Archives: productivity

I’ve long been a loud advocate of the power of social media and digital marketing if used in the right way. The biggest issue that I try to drive home to all of my clients, however, is the simple truth that social media is – and must be seen as – an investment for your business.

It costs money in terms of resources, but it also costs far more in terms of time – the time it takes to develop a social media strategy, to build an audience of friends, fans and followers and to maintain that tribe of people in a way that makes them feel valued by both the brand and the people behind the brand.

Which is why I was so disheartened to see this article on Mashable.com this week on time-saving tips for Twitter.  While I agree that there are ways to increase your productivity by developing processes and systems to optimise you and your company’s time on social media sites, I was taken aback to read this (under Number 3):

Another way to fit tweeting into your schedule is to develop tweets in bulk and schedule them to go out later.

Leyl Master Black, mashable.com

This is possibly the single most misleading piece of advice that is bandied around about Twitter. Scheduling Tweets isn’t conversation, it’s broadcasting.  Social media is specifically that: social. It’s about interaction, conversation and community, not about broadcasting your “message”1 – that’s what traditional media and paid-for advertising is for.

If you only take one thing away from this blog over however many weeks, months and years it exists and you subscribe, let it be this: don’t schedule your Tweets. If you’re not prepared to invest the time to be part of the conversation with your tribe around your brand, then this form of online marketing isn’t for you.

Most importantly, remember that not being on Twitter, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Tumblr, or Blogger, or WordPress or any other social media, blogging or online marketing site doesn’t automatically make you “un-hip” or “out-of-the-loop”. If it’s not right for you, your audience or your budget, then not being on them makes you a far savvier marketer than anyone who’s simply using them as just another broadcasting platform.

I’m getting down off my soapbox now.

1. whatever that may be: sales, social good, charitable [↩]

Our lives are a rush of different stimuli, from our multiple social media accounts to emails to phone calls and text messages.  In order to boost your own productivity, take a break from it all for a set period of time each and every day.

Since I started training for the 3 Peaks, which currently involves 5 trips to the gym a week and a lot of pain, I’ve discovered the enormous benefits of being in an environment with none of the usual distractions.

My creativity has come on in leaps and bounds in the last few weeks as I give myself 45-60 minute periods every day of the week to be completely cut off from my communications, to enjoy some much needed thinking time and to focus my brain on the things that really matter in my life and work, rather than the things that too easily consume my attention when I’m in the thrall of social media maintenance and ever-flowing emails.

You may not be a gym-bunny, but if you can find the space in your day to force yourself to silence your phone, shut your laptop and spend even half-an-hour away from everything and alone in your head1, you’ll notice the benefits creeping into your headspace rapidly.

1. or with friends and loved ones [↩]

I picked up a voicemail from my dad last night around midnight. I figured it probably wasn’t a great idea to call him back right then, so I deleted the message. As I did, I thought to myself, “Now I’ve deleted that, I’m pretty sure I’ll have forgotten in the morning and fail to return the call.”

In accordance with the prophesy, my phone rang this afternoon and Dad’s name popped up on the screen. Luckily, it wasn’t anything too important1, but it reminded me how important knowing yourself is if you want to be truly productive.

I know I can be pretty forgetful, which means I should have made a note that Dad had called and wanted me to get back to him so I did it first thing this morning.

If you know and are aware of your little foibles and common mistakes, it makes it far easier to compensate for them. I’m all to aware of my forgetfulness and I take steps to deal with it2 to keep me on the ball and at my peak of productivity.

What are your little niggles that dampen your productivity? How do you work your way around them?

1. Did I want to go round and watch the game on Saturday? [↩]
2. such as making use of Evernote as widely as possible [↩]

I wrote a few weeks ago about getting ‘a job‘ to help get me out of the house and a little less stir-crazy (one of the pitfalls of working from a home office).  I expected it to be hard work, but that was kind of the point; it would hep my mental state, my writing and my honeymoon fund.

What I didn’t realise was that it would be such hard physical work and that as a consequence, I’d become stronger and fitter so much more quickly than I’d been planning on with my regime at the gym.

The unexpected benefits of the things we do in life can be some of the best. The same thing goes for business, writing and filmmaking, too. Sometimes we do things because we enjoy them, sometimes we do things because we think they’ll be good for us or for others and sometimes we do things because we feel we have to.

Whatever your motivation for doing something – positive, negative or self-serving – it’s always good to be on the look-out for those things we’d never have had access to or experienced had we not taken that certain task on.

I rarely give things up for Lent. A few years ago, I gave up going into hospital , but that one didn’t last, thanks to those pesky medical people trying to keep me alive.

This year, though, I’m vowing to give up the fear of failure.

Too many of life’s decisions are governed by the “what if it all goes wrong?” question or “what if I look silly for trying it?”. Too often we skip over great opportunities because we can’t immediately see how to make them work and we worry about what it’ll look like to our friends, colleagues and clients if they don’t.

So this month I’m going to enter into every project with a sense of the infinite possibilities as opposed to the dread of defeat.

That’s not to say that I will be hurling myself into projects willy-nilly. Fear of failure is very different to realistic expectations for the success of a project and if it doesn’t make financial (or time-cost) sense, then it will remain on the back-burner for the time being.

What are you going to commit yourself to for Lent? What are you afraid of failing? Announce yourself here – loud and proud – and we’ll all keep tabs on each other.

If you’ve established yourself a strict, productive routine, it can be hugely beneficial to give yourself some slack now and again.

