For the majority of us, however, social media is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives. Especially our professional lives, as more companies integrate the platforms into their customer service and networking plans. Not to mention those of us who work freelance or own small businesses, and so benefit greatly from what is provided by these valuable resources.

So how do we balance social media use and productivity? I have personally found three main tips to be helpful.

1. Take a Look at What You Need

What is it that has led you to social media, and what do you hope to gain from it? Even social users who are only on there to speak to friends and family can find their lives being derailed in the process, which is why it is so important to map out what you want with it. For example, if you are there for social reasons only, you should keep in mind that it is more beneficial to communicate in other ways.

Instead of spending a bunch of time on Facebook and Twitter, why not arrange a meeting face to face or make a phone call? For those who are looking to use social media professionally, is it for customer engagement? Finding clients? Promoting yourself? Scoping the competition? All of the above? How does isolating these needs change your plan for social media use?

2. Set Times For Activity

Whatever your reason for using social media, the best way to keep your productivity from being altered is through scheduling your time on certain sites and sticking to that plan. It takes some discipline, but it will become habit after awhile and get progressively easier to keep from wasting time. Many people I know put multiple times during the day where they allow themselves on: mornings before work, during lunch, in the evening before bed, ect.

Try setting an amount of time you can spend, even professionally, on each site. If you need help sticking to this, try a program like LeechBlock or StayFocused. They allow you to set websites you are not allowed to visit during certain times of the day. Or, they limit the amount of time you can spend on a certain set of sites per day.

3. Get a Social Media Dashboard

These helpful tools will allow you to cut the amount of time you spend using social media professionally by linking them all together and giving you a multitude of features that should improve your productivity. Embrace new tools: Even Google can be used creatively!

You can schedule posts for multiple accounts, set keyword filters for reputation management, put people into groups, see analytics on followers, such as when the bulk of them are online and much more. There are a lot of these out there, as the demand increases. The more popular ones tend to be Hootsuite, SocialBro and Tweetdeck.

Do you love social media but it is eating into your productivity and time? Let us know how you have been dealing with this in the comments.

Image Credits: goals, Flickr, Flickr.

Actually, doing too much can really hurt your productivity. Not to mention make you go a little crazy. There are many instances where not doing things can be more beneficial for you.

1. Don’t Surf The Web

It happens to us all; you are just planning on checking your email and Facebook quickly before moving on with work. But before you know it an hour has passed and your concentration is fully broken. It might seem harmless to surf the web on breaks, and maybe even a part of your regular routine. But there is so much to tempt us on the web these days that it is a sure way to kill your work ethic and waste time better spent elsewhere.

2. Don’t Multitask

Have you ever bragged about your ability to multitask? Again and again, studies have shown that those of us who think we do well with a million different directions for our focus are actually less productive than we think. In fact, we might be severely limiting our ability to stay concentrated on a task and perform it to the best of our ability. No matter how much you have to do, you shouldn’t try to do it all at once. It won’t improve your performance, and it might lead to you being unable to finish all that you need to, full stop. Doing things on the go is good only if those things are non-important.

3. Don’t Overburden Your Schedule

You might have an hour or two in your day that you think could be put to better use. But shoving in more work, even if it is personal rather than professional, is a quick way to screw up the rest of your life. Our minds and bodies don’t function on the basis of time, but on our energy. Expending too much can burn us out and make it hard to find the motivation to do what we need to.

4. Don’t Be A Slave To Plans

Sometimes things just don’t work out the way we wish they would. Appointments get canceled, traffic makes us late, things come up or we get sick…it is a regular part of life. If you are too rigid with your plans and schedule, you run a risk of stressing yourself out for no reason. Be fluid with changes and adapt without trying to force yourself to retain a single schedule.

5. Don’t Work Without Breaks

That deadline is looming and you are in full panic mode. You plan to rush through with no breaks, no lunch and nothing but a cup of coffee in one hand to sustain you. This is a bad idea. Forcing yourself to work without breaks is a sure way to have you trudging through and unable to reign in your focus before long. You will slow down, and productivity will be hindered. Take a break now and again, and don’t overwork yourself.

