How to Accomplish More in Less Time.

How is your productivity?  Are you able to manage your time efficiently to get the most done in the least amount of time?  Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist who teaches at Duke University and is the author of three best-selling books on irrational behavior, developed a smart calendar application, Timeful, to help people improve their productivity.  Ariely found there are six keys not improving individual time management.

Step One: Recognize that the world is working against you.  Traditional advertising interrupts and encourages you to purchase products and services.  Internet links encourage you to click.   Text messages make you stop in your tracks.  If you responded to every email, beck and call, Ariely claims you quickly would be broke, obese and constantly distracted.  His advice is to develop a plan to reduce distractions.  Set aside a certain amount of time each day to read emails and texts.  

Step Two: Control your environment or it will control you, claims Ariely.  Your environment matters.  Create an environment that makes things that you need to do easy and the things that you should not do difficult.  Google conducted an experiment at its New York headquarters where it offered M&Ms in a basket.  When the company switched containers to a bowl with a lid, the consumption of M&Ms declined by 3 million a month.  

Step 3: Develop daily, weekly and monthly to-do lists.  Seems like a no brainer, but few employees document what they need to do.  

Step 4: Take advantage of the most productive hours in a day.  Ariely found that not all hours in the day are equal.  Most people are more productive in the morning approximately an hour after waking up.  So if you get up at 6am, your most productive time of the day would be between 7am and 9:30am.  Schedule your most important to-do list items for those hours.  Ariely found that most people miss this opportunity, instead focusing their attention on email and Facebook.

Step 5: Avoid the biggest productivity drains; meetings, email, multitasking and structured procrastination.  The latter is defined as focusing on tasks that give the feeling of progress instead of focusing on deep work that really makes progress.  Ariely explains that crossing off items on your to-do list may give you sense of accomplishment, but real achievements take time.  

Step 6:  Reduce the amount of time on email and texting.  A University of London study found that constant emailing and texting reduced mental capacity by an average of 10 points, five for women and 15 for men.  This is the equivalent of working after missing a night’s sleep.