Whenever you work, chances are you need to concentrate to get the job done as best as possible. However our minds aren’t really tuned to be able to concentrate on one thing for hours on end, especially if its something monotonous and boring. If you love your job or hate it, use a work - rest rule to make yourself more productive and happier.

I often use a 60 -10 rule, which means is 60 minutes work, and 10 minutes of play or rest. I mainly devised this to keep my head, eyes and back from overstress, but it has a great psychological effect on me as well. I love what I do, but I look forward to the next 10 minute break when I can stroll around, paly a round of solitaire, just lay on the bed, or whatever I want. If you hate your job you will feel better knowing you only have to work through the hour and you can rest a bit, taking something bad an hour at a time is better than a day at a time.

If you work in front of a computer all day this will also have some health benefits, especially if you use the time to get away from your monitor. Stand up, do some exercise, walk around, stretch, do whatever you need to feel better, rest and get ready for the next hour.

I suggest creating your own rule, the one that works best for you, and also, not to be afraid of breaking it sometimes. Often I am very into something, and taking a 10 minute break would mean at least 30 minutes extra work, so it would be more productive to work 120 minutes and rest 20 just that once. You could also use a 90 -25 rule, or even a 90 - 90 rule, depending on how much you need to work, and how much rest you need to feel good.

You can extend this to the day level as well. Perhaps you hate taking breaks and would rather work 8 hours in one go, and having a long rest after that. In this case you could devise a 2 - 1 rule, where after every 2 days of work, you take 1 day off. This is of course only possible for those of you who work at home, but those of you who have an office job can utilize the hour based rule well.

Oh God, this is going to be a lecture isn’t it? Well, yes and no, you will see that this post is about being honest to yourself when setting up your own goals and projects, since without this you are doomed right from the beginning. Let’s take a look at a financial example which shows this in numbers.

I recently started some money management and I was faced with my credit card statemet. Now my credit card has an available balance of about $400, so I could write that I have $50 cash on me $300 in my savings account and $400 on my credit car, adding up to $750. This is technically correct, but the reality is very different, since my credit card is actually spent out, I have $400 left out of the original $1800. This means that I owe the bank $1400, and in reality my total is not $750, but -$950, a very different picure. This is a very obvious example, but small “white” lies in our every day life stop us from performing as we should because we cheat on ourselves.

If you know you’re a lazy type of guy for example that’s not a problem. The problem comes when you schedule too much work and you say “I’ll get it done somehow”, when it’s obvious you won’t because you’re a lazy type of guy. If schedule only what you can do you will be more efficient, productive and you won’t be in allthat much stress.

This is why it is vitally important to know your limits and not to lie to yourself. All you will accomplish is temporary, your problems will come back, since you are not solving them, merely hiding them. When scheduling, commiting, etc, always face the real situation and don’t hide behind numbers or half truths.

If you have trouble deciding weather an undertaking should be completed or not, a task should be defered or not, if you should be finishing your work now or tomorrow, you may be able to use a technique widely implemented in economics and company finances called cost-benefit analysis. I don’t want to get into technical details, but basically you are calculating if a project is worth doing, you are asking yourself if the benefit is worth the cost. Even if you can’t put numbers to your cost benefit analysis, taking some time to think about stuff may put you on the right track.

Basic cost-benefit analysis

If you need to make a quick decision, take 5 minutes, sit down and at least make an effort to make it a good and educated one. A crude, but effective way of creating yourself a quick cost benefit analysis is the positive vs negative list. List the positive aspects of your potential decision, but on the other side of the ledger, put down all the negative things as well. This is most productive if you try your best to create roughly equal pairs. Go from biggest benefit and largest cost downward on the scale. This may show you tht the costs grossly outweight the benefits or vice versa.

That’s basically the idea behind any personal cost benefit analysis. You can assign weights to specific items, the entry “I might make $1.000.000″ probably outweighs “I will need to make 100 photocopies”, unless you’re very, very lazy.

Advanced techniques, criteria

Life is of course not black and white, so in many cases you will want to make a decision even if costs outweight the benefits. Using the weighing method you can assign numbers to each entry. You can then add everything up, where 0 means costs equal benefits, negative numbers mean larger costs and positive numbers mean higher benefits. You can designate borders for accepting a decision even if it is costly, for example you can deem -5 to be the highest cost you will accept.

