Time Management Articles
Time management articles by Harold TaylorTime Management Articles:
How to love the job you hate. Part 5.
We have discussed the option of using your current job as an opportunity to train for the job you would really like to obtain, either inside the current company or in a different organization. This would involve more than just applying yourself to the current job,...
How to love the job you hate: Part 4
Most jobs have both positives and negatives. But just as we may be so aware of our weaknesses that our strengths are obscured, so we may be so aware of our job’s negatives that the positives are obscured. You are free to choose which attributes or failings of the job...
How to love the job you hate. Part 3.
Reframing is expressing a concept, idea, or product differently. When we change our point of view on any given situation, the facts remain the same, but a deliberate shift is made in how we see them. For example, we are reframing when we see a problem as a challenge...
How to love the job you hate. Part 2.
If any of the comments and statistics outlined in part 1 of this series apply to your situation at work, you might be justified in seeking a change in employment. Not that you’re necessarily faultless yourself, but it is difficult working in a toxic environment. The...
How to love the job you hate. Part 1
Hate is a strong word. It's the worst-case scenario. Perhaps you simply aren't motivated to wake up each morning anticipating another great day at the office, plant, or next assignment. There is no joy in your heart or spring in your step as you leave the breakfast...
The importance of writing things down.
Benefits of an “Idea Catcher” Writing things down clears your short-term memory of all those ideas, thoughts, and things you plan to do “when you get time.” An ancient Chinese proverb says, “The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory.” This is...
How to quickly break bad habits
Over 30 years ago, I had a bad habit of tossing my car keys on the kitchen table when I came home at night. Invariably I wasted time searching for my keys in the morning since they seldom remained on the table. To solve my problem my wife bought a key rack for me to...
A nap a day keeps the cobwebs away.
Although I used to nap only occasionally, I now nap on most days. I nap for a half-hour in the early afternoon. Napping is good for the learning brain. It helps strengthen the brain’s connections formed while working on your tasks, whether they involve writing, study,...
Are you prepared to manage your time?
Preparation is critical before any activity, whether it is a pilot about to fly an airplane or a surgeon about to operate on a patient. In his book “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Done Right,” Atul Gawande tells how pilots flew a particular type of...
Keep pace with an aging population
Will you still be alive and active in 2050? At 88, the odds are against my being here, but if so, I'd only be 116 years old. And that's possible if Harvard Medical School aging researcher David Sinclair is right in suggesting that the first person to live to 150 has...
Do you have a work portfolio?
What do you do for a living? That's a question that is easily answered by most professionals, managers, tradespersons, and other workers. “I'm a financial planner, professional organizer, bank manager, accountant, lawyer, salesperson, bookkeeper, maintenance...
Make eye contact for better communication
In business, it's important to connect to others in the organization for mutual trust and cooperation to take place. And people usually assume they're liked if you make eye contact. Eye contact is a rapport-building gesture that boosts dopamine, a neurotransmitter...
Unproductive? Blame it on your brain.
It's difficult to think clearly while you are working physically, such as moving furniture or stacking chairs or running. And vice versa; it is difficult to exert much force moving furniture etc. while you are thinking about some project or planning a marketing...
Wherever you are, keep your mind with you.
In a typical work session, what percentage of time do you think you spend focused on the task at hand? Harvard psychologist Daniel T Gilbert, in one study, found that our minds are wandering 46% of the time. There are both positive and negative consequences to...
Don’t like your job? Reframe it.
If you are in a job that is pure drudgery or distasteful or stressful, you can reduce its negative impact on your mental health by reframing it. For example, tell yourself it is something you choose to do temporarily, until you get a better job elsewhere. Or imagine...
The importance of focus and self-control
You have probably heard this many times before. The brain cannot multitask; it operates sequentially and can only focus its attention on one thing at a time. You may think you are doing two things at the same time, such as reading this article while listening to a...
The return of the checklist
Thanks in part to Atul Gawande's book, “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right,” the checklist is making a comeback. Like David and Goliath, the lowly checklist has come forward to challenge the troublesome side of technology. The troublesome side of...
Develop your character.
You can modify your personality. I indicated that in the previous blog article, and mentioned the comments of neurologists and others in an earlier blog article titled, “Are you a highly sensitive person?” The personality or character of leaders can help produce a...
The importance of character in leadership
Personal productivity, time management, and people skills took a leap forward when management heeded the behavioral scientists’ findings, especially the motivational theories put forward by Abraham Maslow (Hierarchy of needs), Douglas McGregor (Theory X & Theory...
