Scott does a great job of outlining what it takes to finish work by noon and knock off for the rest of the day, and I think his ideas are well worth discussing here on TaskBlog.

So, how is this magical half-day achieved?

Change Your Perspective

When you have a 9-to-5 mentality, you’ll spread your work out until 5pm, every time. Work expands to fit the time you have to do it. If you tell yourself you only have until noon to do the few hours of real work in your day, you’ll probably be able to make it happen. As a corollary to this, don’t think of your pay in terms of hours. Instead, think in terms of days. If you do a day’s work before noon, pay yourself for a day’s work. It’s only fair!

Don’t Add More Work

This is my favorite of Scott’s points: it’s tempting to feel like you need to find more work to do, just because you have time. Don’t go down that road. You’ll eventually get better at figuring out how much you can do in 4 hours. Scott likens it to a 400m sprint. You run as hard as you can for that 400 meters, but when it’s over, it’s over. If you don’t get everything done, roll it over to the next day.

Figure Out How Much You’re Doing Now

To know how much you can do in 4 hours, figure out how much actual work you’re doing in a day. As a writer, I’ve got it easy here: I can just keep track of my daily word count. If you measure what you’re doing, you’ll have some evidence that working fewer hours doesn’t mean you’re being lazy.

The real reason I love Scott’s idea so much is that it kills procrastination. Working for 8 hours without falling prey to distractions is practically impossible for me, but working really hard until noon doesn’t sound intimidating at all. I’m glad someone came along to tell me that 4 good hours are better than 8 lazy ones.

Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to The Morning News, among others. You can also find him on Twitter.

Photo credit – thirstian

Here are some strategies for building a buffer without an enormous amount of effort, so you can avoid being like me:

Capture Everything

I know I’ve extolled the many virtues of ubiquitous capture in a previous Task Blog post, but the ideas you write down now could turn into brilliant posts later. When you have a little extra time to get ahead in your work, you won’t have to look any further than your capture device of choice, be it paper, smartphone or other.

Rely on a Friend

Soliciting guest contributions, or making sure you know a handful of talented people who might be able to step in for you in a pinch, is a great contingency plan. It’s the work equivalent of giving a spare set of housekeys to a trusted neighbor. When you find yourself locked out, you can go to plan B and ask for help. Helping goes both ways: letting someone fill in for you might give him or her additional exposure or some new work for a portfolio.

Collect Previous Work (in a useful way, of course!)

Everyone hates to see old work passed off as new, but you can score a real coup if you collect your old work in a new and valuable way. Gather up everything you’ve written on a specific topic, and put it in one useful place. Revisit something you’ve previously covered, and provide an update. A little work goes a long way

Resort to Honest Filler

I understand that we all take a certain amount of pride in our work, and it’s a shame to fall back on filler. If you’re honest about it, though, your bosses, readers, or clients should understand. Explain the situation candidly, and show that you care about the deadline by filling in with drafts, outlines, sketches, links to relevant resources … just make an effort and make it interesting, even if it’s no substitute for your best work.

If had employed some of these strategies, this post wouldn’t be late, even though I couldn’t have predicted the circumstances that caused the delay. Although it’s a couple of days late, I the experience has made me much wiser on the subject of buffers.

Do you have a buffer? How did you go about building it? If you don’t have one, why not?

Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to The Morning News, among others. You can also find him on Twitter.

photo credit — splityarn

Finding your most productive time of day is a pretty big deal, especially if you can manage to schedule your most important tasks during those hours. I’m not a doctor — isn’t it fun how often I get to say that on the Task Blog? — but I’ll do my best to explain how I figured out that I totally suck at working “normal” hours.

I started by asking myself …

How Much Sleep Do I Need?

Different bodies need different amounts of rest. You can figure out how much you need to sleep by using a little guess-and-check, keeping a record of your sleep habits and how you feel, or even tracking down a sleep specialist to help you. I personally do all right on 5 or 6 hours, but I have friends and colleagues who are useless without 9 or 10.

How Long Does it Take Me to Wake Up?

