This last couple of weeks have been full of experimentation. As I push closer and closer toward my goal of building a sustainable, low-maintenance, location independent business, I’ve had to spend hours and hours examining my habits and tools in order to find a balance that can help me reach goals more quickly. Which habits are detrimental to my success? What am I already doing right? What can I learn from other people who already have the lifestyle I’m working toward? What can I use to help me get there?

It’s been a very short time since I’ve started but already I’m seeing huge improvements in productivity and effectiveness. This self-examination has helped me start building a routine that actually works for me, a routine that complements my fundamental nature rather than pushing against it.

If I’ve learned one thing in the past two years of freelancing, it’s that nothing works for everybody. What I’m doing won’t necessarily make you more productive or more successful or any richer than you are. What’s important is that you test, test, test. See what sticks, drop what doesn’t. You’re bound to find at least one useful piece of advice in this list!

Waking Up At A Regular Hour

For the last two years, I hadn’t woken up at a regular hour. I quit the alarm clock the same day I left my last “real” job. An alarm clock was to serve only as a reminder of the oppression I suffered under the hands of a corporate tyrant. Nothing more. In hindsight, this was probably a terrible idea, but almost unavoidable. As a new freelancer, it was tempting to ignore the rules of my old job. It feels good and moral and necessary, but the fact is the rule is there for a reason. Just because it was used to reinforce a less-than-ideal lifestyle doesn’t mean it’s impractical or useless for your new one, it just means it needs framed differently.

At the beginning of September I realized my effectiveness as a freelancer was waning. Upon some self-examination, I came to the conclusion that it was probably due to my lack of focus and my inability to keep regular working hours. So, a couple weeks ago I restored my former overlord — the alarm clock — back to it’s proper place. I’ve woken up every day at 7:30AM.

This isn’t to say you should be an early riser. Night owls can just as easily work in the very early morning hours and set their clocks for 1PM. The point isn’t necessarily to wake up early. The point is to wake up near your peak working hours so that you can get more done in less time. For me, that happens to be between 8AM and noon.

Resources:

• How To Become An Early Riser by Steve Pavlina
• A Night Owl Turned Early Bird by Ken Kurosawa

Exercise and Clean Eating

I’ve become somewhat of a runner. This actually started quite a while before my experimentation. Back in the middle of June I read a post by Leo Babauta that gave me the right perspective on running. I used to associate running with full-on sprinting and that’s just not the case. You can run without sprinting. Once I learned this, I found running to be an exercise I not only enjoyed, but loved. Before long, I was running at least once a day, six or seven days per week. Me, the overweight computer geek, actually getting some sun and exercising!

Turns out that this is an excellent way to boost productivity. When I don’t exercise, I feel fat and worthless. That feeling carries over into every other thing I try to do, whether designing or programming or writing. Within the first 20 or 30 minutes of waking up, I’m outside with my iPod. I only exercise for about 25 minutes, starting first by walking for ten minutes then running/walking at two minute intervals for ten minutes and then cooling down for five. I already feel so accomplished by the time I’m done that whatever else I have to do seems simple in comparison.

Exercise also goes hand in hand with clean eating. Eat less and eat healthy. More fruits, vegetables, and lean meats like turkey and chicken will help you to stay more focused and have more energy, not to mention the inevitable weight loss. This week alone (Sunday and Monday, I’m writing this on Tuesday) I’ve lost four pounds. Four pounds in two days as a result of a high protein, high fiber, low sugar diet and fifty total minutes of running. No gimmicks, no anorexia or bulimia, no over-exercising. It’s no hard work at all really. It’s well worth what little effort it takes.

Resources

• Beginner’s Guide to Running by Leo Babauta
• A 12-Step Program to Eating Healthier Than Ever Before by Leo Babauta

Finding Peace and Quiet

For whatever reason, it hadn’t occurred to me that I needed a nice, organized, quiet place to work. I’ve worked (uneffectively!) for two years with televisions blaring, YouTube videos playing, cell phones on, Tweetie loading tweets and internet radio playing. It doesn’t work.

Maybe some people can multitask. I can’t. It’s not possible. When I’m presented with multiple points of interest — let’s say writing a blog post, watching television, and reading Newser — I focus on one thing and one thing only and that thing tends to be the one that requires the least energy from me. That usually means I’m inclined to do these least effective of the three.

In the last two weeks I’ve made sure my work area is clean and organized and that my cell phone, Skype and messengers are off while I’m working. I’ve made it clear to people that I won’t accept being interrupted while I work and over the last week or so they’ve started respecting that. I sit in this quiet little room for hours upon hours and manage to accomplish everything I’ve planned to for the day. That’s something that has almost never happened in the past.

