I hate doing the same stuff over and over. Since I’m a technical guy, I often create ways to make myself more efficient. Outside of work, this looks fairly mundane: stuff like buying only one type of sock, so I never have to search for a pair.
Michael Lopp writes about the geek phenomenon of being efficient in Saving Seconds. It begins as a rant against the mouse, but really gets somewhere when he writes about creating a new email message:
“There are two types of people. The ones who waited for me to say Go to compose a new mail and the ones who read ‘compose a new mail message’ and pressed the three keys that are necessary, from anywhere in the OS, to fire up a new compose window.”
I think Web people bring this desire to be efficient into our work, mostly for the better. Finding and eliminating repetition is an excellent way to streamline your product. Why make a user click twice if once will do? (Lopp might also say, why make a user click at all?)
Of course, everything in moderation. One can certainly be overcome when constantly striving to be most efficient:
Paying attention to productivity is a slippery slope. The system efficiency addiction associated with saving time can become so compelling that your process begins to control more of your time than your product.
Sound familiar to anyone?
They say true programmers love building tools for programming more than any other programming.
Made me think of a book I’m reading called the four hour work week. Tim Ferriss presented the idea of Parkinson’s Law and how work expands to fill the time allotted.
My productivity increases when I allot less time to a project. I focus on critical steps that need to be accomplished to meet the desired end goal. I set a time frame that the work is to be completed in. The time I have available dictates the pace in which the work gets accomplished.
I haven’t got productivity down to a science but I think my productivity increases when I set goals.