Tag: productivity

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7 Productivity Tips From Ernest Hemingway

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Ernest Hemingway may go down in the history books as a hard-drinking, big-fishing, Nobel-Prize-winning writer, but he was also a productivity guru. Throughout his career he often gave advice to young writers and openly talked about his work habits and writing style. Even if you aren’t a writer Hemingway’s tips and tricks can help you increase your productivity.

Follows is a list of productivity tips that come from Hemingway himself…and they aren’t just for writers.

1. Don’t Waste Words and Be Clear: Hemingway is famous for getting to the point and killing unneeded adjectives. When he was challenged to write a six word story, he wrote “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” Clearly, he knew how to be economical with his words. If you want to get things done you need to exercise the same verbal restraint. Meetings, email exchanges, and conversations often spill into the late afternoon because people employ too many words. Keeping it short, simple, and clear will save time, cut down on confusion, and get everyone back to work.

2. Make a Schedule: Everyday Hemingway would  wake up at 7am and try to write between 500 to a 1,000 words. The rest of his day he devoted to a combination of fishing, hunting, and drinking. Give yourself a schedule. As Jeanette Winterson, another writer, says, “Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.” Routines and schedules give leaders the ability to be creative and consistent.

3. Quit While You’re Ahead: Hemingway said “The best way [to write] is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day…you will never be stuck.” If you do one task well and you know what to do next, it might help to pause and tackle it the next day. Getting something done every day will increase your confidence and keep momentum going.

4. Keep Your Mouth Shut: According to Hemingway, it’s bad form for a writer to talk about his work. He said discussing writing takes off “whatever butterflies have on their wings and the arrangement of hawk’s feathers if you show it or talk about it.” Don’t discuss your project or new idea until you are certain it is clear and well thought out. Talking about a new proposal or plan too soon can give your competition time to coalesce against your idea. Productivity will suffer if you spend more time talking about your idea than acctually moving it forward.

5. Don’t Give Up: Hemingway once told F. Scott Fitzgerald, “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.” You need to be able to be critical of the work that you do complete. Not everything you do will be perfect. Increased productivity will help you make a lot of progress, but you need to approach it with a critical eye. Don’t get frustrated and give up because you feel you are doing a bad job. Keep producing and moving forward. Eventually you will do one thing very well.

6. Work Standing Up: Hemingway wrote standing up because of a minor leg injury he got in World War I. But, his vertical habit isn’t that odd. Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, and Donald Rumsfeld, among other popular figures chose to stand up while they work. Standing while working can increase productivity by fighting fatigue, the allure of napping, and minor distractions. According to the New York Times, it can also help you lose weight.

7. Lastly, Hemingway said, “Never mistake motion for action”:  Leaders have to remember that productivity is about action and getting things done–not running around in circles.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/stickerhelsinki/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
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5 Productivity Tips From Mark Twain

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Popular pictures of Mark Twain show the American man of letters in a relaxed slump, enjoying a cigar, and sheepishly scanning a warm summer afternoon in a comfortable, white linen suit. A calm, restful smile resides on Twain’s lips and his wild, white hair appears to have recently departed from a goose feather pillow.

On first glance, Twain doesn’t seem like a very productive soul, but you can’t judge a book by its cover.

The fact is Twain was a steady, consistent, and productive writer who tirelessly worked on his craft. There’s a reason why Hemingway called Twain’s most popular book, Huckleberry Finn, the root of all modern American literature.

Twain’s impressive work rate is the result of his happy outlook on life and his unique principles. Even if you aren’t a writer, the following list of Twain’s productivity tips will help you work harder and smarter:

1. Don’t be a perfectionist:

Twain observed, “I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.” Twain didn’t let misspellings and rules of grammar get in the way of his storytelling. He believed in telling simple, humorous tales. Twain left the editing to the editors. This carefree attitude spurred his creativity and let him develop his own style that wasn’t beholden to established rules of fiction

Don’t waste all of your time editing and making things perfect. Give yourself time to be sloppy, creative, and messy. It gives you the opportunity to express yourself without barriers. You can edit, retool, and tweak later.

2. Mind your company:

Productivity isn’t always about waking up early, setting a schedule and trying your best to ignore your email and phone. Sometimes it boils down to confidence and Twain believed only certain people inspire self-assurance.  Twain writes, “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Ignore the naysayers, the cynics, and the folks who are always sucking their teeth whenever a new idea is brought up. They are the “small people” and all they want from you is to join them in their misery. You must associate with people who allow, encourage, and demand big dreams.