Have some tips on maintaining productivity? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

• Take a nap – A 15 to 20 minute power nap can do wonders for your productivity.
• Talk to a friend – A phone-call to a friend you haven’t talked to in a while can bring a lot of energy that can translate into increased productivity and motivation.
• Go exercise – Exercise can relieve stress and increase energy.
• Eat something – A delicious meal can be very pleasing and distract you from the stresses of work.

This link was provided by noomii.com. Noomii provides numerous life, career, business, etc. coaching for the masses all throughout the United States and Canada.

The reason I so enjoyed this strip was that I have heard a similar argument many times. I have even used it (jokingly) myself, and when I was in my teens I used to tell my mother all the time that my sleeping until noon wasn’t laziness. It was an evolutionary imperative that allowed me to conserve energy not being used on necessary tasks. I was simply proving that I was likely to survive in a hostile world of predators. You know, like the sloth.

She’d still make me take out the garbage.

Of course, this is always done in jest. Evolution doesn’t work that way, and it isn’t so much an explanation for every trait found in nature as a process to how it all develops. But it does ask a somewhat interesting question: is being lazy really such a bad thing?

The Benefits of Laziness

I am inclined to say ‘no’. Like most things, there is a line between what is and isn’t acceptable. That line is usually crossed when it begins to impact your life in a negative fashion, but “moderate laziness” seems like a perfectly acceptable state to be in.

Think about it; we all need a break sometimes, don’t we? You have been working extra hours to make a bit more cash for the holidays. Your workout schedule has been strenuous to break through that plateau. You just feel tired, or maybe you are coming down with something your body is attempting to fight off. All of these things could contribute to you feeling ‘lazy’ and not wanting to do anything more than you have to.

In my opinion, that is perfectly healthy. Having a day where you take it easy is a great thing, allowing you to refuel and prepare for the days ahead. I always try to have one lazy day per week, where I do as little as is possible. This might mean being more productive the rest of the week, including on my second day off. But it is worth it for that blissful 24 hours of sitting in my pajamas all day, marathon watching reruns of Doctor Who and eating raw cookie dough.

Don’t judge me.

How do you feel about the issue? Let us know in the comments, and I will check them out if I am not too lazy.

Image Credit: 1, 2.

Despite this, we continue to believe that we multitask. All the while making us less efficient, more stressed and never actually multitasking in the first place.

What “Multitasking” Implies

We seem to be believe that multitasking means being able to talk on the phone, type up a client email, listen to our iPods and maintain a conversation with a coworker at the same time. Which sounds impressive, as though you are slashing the time you would have spent on each one by doing it all at once, right?

But honestly try doing this. No matter how hard you try, you will find yourself struggling to focus and communicate. The reason is that you are using the part of your brain that sparks your ability to process language on four different things. You are writing an email, writing a text, speaking to a coworker and listening to the lyrics of a song.

The brain is not equipped to do this.

What Multitasking Our Minds Can Handle

When it comes to doing multiple things at once, the only way we can get away with it is through engaging separate parts of the brain. If we are only using a portion for a single task, and another portion for a different task, we can generally maintain our focus. We can even improve it.

A good example of this is writing a report while listening to instrumental music. While lyrics require the language portion of the brain to process it, classical or even modern soundscapes engage a different part. All without affecting your communication and language skills.

Multitasking And The Web

Possibly the worse culprit for getting us to multitask is the Internet. Thanks to the wide variety of entertainment websites out there, it is so easy to stop what you are doing and jump onto Facebook or a blog for a few minutes.

You might think that there is no harm in this. But through using tools like RescueTime you begin to see what a toll it begins to really take. Those little interruptions add up quick. Not to mention the time it takes to get back on track and find your train of thought.

What You Can Do

There are a few tips you can use to stay focused and stop multitasking.

