(Photo: Erik Abderhalden)
John Hodgman his a highly accomplished author, comedian, actor and public speaker at the tender age of 42. How does he manage to be so productive? In an ongoing series, the blog Lifehacker asks very successful people how they work and what tricks, methods and tools they use to be efficient. Here's what Mr. Hodgman had to say.
Many go-getters use treadmill desks, even though they may actually impair their work. Mr. Hodgman, however, has found that a bed is the optimal workplace:
As per above, I do not stand up. I lie down. While I’ve written in bed occasionally since college, I would always feel guilty about it and try to keep to the desk. But now that I am 42 I do not care anymore what humans think, so I pulled out the sofa bed in my home office and now do everything there. It’s the most productive I’ve been in years, and it makes the nap transitions incredibly smooth.
That's smart! It's similar to the understanding of Winston Churchill. When Churchill was asked to explain how he was so successful and productive in many different fields, he responded:
Conversation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down. Never sit down when you can lie down.
Mr. Hodgman also describes the tools that he uses to keep track of his day:
For a very long time my process was simple: I would think of things to say or do in the shower, and then forget them. Then I would remember them while walking around and write them by hand in a Moleskine notebook. Then I would transcribe that notebook to an MS word file, and then forget all about that file until forced by terrible circumstance to actually compose a script, a sketch, a book, etc. Occasionally I would draft using Apple mail, as it was a quick and dirty way to make sure my dumb thoughts were backed up and available to the cloud.
But since I’ve been performing more and more live comedy, I’ve been using Google Drive to replace all of the above, except the showers.
I'm sure that Google is working on fixing that deficiency.