A Minimalist Desktop

In the same way that my office and desk have to be clean for me to reach peak productivity, the same is also true (probably even more so) for my computer desktop. A cluttered desktop with elaborate hierarchies and files I don’t even remember downloading will clutter my mind and ruin my flow. So what did I do? This is what I’ve done:

That’s it. That’s my desktop completely loaded. It’s a Mac sans the dock, menu bar and icons. Everything is hidden. You might be wondering how I get anything accomplished when everything is invisible. It’s really a simple and efficient system. For opening applications, I use an app that runs automatically when I start my computer called Quicksilver. When I press Control + Space, a box appears that lets me start typing. After a few keystrokes it will load up whatever I’m intending to open and I just press enter. Voila!

How do I manage windows when there’s no dock? Gestures. Four fingers moving horizontally across the touchpad shows you all the open apps. Four fingers moving down the touchpad shows every open window. This allows me to switch between things really fast without all that clicking and right clicking.

The way files are organized isn’t elaborate at all. I only have three main folders. Besides that there’s no hierarchy or organization. The Downloads folder is for everything I’ve downloaded, the Working folder is for whatever I’m currently working on and the Archive folder is for things I’m not working on but should probably keep for future reference.

Spending most of my time working on a computer, this is probably the most important thing I’ve done to help my productivity. I get so much more done when there are no distractions.

Resources

• Minimal Mac
• Mnmlist

Moleskine Notebook

I have a Moleskine notebook that I bought last November. In it you’ll see a few attempts at some kind of GTD system (which never works for me) and a whole lot of blank pages. Two weeks ago I actually started using it. I’m currently in the process of relaunching my freelancing efforts (take a look if you need a designer/WordPress expert!) so I wrote up a SWOT analysis, listed some goals and milestones and started making todo lists.

These todo lists have done wonders for me. They are nothing but very primitive todo lists. They each contain a date, a check box for each task, the title of each task and the amount of time I spend on each task (so that I can measure improvement over the next few weeks). An ‘X’ in the box means the task was completed, a line through a task means it was put off until the next day, a zigzag line means it was canceled. This has been working out really well for me and it’s the first time I’ve ever felt truly organized. I’m finding out that simplicity is the only thing that works for me as far as organization goes.

Also, just a bit of advice… make your todo lists the night before so you’ll wake up knowing what you have to do. You’ll feel better about getting started if your goals for the day are defined.

The Daily Grind

As I’ve mentioned, I’m tracking the time it takes me to complete each task so that I can measure improvements and see how long I work on worthwhile projects each day. I started out doing this with an app called Concentrate. It’s pretty awesome if you need a way to automate the “getting started” process of each project. For example, say you want to design. You can create an “Activity” called design. For this Activity, you can tell Concentrate to open Photoshop, block social networks, change the status in your messenger to Away and play a sound every 10 minutes to keep you focused.

I really liked Concentrate… or so I thought. Then I realized I was only really using it for it’s time tracking functionality and as a time tracker it’s not really all that great (that’s not what it was made for). After some research I found a widget for the Mac called The Daily Grind. It lets you set up multiple tasks and time each one. It’s a simpler, more elegant solution. It’s also free!

I highly recommend it if you want to see where your time is actually going. You have nothing to lose by trying it.

Working in Blocks

I used to feel like I had no self-discipline because it was nearly impossible to make myself sit and work for more than two hours at a time. That’s the way I felt at the beginning of these experiments. Now, though, my opinion has changed greatly.

I’ll admit it.

I’m a “block worker”.

I can only work in two hour chunks of time throughout the day. After that, I need a break. Instead of resisting this natural inclination I started embracing it. I’d plan to go to the coffee shop or go for a run or get a jam session going with a couple friends in my off hours. And what I learned is that the further I am away from the office, the more productive I am when I go back.

Don’t resist natural inclinations. It’s not an issue of self-discipline just because you aren’t able to work like everyone else. If you are getting things done in two hour blocks that “normal” people barely finish in eight hours, why would you try to change that? Figure out what works for you and do it!

Conclusion

I’m sure this list will grow in the next few weeks as I continue to experiment and hack my processes into something more streamlined and efficient. Hopefully, though, this advice will give you a good starting point for reaching your goals and becoming the person you want to be.

If you aren’t already experimenting with effectiveness and productivity and what techniques and habits can help you get to where you’re going, start now! Lifestyle Design doesn’t just happen. It’s a choice put to action.

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Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/orcmid/ / CC BY 2.0

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