• When listening to music, pick something without lyrics. This could be some traditional classical tunes, or even a movie’s instrumental soundtrack. You can also find many playlists for concentration on sites like 8Tracks and YouTube.
• If your current task doesn’t require focus, but instead you need motivation, you can also find many playlists on those sites or make one of your own. In that case, anything you really enjoy, lyrics or not, will do. As long as it gets you pumped and distracts the mind enough for you to get through the physical requirements more easily.
• Limit your Internet access. If you find yourself commonly going to a handful of websites you can’t seem to keep yourself off of, find a program that keeps you off. A popular one for Firefox users is LeechBlock, or StayFocused for Chrome. Both allow you to put in website you want to block, the amount of time you want them locked and even allow you to make it impossible to tinker with addons while the ban is in place.

Conclusion

It isn’t always easy to keep yourself from multitasking. But there is a plethora of evidence to show that it is a productivity killer. If you want to get stuff done, you have to try and cut the habit out of your life.

What are some ways that you fight off the multitasking urge? Let us know in the comments!

But how do you know what these shortcuts are? How can you be sure you are using a program to the best of its ability? Is there anything you can have on hand to let you know at a glance what to do? How about a guide for things like the technical aspects of a service, such as photo dimensions?

Thankfully, there are many interesting productivity cheatsheets out there to give you a hand.

Social Media Productivity:

1. Google+ Cheatsheets

In the scheme of things, Google+ is still a pretty new social network. It is also one of the more heavily debated, with everyone arguing the number of actual users, the benefits of their newer tools and the positives of Google+ as a marketing tool on par with Facebook and Twitter. If you have thought of getting an account there, or you just want to improve your use of it, this is a great cheatsheet to have. It gives you a quick rundown of the hotkeys, ways to manipulate text and to quickly navigate the site.

2. Google+ Cheatsheet 2

This is another helpful Google+ cheatsheet. But this one is all to do with the use of circles and little tricks to help you work the system made popular by the social media site. It also shows you how to use your photostream, which is very helpful.

3. Facebook For Newbies

We were all the new kids on the Facebook block at some point. While it was a rather simple networking site once upon a time, it has grown into something completely different. From extensive games to apps and social shopping, there is a lot to take in. This will help you get through those beginning steps without too much stress.

4. Twitter For Newbies

Like Facebook, Twitter can be a little overwhelming. Especially when it comes to figuring out things like retweeting and hashtags. This will give you all you need to know to get going. It even gives you your first hashtags to follow, which you will probably enjoy no matter hwat your interests are.

Computer and Typing Productivity:

5. MakeUseOf Cheatsheets

I wasn’t sure which of the cheatsheets created by blog MakeUseOf were most useful, as they are all pretty great. So I decided to just link to the download page so you can pick your own. They cover everything from Windows 7 to Skype, each with their own visually pleasing and informative rundown that gives you a lot more information than the average cheatsheet.

6. Firefox Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts

Firefox is full of shortcuts that you can use to operate the many features offered by the browser. Chances are you don’t know half of them, as the list is really extensive. For example, did you know there are three different codes for completing a .com, .org or .net address? Those are only a few of the cool little tricks you can learn.

7. Chat Abbreviations

Everyone knows ‘lol’ and ‘brb’. But did you know ‘bfn’, or ‘emfbi’ or ‘fud’? I didn’t, but they do apparently exist. This is a full cheatsheet of terms for chat, instant message, social media or email. I wouldn’t be surprised if half of these were made up, but then again I might just be old.

Search Productivity:

8. Google Guide

Google is the single most valuable tool you can have when it comes to research or anything else requiring you to search. This guide will show you how to best narrow down results, find hidden gems in far pages and more. In other words, it will show you how to use Google like a boss.

Do you know of any cool cheatsheets to share? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credits: 1, 2, 3.

The list of CAN’Ts go on and on, so we decided to say we CAN. We dove into study after study, book after book to bring this random, fun infographic to the masses. Needless to say, we found out some amazing facts – from the most pizza slices ever eaten by a human being in 10 minutes to the reason famous speakers can captivate audiences around the world.