3. Laugh at work:

Everyone has their favorite Twain joke. Mine is, “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”

Twain knew that humor, jokes, and laughter soothed many headaches and ills. “Humor is the great thing,” Twain writes, “the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.”

If you have a mountain of work and stress dogs your daily life than take time to seek out humor. Laughter will help you relax. Once you’re relaxed you can get back to work with more clarity and focus.

4. Develop good habits with incremental steps:

Twain knew that good habits are hard to acquire. While it’s easy to say you’ll get up early and visit the gym, it’s another thing completely to obey your screeching alarm clock before the sun begins its day.

Twain had a hack to instill good habits and it goes as follows, “Do something every day that you don’t want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.”

He went on to observe, “Habit is habit, and not to be flung out the window by man, but coaxed downstairs, a step at a time.”

Twain knew that one can’t simply pull a positive habit out of the blue. Good habits have to be worked at incrementally.

Twain also writes, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex and overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”

Don’t jolt your system into new, better habits. Gradually work your way into them so they stick.

5. Don’t follow conventional wisdom:

Twain didn’t believe in dieting or maintaining a healthy lifestyle. He smoked cigars, he drank, and he didn’t believe in abstaining from fattening foods.

When it came to cigars he had an especially large appetite. He writes, “I ordinarily smoke fifteen cigars during my five hours’ labors.” It is not exactly a habit one should replicate, but it illustrates that Twain allowed himself small pleasures while he went about his work.

There’s no rule forbidding yourself from small pleasures while you toil over your projects. Faced with a monumental task one should bear down and get to work while allowing for the odd indulgence.

After all, Twain writes, “There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.”

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The Myth of Productivity: Is 8 the Magic Number?

It’s all about getting things done. If you can get those you lead to rally around your ideas then success isn’t that far away. But once you’ve reached a certain level of success it becomes imperative that you sustain the momentum you worked so hard to build.  One way to sustain momentum is to make sure that you keep your employees motivated–motivated to continue the high level of work that got everyone to the top of the mountain in the first place.

Entrepreneur magazine’s Tony Bradley recently wrote an article entitled Telecommuting Is Good for Employees and Employers. In the piece, Bradley makes the point that, despite what we’ve been taught for years, allowing workers to break out of the normal 9-5 grind will actually help maximize their time. He argues that forcing those you lead to sit in a cubicle for 8 hours a day doesn’t guarantee that more work will get done.  In fact it does  just the opposite. There is no incentive to work faster if the only reward is more work and more time sitting around.

The idea that telecommuting is more than just people sitting in their bathrobes watching game shows instead of working is a perfect example of how leaders have to burst The Myth of Productivity. There is no generally agreed upon norm for productivity. Working eight hours-a-day in a sterile, fluorescent lit, cubicle is the result of nothing more than a law to keep unscrupulous bosses from forcing people to work fifteen hours a day in a dangerous and poorly ventilated mine shaft. There is no science behind the number. It’s not some perfectly worked out equation that guarantees success. Yet we still hang on to it like Moses brought it down from Mt. Sinai.

The key here is to understand that you must be able to adapt your criteria for success and productivity.  The bottom line is that you want to get things done. But everything that comes before that final goal must be flexible and adaptable in the face of change. Setting understandable and clear criteria for your employees is an ongoing and continual process. You might have been told that forcing your employees to work a certain number of hours in a certain place is a must, but it is just not so. Don’t be afraid to shape, mold, and transform your criteria as your initiatives and ideas change.

Picture credit: Legozilla

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Leadership Book Corner: 4-Hour Workweek [Video]

4hr-workweek-coverJumping into Tim Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Workweek, is like taking a cold shower. It’s jarring, but ultimately refreshing. Mr. Ferriss argues that you can work 4 hours a week and still live a rich life filled with travels, adventures, and fun. If you’re like me you might look at this book and have some very big doubts.

Yet they are quickly stowed away as Mr. Ferriss, a self-proclaimed lifestyle designer, begins to tell you his very personal story of how he went from being a 9-to-5 drone, to an 80-hour workweek leader, to a Tango champion with loads of free time.

Mr. Ferriss posits that anyone can follow his footsteps if they exercise the right degree of his unusual time management theories. What’s interesting,  for the purpose of this blog, are his very clear and very powerful thoughts on leadership. Mr. Ferriss, a leader and CEO of  BrainQUICKEN, believes two things are key to strong, able, leadership. First, he states, leaders should be able to delegate clearly and second, leaders should be able to automate their jobs.

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