The 3 Things That Increased My Productivity

I went through a lot since starting blogging. The emotional stress during the initial period is understandable. You cannot help yourself but to wonder if it’s all worth it when you see you visitors count suddenly decrease to 12, and your 6 subscribers that you excitedly told your wife about a day earlier, just plummeted to one.

But then there is the physical domain as well. There were days I thought there was no way I was going to find a subject to write about. My routine was all over the place, I spent my entire free time blog hopping, checking my stats every 5 minutes to see what has changed, and when I finally got myself to write anything it usually took me 3 hours because of all the distractions.

Today I am going to share the three tools that increased my productivity during the last couple of weeks.

Recording Ideas As They Come

This is the best thing that ever happened to me. I noticed that during the day I would come up with numerous ideas for articles, but if left unattended those ideas got forgotten rather quickly. I started to use a notepad to write down the ideas as soon as I had something on my mind. When using my computer I use a sticky-note widget to stick those wonderful yellow notes on my desktop. That way, by the end of the day, I go through my notebook to choose that day’s subject, and with the sticky notes I am always reminded of everything when I glance on my screen.

I’m trying to get used to Google Notebook, with little success. Nevertheless, I will continue trying as people report it is a very cool tool for keeping track of things.

Dark Room

I mentioned earlier that I got distracted a lot when finally settling down to write an article. This is due to constant flow of information that you just have to check out, leaving everything for later.

Lately, I found a cool little program that lets you write without distractions. It opens in full screen, blocking everything out, except the simple green-colored Courier font.

I find it great. Finally, when I write I am able to finish the whole first draft of the article before going to do some further research or whatever. Just for comparison, when using Word I was writing one, sometimes two paragraphs before deciding to give myself a mental brake and check my stats or stumble some sites.

So I highly recommend this tool. You can download here: they.misled.us/dark-room. Note that you will have to install the .NET Framework if you don’t have it already. You will have a download link for this on their site as well.

Google Analytics and Google Benchmarking

Being the stats addict that I am, Google Analytics is the tool that I spend many hours using. It takes a while to realize what exactly you want to look for when using it, but once you do have a plan you’re on the right track. It takes 5 minutes to get the current picture and know that certain things have to be improved.

The parameters that are important to me are the referring sites, top content and keywords. I note the bounce rate and the time on site for each of the above. I also briefly go through the visitor trending and visitor loyalty menus. The Site Overlay in the Content menu is cool, it will show you how many times links were clicked on your site.

A relatively new development is Google Benchmarking. It is a tool that compares the stats of your site to the average in the industry. The number of sites participating is steadily growing and the data is becoming more and more accurate. That adds another important tool to help you know what are your strong point and where you are limping behind. Very recommended.

As my quest continues, I am sure that those 3 things are not the last. I’m constantly learning new techniques and discovering new tools, and be sure that once I find anything really useful you will know about it.

- Alex

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