Productivity Hacks

This is going to be a little different, in this post I am going to list three things that I do to increase my productivity. They are:

1. Breathe
2. Listen at 2x
3. Shrink your pptx:es

Let’s dig into details, starting at number one; Breathe. Breathing seems like a no-brainer, I do it all the time, so do you. Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this and you wouldn’t be reading it.

But what I am getting at is that I have developed the tactic of intentionally stopping what I am doing to breathe, (through the nose), when things are starting to get hectic. Again, this seems like very banal advice, but I just haven’t done this in the past. When things get stressful I tend to get caught up in the moment and go chasing after things that needs to be done.

I have tried mindfulness meditation more than once. I really like the idea and the concept, but the actual practice of setting aside ten, fifteen maybe even twenty minutes for mindfulness practice… I notice that when ever I try I fail to make that habit stick.

So this breath hack is what I do instead. I can’t say that it replaces mindfulness, but it gets me to the same state as a meditation session does. Maybe it can do the same for you.

Ok, next, listen at 2x. I have a lot of things to listen to, mandatory training, recorded meetings, podcasts, non-mandatory training and audiobooks. I have more than I have time for really, which is why I have developed the habit of listening to everything at double speed. It does save a lot of time, and for me the knowledge transfer works. It has actually come to a place where if I hear a podcast playing at 1x, I think there is something wrong with the host.

This one may not be for everyone, but if you are looking to cram more listening into the day then go for it. I stack the habit of listening with the habit of walking outside, so instead of attending a meeting when it occurs, I wait for the recording and then listen to it at double speed while walking. I need to mention that I have an almost 100% remote working situation, so again this is not something that everyone can do.

Number three is something I learned from a colleague the other week. I deal with a lot of PowerPoint presentations. I use them to track progress in work and as a basis for conversations. This means that I copy decks a lot and add and delete slides. This can lead to a situation where each deck is easily 25 MB large. This is usually not an issue until you try to send it to someone who can’t receive attachments that large. But still, it is really wasteful to store files that large when the size is due to information that is not needed.

So what I learned is that if you go to the View tab and then click View Master (this is in the PowerPoint application), you can see aaaall layouts in the deck, and which ones are in use. Simply deleting the layouts that you are not using shrinks the deck size by orders of magnitude (for me). So check out if this applies to the decks you use and if you are eligible for this highly satisfying shrink!