Read an interesting article over at zenhabits.net titled - ‘The best goal is no goal’

Unfortunately, it never, ever works out this neatly. You all know this. You know you need to work on an action step, and you try to keep the end goal in mind to motivate yourself. But this action step might be something you dread, and so you procrastinate. You do other work, or you check email or Facebook, or you goof off.

And so your weekly goals and monthly goals get pushed back or side-tracked, and you get discouraged because you have no discipline. And goals are too hard to achieve. So now what? Well, you review your goals and reset them. You create a new set of sub-goals and action plans. You know where you’re going, because you have goals!

I do have very high level goals (business as well as personal) that helps me make decisions and motivates me to do better. The key here is not to obsessively track and make gantt charts out of your goals but to be aware of them and work on the stuff that make you happy each day.

Does the same work for you?

I came across this article that lists various things what people do to reclaim time during the day. We all are bummed-out with a lot of things during the day. Simple changes can make a huge difference. Recently, I have been creating a simple task list in the morning (or the night before) with the minimum things I need to do to feel satisfied at the end of the day. This not only helps me allocate my time better but I am normally done with those tasks by late afternoon having the evenings to do whatever I like - either go play some sports, meet a friend or get a head start on some additional work.

So, here are some of my favorites from 80 Ways to Steal Valuable Minutes for Your Work Day:

“I also use my waiting-in-line time to answer emails and manage my calendar.”

“Leave the last task of each day ‘almost done’. Then in the morning you can hit the ground running. You won’t spend time deciding what to do and will start with a feeling of accomplishment.”

“Establish an early morning no interruption time. Use the first hour or two of work to work on things that require focus. You’ll get more done. Email, phone calls, and interruptions have a way of expanding to fit the time we allow them.”

“Take 15 minutes at a specified point of the day—maybe before lunch —to work on something that’s your passion … at the end of a week you will have put more than an hour into that one thing.”

“Exercise - It sounds counter-intuitive. You have to spend time exercising. But, research has shown that exercise boosts cognitive function, creativity, problem solving and productivity. In fact a NASA study showed employees who exercised daily worked at 100% efficiency after 7 hours, while those who didn’t saw a 50% drop, meaning it took them twice as long to accomplish the same thing. So, exercise, in effect, creates time.”

“Call - We’ve become so accustomed to doing everything digitally, trading flurries of emails, IMs and texts, we sometimes forget that we can get the same thing done in a fraction of the time with one or two quick phone calls.”

“Start scheduling certain days to do certain things, so there is a flow to your week or your month. This adds structure to an otherwise crazy week.”

“Keep your ego in check. Don’t let the popularity contest known as social media suck you in. If you focus on making quality stuff - from content to services, time frittered on Twitter and Facebook seems far less important - because it is.”

“Schedule creative time blocks. You can’t be on top of you’re creative game with endless interruptions. Personally, my best chapters, posts and strategic plans need about three hour time chunks for me to roll around in them and tie together the best parts. Undivided attention is the best time-bender there is.”

“Ruthlessly pare down your e-mail inbox - As a first step, cancel any e-mail newsletter subscriptions that you do not read anymore. If you subscribe to more than one newsletter in a certain category (e.g. innovation newsletters), choose the one that delivers the most value to you on a daily basis. If you’re still missing the other e-mail newsletters after two weeks, find out if they have a Twitter feed or some other way to receive their tidbits and advice. The e-mail inbox should only be for priority communication.”

Do you have any time-saving tips to share?

At least, that is what the article, How to Work Less and Do Better says….

The research by Perlow and Porter seems to confirm just the opposite, that not working can yield better work. In the experiment, members of a dozen four- or five-member consulting teams at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) were required to take “predictable time off” every week, defined as one uninterrupted evening free each week after 6 p.m.—no work contact whatsoever, and no Blackberrys.

The downtime was awkward for many, nerve-racking for some, and a few fought the idea, fearful of poor performance ratings or more weekend work. The goal was to teach people that you can tune out completely for a time and still produce great work.

It worked. BCG internal surveys showed that within six months, consultants were more satisfied with their jobs and work-life balance, and more likely to stay with the firm, compared to those who weren’t part of the study. Too, BCG clients told Perlow and Porter that the teams turned out better work, in part due to “more open dialogue among team members” and that “the improved communication also sparked new processes that enhanced the teams’ ability to work most efficiently and effectively.”

Personally, I believe that an optimum work-life balance is a must for increasing productivity. You need to let loose, unwind, take a break and enjoy the other finer things in life.

A good article on Harvard Business Review by Peter Bregman on why multi-tasking is stressful and unproductive. So, the next time you are working on your projects try to switch off your phones, IM’s, email and see if working on one thing at a time helps you complete the task at hand and makes you feel lighter…

Doing several things at once is a trick we play on ourselves, thinking we’re getting more done. In reality, our productivity goes down by as much as 40%. We don’t actually multitask. We switch-task, rapidly shifting from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves unproductively, and losing time in the process.

Read all of it without multi-tasking…