• Deliberate Living,  Productivity

    Deliberate Task Management: Responsibility

    One of the things about living a more deliberate life is that it means I have to take full responsibility for my decisions. It has been brought home to me that what I do is a choice, which requires a decision, and this has led me to consider more of what I am doing - and not doing - at any time. I see too many instances of blame and excuses every day. What do blame and excuses do to help me live a more deliberate and productive life? Nothing. So how can you remove blame and excuses from your life? Read on. SM Excerpt One of the things about living a more deliberate life is that it means I have to take full responsibility for my decisions. It has been brought home to me that what I do is a choice, which requires a decision, and…

  • Deliberate Living,  Productivity,  Time Management

    Deliberate Social Media

    Many people that I talk with are surprised to know that outside of the blog, I don’t use Facebook or Twitter. Some react with disdain (“How can you possibly know what’s going on?”) or frustration (“How can I reach you if you don’t read Facebook?”). It’s a deliberate choice, and the result of a long journey. I’ve had a rough journey in popular culture over the past few years. First I decided not to read/watch/listen to news. I made this decision after realizing I was angry every morning when I got to work - a direct result of listening to the news. Then, during my year of insanity teaching high school, I took a social media sabbatical because the principal monitored our personal feeds and reprimanded teachers if they wrote something he deemed inappropriate. While I resented this at the time, it gave me a break from…

  • Deliberate Living,  Productivity,  Time Management

    The Deliberate Task List: Controlling What I Do

    One of the things from Getting Things Done that doesn’t work for me is the long lists of tasks split into contexts. It encourages me to take on too much for a current day. If I put my tasks on my calendar, I would see that there aren’t enough hours, but this requires an accuracy in estimating tasks that even after years of practice I don’t posses. The end result of putting too much on myself is that I get overwhelmed by what I want to do, and shut down; or I overextend myself and go past my energy limits, which in turn leads to long periods of not doing anything. Neither one is productive. Over the past few weeks I have been experiencing what I call “planner blindness”. I’ve been using a modified bullet journal system with time blocking on my iPad for months. It’s flexible…

  • Email

    Rules For Controlling Email

    I get a lot of email; in fact about 300 emails per day wander through the various work and personal email inboxes. I have had to develop rules or risk getting swamped under the flood. Today I will share my personal rules and practices that help me keep it under control with minimal attention to my inboxes.

  • Email

    A Better Take on Pro Tips to Manage Your Bursting Email Inbox

    I recently listened to a podcast on the subject of managing email from a man with whose views I mostly agree. Instead of agreeing, though, I found myself shouting "NO" at the car stereo as I drove to work. So today I will go over Get-It-Done Guy Stever Robbins's "7 Pro Tips for Managing Your Bursting Email Inbox". Today I will talk about why I disagreed so vehemently and what I think should be done instead.

  • 15 Essential Productivity Habits
    Productivity

    Essential Productivity Habits

    Productivity isn't about cute tricks nor flashy tools. [Insert Link] It's a matter of buckling down and getting your work done. But that doesn't mean that there aren't things that help. This is my list of essential productivity habits (and yes, they are automatic) that make me hit peak productivity week in and out.