But typewriters are slow, and I was spending far too much time typing over errors, aligning sheets of paper, and hitting the carriage return. I liked the old-timey feel of the typewriter's keys, and I was more focused without the diversions my iMac offered. I was halfway through my latest book, and I was sick of getting distracted by emails, Facebook messages, and Twitter notifications while slogging through a particularly tough part of the manuscript. "A few years ago, I bought a vintage typewriter at a flea market, hoping that it would make me more productive. New York Magazine writer Kevin Roose: Turn your computer into a typewriter when you need to get real work done. With opinion pieces, always read the top then the last two paragraphs in search of the author's main point." And, always search for the single chart that floats your Euclidian boat. Longer pieces may have more than a few key ideas.a 20-page report may take about 7 pages of reading. It can be as simple as take in the top, pound through a part of the next several paragraphs then, and this takes nothing but a practiced eye, find the author's key idea. Call it a planned and highly practiced skim. "But for most reading the great hack is to cut the paragraphs by two-thirds. I am reading every word of The McKinsey Global Institute's QE and Ultra-low Interest Rates: Distributional Effects and Risks.
I read Meghnad Desai's " Marx's Revenge" cover-to-cover. "There are things to read cover to cover. The goal is to simply make sure everyone is making the best use of their time for the next 24 hours."īloomberg News editor-at-large Tom Keene: Read more by reading less. It’s not meant to be the in-depth Monday after game discussion that is deep in strategy or a business review.
"Our daily stand-ups are like a football huddle, in which the team quickly discusses execution and roadblocks. My best productivity hack is this: I hold daily stand-ups for my direct team every morning at 9:15 a.m. I think this holds true for anyone that manages or influences other people, and I hope this advice will be helpful to you. As a CEO, my focus is on ensuring a much broader set of people beyond me can make the most productive use of time.
"The productivity hack I’d like to discuss is not one that increases my personal productivity, but my team’s productivity. Kabam CEO Kevin Chou: Hold stand-up meetings every day. I call it my weekly workout with my calendar. A few years ago, my boss, GE CEO Jeff Immelt, told me that he controls his calendar very strategically, so I thought I would do well to follow. And turning the hate to do into something more tolerable (especially when it can’t be outsourced). My creative challenge is finding the intersection between what I have to do and what I love to do. When I think of my schedule, I picture three interlocking circles: what I love to do, what I have to do and what I hate to do. For me, they’re more than a throwback to high school they’re the key to how I can make the best use of my time. "Almost everyone remembers Venn diagrams, those circles with the shaded areas where they overlap.