By rights, this story should have been written half an hour ago. Instead, I was playing Rolling Sky on my mobile and arguing with random people on the internet. Such are the perils of procrastination.

If you never seem to get things done on time, you're probably suffering from a productivity problem of one form or another. Fortunately, it's not difficult to yield more out of the workday via a few tried-and-trusted adjustments. This infographic provides 11 caffeine-free tips.

If you're someone that automatically schedules your meetings to be an hour long, it might time to reassess your workday. This method of timing meetings could net you more time to get other things done.

A global survey into the effectiveness of open plan offices has found that most workers believe they are noisy environments that hamper productivity. Around half of respondents admitted they regularly used quiet meeting rooms or elected to work from home to avoid office racket. What do you think is the worst thing about open plan working environments?

Let's face it: when you've run into serious productivity roadblocks like procrastination, distraction, and overwhelmed paralysis, keyboard shortcuts and index cards aren't going to save you—only better patterns of behaviour will.

All of us could probably do with a more productive workflow. Lifehack.org suggests applying Parkinson's Law to our daily routine: Parkinson's Law states that "work will fill the time available for its completion." This is a side effect of focusing on doing work instead of getting projects completed. Give yourself strict deadlines and cultivate a desire to finish projects, not just check tasks off on a to-do list. You could do this by setting a timer for a set amount of time to finish a project— once the timer sounds, you are done and must move on to something else; a similar method is working in 48 minute increments.6 Rules to Work Less and Get More Accomplished

We all face productivity killers each day when we're trying to get work done. The Lifehack.org blog lists seven common ones - including procrastinating instead of making decisions and moving on, web surfing disguised as 'research', disorganised meetings, and team members not meeting their commitments on time. Chatting with colleagues and IM are a couple more.

I've tackled a couple of these, particularly the distractions offered by the internet. I read a lot of blogs and news sites as part of my research each day, but I've put in a couple of mechanisms to keep my browsing on track.  Keeping your work goal consciously in mind as you browse really helps. I have set up a few bookmark folders to help me. If I come across a story I'm tempted to read but know isn't 'on topic' I add it to my bookmark folder called 'read later' and move on. I've also got a 'work in progress' bookmark folder for links which might develop into a story later - bingo, I've got a whole folder of story ideas.

So what are the productivity killers which conspire to keep you working late? And how do you deal with them? Leave your ideas in comments please!

Seven Things That Keep Us From Getting Home on Time 

Routines are not necessarily bad things, but after doing the same thing day in and day out can dull your creative side. Web Worker Daily suggests that clearing your routine of everything you can spare to actually clear can serve to bring back some inspiration: Sometimes you may find that you're slipping into your routine as a way to avoid focusing on a knotty problem. In that case, ask yourself how much of your routine you can simply skip for a day or two. Do you really need to read all those blogs today? Can the filing wait? Is instant coffee in the kitchen good enough? Slash your schedule to the bone and force yourself to spend time with the work that you're avoiding, instead of letting the tedium expand to fill the time available. I find that simply walking away from the computer and doing something (anything!) else can really get me out of a rut. What's your best routine breaker? Let's hear in the comments.

4 Ways to Break Out of the Routine

Tutorial site Tech-Recipes has posted an interesting opinion from a doctor on the unique health problems associated with being a computer-based worker (aka "geek"); one of which is a poor attention span. The typical geek trains their brain to be heavily focused while multitasking day after day. Is it surprising that this same brain does not do well when forced to isolate down to one task? Listening in a meeting is a very isolated, very passive event. Coding, developing, debugging -- these are not passive at all. The geek brain is just not trained to sit quietly and listen.In other words, you don't necessarily have a poor attention span—you're just used to engaging your brain in more than one task at a time.