Ten Ways to Increase Your Productivity

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1. Rework your to-do list.

Choose one to three most important tasks

2. Measure your results, not your time.
Try breaking your project down into "completable" sections.  Keep a list of everything you get done in a day.

4. Track where you waste time.
Track how you spend your time during the day and look for patterns. 

5. Build habits to help you stop working.
Quit while you're ahead. Hemingway: "The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next."
Set a firm cut-off time for your day. 

6. Take more breaks.
On average, your brain is able to remain focused for only 90 minutes, and then you need at least 15 minutes of rest. 

7. Take more naps.
Research shows naps lead to improvement in cognitive function, creative thinking, and memory performance. 

8. Spend more time in nature.
spending time in nature to help you reset your attention span and relax your mind.

9. Move and work in blocks.
Use this time to practice your Zen, take a break from your screen, and get some movement into your day. Keep your phone in your pocket, and move. 
Take a break away from work for at least 30 minutes.

10. Check your email first thing.
Dealing with important issues first thing helps you make quick decisions about whether your day needs to be adjusted to fit in with what everyone else is doing or whether you can proceed with the tasks you already had planned.
Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

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