September 8, 2008 was an important date in the world of self-improvement writing. Yet almost no one knows this.

To understand what happened on this date we should return, briefly, to 2004 — the early days of blogging. It was then that a web programmer named Merlin Mann stumbled onto a powerful formula: blogging about becoming more productive. He called his site 43 Folders, a tribute to the tickler file from David Allen’s Getting Things Done system.

43 Folders’ timing was good. A new generation of tech-savvy knowledge workers needed help navigating a work environment defined by information overflow, and Mann offered them a tantalizing promise: with the right combination of high-tech productivity tools, you could find your way into a utopian state where work becomes effortless.

Most designers, regardless of whether you are self employed or an employee, have a to-do list full of all kinds of different tasks that are fighting for attention. It may include finalizing a project for one client, working on an estimate for another client, responding to emails, recording payments and working on financials, etc. With so many different things going on and a to-do list that likely includes tasks related to several different projects, knowing how to effectively prioritize can be a real challenge.

Having productivity in your work day is important, but having productivity on the right tasks is what will really lead to a successful use of your time. In this article we’ll look at 7 tips that may be of help to you when struggling with knowing what to work on next.

In order to be successful, we have to work hard, no matter what. We can’t always be at the mercy of our motivation.

I am lazy. But that’s okay, because I have some tricks for fooling myself into working, every single day. Actually, I’m quite productive thanks to these tricks. I’m going to share the tricks with you now.

I will mention my own software, a task and notes organizer Swift To-Do List, in 2 of these tricks, but these tricks can be done with other programs (or pen and paper) too.

Every few minutes, more communications are being sent your way. Emails, text messages, voice mails, instant messages, twitter messages, facebook posts…and the list goes on.

Your human response? You simply try to stay afloat. You peck away at the latest communications at the top of your many inboxes. And since the flow of communication never ends, you slip into a life of what I have come to call “reactionary workflow.”

For those of us with great ideas and bold goals for the future, reactionary workflow is a big problem. If we spend our working hours reacting to the incoming barrage of communication, we will fail to be proactive with our energy. Our long-term aspirations suffer as a result.

Given a task, there are essentially two ways we can approach it. Either, we can work as hard as we can until it is “done” or we can fix the amount of time we have available and do the “best” we can. The latter approach is known as “Time boxing“.

There is never a moment at which you could do everything you’ve decided to to, simply because most of those actions require a specific tool or location. Context is also the first criterion that limits your options and keeps you from being reminded of things you simply can’t do.

Welcome! This is beta version 0.2 of focus: a simplicity manifesto in the age of distraction. Read more about the book.

Please note that this book is far from being finished. This version contains just the start of the book, and even these chapters are short at the moment. More chapters will be added in later versions, rather quickly I hope, and these chapters may be expanded and revised.

I like to hack. Occasionally I produce the odd bit of code that might be useful to others. Here are some of the fruits of that. Share and enjoy!

I’m also starting to share the source code to some of my software on github. Head over there to take a look.