Keep ahead of your work commitments.
When you have repetitive commitments, and most people do, there is an excellent opportunity to not only keep up with your work, but to get ahead of it. Do you have monthly reports to prepare? Weekly meetings to attend? Articles to write? Books to read? List all...
Are you a highly sensitive person?
A Time Management Article by Harold Taylor I had never considered being a “Highly Sensitive Person” (HSP) until one day several months ago, while talking to Clare Kumar, a certified executive coach. She suggested that I might be one. Until then, I had never heard of...
How interruptions impact your productivity
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorIn my last blog article, I mentioned our low attention span, and our innate tendency to interrupt ourselves to accept interruptions from others. We are hardwired to protect ourselves, and any potential interruptions could be a...
We have an attention span lower than a goldfish?!
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorBack in the year 2000, Microsoft Canada reported an average attention span of 12 seconds for humans. This decreased to 8 seconds by 2013, probably influenced by the digital age of speed. Microsoft Canada also noted that the...
Words – Choose them carefully
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorWhen I was first trying to get published in a fiction magazine over 50 years ago, one editor took the time to offer constructive criticism. I will never forget the rejection letter he sent to me along with my returned story....
Your brain’s role in managing time.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorSometimes referred to as” habits of the mind”, a person’s “executive skills” are those brain-based skills required to execute tasks – that is, getting organized, planning, initiating work, staying on task, controlling...
Gratitude is thankfulness in action.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorHave you ever wondered why you are seeing so many books and articles on what used to be considered non-business topics, such as trust, gratitude, and thankfulness? It is part of the trend to provide training in soft skills....
A short-cut to forming effective habits
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorOver 30 years ago, I had a bad habit of tossing my car keys on the kitchen table when I came home at night. Invariably I wasted time searching for my keys in the morning since they seldom stayed on the table. To solve my...
The importance of trust
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorTrust, like time, is one of the essential intangibles that everyone understands until it comes to define it and put it into practice. The Webster New World Dictionary defines it as “a firm belief in integrity, reliability,...
Performance improves with positivity
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorA positive atmosphere works in our favour. Simon Achor, in his book, The Happiness Advantage, says it was shown that optimistic salespeople do 56% better at sales than pessimistic ones. It was also shown that doctors in a...
Interruptions can be avoided or controlled.
A Time Management Article by Harold Taylor John Medina, in his book, “Brain rules,” remarked that studies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50% longer to accomplish a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50% more errors. And according to Rescue Time,...
How to keep up with your email.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorThere are two times during the workday when you should never check email - the first thing at the start of the day, and the last thing before you leave work in the afternoon. If you look at your email in the morning you could...
A closer look at making the main thing the main thing.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorImportant tasks are those tasks that have intrinsic value and help to achieve a goal that you have set. A priority is the task that you have chosen to do first. A priority can be either important or unimportant. For example,...
Make your work sessions brief and focused.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorIt is rewarding to read that more and more people are agreeing with my selection of 90-minute blocks of time to concentrate on priority activities. They may not all agree with the 90 minutes, but they have discovered that...
A few of my favorite time management books
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorI'll mention Stephen Covey's 1989 classic, The 7 habits of highly successful people, which seemed to me to be one of the first books to take a holistic approach to time management. It is a “must read” of course, but I want to...
Has time management changed in 40 years?
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorIt was 40 years ago when my first book, Making time work for you, was published in 1981. Most of the same suggestions and principles are still valid, at least those that could be adapted to the digital fast-paced world of...
How to build trust and respect.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorIn last week's log article, “Remote work is here to stay,” I mentioned that a large increase in the number of remote workers is expected in the coming years due to the tenacity of the COVID-19 pandemic. I also mentioned that...
Remote work is here to stay.
A Time Management Article by Harold Taylor In 2020, as Covid-19 disrupted the way we work, companies started transitioning into mobile workforces as many employees worked from home. This was not new, since some companies had already had up to a third of their...
Beyond time management
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorA few years ago, I self-published a book called How to grow older without growing old to suggest a set of new time management strategies for seniors that I referred to in other books as holistic time management. I define...
Are you robbing your family of their memories?
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorTen years ago, I took a photo of a father and son sitting in the Toronto airport, both independently engrossed in their electronic devices. At a time management workshop later, I showed this photo and asked the question, “What...
Skipping sleep is a productivity killer
A Time Management Article by Harold Taylor“We are fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:14) Your body is programmed to spend one third of its life asleep – and to sleep in specific cycles of light sleep, deep sleep, and active brain sleep. Each complete cycle...
