Have you ever sat down and thought about where you are most productive? I'm talking about a physical location rather then a 'mental state'.

If you don't know, there's only one way to find out. You have to test different places. Here's how to do a test:

  1. Make a list of the physical places where you can do your work. Add to that list a few places where you have never worked before, like the park, the library, a local sandwhich shop with wifi, or a local coffee shop with free wifi 1.
  2. Schedule two hours of time on your calendar for each place. Putting a time limit is critical in helping to judge your productivity. Try no more than two places a day and make sure your schedule moves you away from your place at the end of the two hours.
  3. Ensure you have a list of "ToDo's" that will fill the entire two hours. It's great to run out of things to do because you are so productive, but that sort of defeats the purpose of our test.
  4. Go do it!
  5. Important! Write a two sentence description of how you feel about your productivity the instant you finish the two hour session. This is critical. You might even write yourself a quick email so you don't have to keep track of the paper.

When you've tried every p lace on your list, review your notes to discover where you are able to get into the "zone" the quickest. If you've got more than one place, good for you!

I personally find a local coffee shop (but not any coffee shop) the most productive place for me to work. I can usually accomplish about 4 hours of work in 2 hours. This productivity boost costs me $1.74 for a cup of coffee. I try not to work there too much because I worry if I over-use it, I'll lose the productivity boost, but that hasn't happened so far.

My second favorite place is a empty conference room at the office. I typically will schedule myself a meeting in Outlook2, and then work for two hours first thing in the morning. It's a great way to get a jump on the day.

  1. I'm looking at you Starbucks
  2. I want to ensure I follow procedure and can't get kicked out. Plus, it's a co-worker respect thing. Nobody likes to kick somebody else out of a conference room

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