Be More Productive With Your Side Projects By Saving Your Work In A State Of Suspended Animation

There’s the job you go to during the day and the projects you come home to when you’re finished. If you’ve got more your want to accomplish after a long day of work but are finding yourself lacking the productivity to get going on a regular basis, it can help to spend your work in the middle and pick it up right where you left off the next day.

Image: Alex Staroseltsev (Shutterstock).

Kay Keng Tay, an engineer over at Quora, uses this technique to easily pick up his side projects:

I leave all my editors, browser windows, etc. exactly the way they are so I can pick up and resume where I left off. This means I usually never shut down my computer, preferring to put it to sleep or standby where possible.

When you leave your work in the middle, you get the added benefit of knowing exactly where you need to start back up again. If you end your work day by finishing a task, it’ll often be difficult to start again because you have to figure out what to tackle next. Stopping in the middle of your work gives you one less reason to procrastinate when you start again.

This is a trick you can use in nearly any kind of work, but if you’re on a computer it’s very simple to just leave things as they are. If you can’t do that because you’re sharing a machine or use the same one for your daytime job, consider making a separate user account for your side projects so it can be left in a state of suspended animation and resumed again when you’re ready.

This is just one of a few tips Kay offers. Hit up the full response on Quora for more. Got any side project productivity tips of your own? Share ’em in the comments!

How can I increase my productivity on my side projects at the end of the day when I’m tired from work? [Quora]


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