I've had a rough couple of months, and my productivity has taken a hit. It reminded me of a week years ago. Read on for the description, and what I did: It was the week from hell: a situation with a family member threatened to sever a relationship, I was recovering from a vertigo-inducing double ear infection, and my daughter picked up a virus that caused her to vomit for 9 hours. Then work went to you-know-where in a handbasket, and we went on vacation. I spent the next two weeks trying to catch up, unsuccessfully.
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The feeling of getting to zero in my email in box is something that really gives me a boost. I realized after a trip away that the piles in my life were very much like a backlog of email: incomplete decisions. I decided to go through my physical, written and electronic spaces to pursue a concept of zero.
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Getting my inbox down to zero means that I can approach my inbox each time without the dread of all the leftover email waiting for me to do something about it. It makes email much less stressful. I wondered if I could apply the concept of Zero to other areas of my life.
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In the US this month we have Thanksgiving. I find that being thankful, or having gratitude, is one of the things that helps keep me on track, both in how and what I am doing.
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If I have too many projects on my plate I shut down, overwhelmed by the volume. I needed to tackle this early this fall, and I tried something new: clearing the decks. It worked really well taking my 18 project list down to 4 in about 5 hours.
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I had a really rough August into September. Two days after we took my only child to college and became empty nesters, my mother passed away. My husband and I made the drive to Wisconsin. I came away with some profound lessons. These are things that I am trying to incorporate into my life.
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Perfectionism is a deadly enemy of productivity. Whether it is self-imposed, or imposed by others, the quest to get things absolutely right is a waste of energy and time.
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Managing our energy is one task that working parents face daily. Given the demands on us from both the office and home, we can quickly become drained. An old article over at Lifehack.Org got me thinking about energy sinkholes. I thought I would expand on these for working people.
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It’s always a big temptation to take shortcuts. Imagine where we would be if Columbus didn’t think it would be shorter to go east instead of west to reach India? But just as Columbus’s shortcut went horribly wrong on so many levels, other shortcuts can also go wrong. And so today we are going to take on the case against a particular type of shortcuts. This is Episode 68: the case against lifehacking.
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I love sticky notes. I love that they can be moved around. I like using them for quick task lists and reminders of routine items. I don’t love rewriting things. I thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if I could print on them?” I figured out how to print on sticky notes, and today I’ll talk about how I do it.
