know how you get on. A  If you have other simple 1-minute productivity ideas, leave a comment.

Have you noticed that email spam is getting beyond a joke? Many countries have instituted anti-spam legislation but judging by the state of my inbox every morning it’s not doing much good, and I know I’m not alone.

Have you actually calculated how much time spam email costs you every week to download, sort and delete? 15 minutes a day is over an hour per week of lost productivity…

Recently I came accross and Anti-spam program called MailWasher Pro that is already saving me hours every week.

Why I like MailWasher

Many anti-spam solutions that I’ve seen suffer from one or more of these problems:

1. They’re too agressive – they eat up legitimate emails
2. They’re not agressive enough – they allow tonnes of dodgy emails through
3. They can be circumvented and rendered useless by inventive spammers

MailWasher overcomes each of these problems. Here’s a quick summary of how it works:

Sorting Emails and Nuking Spam is Fast!

Because you only see a preview of incoming emails without downloading the whole message, MailWasher is lightning fast – no more waiting for dozens or hundreds of rubbish emails to clog up your inbox before you get a chance to delete them.

Reduced security risk

Because you don’t actually download emails to your computer until they have been sorted by MailWasher, malicious emails with viruses attached never even reach your computer.

MailWasher is a fast learner

When I first purchased Mailwasher Pro after previewing the Free Version, I found that for the first week or so I had to keep an eye on the automated sorting function to ensure that mails were sorted correctly.

But ever since flagging most of my “friendly” email addresses and blacklisting others, the learning filter has taken over and the program functions brilliantly. Previewing and sorting 100 emails now takes less than 1 minute.

MailWasher Versions and Prices

Even if spam email is costing you only 15 minutes a day, that’s 50 hours you’re sacrificing every year based on a working year of 200 days. Then multiply that by how much your time is worth to you (your hourly rate)…

Convinced yet?

So, how much does this little baby cost? Well, there are two versions, the Free Version and the Pro Version. Here’s how the versions compare.

Why I use and recommend the Pro Version

• MailWasher Pro allows multiple email accounts
• It has a built-in “learning filter” which increases speed and accuracy.
• It integrates with the First Alert global spam database which allows automatic screening and flagging of 95% of spam email
• It is an absolute no-brainer at only USD $37.

So if you want to free your inbox of clutter and claim back countless hours every year, grab MailWasher!

Will Swayne
On-the-warpath-against-spam

Google launched Google Maps in Australia this week and I went over to check out the functionality – from the perspectives of both a consumer and a marketer. While Google Maps has been viewable in Australia for some time, the latest updates have fully localised the service and provided additional features such as more detailed topographical images, driving directions and business listings.

That puts Google Maps in direct competition with the Yellow Pages, and the YP people must be none too pleased, because Google Maps is, well, a lot better.

The Consumer’s Perspective

Mmmm…..mappy goodness. Google Maps has gone straight into my favourites. One of the reasons why I like it is that it combines some of the best features of Google Search, whereis (direction finder) and the Yellow Pages into one site.

I’m having a smash with a friend at the golf driving range tonight so I did a search for “oxley golf course oxley rd oxley brisbane”, which returned the following results:

I was impressed by the variety and depth of info returned, including:

• Addresses, phone numbers and websites
• Other related businesses in the area
• Driving directions
• “Golf” and “Oxley” related contextual ads
• Links to related categories

Enough said – give Google maps a try.

The Marketer’s Perspective

From a marketing perspective, I believe that Google Maps is significant because it more deeply integrates search with purchasing context. Let me explain…

One reason why Google Adwords produces such a solid ROI is that the ad appears exactly when a user is searching for a product or service – the search and the solution (ad) are closely connected in time.

Now, Google Maps results enable searches and solutions to be more closely connected in time and space. For local businesses, this should mean an even higher return from Google Adwords.

Obviously, any effect will be proportional to the number of people who use Google Maps, so it will be interesting to see how quickly Google Maps is adopted in Australia.

This comparison of searches for “Google Maps” vs “Yellow Pages” reveals that in Australia at least, the YP has a solid lead [note that the data are around 3 months old at the time of writing] – it will be interesting to see what happens over the coming months.

Other services just round the corner

Google Maps is the first of the Google “local” services to reach Australia – others are no doubt in the pipeline (e.g Google Local integrated with Mobile services). I believe these will have a significant impact on the Internet search space when they arrive.

Looking out for them and thinking about how you will use them before they arrive is an excellent way to get the jump on your competition.

Will Swayne
Internet Optimiser

Check out this Periodic Table of Visualisation Methods that details dozens of ways to present and visualise data. What a great resource.
Thanks to Stuart Gordon via Marc Dussault for this link.

Over the last couple of years a number of colleagues have mentioned the Myers Briggs Type Indicator as a useful tool for analysing and understanding yourself and others.  (Looking back at the wording in that last sentence, it’s hardly surprising that I’m an INTP, also referred to as the Architect type.)

While I don’t have much experience working with this metric, I felt that the description of my type was for the most part accurate.

If you’re up for an intesting exercise in self-analysis, why not take a free MBTI test here? Do you agree with the results? Did you pass? =D