Check out this infographic to learn 10-minute chocolate cake recipes, 10-minute full-body cardio and muscle toning workouts, 10-minute Guinness Book of World Records feats and many more useful 10-minute fun facts to store in your memory banks.

Share it with your friends and family, try our recipe and workout and give us some feedback on our blog Quid Corner here: http://www.quickquid.co.uk/quid-corner/2012/08/21/what-can-be-done-in-10-minutes/

The worse part of this is how long it can take me to finish something that might have only taken a few hours had I just worked on it from the beginning. Because so much of my work involves the internet – my main distraction – it is a hard hurtle to overcome.

This lack of focus has led me to seek out every productivity tool and tip I could find. In the end, I have managed to come up with a small list of things that have helped me fight off my procrastination. Luckily, they seem to also be tips that help many others.

1. Pick The Right Background Noise

This is a big one for me. I love to have music playing in the background, but if I choose the wrong kind it will distract me as badly as anything else. Inevitably, it leads to YouTube searches, playlist creation and other non-productive activities. Putting together something that helps keep you relaxed and attentive is best. I find that anything instrumental, such as classical or even movie orchestral soundtracks, are great. Studies have shown that lyrics are horrible for focusing on tasks. You can find many great playlists with instrumental music anywhere from YouTube to 8Tracks.

2. Put Things Aside

I will always manage to come across something I want to read. Some might be helpful articles, but when I am working is not the time to immerse myself in them. Which is why I have found great tools like Pocket to be helpful. That way you can bookmark it for when you have time, and move on with what you are doing.

3. Remove The Distractions

Sometimes staying focused can be as simple as keeping yourself from looking at anything else. There are tools that will hide other windows and icons, to keep you from looking away from what you are currently working on. My favorite is definitely Isolator. Nice and customizable, it gives you several options for hiding any other content on your screen. This includes blacking it out entirely, or only blurring it. This lets you remain visually focused on a single window.

4. Block Sites

Probably the most popular way to increase productivity is through a site blocker. These are simple plugins that work by having you fill in the sites that distract you the most, and times when you can or cannot access them. They also have an option on most than block them for a certain amount of time, such as a few hours, so you can work without distraction. StayFocused and LeechBlock are both great (and free).

5. Make Lists To Follow

Sometimes it helps just to organize a nice list that gives you everything you have to do, and in the priority in which you have to do it. It can be a simple sticky note on your desktop, or a program like LazyMeter.

6. Remain Motivated Through Success

Another great idea is to remind yourself of how well you have done at working on what needs to be done. My favorite tool for this is the rather simple Don’tBreakTheChain.When you meet your goal, you simply sign in and check off the day with a red box on the calender. The longer you go, the longer the red chain becomes. Very basic, but super effective.

Conclusion

Staying on track is possible for even the most easily distracted person. It just takes a bit of willpower and some helpful tools. Try the ones above, and watch how much your focus improves.

Image Credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

With that out of the way, I am also going to assume that, like most Gmail users, you are not fully utilizing the potential of their lesser known features. Between their permanent tools and their labs, there is a surprising number of other users for Gmail itself.

Here are the five coolest (in my estimation) that I think you are perhaps the most helpful for any consistent Gmail user.

( Quick Note: To enable any lab mentioned here, go to Settings > Labs. )

Feature One: Image Pasting

This is one of my favorite features of any email client. You don’t have to provide an image as an attachment anymore, which is nice due to the paranoia most of us have about downloading anything from email.

Instead, you can enable the picture pasting lab, which allows you to insert the image directly into the email. You upload it from your computer, or past the URL into the tool itself. You can then resize it by dragging it to the correct pixels in the email window.

Feature Two: Sort By Size

When other people send me attachments, I like to keep them together, apart from my other emails. The problem is that I have a serious issue getting into other folders in Gmail. From what I understand, I am not the only person who has to deal with this. Even in the basic HTML version.

So I have started to sort my messages by size. This puts all of my emails with attachments right at the top, where I can more easily access them. I also know several people who do this to get rid of anything taking up unnecessary space by checking out which ones are big and unneeded.

