Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape, launched his own blog this month and I have to admit that I really enjoy reading it. I especially enjoyed one of his posts, The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity.

In my opinion, the biggest problem facing most people (or maybe just me) is that they have too many things to do and not enough time to do it (in other words, they aren’t productive enough to accomplish their goals on a daily basis). It’s not because they don’t try hard enough, but because they’re overwhelmed, don’t know where to start first or can’t focus for long enough to get things done. Technology, which has kept us “always on,” has greatly exacerbated the problem because it’s too easy to get interrupted, the biggest offenders being IM, e-Mail and cell phones.

My advice, and Marc echoed this in his post, is that what works for me will probably not work for you. In fact, I can almost guarantee that if you try to adopt somebody else’s “system,” it won’t work for you. Then why read about Marc’s secrets or attend a “Seven Habits” class? The answer is that you can get some ideas from others that might work for you as you create your own system.In my opinion, Marc’s ideas ranged from impractical to excellent.

I just can’t see how, for example, you can function in a business environment without keeping a schedule.

But if you do want to be more productive, stop trying to read email while you are working on something else. You do not save time by multitasking. Sure, you can do 10 things at once, but at any given second you are only actually doing one of those 10 things because the human mind is not capable of multitasking. All you’re doing by dividing your attention is assuring yourself that each of the things that you are working on will take more time than they should. This lesson applies to anybody who texts while driving a car — it’s dangerous for all of us.

Also, I thought that his suggestion to prepare an index card each night with tomorrow’s “to do” list is an excellent idea. Like Marc, I frequently have “busy” days where I can’t really point to what I actually accomplished. Also, I waste time thinking about what I need to do next — if I can set goals the night before when my mind is clear I think I’ll accomplish much more.

Let me know if you have any good productivity suggestions — I’m always happy to hear how other people deal with these types of issues. Oh, and you can check out Marc’s blog here.