• blindsides
    Productivity

    How To Be Productive When Life Blindsides You

    There are times when I feel like I've been run over with the dump truck of life. And then the truck backs over me for good measure. But life goes on. So as I am metaphorically picking myself up and dusting off the tire tracks, I need to have a plan. I need to figure out how to be productive when life blindsides me.

  • Productivity

    How To Eliminate Self-Generated Crises

    How many "emergencies" do you have on a daily or weekly basis that are actually self-generated crises? I'm talking about panic because you can't find something you need right then. Here are tips on the causes of these crises, and how you can stop them in their tracks.

  • podcast
    Podcast,  Task Management

    Podcast Episode 84: Tackling The Task List

    My task lists have become a problem. They’ve been growing steadily, and it is now not unusual for me to have 20+ tasks on the list as I start the morning.It’s not a sustainable approach. Even though I am knocking a good number of tasks off the list each day, it still keeps growing. There are some days I look at the list and I cannot even fathom where to begin.Today I will talk about my experiment with open, closed and hybrid task lists and the things I am trying to keep myself working. I’m going to call this Episode 84: Tackling the Task List.

  • Productivity

    Creating Systems To Support Weaknesses

    None of us are good at everything. Many people say to “focus on your strengths.” But weakness in some areas of our life have more consequences than others, and ignoring them might not be an option. If you are in a situation where avoidance won’t work, you need to create systems to support your weaknesses. This article will help you determine weaknesses that need support, and give some examples of how to create a system.

  • Productivity

    What To Do About Busy Work?

    A reader asked me, "What are your thoughts on 'busy work'? For some whose jobs are based more on time than production, it's easy to get caught up doing some busy work to justify one's existence." I realized that there are actually two types of busy work: that which we engage in when our time is our own, and that we engage in to fill working hours owed to someone else. But we can turn busy work into productive time with a bit of planning and action.

  • podcast
    Podcast,  Productivity

    Podcast Episode 81: My Weekly Review Questions

    The weekly review, made popular by David Allen in Getting Things Done, is supposed to help you look back and assess the week as well as plan the next week. I have done various forms of the weekly review for years, but the “review” part of it always slid away in the face of planning for the next week. Recently I made a list of questions that will allow me to do a look back with intention, so that I can assess what happened in the past week - and more importantly, what is outstanding and why. I’m going to call this Episode 81: My New Weekly Review Questions.