One of the articles in the "Articles & Resources" section below is by author Oliver Burkeman in which he encourages
being productive by thinking about doing one task at a time. It's not so much an article against multi-tasking, but it's more about forcing yourself to recognize priority.
I can definitely relate to the concept myself. I write
three newsletters per week now, and if I didn't focus on 'one task' (i.e. one newsletter) at a time, I would never be able to do this. But it's not too difficult because I know which one I'm supposed to work on next.
I work on Web Tools Weekly every Wednesday. Everything else is low priority on Wednesday. Occasionally I have to do a little bit of prep work ahead of time for it (for ads or possibly a paid review) but in general it gets done almost exclusively on Wednesday.
Approaching tasks one at a time
The two smaller newsletters are much easier. They're much shorter newsletters, taking up maybe 2-3 hours of work each. But the same rule applies: On Sunday evening or Monday morning (depending on my schedule) I prioritize the current newsletter you're reading. On Tuesday evening, or possibly Wednesday morning, I prioritize the one on VS Code.
In all three cases, it's just me working on one thing until I get it done. Because I have responsibility towards advertisers and the expected day it goes out, it makes it easy to do. Of course, each newsletter itself consists of dozens of little tasks that all make up the 'one task' — but the same principle applies, I simply do each task one at a time until they're all done (and hence the 'one task' is done).
If you find yourself having trouble getting stuff done, try to force yourself into this mentality. Figure out what's important and just get it done without switching tasks. It might work for you too.
Now on to this week's hand-picked productivity links!
