A scaffold is a temporary structure that supports tools, materials, and people while erecting or repairing a building. A similar construct can be used to improve your personal productivity. Much like wearing braces to reposition crooked teeth, a personal productivity scaffold is something you temporarily insert into your daily routine to help create and establish new habits. Once those habits are conditioned, [...]
Sometimes we procrastinate on projects because we don’t know where to begin. A goal like “write a book” might seem straightforward enough when first set, but when it’s time to act, the goal becomes this huge, amorphous blob. Procrastination soon follows. A popular suggestion is to define the immediate next action that must be taken, and then focus on [...]
Sometimes we face tough decisions that involve one or more unknowns. We can’t know in advance what the consequences of each alternative will be. This is especially true of big decisions like quitting a job, entering or exiting a relationship, or moving to a new city. When faced with such a decision, what do you do? If you [...]
Too often our important-but-not-urgent tasks get put on the back burner… and never make it to the front burner. When you get busy with urgent tasks, you may feel pressured to finish those first before you can justify doing anything less urgent. But then when you finally catch a break, you may decide you need [...]
Virtually every time management system teaches that you must prioritize your projects to make sure you’re working on what’s truly important instead of getting caught up in minor things. However, few systems explain precisely how to do this. How do you decide which task is really the most important at any given time? Is it the one that’s most urgent, [...]
Since I receive many questions about this topic, I thought it would be fun to share a candid insider’s look at the reality of being an A-list blogger. These are my personal observations, so I’m not saying they’re true of other high-traffic bloggers, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these patterns held up. While I normally [...]
Here’s the third installment of 33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity (see Volume 1 and Volume 2). These are a bit sillier and less politically correct than the first two volumes — I had to stretch to come up with more ideas – but many are still valid in certain situations. Just be sure to take them with a [...]
My last article on 33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity got a positive reception, so I decided to come up with 33 more. A few of these are similar to the ones already posted, but most are new. Sometimes looking at the same idea from different angles can be beneficial. So here are 33 more rules to [...]
Heuristics are rules intended to help you solve problems. When a problem is large or complex, and the optimal solution is unclear, applying a heuristic allows you to begin making progress towards a solution even though you can’t visualize the entire path from your starting point. Suppose your goal is to climb to the peak of [...]
A few weeks ago I evaluated The Science of Success program from James Ray. James is one of the cast members of the underground hit movie The Secret, and you may have seen him on Oprah earlier this month or read my recent interview with him. I spoke with James on the phone in January, [...]