Thanks for asking this.  I have always wondered the same and I look forward to the answers.<p>I am not as prolific as many of the people you are probably thinking of but I am slightly above average.  Here are a few things that WORKED FOR ME:<p>- Learn &amp; use GTD - life changing.  I use omnifocus but you can do it with pen &amp; paper<p>- Automate as much as you can - checkout keyboard maestro and many other tools<p>- Use your calendar efficiently - block time for reading, playing, OSS or whatever<p>- wake up early<p>- excercise (i don&#x27;t do too much but the days I do, I feel great)<p>- keyboard shortcuts for everything<p>- look for productivity tips for whatever tools you are using.<p>- turn off facebook and distracting material<p>- monitor your time - I use rescue time<p>- outsource as much as you can.  I use fancyhands.com to handle things like calling the phone company, cable company, making appointments and so on.  It saved me tons of hours of BS tasks<p>- I have had some success with the pomodora technique as well, give it a shot.<p>- Don&#x27;t work more than 8 hours a day<p>- Work from home as much as you can<p>- don&#x27;t burn out<p>- for side projects, blogging, oss or whatever it is you want to do, i find it better to do 1 or 2 hours a day than try to crank 8 hours on sunday.<p>- spend time with friends and family - it&#x27;s amazing how your productivit improves when you are refreshed<p>- take a power nap or naps<p>- sleep well<p>I am married with infant twins so I try to be as efficient as possible with the limited time I have infront of the computer.  1 hour of highly focused work yields more output than 4 hours of distracted, half-ass work.<p>forgive the self promotion but I think it is relevant.  I put together a free ebook about mac productivity tips - might not be as helpful for techies like you but you might at least learn a trick or 2 or find an app that you never heard off - www.bestmactips.com