How to improve efficiency

Aaron Swartz is a legendary figure, he is a network wizard, but also a freedom of information fighter. I had no idea of him before, but he had long benefited from his wisdom. At the university stage, most of my knowledge comes from Google Reader, and RSS is the work of Aaron Swartz at the age of 14 with others. From June 13, 2010 to now, I read 63,862 entries in Google Reader altogether. America's distorted intellectual property protection system and judicial system have finally cornered him. So, I put Aaron Swartz this famous "howto:be more productive" translated into Chinese, to his salute!

Someone would say, "If you could spend your time watching TV on a novel, you'd have finished a masterpiece!" That's quite right, because it's certainly better to spend time writing books than watching TV. However, this argument implies the assumption that different kinds of time are "interchangeable". You can easily write a novel by watching TV. But in practice, that is not the case.

Time is also divided measured. If I find myself forgetting my notebook on the way to the subway station, it's hard to use the time to write a few novels. When you're at work, it's hard to concentrate on using your time effectively if you are always interrupted. Sometimes, there are psychological effects that affect the quality of time: When I am in good spirits, I can work actively and efficiently, and when I am tired I can only watch TV.

If you want to improve efficiency, you must follow the following guidelines: First, you must make full use of each type of time, and secondly, you have to try to make time into good time.

Effective use of time

Choose a worthwhile job

Sent Mayfly in heaven and earth, one of the sea of millet. (At least I am so educated) so why waste this short life on stupid things? It's easy to do something simple, but you should ask yourself: can I do something more meaningful? Why not do something more important? It may be difficult for you to confront this cross-examination ( If you follow this rule, you often ask yourself: why don't you do the most important thing in the world? However, each step forward will increase your efficiency.

This is not to say that you have been busy all your life, at least I certainly did not (after all, I am still writing this article). But it's definitely my standard of living.

Three uses

Another common misconception is that focusing on one thing helps us accomplish tasks efficiently. I think it's nonsense. At this moment, I am adjusting posture, exercise muscle, drink drink, clean desk, chat with my brother QQ, of course I still write this article. In the past day, I have done some preparation work for this article, read a book, ate something, replied to several emails, chatted with friends, backed up the hard drive, and sorted out my reading list. Over the past week, I've been involved in several software projects, read several books, studied several programming languages, and put forward some of my ideas, and so on.

Multitasking allows you to work in a different quality of time. Also, when you're stuck in something, or bored, you can do something else. (This also gives your mind some activity time)

Doing multiple things over a period of time can also make you more creative. Creativity is the ability to apply what you have learned in other fields to your current job. If you do multiple projects in different areas at the same time, you can borrow a lot of fancy ideas.

List

It's not that hard to do many things at the same time--more people want to do infinite pieces at the same time. But if you try to keep them in mind, your fragile heart will collapse. The psychological pressure to remember all things to do at the same time can drive people crazy. In fact, the solution is simple: write them down.

Once you have the list of issues, you can organize your work in a step-by-step manner. For example, my to-do list is programming, writing, thinking, running errands, reading, listening, and observing.

In fact, many big projects contain a series of work items. For example, writing this article includes reading articles about procrastination, thinking about chapters, phrasing, asking people questions, and so on. These matters are practical tasks that must be performed in addition to writing. We should arrange everything rationally so that when you have the right time, you can do the work without thinking.

Consolidated List and Life

Once you have the list of issues, the next question becomes to remember to look at it, and it's best to notice the list of items no matter what you want to do. For example, I put a book I read recently on the top of a stack of books on my desk. So whenever I have to read, I just open the top one.

I do the same with movies and TV programs. Whenever I hear a movie worth watching, I copy it to a special folder in My computer. , whenever I want to see a movie, I open that folder directly.

I have also thought about some more in-depth methods. For example, when I check for blog updates, I have a Web page that comes with an article in my "to read" folder. Or when I take a break, I pop up a job Tip page.

Improve time Quality

The above advice has enabled you to make the most of your time, but more importantly, you need to make time more quality. Many people waste their time on boring things like school or work. If you work or go to school, you obviously should stop wasting your life. What else do you need to do to improve the quality of time?

