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11 Tips for Time Management in a Web Worker World
webworkerdaily.com — How often do you get to the end of your day and feel like you ’ve worked so hard and have nothing to show for it? Specially if you work alone, remotely, or freelancing, you may want to follow some practices to make sure you do you work on time
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- otomo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5The most effective is to look at your email every 30 minutes.
I work as a sysadmin and this works out fine, we have enough paging/managers/helpdesk/other irritating people that alert us to things going down, missing the email doesn't hurt.
And get a timer, set it to go off every 30 minutes or so and take a 5 minute break. This helped me a ton.- pvtjohndoe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I'm a Web developer and the most effective thing for me is looking at email very infrequently. I only check my email at certain times of the day. Checking my email too frequently was taking up far too much of my time that I could have been using to get things done.
- bede, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I am a web developer too. Another tip I have found useful as regards email is to be ruthless about clearing out your inbox. Delete anything which doesn't directly apply to you. If an email requires action move it to an 'action' folder, if the email applies to you, but doesn't require action, move it to an 'archive' folder. If the email requires action, but cannot be acted upon immediately (waiting for a decision or another worker's action or something), move it to a 'hold' folder. Whatever you do GET IT OUT OF YOUR INBOX!
- NeoZenkai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15The fear of having no money for food is a good motivator too.
- numb, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5Failing that, actually having no money for food has proven to be a good motivator. Still better than working for some other schmuck.
- paulface12, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13I'm a freelance web designer, and in order to conserve time, I have to constantly remind myself that perfection is rarely achievable, especially in the scope of an entire project. Often times, halfway through a project, I will encounter something that will make me think I should go back and redo something that I've already done. But the fact is, if the code and markup give you favorable results, it usually doesn't matter how streamlined the code is or how efficient your database queries are. Saving milliseconds in load time is not worth hours or days of extra work.
- h0zae, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1SPAM
- darnfabulous, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Whew, I needed that. I really need to break up my digg visits into smaller, manageable visits.
- palova, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I think you should not be reading such blog entries in the first place. :) Not that it is not useful tips but...
- AhmedB, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This is what I've personally started doing when email and other distractions got me to a point where I wasn't able to focus on stuff that I really needed to do.
1. NOT check email the first thing when I get into work, when you first get into work your mind is set to work on something in particular, reading email the first thing in the morning distracts you and you lose concentration! if you want to check your email, check it before u go to bed at night, by the time you get to work in the morning you would've automatically sorted the emails and if they're not that important you will ignore them and work on the essential stuff.
2. Check email 10-20 minutes before lunch, respond to essential email in 10-20 minutes after lunch.
3. If I'm expecting an email or action from someone, spend 1 minute peeking into mailbox every 1-1:30 hours. Once I'm done with my peek, minimize the Inbox, 'notification' is turned off so it doesn't disrupt me.
4. Responses to all 'non-urgent emails' are written at the end of the day. - guigo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Touch each email only once." - best thing i've heard lately
- sclark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Read David Allen's "Getting Things Done".
Twice.
A voice recorder is awesome as well for keep track of the chunks of billable time you've worked. - drunkKitten, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2best possible advice: Stop digging .
- brainspears, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Very nice list overall, but i have found checking my email even that often slows down my productivity. I check email three times a day; when I get to work, after lunch, and right before I leave for the day. I always reply within 24 hours, not necessarily right then.
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