Due to variations in brain chemistry, those mythical “morning people” that third-rate office comedians love to bring up actually do exist. Some people just wake up more quickly than others. If you know you’re useless for the first hour or two after you crawl out of bed, don’t fight it. Just do your best to tackle those concentration-intensive tasks later in the day.

When Do I Want to Eat?

We all need food, but large meals have the dual effect of taking up time when we eat them and slowing us down a bit later. One option is to eat breakfast soon after you wake up, when you’re still too groggy to be productive anyway, and then kick some mid-morning productivity butt on a full stomach. It’s a bit harder to be productive after a big lunch, especially if you’ve expended plenty of brainpower on your important tasks early in the morning.

You may not know the answers to all of these questions without a little bit of experimentation to find out what works for you, so you may also have to …

Keep Good Records

Pay attention to how much sleep and food you’re getting, and when you’re getting it. Write it down if you’d like. From there, just tweak your habits until you get it right, noting any changes in your productivity. Charlie at Productive Flourishing created a “productivity heatmap” that looks like a clock and makes it easy to record and visualize your best work times.

The hard way to do this — the way I did it, of course — is to procrastinate so horribly that you find yourself forced to work at odd hours of the day. I don’t recommend that approach.

What’s your most productive time of day, and how did you figure it out? Leave us a comment!

Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He writes about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to Geek Monthly magazine, among others. You can also follow him on Twitter and at his blog.

Photo Credit  — rob & jules

If you’re constantly starting new websites, clubs, bands, novels and the like, how do you make sure you have enough time to follow through on them?  I might not be the right person to ask, considering how often I put off writing fiction to work on my paying gigs, but I’ll do my best. Here are some tips on how to balance side projects and paid work:

Schedule Project Time

I know this sounds incredibly basic, but a schedule is really important. If you don’t know how much time you can reasonably commit to side projects, it’s that much harder to decide whether it’s ok to drop your paying work for a couple of hours. Just like a flame burns out with no oxygen, a great idea can burn out without dedicated time to work on it.

Don’t Underestimate Your Commitments

If you’re going to commit to a side project, you should realize that you’re probably going to want about twice as much time as you think you need. Since these projects are usually things you really want to be doing, you should just go ahead and double your time estimate before you try to work them into your schedule. Fun and interesting projects inevitably grow in ways you can’t foresee when you’re starting out, and it’s better to leave yourself a cushion in the beginning than find yourself in other time-management jam later.

Collaborate!

Maybe you really don’t have the time for one more side project, no matter how organized you are. But maybe you could, if you had a little help! Finding a partner or a group to share work, responsibility, and costs with might make the difference between building something cool and never starting at all.

Document Your Projects

This one ties in with collaboration in a big way. Document your projects in detail, in case you start and find you no longer have time to finish. That way, you can hand them off to someone else with everything they need to keep going. This might not work so well if we’re talking about a painting or a sculpture, but an app, a website, or a community group can all benefit from great records-keeping.

This is honestly one of the most interesting, most troublesome productivity problems I run into, and I’d like to hear any more ideas you have about allowing side-projects to coexist in a healthy way with the work that pays the rent. Leave a comment!

Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He writes about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to Geek Monthly magazine, among others. You can also find him on Twitter and at his blog.

Photo Credit  — brookpeterson

Basically, shutting myself off from the world can’t force me to get more done. There are plenty of other distractions out there, and I’m going to find them when I don’t feel like working. Sure, I didn’t waste any time reading Twitter this week, but I did watch the entire first season of Torchwood.

My takeaway is that social sites are no worse than any other favorite distraction. It’s okay for them to be part of your life — a big part, even —as long as you manage the amount of time you spend and don’t let them interfere with work.

Here’s my best advice on how to allow work and Facebook to peacefully coexist:

Don’t Go Cold Turkey

I can’t recommend completely quitting your social networks as a way to increase your productivity. If you’re a compulsive Facebook checker, thinking about loading up your News Feed can be just as distracting as actually doing it. Allow yourself a few checks a day — at lunch breaks or logical stopping points in your work — so you can put it out of your mind and get things done.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The best thing I did for myself while taking a break from social networks was to hide all the bookmarks and apps that connected me to them. This seems obvious, but I didn’t fully understand how important it was until I put it into practice: when the distraction wasn’t right in front of me, I wasn’t tempted to go look for it. Even an extra step as small as having to type “Facebook” into my browser’s address bar was enough to make me stop and decide whether that’s how I wanted to spend my time.