Productivity with cost benefit analysis

If you want to take this method seriously you can take it to the next step by creating steps to take, standardizing your method. If you have to make some similar decisions frequently you can draw up a table in Excel containing the frequent costs and benefits of these situations. You can then easily fill out this table and add some entries on the fly too, creating a quick CB analysis for yourself each time.

This will help you make the best out of each situation, and the whole thing really doesn’t take more than a few minutes in most cases. Do you have some similar methods you use? Please let us know in the comments!

“If you want to help out Hack Your Day and you’re looking for a hosting solution please choose Bluehost and sign up using this affiliate link. I can personally vouch for this company, apart from offering the best services - unlimited bandwidth for example - they have the best customer care ever. If you need a management solution please also consider Nozbe a great GTD based application.”

This post is actually an attempt to organize myself more than anybody else, but let me share what I propose to introduce into my own life, perhaps you will like it too. My problem is that I want to do too much, and I have too little time. This is an age old problem and I think I’ve found a quasi solution to it. The problem with large multiple projects is not so much that you don’t have enough time, but you need to divide your focus between them, and this division of labor if you will is the cause of much time wasiting.

The way I am trying to solve this is not to split up days into working on all of them, but to split my week up into days dedicated to one project. This creates some problems, but also solves a lot and problems created can be remedied, at least in my case.

Currently I can split my life into about 5 different large projects. These are Hack Your Day, Guest blogging, Code a Day (an upcomming css blog), my upcoming music project and Blogtastique. Ideally I would create a separate day for each of these projects, except for Blogtastique, which requires at least two. Since I can blog about things in advance it’s ok to separate only one day, even put two blogging projects on the same day, I can just schedule posts for a later date. This means I can spend the optimum amount of time on the most time consuming tasks, Blogtastique and my mystery musical project.

You can do the same thing I have done in your life. Identify your key projects and set up different days to work on them. If you have a day job you can still apply the same method to other tasks or hobbies you have. Separating projects like this helps you focus on one at a time, keeping a clear mind and you will be able to work much more productively overall.

The negative side is of course quite prominent with Blogtastique. Since I provide services, I can hardly keep a new client in the dark for 3 days. Even if my Blogtastique days are Tuesday and Thursday, this would still be an unacceptable time lag. So the question is, how much do I keep “out of touch” with a project on unspecified days?

This can be remedied quite easily actually. I have determined that the best course of action (for me) is to make emailing a global task, since that doesn’t take much time, and leave the actual work for scheduled days. So if a new client contacts me I talk through his order with him, and I notify him on which days I will be wrking on his order.

If you have multiple projects, but you can’t separate them like this, I still suggest some kind of barrier between them. Drink a cup of team between working on separate things, go for a walk, clear your mind and start each new project with a clear mind and you will be much more productive and effective!

Productivity is something that escapes many people in the morning, and I would be the first to admit to that myself. I’m far from being the easy waker, although I tend to “fall into shape” fast once I get up. For most of us the problem lies in our sleeping schedule, which we are unable to alter, due to family, friends, our jobs and so on. Let me share some tips to enable you to wake up better and start the day quicker, with more energy and positive thoughts.

Measure how much sleep you actually need

This is a tough one and requires some time. From various sources I’ve heard that if you miss some sleep you should not sleep more the next day, but this is totally stupid. If you sleep less than usuall on one day, you’re body will try to get it back later. This means that if you want to determine how much sleep you really need, you need to spend at least a few days sleeping right, but this should be more like a week or so.

The idea is to always go to sleep and wake up at the same time for at least three days. It’s best to go to bed around 21:30 - 22:00, and don’t use an alarm clock to wake up. Repeat this two more times, and on the fourth night, determine the amount you slept, this should be the amount of sleep you need. This method is far from fool-proof, sleep is probably the most varied thing ever and a lot of factors can mix up your results, so if you feel this is not the right amount for you, repeat this for more days if necessary.

Once you have determined your needs, you will have two advantages. Once is you know exactly how much sleep you should be getting, so you can schedule yourself accordingly. Even if this amount is more than you expect, at least you can now be predictible in your sleep. The other advantage presents itself if you have a low sleep need. If you find that you only need 5-6 hours, you won’t be psychologically pressured if you know you’re only getting 5 hours this night. I find that a lot of people slep badly because they know they are only going to get a few hours, which makes them tense, which makes them stay up even more, sleep even less, and the vicious cycle continues.

