Struc­ture your to-do list for max­i­mum rewards and you will get more done – this is a Sand­wich To-Do methodology.

(I should note that this is not a sys­tem that I use, and not one that I have really ever heard detailed out. I wanted to share this method for peo­ple who want a quick and dirty way to get started on productivity.)

Any­one who has ever attended busi­ness school can prob­a­bly tell you that they are taught when giv­ing bad news to sand­wich bad news between two pos­i­tive things. You will prob­a­bly notice that most man­agers try to do this and it helps to keep peo­ple feel­ing good about them­selves. We can apply the same think­ing to task man­age­ment by sub­sti­tut­ing good for easy and bad for hard.

The sand­wich to-do method then would be as easy as accom­plish­ing one easy to-do fol­lowed by a hard to-do and back to an easy one, rinse and repeat.

The pur­pose of the method then is not about get­ting more done in less time. Rather it is all about get­ting the hard things done. It would be easy to run through your list and do all the easy stuff. We only pro­cras­ti­nate on the hard / bor­ing stuff. Not allow­ing your­self to do the easy tasks until you com­plete one of the hard ones is a great way to start tick­ing off the dif­fi­cult tasks.

Brit­tany Ancell:

The only way to gain true peace of mind is to close your email com­pletely. It requires an obscene amount of dis­ci­pline to not dip into your inbox on a whim. At the very least, turn off mobile alerts and keep your client minimized.

This is a great arti­cle; if you use email you need to read this.

via The 99 Per­cent.

Thurs­day Bram:

The Insti­tute for Busi­ness Tech­nol­ogy orig­i­nally spon­sored a National Clean Out Your Com­puter Day sev­eral years ago, assign­ing it to the sec­ond Mon­day in Feb­ru­ary. It’s a hol­i­day well worth adding to your calendar.

via Web­Work­er­Daily.

Seth Godin:

I think there’s a killer app ver­sion of this for the iPad, and I hope some­one will build it. The talk­ing pad is an inter­ac­tive pre­sen­ta­tion tool for smart people.

A while back I linked to Seth’s post about the New Talk­ing Pad and it is still one of the high­est clicked out­bound links on this site. Here are his thoughts on a ver­sion for the iPad.

via Seth’s Blog.

Mark Foo:

Here are 50 tips to set you on your way to a bet­ter day. Do your­self a favor and don’t try more than a hand­ful of these in a sin­gle day. In fact, put these ideas in a hat and pick one ran­domly the next time you get in a funk.

via Dumb Lit­tle Man.

Mer­lin Mann:

You “focus” on the one thing you care about, as you “unfo­cus” on every­thing else. If not for every minute of your life, at least for the time you set aside to pur­sue the thing that matters.

Per­haps more excit­ing news than the iPad announce­ment is that Mer­lin Mann is back to blog­ging again at 43Folders.com. If you have yet to check out his site do it now – as you can see in the above quote his advice is always sound.

Wel­come back Merlin.

via 43 Fold­ers.

Zeld­man:

Don’t be so quick to excuse your­self. If 80% of suc­cess is just show­ing up, 90% is show­ing up early. It’s hard for the client to sym­pa­thize with your late­ness when she, who had far­ther to travel, man­aged to make the meet­ing on time.

Some of the best advice for any­one who works in any kind of job.

via Jef­frey Zeld­man Presents The Daily Report.

Our iPhone app is out. Basic stuff just the sites RSS feed for now — but it is a far bet­ter way to read the site on an iPhone.

Get is here.

We are all more pro­duc­tive alone then when oth­ers are around us, focus on how we can lever­age that to become more pro­duc­tive is key. I want to first touch on what I mean by ‘around us’ when I am refer­ring to people.

I do not mean ran­dom strangers in a cof­fee shop, or other peo­ple in the room. I am refer­ring to indi­vid­u­als that you may have to inter­act with at some point. More specif­i­cally those around you that will need or want to inter­act with you.

Look around your office at co-workers and friends, they are all dis­trac­tions in the lurch. Peo­ple love to gos­sip and ask oth­ers ques­tions because it ful­fills their need for human inter­ac­tion and they don’t have to be focus­ing on work at the moment. This is the very rea­son that I get my best work done at home or in a cof­fee shop or vacant building.

I hate interruptions.

Every time you are in a good work flow and inter­rupted it will take upwards of thirty min­utes just to get back into that flow. There­fore if you are in an office where an hour won’t go by with­out you being inter­rupted by some­one, then you are not being allowed to be pro­duc­tive at all.

The same holds true for phone and email. I have the ringer off on my phone, and no noti­fi­ca­tions on my email client. I check mes­sages at reg­u­lar inter­vals – I don’t let tech­nol­ogy force me into inter­rupt­ing a work­flow just to check messages.

Head­phones. If you are not lucky enough to be able to work from a place you choose, get your­self a large set of head­phones. The over the ear type, not the ear­buds. You don’t even have to lis­ten to any­thing (though if you do may I sug­gest Noise Can­celling Head­phones and per­haps Coltrane ) you just need to have the head­phones on. This seems to be an interof­fice sig­nal that says do NOT inter­rupt me, I am busy.

more after jump…

Pamela Poole:

But I’ve always found that a lit­tle struc­ture never hurts when it’s used as a guide­line, so I will try it out and see how it goes. Then I’ll try to apply it to my com­puter files, emails, etc. Any­way, it’ll be fun to say “Seiton!” the next time my hus­band puts the pli­ers down on the cor­ner of my desk.

via Web­Work­er­Daily.

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