It's one thing to make deliberate choices when the choices are easy. But what can you do when there are too many to choose from and they all need to be done yesterday? What do you do when you're overwhelmed?Overwhelm is a common problem and can stop people from doing anything. After all, why even start if you can't possibly finish? I'm looking at a perfect storm of a week: meetings Tuesday through Friday, along with a full task list. Here are the steps I took to make this week do-able.
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There is only one thing you need to do to get things done, no matter what the time frame or task. It's very simple, yet profound. And still many people won't do it. Want to know this secret?Today we'll look at the secret and why most people don't do it.
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Time blocking is a great way to get things done efficiently. Today I show you how I do time blocking, including pictures of an actual day's result.
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One of the things that came out of the 2020 Reader Survey is that people are struggling with energy management.I’m not a naturally energetic person. In fact, some of those same readers made the comment that not everyone has energy to manage everything that I do.I laughed until I cried at the thought that anyone in the world thought that I was a peppy and energetic person. I’m not. I don’t sleep well. I don’t sleep enough. I’m often irritable from lack of sleep. I sometimes want to put my head down on my desk and nap.But over the years, I have learned how to manage my energy, and even what to do to increase it. So today I present…
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In today's episodes, we look at: What is enough? Tinkering Innovation vs. Standardization (routines)
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Working from home...many of us are doing it right now. Some are doing it better than others. So how can you make working from home successful? Today we look at various ways, including how to make the mental shift to and from working; maintaining an office space; keeping up motivation and the importance of notes.
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The Pareto Principle has been much abused in productivity circles. But I recently saw something that blew me away. Someone suggested that if 80% of the results comes from 20% of the work, then it must also hold that 64% of the results comes from 4% of the work. Umm, no.So I'm going to put on my math teacher hat here for a bit.
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I've believed for a while it is possible to be over-systemized. At the point where our productivity systems, whatever flavor they are, begin to take up more time than they save, they have crossed the threshold and have run up against the Law of Diminishing Returns, where at some point, each additional unit input yields less output.So where is the sweet spot?
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How many times have you started something just to be stopped by having to fetch needed material or run to the store or do another task first? Wouldn't it be nice just to have everything ready to go? It would certainly help us get started faster.
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One of the things that I still struggle with, years into the productivity space, is making my to-do list doable. I don't want to put each step to complete something on the list, because a) I don't need to be reminded that I need to fetch the stepladder when changing a light bulb, and b) the list gets far too long the more granular I go.On the other hand, if the tasks are too big, then I can't get them done in a small amount of time.Enter Little And Often, one of Mark Forster's concepts.I've been a fan of Mark Forster for a long time now. Besides being an eloquent writer, he takes it upon himself to innovate new systems…
