Also, thanks for mentioning the gestures! I have a Mac and I totally forgot about those! I’ve been using Apple+Tab to switch apps and F9 to show the windows. Doh!

I’ve found that disabling notifications really helps with concentration. It’s incredible how much time little distractions can take away from us. This example applies for any type of notification but lets use New Email notifications as an example. If I get 50 emails a day, that’s 50 individual notifications. Now lets say that each notification only pulls my eyes away from what I was doing for 2 seconds. That’s not so bad, but now lets add in the amount of time required to refocus on what I was doing. It might only be another second or two, but that increases the total. Lets say it’s now 4 seconds. Multiply that by 50 emails and I will have spent 3 minutes and 20 seconds of my day just looking at new email notifications!

That’s 1 hour and 40 minutes a month, or 20 hours a year spent looking at notifications!

When I realized this I immediately turned off ALL notifications. The only thing that I get alerts from now is my calendar, which I configure for time sensitive events. .-= Raam Dev´s last blog ..What does it mean to be successful? =-.

Although I implement these in one fashion or another I'm going to be taking a look at logging, which I haven't really done through more than iCal at this point. I use iCal for my "getting things done" as well, I keep a short tight reign on todo lists and make sure things get off the list and on a calendar each night…nothing lingers in the floatable world of a todo list for me!

Working in blocks is a GREAT take on singular focus, it really produces the best gains. Awesome stuff. Thanks for putting this together, it's great to see it holistically and yet broken down all for accomplishing the overall goal of freelance/entrepreneur success!

Good tips on computer productivity, but what if I'm sans laptop? I use the Mac OS X spaces to segregate work oriented space and other more distracting programs, and I keep my e-mail SHUT unless I've scheduled to open it and respond, even then get the heck out of there, treat it like a war-zone if its a point of unmanageability!

I wanted to add, too, that one thing I've been doing (in addition to many of the things that you listed) is applying the 80/20 principal to my lifestyle in earnest. I've know about the principal for a while (80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of your effort/input), but I never really put it into practice until about 3 months ago. At that point I started handing off older, less profitable clients to friends and colleagues, spending less time with the 'time drain' friends who are great from time to time, but tend to take up more than their quota of my attention, and generally spending less time doing things that I don't want to do, focusing my 'work' effort on very profitable activities and clients.

The amount of time this has saved me is monumental. I went from working 60-80 hours per week to around 10 in just a few weeks. I still make the same amount of money (or perhaps a bit more, though it's hard to say right at this moment since I just moved to Argentina and haven't been working for a few weeks), but I have so much more time to spend on myself. It's a really great feeling.

Keep up the good work, and good luck to everyone who is undergoing their own evolution!

Feel free to keep wasting time in the comments here though

The simple fact that you've taken the time to examine your situation and know that you are doing the simplest things to avoid the most effective things already proves you're miles ahead of most other people! I wish you well in whatever you're trying to accomplish!

And feel free to continue wasting time here