I have read lots of productivity tips from Lifehacker and many good blogs. I think a lot of the self-management tools and processes are great if you have a clear-cut work, and then clear-cut distraction that you want to minimize. But what if your work is those distractions?

If you are a marketing or biz dev person, or otherwise in charge of communications and channels, a lot of the crap that gets in the way of your productive work is actually a part of your work. I have to follow Twitter, I open Facebook to check ads or pages and groups. I follow HackerNews, TechCrunch, multiple blogs and news sources. Even if you are a coder with a brilliant Kanban underway, you still may need to foray into the sludge once in a while.

The key problem with staying on top of things is that you don’t know what you don’t know. Is there something else that could be important? Another connection to make, another contact to make? This is one reason why this kind of work can easily overflow.

The other key reason is of course that navigating the information flow presents lots of appealing detours, tangents and sidelines. Ever read half a dozen interesting pages on Wikipedia in addition to the one you originally looked up? Even if it perfectly answered the simple question you had? You know what I mean, and it is even easier to get lost in the cross-linked blogs and the echo chamber that is Twitter.

How do you navigate this flow and still get your things done? Here are my collected tips. Please read and add to them if you can think of something else.

1) Use multiple browsers. This for a few reasons:
1 a) Have an ad blocker on in at least one of them. If you work in a marketing role or with advertising, you often do need a browser that also displays advertising. But I still need one that blocks ads, which I use for email, targeted research, and productive work. The ad-ridden browser is for browsing.
1 b) Dedicate a workspace. Separate browsers are an easy way to create a context. Create one that is all about getting things done with minimal interruptions. Have another for more adventurous tasks.
1 c) Consolidating email in one account (provided you use webmail from Google or Yahoo) may sound like a good idea, but if you want to focus, you want to set up a context. Use this for email too, having different accounts in different browsers.
1 d) For going hardcore, use a browser that turns off images by default and allows you to load them with a keyboard shortcut when you need them. Easy on the eyes.
1 e) Share bookmarks between browsers to create continuity. I use Delicious. You can use anything.

2) Restrict yourself. Go off the grid at 6pm. Having a hard deadline to when you are online (even if you continue to work) will motivate you to get the online stuff done by then. Not being connected all the time may seem daunting, but this means you can’t put off things. Just surfing becomes less important. You don’t have the TV on all the time either, do you?. The internet is a media, and while you may assume you have free will and actively select what you do with the internet, it will often grab you on an appealing tangent.

3) Work in bursts. Email is asynchronous, so use it that way. If you check email and reply only three times a day for example, you are actually putting less work off. If you have email open all the time and you see a new message come in, it either interrupts you, or you have to put it off. Check it less often, and you are more active, not more passive.

4) Make most things pull, not push. Email is just another task. So is checking Twitter and your feeds. Or TC or HN. Hey, the people who matter have your phone number, right? They’ll call you if it is an emergency. And if they won’t bother to call, talk face to face, or make a colleague chase up after you, it is not an emergency.
4 a) Note that this may take some time for people to get used to, if you have given them the impression that you reply to everything with a 10 minute turnaround time even at 11 pm. If you go through a lot of email, setting up an autoreply is not out of the question, even if you are in the office. Keep it on for a week, explain that you are doing real work and will check your email a few times per day.

5) Manage work in small chunks. This is a more abstract tip, but it is in line with GTD’s “next action” or Superfocus’s single tasks. Make them very concrete, make lots of them and keep them alive. I will write another blog post next about using Superfocus and Pomodoro in conjunction. This combination has been a revelation for me after going through GTD, kGTD, OmniOutliner, OmniFocus, hanging-file folders, web to-do managers, iPhone apps reminding you about groceries and post-it notes organized and re-organized until the glue no longer sticks. I will write that next. It is on my little list.

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