I did a writing exercise with a group of school-age kids last year and they had to go away to continue it. They wanted rules, I gave them rules. But one of the kids completely ignored those rules. She wasn’t being obstructive or rude, she was being right. Her story was good but the fact that she’d thought about it and gone against my instructions was fantastic. I praised her in front of the group and then later when they were all gone, I swear to you I punched the air.

Sometimes you just have to do it wrong because you know that’s right.

So on reading advice that I should say nuts to just about every piece of productivity advice I’ve sworn by, I was willing to give it a go. And my reward for being brave was that actually much of this purportedly counter-intuitive advice is what I swear by.  Certainly this one:

Use at least Facebook, Twitter and 3 other social networks
Are social networks blocked by your employer? That’s probably not a good thing for your productivity, according to a recent study by Evolv. They monitored hundreds of metrics from Fortune 500 companies and found an exciting correlation between usage of social networks and productivity/output per employee.

10 of the Most Controversial Productivity Tips That Actually Work – buffer.com

I’m not sure I’d say it was exciting, but I maintain that the fact you are distracted by social media is a good thing. If you found it all a burden, that would be… less good. Facebook, twitter and the rest are your friends. I don’t even say that because you can get money or audiences from promoting things via these services. I say it because if you have a great time trying to build an audience and you fail to do that, you fail to get any more readers or customers or whatever, at least you had a great time on the way.

You do also need to be able to switch the bleedin’ things off, mind.

Or then there’s this. This is one of the most popular sections of my The Blank Screen book and I’ve even run it as a standalone workshop, quite apart from the productivity advice:

Get rejected
Here is something to finally stop being angry or disappointed about: Being rejected. Instead welcome it in and work on how you react to it. “Social rejection can inspire imaginative thinking, particularly in individuals with a strong sense of their own independence”.

10 of the Most Controversial Productivity Tips That Actually Work – buffer.com

My version is How to Get Rejected: I specifically tell you how to make sure you don’t get any work – and why that’s true. Actually, when I run this in a workshop I tend to get the whole audience to reject me. It’s cathartic for them though for me, not so much.

Here’s another eight pieces of counter-intuitive productivity advice from Buffer.com. I’m not sure I agree with all of them but their case is well made.

Also, Buffer.com is a service that I’ve just started trying out with The Blank Screen and Self Distract. I tend to tweet about that personal blog around three times: once the moment it’s out, then over the lunchtime the same day, probably around early evening too. With Buffer.com, I could write three different tweets and tell it when to send them out. I’m half pleased with it: the service works perfectly and it is very handy to not have to remember to tell people about a new blog, but on the other hand it’s harder to then get into conversations with people about it.