A lot of productivity techniques revolve around somehow trying to be cleverer, more strategic, more motivated, or more driven.
It’s important not to forget that some of the most stable gains will come not from these but from increasing your skill in a specific domain relevant to your work.
Examples:
- If you spend a lot of time writing (whether blog posts, fiction, or emails) and you don’t know how to touch-type, you might be able to increase your ability to get your ideas out there by learning how to type faster. Aim for at least 65 words per minute.
- Whether or not you know how to touch-type, learning certain keyboard shortcuts (such as ctrl+backspace to delete a whole word) can speed you up enormously. Or learn app-specific keyboard shortcuts for apps you spend a lot of time using.
- If you’re a programmer, typing.io can help you get faster at typing code in particular, or you may also benefit from memorizing some functions you use often but forget the arguments to, or git commands that you currently have to look up every time.
For this exercise, pick something like this that would make a difference for your work (if you think of another example, let us know!) and do something to set in motion that learning.
For a great guide that will help you hone in on some of your current bottlenecks, check out the Digital Fluency section of the Digital Productivity Coach, created by some friends of ours.