As you probably know by now, I’m training for the 3 Peaks Challenge in June this year. Since I’m much further behind all the other members of the team, I’ve set myself a rigorous and punishing work, training and dietary schedule to get myself in shape.

Motivation for anything can be hard to maintain, but even more so when you’re limiting and/or being tough on yourself, restricting certain things and enforcing others. That’s why I’ve taken to giving myself a ‘cheat day’ once a week to allow me to indulge, slack off and generally slob around a bit.

Including a cheat day as part of your regular schedule – whether it’s a day off from work, a day with no internet, eating whatever you like or just enjoying something you don’t usually have time for – can be a much stronger motivational tool than a long-term goal; knowing that you’ve got a ‘rest day’ coming up can help you work harder and more efficiently as well as increase your positivity and productivity.

Don’t be so hard on yourself; cheating’s only cheating when it does you a disservice. Sometimes cheating’s just the best way to move forward.

I’ve been in a funk since the weekend.

Working too hard, not playing enough and feeling generally a little run down, I’ve been struggling to concentrate and get my head in order with no inspiration to get anything done.

Then, today, thanks to a friend on Twitter, I did the one simple thing that works every time. I got off my arse.

The simple act of standing from your sofa, your desk, your workbench and going and doing something can be all the inspiration you need to get back up and at ’em.

Next time you’re funking1, just choose something, get up and DO IT.

1. new word! [↩]

Welcome to another new LOWDOWN, that part of the Production Office that brings you tips and tricks on all the tools you need to enhance your career as a filmmaker and creative.

Today, it’s Productivity.

Anyone who follows my blog will know I’m pretty hot on productivity. For far too long I spent my days being busy, but rarely productive. Since harnessing some of the tools I’m talking about today and putting some best practices of getting things done into place, I’ve become much more focused, much more productive and much more successful.

Let’s have a look, then, at some of the tools you can use to make your life easier.

EVERNOTE

Evernote comes at the top of the list today for two reasons: number one, it’s the tool I was most recently introduced to and two, it’s the tool I now find the most invaluable.

Evernote is a desktop and web-based app that you can also get for almost all smart phones.  It’s free to get started, but if you go over a certain storage limit you have to start paying.  That said, I’ve used it quite a lot and still not exceeded my free allowance.

What Evernote does is to collect together all those bits and pieces of things on the web that you want to take note of, as well as allowing you to compile your own To Do lists, projects and other notes.  It’s the simplest, cheapest and easiest way of keeping track of just about everything you need to remember. The Evernote logo isn’t an elephant for nothing.

THINGS

The second tool that works hard to keep you on time and on-topic is Things. The biggest down side? It’s Mac-only. So all you Windows dinosaurs can’t take advantage of it. You also have to pay around £30 for it, which puts it a step below Evernote to begin with.

Once you get past those elements, though, Things is brilliant for tracking To Do’s, project files, notes and reminders. Most usefully, though – and what helps to elevate Things to a point worth paying for – is it’s interaction and syncability1 with iCal and iPhone. If you use Apple’s MobileMe syncing solution to share your calendar across all your home computers, like I do, Things swaps and shares data seamlessly with not only all of your computers, but your phone as well. An invaluable way of keeping track of everything you need to know when you need to know it.

BASECAMP

There are numerous online project management tools that help you and all your collaborators to keep track of all the strands that make up your project, but the best one I’ve found (and used) is Basecamp.

Unlike other, equally useful online tools like Huddle, it’s Basecamp’s pricing structure that really makes it stand out. You pay a flat monthly fee from $24 (£15) and upwards that allows unlimited numbers of people to join your project and work on things with you. Huddle, by contrast, charges you per user per month, meaning a major film or creative project would quickly rack up sizable fees.

Basecamp2 is best used for sharing documents and keeping track of project timelines and goals in a way that everyone involved can see. Not only is that a great motivational tool – if everyone know what you should be doing, you’d better be doing it – but also a great way of making sure key things don’t get missed and that everyone knows the timeline their working to and the goals their aiming for.

There are hundreds of different tools of productivity for you to explore, but I’d suggest you limit yourself to trying one or two at a time, otherwise you risk undoing all their good work by spending all day getting to know them and setting them up as opposed to using them to help get your work done.

For more o productivity, keep an eye on my blog here, as well as checking out the99percent and lifehacker, my two online bibles of productivity tips and tools.

1. new word alert! [↩]
2. and, in fact, all online project management tools [↩]

For years the iconic sports brand have been telling us to ‘Just Do It‘. It works as a slogan because it’s short, it’s snappy and it’s easy to remember.

It also works because it’s true; the single best way to make anything happen is just to do it.

If you’re sitting around thinking of all the things you ought to be doing, you’ll never get anywhere. If there’s something to be done just get up and get on with it. The sooner you do, the sooner it’ll be done and you can get back to the other tasks on your To Do list1.

Even when it comes to big things, although you made need to break them down into smaller, more achievable chunks, you start down the road by simply taking that first step.

Yesterday, after much delay and dilly-dallying, I finally committed myself to attacking the 3 Peaks Challenge later this year. How? I contacted a journalist friend at my local paper and got them to run this piece on me to help me find a trainer.

Not only will I hopefully get some expert supervision and advice, but I’ve also announced the trip to the world in a way that will keep me honest, make me stick to my goals and motivate me to achieve what I’ve set out to do.

Expect more on the 3 Peaks and my journey towards it in the coming weeks. But, right now, what are you doing to “just do” today”?

1. or just chilling out [↩]