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• Note from Olga: Getting into the festive mood.
• Feature Article: Daily focus - propel yourself towards your goal.

Note from Olga

So, the holiday season is nearer and nearer. I am getting excited about the approach of my favourite celebration: the New Year. There are a lot of preparations and decorations going on in our family, primarily because it is so much fun for our boys.

Watching them decorating the cakes one day this week, I noticed how focused they were on what they were doing. No distractions. Complete focus. I asked myself how often we adults do get focused on what matters most to us. Unfortunately more often than not we let ourselves get distracted. E-mailing, texting, instant messaging, Twitter, other social media, googling, magazines lying around – an incomplete list of our usual distractions. There is a very nice technique though for us to go around the distractions and move towards our goals and desires. Scroll down to read the feature article about this simple technique that will do wonders to your productivity. :-)



Love,

Olga



Feature article
 
Daily focus: propel yourself towards your goal.
 
We all have ideas. We have lots of great ideas, often. Not so often though we see the realisation of those ideas. Something always gets in the way, we get distracted and side-tracked. Another year is almost over and we have not made much progress on that project that we were so excited about at the beginning of the year.
 
Maybe it is a PhD thesis we are working on, or a book chapter, or just planning a new direction of our work. We are very busy every day all day, and that desired project somehow is not getting done. There is actually never time for it! We are too busy with other things, and more often than not we don’t find time to actually sit down and work towards our goal.
 
And even when we do, we are often in a distracted state. The cell phone is ringing, the beep alert is notifying us of new e-mails and messages, colleagues knocking on the door etc etc.
 
If the above situation sounds familiar to you, here is good news! There is a very simple and elegant technique that will make you less busy, increase your productivity and propel you towards your goal. Using this technique you can stop “wasting” your time and start transforming it into a productive result-producing time.
 
I came across this technique under the name of “Power of One”. Practicing the “power of one” you take a piece of time in your day once a day to completely focus on your project. This can be as little as 30 min, an hour, 90 min or even an entire day. It is nice to practice this for an entire day once in a while. During this time turn off your cell phone or iPhone, Twitter, Facebook, Instant messager and other social media. Stop texting and e-mailing. Unplug. And unless your need your computer for typing your project, you unplug completely.
 
During this “power of one” time you focus on your defined task. You focus on growing the content of your project, be that writing your PhD, a review, a book chapter, planning a new project or even a new direction of your work. It is very focused, directed, and very quite time. It is just time for YOU and your goal.
 
Practice it once a day, every (working) day even for as little as 30 min, and you will see results pretty soon. What you will be noticing is that the content starts growing even if at first you find yourself just sitting there with a pen and paper without anything happening. The inspiration and new thoughts for the project will come as the direct result of your complete focus.
 
Set yourself up for success by putting this “power of one” time into your diary/calendar and notifying your colleagues that you will be available for conversations after that time is over – let them know!  
 
The quietness of your focused “power of one” time can lessen the feeling of overwhelm. It can provide you with a system or in other words a habit of working towards your goal “no matter what”.
 
With this technique you are guaranteed to be moving towards your goal. Soon you will be completeing one task (for example, one chapter of your PhD). Remember to congratulate yourself on the accomplishment and celebrate the completion of the task with your favourite activity! Then it will be time to move to the next task in your project such as the next chapter or whatever part of the project you think would be your very next step. And here we go you are a productivity star!

 

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Olga Degtyareva is a research scientist and a mother of two who blogs about productivity at our work place and living on purpose. Her weekly Productivity Insights ezine is published every Friday. If you are willing to start increasing productivity at your work place while feeling happier and more on purpose then join Olga's community at  http://olgadegtyareva.com.

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Featured Member

"Olga's blog is very inspirational and motivating!"
When I was reading Olga's blog, I felt like "she knows what is happening to me in my PhD life". Her blog is very inspirational and motivating. I have read her posts many times, especially when I feel like having no motivation or lacking self discipline. Every PhD student should subscribe to this blog, before it is too late! 

Wanaruk Chaimayo, PhD student, The University of Edinburgh, UK

About Olga

Olga is a research fellow working at the University of Edinburgh conducting studies in the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions. She lives with her husband and two children currently 3.5 and almost 2 years old. This year Olga received an international prize for her scientific research and published a review article. At about the same time people started to ask Olga how she manages it all. This is where the idea of her blog on Being Productive at Our Work Place came from. In her blog (http://olgadegtyareva.com), Olga focuses on the ways of increasing productivity at our work place using creative and effective concepts that take into account all aspects of our lives.