Personal Productivity is an Artform

I struggle and yet I do get things done.  I think ultimately I just give myself deadlines, often artificial, and take them seriously. This paper or even this paragraph has to be written by this time - and I sit down and I do it. In today’s world personal productivity is an art form because there are so many distractions.

To really get things done, to use one’s time well, requires a kind of almost complete rethinking of how to deal with time. We are bombarded with emails and bombarded with content on the web. We could keep ourselves busy all day long and not really at the end of the day have been productive. So there’s an art of being very clear what our purpose is, our larger aspiration, and organizing ourselves to use our time well toward achieving that purpose, while not cutting ourselves off from the great content and the great learning that we each need to do to prepare ourselves for tomorrow.