For years I’ve been a champion of steering clear of email when you’re trying to manage your tasks. Every time I have witnessed someone using Outlook or Gmail as a to do list, I cringed and did my best to get them to see the light of day and start using an actual task management or to do list application for getting things done instead.
But I’ve since changed my tune.
The title may seem daunting, but the idea behind it is simple: You must set yourself up in advance so that you can keep yourself from simply going through the motions every day — which is really what you’re doing if you’re using a simple to-do list. I call this building An Achievement Structure. In order to
“Slow and steady wins the race.” – The Tortoise and The Hare In our quest to get things done, we can find ourselves moving too fast. When that happens we run the risk of missing key components of task completion, which can result in lower quality results. The need for speed is alluring because the
I’ve been studying personal productivity and time management for years now and there’s one question that comes up often. “What’s one piece of productivity and time management advice that you would give to everyone?” I love to talk about this kind of stuff but after being asked this plenty of times I decided it’d be
“Don’t worry about it.” I hate this phrase. Hearing this phrase does the exact opposite of its intent. It creates worry for me. I find that worry is a waste of time. I’m with Travis Bradberry on this. He said the following about worry: “‘What if?’ statements throw fuel on the fire of stress and
During the workshops and talks I deliver I’ll often ask the attendees (or audience) to do absolutely nothing for an entire minute. I time that minute and to this day I still get fidgety at around the forty second mark. Sixty seconds is both a short and long time. Many moments can happen during that
I’ve been spending a lot of time watching Highway to Heaven for the past couple of months. I’m not a particularly religious person but the show offers some strong messages that I think are valuable and we need to hear. There was an episode featuring Leslie Nielsen, best known for his work in The Naked
I'm a big fan of Henry David Thoreau's insights and writing. There's not much that he says that I don't agree with. But there is one quotation that is attributed to him that I do take a bit of an issue with: "Never look back unless you are planning to go that way." I think
I’m a big fan of Cal Newport’s writing and his books, especially his book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. We’ve had several conversations about his working (and living) habits — he’s been a guest on my podcast on not one but two occasions — and his dedication to the concept
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