Feature Three: Contact Restoration

Did you screw up your contacts list? You wouldn’t be alone; I did this myself a few weeks ago. But luckily they have an option that allows you to go back to a former, backed up version of the list before you made any changes. It goes back 30 days, so you should be covered, even if you accidentally delete the whole thing.

To do this, go to Contacts > More > Restore. It will give you options for time periods to restore it to, up to the one month mark.

Feature Four: Sending In Background

This is another great one. If you have some of the problems I do, the loading on Gmail can be surprisingly slow. Especially when sending a message. I was about ready to give up and start accessing my mail through Outlook when I found the lab to send messages in the background.

You can move back to your inbox, read other messages and even reply while it sends, without disruting it. All you have to do is enable the lab.

Feature Five: Canned Responses

Do you commonly have to send the same kind of messages, especially in a business context? Do you run a company and know the same question will be asked again and again? Are you going on a business trip? Are you extremely lazy? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you will love this lab.

It lets you set up common messages and will allow you to choose one of those responses to send with the click of a button.

Conclusion

Gmail has its downside, like the privacy issues and load time. But if you can look past that, there are a number of features that more than make up for it. Try the five above, and make Gmail really work for you.

Twitter is one of the biggest time wasters on the Internet, along with Facebook, YouTube and a million other pages that provide way too much entertainment than is probably good for us. Which is why the thought of Twitter being a tool to up productivity or help you get organized is hard to digest.

One obvious way is just by offering you a moment to get away from what you are working on for small intervals. A mental break is crucial for overall morale, and for remaining concentrated on a task at hand. Wired gave a great argument for social networking and other distractions in an article back in 2010.

But things have become even more sophisticated, and you can get the same positive benefits with a rather small amount of effort on your part. These tools offer a quick way to organize everything in your life and cut the time you spend on necessary activities in half.

That is, if you can bring yourself to stay focused long enough to set them up.

TwitDoc

Want a faster way to share a document every time it has been updated or uploaded on Scribd? This is a quick way to do it. It syncs to your Scribd and Twitter accounts, shortens the link and  sends it off from a single application. Great way to save time as well as backup your documents through Twitter!

A lot of people use this, and yet it is a surprisingly unknown (or just unshared) program. But it works and it is free, so you should be sure to check it out. Sadly, it is not compatible with any other documentation sites.

Tweet What You Spend

Keeping a budget and watching what you spend is a huge time guzzler. Since it is a constant necessity as well, you might sometimes feel a little overwhelmed by how much effort you put in. But this makes it really easy, as well as something you can do while you are already using Twitter.

All you do is get log your purchases via Twitter at the time of sale. This will then log everything in a journal, which categorizes and monitors all that you spend. You can set a daily limit on what you can spend, and when you are getting close to it you will get a mobile text alert.

My favorite part of this program is that it allows you to export your journal in Excel or CSV format. So it is easy to backup and see the pattern of your spending every month.

Twistory

For anyone that is using Twitter for a more official use, such as through a company or blog, will know having a backlog is important. But it isn’t efficient at all, with most saved tweets coming off as an endless line that you have to slowly make your way through manually. Which takes forever, and can be extremely tedious.

Twistory works by saving a backlog to your favorite calender program. This makes it easier to sort by creating a diary of your back account activity. It will cut a great deal of time off of sorting through the backlog. It even has real time updates like Twitter itself, matching to its algorithm.

If you really want to make it work for you, create a monitoring system for search terms.

HootSuite

Finally, no social media tool kit is complete without mentioning HootSuite. The most popular social media dashboard around, it allows you to link up multiple accounts to monitor them all at once. This includes Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linked in and others.

With this program, you can schedule tweets and events, backup all accounts, monitor search terms and more. It makes it much easier on the professional Twitter user, who needs to make the most out of their time without wasting too much on the social media aspect of marketing and outreach.

Conclusion

You can use Twitter without sucking your schedule dry. There are only so many hours in the day, so make the most of them by using these simple tools for productivity.