Life Hacking

I read something about this in the Economist yesterday, apparently the challenge for the 21st century will be to do for the knowledge worker what was done for manual workers in the 20th century. That is to increase productivity very significantly. (I do find myself wondering why we are so keen to be turned into a borg like symbiotic techno thing, but maybe that's just me.) Anyway there were a coupled of good tips, some of which I have already tried and am enjoying the fruits of already

• Set email to update every 15 minutes or more to reduce interruptions to your work or more importantly your thinking.
• When working on something specific (such as writing a document) then use full screen to remove the tamping distractions.
• Use a sort of dashboard to monitor progress on key tasks (ok I call it a to-do list)
• If something is big or awkward to tackle, spend 5 minutes on it then leave it a few times, each time you come back, it seems a little easier.
• When leaving something unfinished, make a note of what you plan to do next.

I like the full screen one the best, you can concentrate on the writing and worry more about the format later.

There is one big issue here though, I am often looking for a distraction (such as writing a blog) to either give me something to do or to escape from the mindless "knowledge work" that I am employed to do.