work more efficiently

Feeling chuffed as I had a big piece in G2 (the features section of the Guardian) today. I went to Syria to do the research.

If you are in the UK please check out the story “A Marriage of Inconvenience” in today’s G2.

It’s available online as well but without the pictures. You can find it at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/12/iraq.syria

Edited to add: They’ve now added a pic to the online version, though there are more pics in the print version.

The GTD system is really helpful for this. I keep a list of all my projects (work and personal) in my Moleskine notebook and write next steps regularly.

I’ve also been keeping track (in the back of the same book) of how much I bill each work, as a measure of productivity.

I just need to stay away from time wasters like games on Facebook.

I’ve really not been doing that this week. I was stuck home waiting for tradesman and deliveries, which is always distracting. But I have also wasted a lot of time playing games on Facebook, which is definitely not productive! It just wastes time and it makes me feel bad about myself but it’s also highly addictive! I do need to put a stop to this.

I think that the main areas of my life where I need to have goals is work, exercise/diet, and writing. I need to work out a daily and weekly schedule to help me manage these three things productively.

The problem when I work inefficiently is that I end up with deadline stress and then that affects the rest of my life. I work for myself so it’s about getting the job done rather than clocking the hours.

Last week I spent until 2am on Wednesday night/Thursday morning finishing features for the following day. I functioned okay, though not optimally, during the day on Thursday when I was on site for a client, but was then too tired to go to the gym.

Action = consequence.

Now admittedly I was sick earlier in the week, but a lot of this was to do with procrastination. I have deadlines coming up again next week and I want to space it more out and even get some of the work done early. I am trying to use the Getting Things Done system to stay more on top of things.

Last week I did a features writing course with the National Union of Journalists. It focused more on the writing side but it did touch on planning and structure and I can see how a little more work up front in the planning stage could save me time in the long run.

What I really need to do is keep track of how I spend my time.