Read an interesting article on Fast company on ‘Time Blocking’ as a method to avoid distractions and increase productivity. The writer has given the example of an office with no cubicle or private space where getting work done becomes a difficult task due to constant disruptions due to surrounding people.

Today with the internet, even in a cubicle or private office a person can find himself disrupted all the time with emails, chat messages, notifications and more!

Gina Trapani suggest in the article to block some time off where you are focussing on the particular work,

Being available to your boss and co-workers is part of your job. But the most creative and important work you do requires total focus and attention for an extended period of time. Your brain needs at least 15 minutes of uninterrupted time to dive in, concentrate on one thing, and get into the zone where you’re truly focused and doing your best work. Time blocking is a technique that sets the stage for that to happen. Read More.

I totally agree with this, definitely time blocking is needed in work as well personal life! I find it crucial to spend time with myself and also with friends and family. These time outs ensure that things are going on the right or desired track.

What do you think? Is this something you do to manage time better?

Just came across this interesting article at Terry Starbucker’s blog, on productivity and how to make best use of our time. He has also noted down a few points that should help us with prioritizing our actions.

In any day there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of actions you can take.   Which ones you choose are critical to living a productive life, or being the most productive person at the office.

It’s the art of constant prioritization – a mental “to do” list that goes through a special kind of algorithm, a kind that only a properly focused  human brain can pull off. Read More.

This is something that all of us face on a personal as well as business front in life. At DeskAway we have a slew of to-do’s. Be it new feature requests, fixing bugs, revamping sections and a whole lot more.

Some things we keep in mind are,

1. KISS: Keep it Simple, and thats what we always attempt.
2. Customer Insight: What does the customer really want and what would add most value to him/her?

What do you do to manage your time well doing the RIGHT activity?

SuperChooha is a social media agency based here in Mumbai. They have recently been using our software. Just got this from…

Good to see this! Thanks Superchooha team

Work-life is usually filled with ups and downs and some days are inevitably more stressful than the others. Maybe it’s the project deadline or some issue you are tackling. We believe health comes first no matter how busy or bumbed-out you feel. It is important to de-stress and calm down. Here are a few tips that I find useful to rejuvenate myself.

Watercooler Break
This proverbial small break from the routine of office, can be very effective to relax you. The water would also help cool the body.

Loiter
A small walk around office, maybe to the balcony or window, can be quite refreshing! The movement is good to loosen up the body. Additionally, looking away from the computer screen for a bit relieves eye-strain.

Socialize
Have a chat with a nearby colleague. As you think about other things apart from work like a movie, music, travel, book or family can really help set a relaxed perspective over stuff. This can also go a long way in team bonding.

Energy Boosters
A small snack in your seat maybe a cookie or fruit etc.. gives you a mental break as well as it boosts the body energy. Try to keep it healthy though, junk food could spoil your health and increase uneasiness.

Web-Fun
Visiting a social network or checking out some favorite website or group discussion can really help with your web enthusiasm. In fact there are many researches that suggest social networking in offices boosts productivity.

Play Time
Feels like revisiting childhood but, adding some actual play time to the work routine would not only help various motor and co-ordination skills in your body but also bring cheer to your life! Juggling, Rubik’s cube, yo-yo are some simple games that can be really interesting and viable even in cramped offices.

Some more cool de-stressing tips can be found here:
http://zenhabits.net/2010/01/8-unconventional-ways-to-de-stress-and-release-tension/

How do you guys de-stress?

Firstly, let me apologize if something that you requested hasn’t made it yet into DeskAway. Here is probably why:

Back in 2007-2008, we were obsessive about adding new features. How do we make DeskAway feature-rich so that we can get a lot more users? Our development plan was easy - build the stuff that was missing. Mind you, when we started, a lot of things were missing from the application. At that time, our user base was small and growing so many of the feature requests were things that were already in our pipeline.

Today, things are different. We think ’simplicity’. Our goal is to make sure DeskAway remains ’simple’ to use yet powerful enough to scale as your business grows!

A gush of feature requests

Our user base has grown in the last couple of years - users comprise of freelancers, entrepreneurs, startups, small businesses to groups within larger companies. These users are spread across many different types of businesses - web design, development, e-learning, e-commerce, hospitality, media agencies, SEO firms, airline departments, infrastructure companies, health-care, education etc. As you can imagine, requests for new features have increased on a daily basis - which is truly an amazing thing! Love it!  Requests come in through email, our support site on Zendesk, GetSatisfaction community, Twitter and through our website contact form.

Challenges

We are faced with a few challenges today. How do we satisfy the majority of the people, stay in line with our vision and not let feature-itis take over (with too many feature, you run the risk of increasing the complexity of the user interface).

The Chosen ones…

We have learnt to prioritize, listen and ask questions. Everything that comes in gets added to a spreadsheet (I am still looking for an app which can manage feature requests :-)). Requests that are repeated get a vote added to it. When an update to the application is complete, we go back and look at this list. The next set of features is chosen by going through the following questions…

• How popular is the feature?
• How long will it take to get developed?
• Technically, how complex is the feature and how will it affect other features and the user-interface?
• Will it actually enhance productivity and project tracking or is it just a decoration?
• Will it be relevant to a majority of users?
• Is it the next killer feature that will give us an edge? Not all have to be but something that can give us the edge will get a higher priority.

If in doubt, we probe our users for feedback - mostly through our monthly newsletter, GetSatisfaction and Twitter. Sometimes we just go on our gut to choose the ones that will make it to the list.

The chosen ones (typically a couple of large feature and a few small ones) are then fed into our project in DeskAway (yes, we walk the talk) and then tracked until they finally go live. Spill-over does happen, so we then move the uncompleted features to the next month. We try to leave some room for bug fixes and other small enhancements.

Managing features and deciding what gets done is quite an art and we are getting better at it everyday. I think the key is to ask if the feature is going to add positive and real value (simplicity, ease of use, power etc.) to our end users. With this as our guiding light, I think you can expect some really cool stuff in 2010 to help you get more done in less time!

Go Play!