Fridays... Friday afternoons could very well be the hardest part of the week. You start the morning all fired up for the day, then comes lunch time and everything just slows down from there. If you find it hard to end your work week off on a productive high, try some of these tips to get the gears in your head spinning again at optimal speed and enthusiasm: … [Read more...]
Managing emails could be the biggest challenge you face in the workplace, especially if you receive hundreds of mails. I receive up to 200 mails a day. I’ll admit, if I didn’t have the following guidelines in place, I would most certainly miss important deadlines, neglect certain tasks or overlook customer queries. … [Read more...]
We have all had moments when we juggle so many tasks at once that just having to remember the time of day takes a huge amount of effort; and no matter how busy you were during the day, it feels like you hardly accomplished anything. Enter the simplest time management tool: The To-Do List. Brilliant in its simplicity, easy to master, and keeping stressed people sane since 1921. … [Read more...]
Procrastination is not a new concept. During your career, it will grab hold of you in some form. Now, we all know the basics. We know that, in order to complete the task at hand, we need to turn our phones/IM off, close the browser and put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. We know that; we rarely DO that. I am the first to admit that I procrastinate. If I’m not careful, I can spend an entire day being very unproductive. Therefore, I’ve compiled a list of 10 sure-fire productivity … [Read more...]
This is a post I almost didn't write. I was too busy -- just kidding. No, the truth is I've struggled with this issue most of my career. And, in my case, I can't really blame my organization. Many of my issues have been of my own creation. As I've thought about it, several factors have contributed to my struggles: I have a personality that contributes to my desire to work. I'm not complaining or deflecting, I'm just acknowledging my wiring -- Type A. I want to be perceived as a guy who can … [Read more...]
What with the new calendar year and the slowly increasing supply of light here in Wisconsin, I’m thinking a lot about time. It seems to me that time – how we think about it and how we use it – has a huge impact on our success. Accordingly, the following four tactics all involve ways we can get the most out of our most precious resource: … [Read more...]
I can appreciate the value of a to-do list, I suppose. It's one of the basic tools of time management. You create a list of things you need to do, prioritize them, as it helps you to get the most important stuff done. But that's not what most of us struggle with. Instead, the days seem to disappear in a lot of busy-but-not-terribly-important activities. Meetings. Facebook. Blogs. Emails. … [Read more...]
When you think about it, "time management" is a ridiculous concept. Time always has been, and will continue to be, impossible to manage. Each of us is given 24 hours a day, and that's it. Really, the choice is about how you manage your attention: where you place your focus, your energy, and your effort. This isn't just a matter of semantics, either. If your focus is on managing something which is impossible to change, you're going to be forever frustrated. Instead, if your focus is on … [Read more...]
We’re all trying to find a few more hours in the day, right? I know I am. I keep scrabbling around, hoping to find the time management equivalent of a $20 bill in a coat I hadn’t worn since last spring. … [Read more...]
Now that the Great Recession has enshrined the New Frugality in the popular consciousness, it only makes sense to try taking a budgetary approach to time management. Or so it seems to me, but then again, I do have a long history of deficit spending – if only when it comes to time. … [Read more...]