Wake up at once

I’m not saying this is something I follow to the letter, but the most helpful thing you can do in the mornings is jump out of bed once your alarm goes off. Don’t set your alarm 5 minutes before the actual time you need so you can get an extra few minutes of shuteye. I mean how much do you think 5 minutes really helps? Sure, it feels good, but you’re just running away from the problem. Wake up, start doing stuff, you’ll feel better in notime and you will save some time in the mornings for yourself.

Start an activity instantly

My Mom is one of the worst wakers ever. When she wakes up she’s like a drunk, she can barely speak and so on. When I was small though and I woke her because I had a tummy ache, she woke instantly and was alert in about 2 seconds. There’s a good deal of Motherly instinct there, but you can use the same basic principle for youself.

First of all, you need a child. No, just kidding, but you need to get yourself an activity in the morning. I frequently sit down and start working right out of bed. This doesn’t mean I don’t brush my teeth and eat my breakfest, the activity just helps me to wake up at least 5 times faster.

How many times have you sat down with your coffee, just staring into nothing? This takes away a lot of time, time which most people don’t enjoy, because they’re still quasi-sleeping. Get up and do something, anything to take your mind off the fact that you’re tired.

Get yourself into the shower as fast as possible

A shower is something that will wake everyone who has had a half-proper night’s sleep, so getting in there asap may be your number one priority. I realize this takes some will power when you’re tired, but it will wake you up, you probably need a shower at some point anyway and makes you feel good and fresh.

If you alternate between hot and cold water the effect will be doubled and this will also help your skin to breath a bit, since it exercises your pores. You can also use a refreshing shower gel, or anything like that you have at home, whichever you feel most comfortable with will be the best.

Since I work from home, I have plently of time in the Summer to go here and there. I spend about 3 weeks each Summer at Lake Balaton here in Hungary which is a nice sunny place to be, but for me this is not a vacation, it is just a different, more sunny and fun place to work. So how can you stay productive when you have all this fun in the sun going on? Here are a few tips I use to keep my productivity at its peak.

Use the UV index to schedule work

The UV index is an international standard to measure how harmful the sun is. As a rule of thumb it is not recommended to go out into directed sunlight from 11am to 3pm. This is a great way to schedule work! Since you shouldn’t really go out in that time, why not stay indoors, or on the shady patio to do some work? You can do some serious sunbathing or swimming early on, and then take a quick shower and work until the afternoon, when you can go out again.

Schedule all your work in the morning

I realize this goes against what I just said, but this is an alternate method for areas where UV is not a concern, or for people who hate working through the midday. In fact, this is he main reason I suggest working in the morning, midday is a very tiresome time in the summer. First of all, you either need to prepare something to eat, or you just need to eat it, either way, you spend half an hour not working at least. When it’s hot, your body reacts to all this eating more intensly, meaning you get much more tired after a good meal than you might usually do. For some people this takes an enourmous effort to fight off, and indeed may lead to being less productive in the long run.

What I recommend is waking up around 7am and working untill about midday. This may give you enough time to do everything you need to do, and will free up the rest of the day for eating and having fun in general. I still don’t advise going out in the sun until 3pm, but you can take a nap, play some board games or have a light read, and so on.

Work where you feel most comfortable

This could be advice in general, but in my own experience the importance of this is much more elevated when working in these fun in the sun type places. You can take this as far as you want, from working with your laptop at the seaside, renting a boat and working there, going into the water on a mattress and working on notes in the middle of the lake, wherever you are most at peace, you will be most productive.

Most people’s minds work a bit differently when working in places where they would normally be on holiday. It is harder to sit down and do something, temptation is greater, and you get fed up with work much more easily. If you can connect fun with work however, you have a much higher chance of working productively.

Imagine wading into the water with a pen and a notepad, climbing on to your mattreess and taking notes, working on your latest ideas from there. I always get the “Wow, how cool is this!” feeling, which helps me tremendously at times.

Be firm, but flexible

Always keep in mind that there is nothing wrong with having fun. It is important to be strict, meaning you should constantly work each day, roughly the same amount, but you should let yourself let go at times. If your family, spouse or girlfriend is with you, and they are dying to play some Monopoly with you, just go with it and have fun.

If you are tense and always miss out on these opportunities, you might get more work done in the short run, but you will be more tense and angry because you can’t have fun, and you also know your friends and family has to miss out on you.

Whatever happens, try and be consistent, but do not put this rule over everything else in your life, if you are lucky enough to work at the seaside or lakeside, take some time off to have fun, Summer only lasts for a while, make the best of it!