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Rob's avatar

"Focus on work where you can make others around you better, not just finishing tasks."

Couldn't agree with this more.

As a manager, if you finished the task, but no one gets better because of it, get ready to do it all again next time.

Managers must constantly focus on leverage. Every task is an opportunity to improve those you lead.

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Aleš Žehelj's avatar

As I manager and team lead I agree with you Rob

Role of the managers is lifting up the people in your team

And being a role model with constant improvements makes the difference

Thank you for reading and I hope you will test & implement some of the tips

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Fejan Malek's avatar

Wow, very inspiring. Thanks!

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Mohamed Shamekh's avatar

This piece is great! I’m almost graduating so I’ll save it so that I read it again once I start working in the field! I guess the thing that links all of the things mentionned in this piece together is the fact that you need to have a good attention span. Perhaps being more agressive with the social media blocking could help repair the attention span that was destroyed by short-form content

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Aleš Žehelj's avatar

Glad that you liked the approach Mohamed

Yes eliminating distractions and focusing on the things that matter makes the difference in providing valuable work

Regarding social media blocking - try to block 2x1 hour in your day for social media to avoid checking it all the time and wasting your precious time

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William Meller's avatar

Great insights! I used to beat myself up for procrastinating. “Why can’t I just get started?” But then I noticed something: I procrastinated the most when I wasn’t sure what the next step was.

I wrote a little bit about that here: https://mellernotes.substack.com/p/10-hard-lessons-about-productivity

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Aleš Žehelj's avatar

William yes procrastination is an obstacle for progress

What I do is to make some small steps first to avoid delaying tasks and projects

"Just do it" attitude works great

I read your article and the productivity tips you mentioned are great too!

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Shaun's avatar

Short and actionable. Nice write up!

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Aleš Žehelj's avatar

Shaun thank you for the feedback

That was our mission - to provide actionable and valuable tips

And present graphical perspective of the content

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Gregor Ojstersek's avatar

Thank you for the kind words. Glad you like it Shaun!

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László Bencze's avatar

Thanks Gregor and Aleš for collecting these very good tips into a top list. I apply some of them and I can say that they have given a boost to my productivity.

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Aleš Žehelj's avatar

László thank you for the feedback

We wanted to provide some ideas how to approach work performance

Testing different hacks and see what works the best for you is the way to go

I am glad that they reasonate for you

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Gregor Ojstersek's avatar

Glad the article resonated László! And awesome to hear about you applying some of the tips and getting the productivity boost 👏

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Tanay Buddhdev's avatar

What a comprehensive yet succinct selection and presentation of all the great power tips and tricks that I've seen, tried, read about from different sources at different times - thank you both, so much for this!

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Aleš Žehelj's avatar

Thank you Tanay for the feedback.

We wanted to include some classic approaches and some different ones.

Hope you gonna implement them and it will bring you better results and more time & energy for yourself.

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Gregor Ojstersek's avatar

Glad to hear you like the article Tanay and thank you for your kind words!

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Karthik Subramanian's avatar

Excellent writeup Ales and Gregor!!

I recently started carrying a physical notebook with a pen so that when I'm doing my deep work stuff (like writing a PR, reading some code, etc), I can draw out how the representation looks like and write down thoughts that come to mind.

Writing to bring clarity has been a good productivity hack for me

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Aleš Žehelj's avatar

Thank you for your feedback Karthik

Notebook and a pen is also my choice when it comes to planning, writing and idea dropping

I am glad these hacks reasonate to you

Keep on improving your personal & work performance!

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Fejan Malek's avatar

I personally use Google TickTick, and I find it much better than Todoist.

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Aleš Žehelj's avatar

I combine using aps and a paper notebook - works great for putting down creative ideas

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Fejan Malek's avatar

Thank you, really nice post.

I am currently using daily to-do tasks, but I haven't tried weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly tasks. I will start by trying weekly tasks first.

I started scheduling events on my calendar, but it hasn’t really helped me. For example, I might get an urgent call or a meeting scheduled unexpectedly while I’m in the middle of another event. Or, I might be working on a scheduled task that takes longer than expected, causing it to overlap with another planned event, and it messes up all events of the whole day.

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Aleš Žehelj's avatar

@Fejan Malek that’s a great start, I am sure planning will bring you some positive effects in saving time and getting more focused

Regarding scheduling - you should always leave some space for unexpected tasks or events. The point of scheduling is not to stick to it 100% all the time

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Fejan Malek's avatar

Understand 👍

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