Reading Time: 2 minDuring the day we all have spots of time that we need to “kill”. Waiting outside of the dance studio for your child. Waiting for the doctor to see you. Waiting in line to check-out at a store. What do you do with that time? I have two vastly different approaches. Be Productive Ideally, I […]
Productivity
The Digital Efficiency Framework
Reading Time: 10 minIt’s 10:30 Monday morning and you now have 742 unread emails in your inbox. You have three notes you scratched in your notebook, your boss just asked for a few things, and you have no idea what’s in your Evernote anymore. Things are a mess. Digital tools are great. Never in our history have we […]
Planning for Growth
Reading Time: 5 minI’ve always considered myself to be a pretty good planner, but as I’ve learned more I’ve realized how poor a job I often do. Over the past year, I’ve refined my processes quite a bit and I feel I have things in a much better place (though always looking to improve). For me, planning really […]
To write more, read more
Reading Time: < 1 minAs I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m trying to write every day. So far, so good. It’s been excellent, but it’s not always easy. There are times when I’m not sure what to write, and I find the reading is often the solution. David B. Clear sums it up rather nicely by saying that […]
Goals are a commitment to the process
Reading Time: < 1 minSetting a goal is easy enough: “Lose 20 pounds by March 1” sounds great. If you follow something like the SMART framework, that simple goal essentially checks all of the boxes. While losing 20 pounds might be the goal, setting that goal really means that you’re committing to a process. This likely means eating less […]
Unsubscribe like crazy
Reading Time: < 1 minOver the next few days, you’re likely to be inundated with emails from companies that you haven’t heard from in a while. It’ll be irritating to receive them all, but it’s a great opportunity — don’t just delete those emails, but take a few seconds to unsubscribe. Maintaining control of your inbox is an increasingly […]
The two types of failure
Reading Time: < 1 minIn Atul Gawande’s amazing book “The Checklist Manifesto“, he suggests that there are two types of failure in the world. The first is ignorance—we may err because science has given us only a partial understanding of the world and how it works. There are skyscrapers we do not yet know how to build, snowstorms we […]
It’s just not a priority for me
Reading Time: < 1 minThere’s another side to being so “busy”, and that’s when it comes to excuses. There are very few situations where you’re ever “too busy” for something. The only two I can think of are: If you’re in jail. If you’re in the hospital. The rest of the time, your rejection of a request isn’t because […]
My list of daily goals
Reading Time: 2 minA few weeks back I started tracking a list of daily goals. These are separate from any to-do items I might have, and unrelated to anything on my calendar. They’re simply a list of things I’d like to accomplish every day. As of today, it’s a list of four main goals with five sub-goals in […]
My big reading shortcut
Reading Time: 2 minOver the past year I’ve been trying to read a lot more. I’ve succeeded in reading quite a few books, but I’m also “semi-reading” quite a few more. Michael Simmons has coined this as Fractal Reading, and while I don’t follow his practice exactly, it’s pretty close. Full books First, there are some books that […]