Hey blog! It’s been a while! It really has and I really need to get back into blogging. At the end of the day it is good to sit down and let the words flow out. Also I always look back at old blog posts to see what I was up to. I have been blogging since 2005 so it is great to look back.

Anyways back to what this post is about…getting things done. Do you ever feel like there is just not enough time in the day? That you are always behind on your work? This happens to me constantly and you would think by now I would have a handle on it, but I never do. There are many reasons for it, but let’s not get into that right now. Let’s talk about how to fix it.

So many times I wake up in the morning and I go “Damn I have so much work to do!”, but do I really? I am a master of procrastination so that never helps. You know if someone told me “hey let’s go to a Penguins game I have free tickets” and the game was in an hour you bet your ass I would get my work done before that. Think about that, when there is something important we will get all of our work done. But the thing is important things do not happen that often so what do we do? I have a couple of tips to help you get things done.

Set a Prize
Do you remember how awesome it was to get a prize for doing something good in school? This is the same thing. Set a goal and a prize associated with that goal. Say for me it would be to have 5 reviews written in three days. If I do that maybe I’ll treat myself to a nice dinner. This may sound stupid, but when you reinforce goals with prizes it does tend to help.

The 1 Hour Rule
I put things off, like I said I am a procrastinator. Work can suck sometimes and it can be a pain to complete the most important tasks of the day. I tell myself let me work on this one important task for an hour. I usually knock out this important task and now I have the rest of the day to complete the easier and less stressful tasks.

15 MINUTES!
Another way to really get things done is to just stop what you are doing and ask yourself “how can I get this done in 15 minutes”, believe me it works. Doing this really helps you be effective rather than just slowly doing work tasks.

Pomodoro
This is a productivity technique of breaking time down into 25-minute intervals with 5 minute breaks in between. So you work for 25 minutes, take a 5 minute break then back to work for 25 minutes and so on. This again helps you be effective and really limits distractions.

Hopefully these tips help you get work done! I know I need to use them more, if I did you would see more blog posts!