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Use software to disable distractions and increase your productivity

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Some help has arrived for in-house lawyers who are diverted too easily by RSS feeds, instant messages, e-mail, social networks, Twitter, or Google alerts. The Economist, June 12, 2010 at 12, describes more than a dozen software add-ons, packages, or apps that screen out the distractions that plague some users. It devotes most of the article to one particular program, Freedom, which can allow you to work in peace. Other programs also disable shiny, seductive time-wasters.

Even if you want to use one of these programs, will IT allow you to load it on your corporate laptop? And, isn’t it ironic that we need software to save us from software?

I decided to collect posts that say something substantive about RSS feeds, of which this blog has about 830 feed subscribers according to Feedburner (See my post of Sept. 22, 2005: Really Simple Syndication; Dec. 10, 2005: RSS feeds; March 1, 2009: aggregators and RSS feeds; March 9, 2009: rankings of this blog; July 15, 2009: MyCorporateResource.com; July 19, 2009: Feedburner statistics with 7 references; Nov. 16, 2009: RSS feeds to this blog; Dec. 21, 2009: Wikio and its rankings; and Feb. 22, 2010; material for my newsletter.).

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One response to “Use software to disable distractions and increase your productivity”

  1. Steven B. Levy says:
    June 15, 2010 at 9:55 am

    Two clicks disables any of this stuff.
    File.
    Exit.
    Anything else is superfluous. Check EMail on a schedule, not as an interruption. Let clients know you’re busy working on their stuff, and that if it’s urgent they should pick up the phone and you’ll be instantly responsive.
    Hear more at a panel discussion at which Rees and I are “competing” for best time- and money-saving idea at LegalTech West Coast, next Wednesday at 3:30.