Two months in, here’s how I’ve done!

by | Jul 5, 2013 | Housekeeping

Takeaway: Month two was bigger and better than even month one! I posted two big interviews along with a bunch of articles for Focus Week, and wrote 13,561 words. And perhaps most interesting of all, I just concluded my 10 Days of Reclusion productivity experiment.

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 51s. (And it’s skimmable.)

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Are you serious? Really?
Another month has already passed?
Get out of here.

I guess it’s time for another status update then! Here is all of the big stuff that happened over the last month.

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Two huge interviews

The biggest news (to me) from the month is the two huge interviews I posted.

1. I interviewed musician Ernie Halter about exactly how he stays so productive. The man writes over 100 songs a year, personally responds to every email he gets, and somehow finds the time to keep up with his massive following on twitter (500,000 fans and counting).

2. I also interviewed world-renowned color psychologist Angela Wright about how you can use color to influence how productive you are. The answer to that question is absolutely fascinating.

10 Days of Reclusion

I capital-H Hated this experiment, but I learned an awful lot from it. From June 24th to July 4th I spent ten days in total reclusion, without any social interaction or sunlight. I wrote a big article with the top 10 things I learned about productivity in reclusion, and a smaller, but equally meaty article about how living under too much artificial light can affect your productivity.

I also made a bunch of videos for the experiment, and I like how they turned out. There are videos for days: one, two, four, five/six, seven, and nine! And there’s an audio update for day three.

This experiment is what A Year of Productivity is all about. It’s one thing to write about productivity – anyone can do that – but I think it’s a whole other to live productivity and experiment with it. I have a lot more exciting experiments coming up, and I can’t wait to dive right into them and write about what I learn.

Focus Week

The first week of June was Focus Week, a full week’s worth of articles dedicated to improving your focus. If you missed it, don’t worry – I posted a Focus Week article roundup. Over the week I investigated and wrote about: food, mind tricks, procrastination, meditation, multitasking, and exercise. If you’re looking to boost your focus, these articles will help.

sideplantSome project stats for ‘ya

In June..

  • Hours invested: 173.19 (43.3 hours/week on average)
  • Words written: 13,561 (678 average per day!)
  • Pages read: 353 (17.65 pages/day)

Also, maybe the best stat of all is the growth rate of the site. When you remove the traffic spikes, A Year of Productivity is receiving between 1,500 and 2,000 hits a week, and that number is going up!

In addition to my CBC Ottawa Morning interview in May, three news articles were published about A Year of Productivity in June! One for Carleton Now magazine, another on my business school’s website, and a third on The Scene in Toronto.

The goal of this project is to make myself and you more productive, and the more people that come along for the ride the merrier. If you’re new here, welcome!!

What’s next?

I have a lot of exciting stuff planned for next month. In June I made the decision to write only one article a day instead of two, and no doubt this will allow me to dive much deeper into what I write about over the coming months. Here’s what’s in the pipeline for July:

  • A comprehensive guide to networking (without being, or feeling like a douchebag)
  • A Week of Meditation – A productivity experiment where I ‘m going to meditate for 5 hours a day, for seven days. July 21 – 27.
  • Motivation week – A full week’s worth of posts on motivation, July 28 – August 3.
  • And a lot, lot more.

I’m pumped about the progress of A Year of Productivity so far, and the best part is, the project is only getting started :-)

As always, thanks a lot for reading! Truly.

Notebook image courtesy of Sean McGrath.

Written by Chris Bailey

Chris Bailey has written hundreds of articles on the subject of productivity and is the author of three books: How to Calm Your Mind, Hyperfocus, and The Productivity Project. His books have been published in more than 40 languages. Chris writes about productivity on this site and speaks to organizations around the globe on how they can become more productive without hating the process.

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