Comments on: Benjamin Franklin: the grandfather of personal productivity? http://www.academicproductivity.com/2009/benjamin-franklin-the-grandfather-of-personal-productivity/ A survival guide for the 21st century researcher Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:30:49 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Alexander Vozny http://www.academicproductivity.com/2009/benjamin-franklin-the-grandfather-of-personal-productivity/comment-page-1/#comment-81157 Alexander Vozny Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:20:20 +0000 http://www.academicproductivity.com/?p=1272#comment-81157 This is very similar to what I (following the success stories of other people) come up to: 1. You have to decide in the morning what problem you are going to solve today (or have a list of other more global goals that you can achieve in your life only by working steadily every day and over a long period of time i.e. allocate time for your work, for your health, for your family, etc.). 2. It is important to have a day schedule i.e. have a dedicated time-frame for each of your problems (long enough to be able to achieve something) but you have to stop when you reach the allocated time limit and switch to another problem that you planned for this day. 1 and 2 are interconnected. During your work on any problem you will most likely open a new can of worms and will tend to try to solve them today extending the time allocated for the initial problem. This makes you fail on the other problems that you planned to work on initially and putting you behind the schedule. This will definitely happen if you hadn't the schedule at all. You have to make a conscious decision in advance and then adhere to it, otherwise your subconsciousness will win while you are in a burden of being busy with something else (because people are bad at multi-tasking e.g. thinking of the problem and creating the schedule for the next problem at the same time). By the way this is exactly the advice to become an early riser (you have to make a resolution in the evening of getting up early next day). This is very similar to what I (following the success stories of other people) come up to:

1. You have to decide in the morning what problem you are going to solve today
(or have a list of other more global goals that you can achieve in your life only by working steadily every day and over a long period of time i.e. allocate time for your work, for your health, for your family, etc.).

2. It is important to have a day schedule
i.e. have a dedicated time-frame for each of your problems (long enough to be able to achieve something) but you have to stop when you reach the allocated time limit and switch to another problem that you planned for this day.

1 and 2 are interconnected.
During your work on any problem you will most likely open a new can of worms and will tend to try to solve them today extending the time allocated for the initial problem. This makes you fail on the other problems that you planned to work on initially and putting you behind the schedule.
This will definitely happen if you hadn’t the schedule at all.

You have to make a conscious decision in advance and then adhere to it, otherwise your subconsciousness will win while you are in a burden of being busy with something else (because people are bad at multi-tasking e.g. thinking of the problem and creating the schedule for the next problem at the same time).

By the way this is exactly the advice to become an early riser (you have to make a resolution in the evening of getting up early next day).

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