Reduce physical Limitations

Carry paper and pens with you

I know a lot of interesting people who carry some kind of pocket notebook at any time. Paper and pens can be used immediately in any case. You can always write to others, take notes, or doodle ideas. I even wrote a full article on the subway.

I used to do that, but now I have a smart machine with me. I don't use it to send messages, but the smart stuff lets me have reading material (email) anytime, and it can push my notes down to my email inbox, which is something I have to deal with immediately. )

Avoid being interrupted

You should avoid interruptions to work that requires concentration. The easiest way is to go to a place where no one is disturbed. Or you can chapters with the people around you: "When my room door is closed don't come to me" or "I brought headphones, you are on the Q message to me" (and then you can always work until the idle down to see the QQ message)

You don't want to go too far. Sometimes if you encounter bad times, you should do something else. For example, to help others solve their problems is much better than sitting in front of the computer to brush Weibo. That's why chapters: when you really can't focus, you can help them do something else.

To ease the psychological shackles

Eat, sleep, exercise

When you are hungry or tired or restless, you are suffering from inferior time. The solution is simple: eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are sleepy, and exercise when you are not happy. I don't do well at times. I do not like to find food, so I often work hungry belly, has been so tired that they do not have the strength to take food.

At work, it's easy to say to yourself, "I feel tired too, but I can't rest now." I'm not done yet! In fact, if you take a nap first, the rest of the bad time will become a good time, and your productivity will be higher. And sooner or later you'll have to sleep.

In fact, I do not often exercise, it seems that I am not a warning to everyone to actively exercise the best person, but I am trying to improve the exercise. I would do sit-ups while I was reading while lying on the road.

To be with a cheerful person

It is very difficult to relieve psychological restraint, but it is good to make friends with cheerful people. I find myself enjoying my job after talking to Paul Graham or Dan Connolly. They're just radiating positive energy! People often think that they can start work by shutting themselves out of the room without outsiders. But it is discouraging that this approach is actually extremely inefficient.

Sharing of work

Even if your friend is not cheerful, to solve the problem with him than a person alone bear. On the other hand, a friend who helps you share your work can supervise you, and you won't be distracted from doing anything else.

Procrastination and the Spirit field.

However, all of this attempts to evade one of the problems. The key reason for inefficient people is procrastination. Everyone is stalling, not just you, it's a dirty little secret. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't deal with procrastination.

What's the delay? For outside observers, procrastination is like doing something interesting (like playing a game or swiping a tweet) rather than doing what you should have done. (This usually makes the bystanders feel lazy and dependent) but the real question is: what is the nature of procrastination?

It took me a long time to study the problem. My best description for this is that your brain exerts a mental field on the task. Those who have played magnets know that they repel each other very much. When you move a magnet, you can feel the edge of the magnetic field line, and if you put the same pole magnet together, the magnetic field pushes the magnets away from each other.

The Spirit field works like a magnetic field. We can't see, but we can feel it. The more you try to accomplish something, the farther the Spirit field pushes you backwards.

Just as you can't hold two mutually exclusive magnets together by brute force: as soon as you let go, they will be parted, and I have never been able to use my willpower purely to overcome the spirit field. On the contrary, you should be smart enough: just rotate the magnetic poles.

So what caused the psychic field? I think there are two main reasons: first, the work itself is more difficult, and the other is that they are assigned to work.

Face difficulties

Split work

The first reason to work hard is to be too big. Suppose you want to write a recipe. No one can sit down and start writing code right away. Creating a program is just a goal, not a specific executable work item. Work should be a specific, specific step that can lead you to a goal. Such work as "drawing a virtual window to show Recipes" is a good start. From this point forward, you know what you can do.

When you take the first step, the second step becomes clearer. You have to conceive the composition of the recipe, what kind of search function to do, how to build the recipe database, etc. Success is on the roll. The problem becomes much easier when you are fully committed to every step you can make.

For each of my big projects, I will think about what to do next and put them in the list of categories (see above). And every time I suspend a project, I will write the next plan in the list.

