Increase Your Productivity Today

Over at Lifehacker they have a great list of things that will increase your productivity and I think much of this can be applied to Grad School and information overload. Sometimes you need tips to increase your productivity.

Walk around. Anywhere will do. You can walk around your office. Visit a floor you haven’t been to before. Or maybe you have time to go around the block or visit that park down the street. It’s all about looking for something positive you have never seen. Taking time to smell the roses may be just a cliché, but those roses could be anything. A restaurant you’ve never seen. A friend’s cubicle. Some kids playing ball. Life is going on in the world around you. You just need to notice.
Set an alarm and work on just one thing for that period of time. Maybe it’s just 5, 10 or 20 minutes. Maybe it’s two minutes. But at the end of the time, you will notice what’s it’s like to experience real focus. And if you complete the task, you have something to anchor your day around. You’ve gotten at least one thing really done.
Open up a best-selling business book to a random page and read for five minutes. Let you mind apply whatever your reading to whatever you are working on. There is bound to be inspiration for a great idea or a new way of doing things.
Contact someone you admire. If the internet has done anything, it has flattened the world and enabled us to contact people we respect in many different areas—your business, entertainment, politics or writing. Like an author? Find their web site and drop them an email. Make a list of all the people you want to meet someday and see how many of them you can find on the web. You’d be surprised how many respond.
Send postcards to two friends you know you live out-of-state. It will make you appreciate where you live more than ever.