Don’t Check First Thing in the Morning

A lot of people have a policy of not checking email right when they wake up, and the same thing can apply to social networks. Whether you wait an hour, or wait until you’ve done a certain amount of work — for me, writing two blog posts is about right — you shouldn’t go there right away. Like email, social sites give you loads of stuff to respond to. Event invitations, wall posts about friends’ relationship drama and tweets about the coolest new web game are all great ways to kill an hour, and they can all wait until you’ve finished at least SOME work.

Try a Time Tracker

I didn’t take things this far (probably because I’m afraid to find out exactly how much time I spend not doing work) but there are some great tools out there that tell you how long you spend on various websites. RescueTime is a popular choice, but you can also try Slife or  Nebul.us.  These services will give you a stark picture of all the time you spend not working, which ought to motivate you to be more efficient.

Don’t beat yourself up over using the web to procrastinate, just be aware that you’re doing it, and adjust your habits accordingly. Good luck!

Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He writes about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to Geek Monthly magazine, among others. You can also find him on Twitter and at his blog.

Photo Credit — escapetowisconsin

In one of the most insightful essays I’ve read all year, Paul Graham explains the difference between the Manager’s Schedule and the Maker’s Schedule, and why meetings have a cascading effect of wasted time for people who make things. That “Maker” group includes writers, coders, designers and other project-oriented folks.

When a Maker has to attend a scheduled meeting, it has the effect of breaking a useful stretch of time into chunks that are often too small to accommodate any difficult work. Even a half-hour meeting can be distracting, because anticipating it and remembering to go to it pulls focus away from the task at hand, and refocusing afterward takes time, too.

Graham says that Managers don’t understand the Maker’s schedule, because their own schedules are blocked out into hour-long chunks by default.  They have time to take speculative, “just-getting-to-know-you” meetings. A Maker, on the other hand, might need an entire day to work on one problem.

So, what can you do if meetings keep breaking up your valuable work time? Obviously, turn down the ones you can skip without causing offense. If you can, try to set up office hours, so you can do any face-to-face interaction on a schedule you can plan for and control.

Beyond that, communicate with the Managers in your life, so they won’t ask you to schedule an appointment without understanding the damage it does to your productivity. In fact, send them Graham’s essay — writing it and spreading awareness was his way of addressing the issue.

Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to Geek Monthly magazine, among others. You can also find him on Twitter.

Photo Credit – clagnut

It’s easier to say no when you put requests in context. Small favors and quick new projects aren’t much on their own, but saying yes to every single one can leave you burnt out and stressed. To understand how all your small commitments add up, you have to know what you’ve already agreed to do. That’s where the ubiquitous capture part of Getting Things Done comes in. Make sure you keep track of everything you’ve signed on for, so you can make realistic decisions about new work.

Do your best to say no early in the process. It’s easier to turn a job down right away than it is to tell someone you can’t finish it after you’ve already committed. It can be hard to say no to someone who’s bent on “Getting to Yes,” but you’re saving their valuable time and doing them a favor by being crystal-clear about what you can and can’t handle.

If you enjoy what you do and strive to make people happy, it’s natural to want to say “yes” to everything. It can be hard to switch from that mindset to a policy of saying no by default, but there are ways to make it easier. For example, if you have a new work page on your website, be honest about the likelihood that you can actually take on more projects.

Someone who really gets this right is Chris Pearson, the designer behind the wildly popular Thesis WordPress theme. His bio page prominently features the following polite-yet-firm message regarding new work:

Unfortunately, I must inform you that I am not for hire.

I’m not saying that Chris doesn’t still get unwanted email from people trying to hire him, but I’m sure he gets a lot less of it because of that single sentence. The takeaway from all of this: be honest with yourself and others about how much you can handle, and you’ll save a lot of time and hassle.

Do you have your own effective way of saying no? Let us know in the comments.

Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to Geek Monthly magazine, among others. You can also find him on Twitter.

Photo Credit – biscuitsmlp