Simplifying work

The second reason for the difficulty of work is that it is too complicated. For example: Writing a book can seem daunting, so we're going to start with an article. If an article is too much, write a paragraph first. The most important thing is to start doing something.

Once you start, you will be able to more accurately judge and understand the difficulties in your work. It is much simpler to improve what you already have than to do it from a blank sheet of paper. If you write a passage smoothly, it may turn into an article, then a book. One step after another, a magnificent book was born.

Think difficult

Usually, a little inspiration is the key to solving a problem. If you don't know a field, you obviously need to do some research: see what other people do, find some sense, and then try to get a complete picture of the field. Then, handle some minor problems to practice practiced, test whether master the essentials.

Assigned tasks

This refers to the work you have been asked to do. Countless psychological experiments have shown that when you try to motivate others to do things, they tend to not cooperate or do poorly on purpose. Carrots and rods. Such extrinsic incentives seem to kill the "intrinsic motivation" of psychologists-your natural interest in difficulty. (This is the area of social psychology that has been repeatedly studied and is the most thoroughly studied: More than 70 studies have shown that rewards can undermine the interest in completing tasks) and people seem to resist the task of being asked to do so.

Oddly, this phenomenon is not confined to others, even when you tell yourself what to do. If you tell yourself: "I should do xx, this is the most important thing at the moment," Suddenly, XX became the most difficult thing in the world. However, once yy becomes the most necessary thing for you to do now, the original XX becomes lovely.

Create a bogus task

Thus, we can propose a solution: if you want to do xx, tell yourself to do yy. Unfortunately, it's difficult to cheat yourself because you know what you're doing. So you have to be more chicken thieves to cheat yourself.

such as assigning tasks to you. The most famous example is the graduate thesis that graduate students must complete, and only if they finish this difficult task can they graduate. So in order to avoid writing graduation papers, graduate students are happy to do other difficult tasks.

This phony task must look very important (you only have to write a graduation thesis to graduate!) It's huge (you're going to finish hundreds of pages of paper), but it's not going to die in fact.

Don't give yourself a job.

It's easy to say, "Well, I need to put everything aside and concentrate on this article." "Even worse, you want to buy yourself some rewards, like" If I finish this article, I'll eat a candy. " But the worst thing is to let people force you to do it.

These three kinds of situations are very easy to happen, I have used the above means to motivate themselves, but completely counterproductive. Because you're already assigning yourself to a task. Then your brain will try to avoid these tasks as much as possible.

Make things interesting

We are often told that eating bitter is a person. But actually solving the problem is almost the most enjoyable job I have. A thorny problem not only allows you to concentrate on it, but also gives you a wonderful sense of accomplishment after you have solved the problem.

So the secret to driving yourself to do things is not to convince yourself that you have to do it, but to tell yourself it's fun. If it's really boring, you can make it interesting.

The first time I took this problem seriously, I was studying in college. At that time I was asked to write a paper, in fact, writing a paper is not a particularly difficult thing, but it was imposed on me. Who volunteered to write so long papers to discuss the links between the two books? To make it interesting, I started by turning my paper into my own little joke. I decided to write a paragraph in a different style and try to imitate all kinds of words I could. (This also has the benefits discussed above: The first step is finally taken)

Another way to make things more interesting is to solve the model problem. For example, instead of building a Web application, build a framework for Web applications and use that Web application as a model app. This will not only make the task more interesting, but the results of the work will often be more useful.

Conclusion

There are many misconceptions about efficiency: such as time can be replaced, focus on doing something more efficient, self reward can improve efficiency, hard work is hard, procrastination is not normal. The common essence of these myths is that they distort your nature.

This is true of most jobs for most people. Do you really like to write boring articles or record meaningless memos? If society forces you to do so, you listen to your heart and yell out your heart.

If you are trying to do something worth paying for, you should not close the window of your mind. On the contrary, the real secret of efficiency is listening to the voice of the body. Eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are sleepy, rest when you are tired, and do interesting things. It seems so simple, without any fancy words, with no need for strong willpower, much less like the advice of a life mentor. Listening to the heart looks like common sense, but social fetters make us all go astray. If you really want to be efficient, it's easy, it's time to turn around.