This is one tip in a series of techniques to help you take control of your time, feel great about each week, and watch those weeks add up to impressive results. The key to each successful week is two-fold: Identify what would constitute a successful week Make it happen This tip tackles both. Get the unimportant tasks off the list so you can finish the important ones with enthusiasm! Uncommon Booster #4: Create Energy with Clarity Ask yourself which items on your To Do list are energizing and which are draining.
A few days ago, USA Today featured “no excuse” workout tips and an interview with Jane Fonda, who has just released two new workout videos. The perennial problem of too much weight and too little exercise is always of particular interest this time of year thanks to two traditions: cult-like over-eating from Thanksgiving until New Year’s followed by the opportunity to undo all the damage, along with previous years of damage, in one fell swoop with New Year’s resolutions to lose weight and get fit. Predictably, the newspapers print advice and the fitness and weight loss folks proffer truly astounding, totally proven, miraculous products and services. Shortly before Valentine’s Day provides another misguided opportunity to run amuck, I boldly predict a surge of articles encouraging resolve and dispensing with guilt. If happens every year so I have great confidence in my prediction.
This is the third tip in a series of techniques to help you take control of your time, feel great about each week, and watch those weeks add up to impressive results. The key to each successful week is two-fold: Identify what would constitute a successful week Make it happen This tip tackles the first and helps you shrink the list to the things that will make a difference.
I spent three glorious weeks in Ireland recently with only evening WIFI access. I forgot about checking email, watching for voice and text messages, and listening for incoming calls. I didn’t look anything up on the Internet, check Facebook, or wonder whether anyone had placed an order for books or CDs on my website. Instead, I enjoyed the people and places, relaxed, and found each day longer than at home. As we drove home on the Mass Pike, NPR reported on a lively debate among scientists on the impact of being constantly wired. Half denied any and half were convinced of profound changes to the brain. A wilderness trip together was planned to provide ideas for subsequent studies. I don’t need any scientific studies to convince me of a significant impact.
This is the second in a series of techniques to help you take control of your time, feel great about each week, and watch those weeks add up to impressive results. In my introduction to this series, I identified the two secrets to a successful week: Identify what would constitute a successful week Make it happen This second tip is relevant to both of these. Productivity Booster #2: Identify Concrete Next Steps You probably have several projects underway. Have you identified the next concrete step that will move each one forward? Big nebulous projects kill productivity. They clog To Do lists like lumps of fat clog arteries. “Launch new product,” “improve visibility,” and “reduce development costs” are prime examples of indigestible and exhausting behemoths. Stare at those for a while and you will definitely need a nap!
Feel like your weeks are slip-sliding away? Not satisfied with what you accomplish each week? The secret to a successful week is two-fold: Identify what would constitute a successful week Make it happen If you have too many priorities, you have no priorities. You must identify the top few that will make a difference and leave you feeling satisfied with your week. On top of that, you must protect the time you need to spend on those critical few to make measurable progress. You can’t let distractions and interruptions suck up valuable time. Today I offer the first in a series of specific techniques to help you take control of your time, feel great about each week, and watch those weeks add up to impressive results. I suspect you will find that you already use some of the techniques, can’t make some work for you, but are propelled toward peak productivity by others.
I’ve just discovered Bump and now I can’t wait to try it! The worst thing about meeting lots of new contacts is loading up all that contact info afterwards. The business card scanners I’ve tried are not great. But now there is Bump! Tap iPhones together and you are done! So if you have an iPhone and you run into me somewhere, let’s give it a try!
Feel like your weeks are slip-sliding away? Not satisfied with what you accomplish each week? The secret to a successful week is two-fold: Identify what would constitute a successful week Make it happen If you have too many priorities, you have no priorities. You must identify the top few that will make a difference and leave you feeling satisfied with your week. On top of that, you must protect the time you need to spend on those critical few to make measurable progress. You can’t let distractions and interruptions suck up valuable time.
“You must have an agenda!” is a demand that has guaranteed nothing but a flood of atrocious agendas. Most agendas are literally recipes for wasting time: 8:00 Waste time on X 8:15 Waste time on Y You get the idea Now download these typical and seriously flawed agendas. Do they look like yours? Why more companies don’t do something to improve their meetings is way beyond me. I have met almost no one at any company who doesn’t complain about the time wasted in lousy meetings. Furthermore, I have never encountered a company that couldn’t slash the total time spent in meetings and realize huge gains in productivity. Can you think of a better opportunity to: Free up large quantities of valuable resources for more important, profitable work? While simultaneously pleasing shareholders from the Boardroom to the shipping dock?
A 27 pound, spiked tortoise broke through a wooden fence and has gone missing in Easthampton, Massachusetts, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. This African Sulcata can grow to 300 pounds and live 100 years. Eleven years ago it was a tiny little thing that the kids, who have since moved out, loved. So why not? SO WHY NOT? If this phrase was uttered at all, it must have been as a statement. Likely in answer to any questions and concerns raised AFTER the purchase. What would have happened had it been asked seriously? It would take a really dishonest or ignorant pet store owner to fail to mention the 300 pounds and 100 years. And it would take a parent totally infatuated with the idea of such an exotic pet and unable to think for about two minutes to ignore the image of a 300 pound tortoise in the yard, house, or garage long after the kids are gone.