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For better or for worse, I have read a lot of stuff about how to organise my work for the better – how to work more smartly and how to get more out of the time I spend.

You could misunderstand this and think that I want to get more done in my hours of work, but in my mind I’m able to spend less hours doing the same amount (I hope that makes sense)

Lots of people cleverer than me have written lots about this but I know myself, from the time spent working at home or in the office at work, that I can waste huge sections of time just not getting things done and if I had been more effective at getting things done I could have had those huge sections of time to do other things that weren’t work related.

This is exactly why I dictate this blog and emails.

The time spent speaking is much less than the time spent typing and organising.

So, in some of the stuff I’ve read of late, here are a couple of tips that you might like as you continue on your own quest to create as much time as possible to do the things you like to do:

Cal Newport wrote about the ideal meeting environment for different types of task.

It turns out that some clever research bods at the Harvard Business School realised that to do deep work you need to concentrate and the ideal background noise is 50 decibels. But to carry out creative work, where you want to be stimulated with ideas and innovation, you need 70 decibels.

It turns out that a coffee shop is usually around the 70 decibel mark which is why people instinctively flock to them. You don’t go to coffee shops to write up your dissertation.

Dan Pink in his latest book ‘When’ writes about the research proven effectiveness of a Nappuccino. It turns out that it takes 20 – 25 minutes for caffeine to get into your system and that your lowest point of work is generally in the afternoon, regardless of what type of person you are.

It turns out that the NHS has a huge increase in non-accidental injuries after 2pm.

One of the ways suggested to get around this is to sleep in the middle of the day (I have been a big advocate of that for a long time and I know I've written about this before in my blog) and if you can get a 15 minute nap in the middle of the day it can be worth 3 hours at night. If you add this in with an intake of caffeine immediately before you go to sleep, then by the time you wake up the caffeine is in your system and this makes it feel much easier to get through the afternoon with much less of a dip.

Walking when you have a meeting. The next time you have to have a meeting with your finance advisor, your accountant, your practice manager or your wife (they might all be the same person) why not try to do it whilst your walking outside? There are plenty of reports that suggest these are much more practical and much more productive meetings than constantly being sat around a table.

Mindfulness. This is one I’m going to write a lot more about coming up. I don’t claim to be an expert in this, but the last six or seven months have been an experiment in Mindfulness that I have been meaning to do for some years and some of the effects are quite extraordinary. It becomes like a treat, like opening a bar of chocolate or giving yourself something which shouldn’t be allowed but it, which makes you feel enormously better.

Alcohol. There’s not really any amount of alcohol which is helpful. Unless you can stick to a very small glass of red wine in the evening.

Lunch food. What you eat at lunchtime is critical for how you perform for the rest of the day. Infact that’s pretty much true for everything.

For some time now it’s been time for me to redesign the way I work and the way I am and I’m halfway through this process. So far it looks pretty good, I’ll keep you updated.

Blog Post Number: 1707