Reading Time: < 1 minWith most things that we work on, there is some end goal in sight. Publish the website. Mow the grass. Run a marathon. In some cases, though, there isn’t a “done” to be found. This blog is a great example of that, in that I have no end goal in mind. In most cases, though, […]
Productivity
How long to recover?
Reading Time: < 1 minWhen reading the book “Effortless” by Greg McKeown, he made a big push toward encouraging us to take small steps. It’s not unlike what I’ve talked about before with One Percent Can Make a Huge Difference, but he took it a bit further, saying: “Do not do more today than you can completely recover from […]
Progress moves at the speed of trust
Reading Time: < 1 minIf you want to move your business forward, trust isn’t an optional component. People need to know they can trust you, and you need to learn to trust those around you. Stephen Covey said it well: “Trust always affects two measurable outcomes: speed and cost. When trust goes down—in a relationship, on a team, in […]
Flow follows process
Reading Time: < 1 minGetting into a state of flow can be amazing. It could happen while you’re writing, painting, running, or many other things. Time slows down and things feel effortless. We all know well enough that for things like exercising, the decision to do it is often more work than the actual exercise. Once we get going, […]
How big is your unread library?
Reading Time: 2 minI try to set up my life so that the “next steps” are often right in front of me. When I sit down to write a blog post, I usually have 20-25 ideas already sitting there waiting for me, so I can just pick one and get to it. I keep a list of ideas […]
Reliability makes work easier
Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve long said that the level of trust that I have in my team helps make my life much easier. Among other things, I know that if I send an email to one of them to get something taken care of, I don’t need to remind myself to follow-up — it gets done. However, a […]
Sometimes I’d rather just read
Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve talked a few times about my big reading shortcut, and how I can spend less than an hour to extract almost all of the best information from almost any book. It works amazingly well, but it’s a very focused hour to get it done (20 minutes reading, 20 minutes pulling more quotes, 20 minutes […]
Should you be scheduling more emails?
Reading Time: 2 minA few years ago, Gmail added a nifty feature tucked into the main “Send” button to “Schedule Send”. Pressing that button will open a prompt for when you want to send it, and then it essentially hides the email and sends it at the appropriate time. I use this feature occasionally, but an article from […]
An overwhelming number of inputs
Reading Time: 2 minWe have a lot of things being thrown our way. In a typical day, most of us will have to deal with requests coming via email, text messages, social media, to-do lists and a variety of other places. It can be a lot! As Khe Hy said in a recent post, many of us often […]
Efficient isn’t the same as effective
Reading Time: < 1 minI strive to be a very efficient person, as evidenced by the well over 100 posts in the “productivity” category of this blog. I try to be careful, though, as efficiency has very little to do with being effective, and the latter is far more important. Kevin Paul Scott laid this out beautifully in a […]