There is no such thing as a “best planner.”
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorThere are hundreds of different paper planners on the market today. Do you know why? Because there are hundreds of ways to record your plans, and just as many approaches to planning. Back in the early 80s, in the heyday of my...
When people are most productive
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorThe Secrets of Our Body Clocks by Susan Perry and Jim Dawson reveal some interesting information on how our internal clocks operate. For instance, most of us reach our peak alertness around noon. So, delaying lunch until...
How your circadian rhythm works
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorRecently, there has been more research on our circadian rhythm, which acts something like an internal timer that determines how our bodies function during a 24-hour day. We are now beginning to understand the full significant...
For maximum performance, follow your biological clock
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorSince ancient times people have experienced getting hungry, sleepy, alert, and so on at specific times of the day, and in the 1960s this whole new field of biology called chronobiology began to study what is now known as our...
Control your time through scheduling
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorWhen you schedule your priorities and other important tasks and activities into your planning calendar, don't forget to include your family. Everyone I have talked to claim their family is their priority. But does the family...
Do you have junk in your trunk?
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorTD Jakes, in his book, Before You Do, tells of a humorous incident when a friend picked him up at the airport. When the friend opened his trunk to put in the suitcases, there was no room. The trunk looks like a traveling...
The 7 Key Components of Personal Productivity.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorSome small companies measure productivity in terms of output alone, as opposed to output per hour, since they assume they have a stable workforce consisting of the same team of workers. They may think that any increases in...
Know how to say no.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorTo police your boundaries, you must be able to say no when appropriate. We hate to disappoint someone, especially friends and people we like and respect. And we do not want to appear uncooperative or selfish. We do not want to...
Let personal policies guide you in your business
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorDuring my 50 years as a professional speaker and workshop facilitator, I have always had a set of “personal policies” that I would write in the front of my planner each year to remind me to adhere to my own boundaries. It is...
Set boundaries to protect your time.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorIf you are serious about managing your time, you must first ensure that it is protected, not only from others, but also from any time-wasting habits of your own as well. You already have already established a boundary if you...
The need for boundaries in our lives.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorTo be successful in any job or any business, we must accept responsibility for any problems we encounter and take the necessary action to remedy the situation and ensure that a similar situation does not occur in the future....
Whose priorities are in your planner?
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorEugene Peterson, in his book The Contemplate Pastor, suggests that busy people might be busy because they let other people decide what they will do instead of deciding themselves. In his case, he feels people who do not...
It is right to keep writing.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorI realize that with the advent of laptops and iPads, came the practice of typing notes in classrooms, workshops, meetings, and office situations, handwritten notes seem to be going the way of the dodo bird. I suppose I am as...
A closer look at efficiency and effectiveness
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorEfficiency and effectiveness are two terms that are sometimes misunderstood. The usual definitions of efficiency as “doing things in the best possible way”, and effectiveness as “doing the best possible things,” needs to be...
Write it into your memory.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorKeeping a diary, journal or logbook helps keep you in the moment. If you use a paper planning calendar to record appointments, activities, and events, you are giving your memory a great assist. When you write things down it...
When you leave work, does your brain stay there?
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorA frequently asked question is “How do you stop thinking about your job even when you are at home or on vacation?” There is no quick answer. But there is a long one. First, if you are an entrepreneur who owns your own company,...
Break the multitasking habit
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorIf you seem to be getting less done, but working harder, and feeling drained of energy before the day is over, you could be a victim of the multitasking craze. Almost everyone has multitasked at one time or another. Most do it...
“No” is a little word with a big impact.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorEverything we say yes to takes far more time than we think it will take, or what the asker says it will take. Also, most people think they will have more time in the future than they have now, but it never seems to turn out...
Ideas have no expiry dates.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorIn one of my earlier blog articles I mentioned my love of books and my tendency to hang onto them. I have been criticized more than once for citing time management reference books that were over ten years old – as though ideas...
How to Speak in Public
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorIf you present time management keynotes or other presentations, how you deliver the material is almost as important as the content. You want to keep the group’s attention and ensure that learning is taking place. Here are some...
Laws governing the use of time.
A Time Management Article by Harold Taylor There are several laws that collectively provide effective guidelines for those who wish to maximize their use of time. Here are a few of the more important ones; along with brief explanations of how they can impact the way...
Do not underestimate the importance of sleep.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorYour body is programmed to spend one third of its life asleep – and to sleep in specific cycles of light sleep, deep sleep, and active brain sleep. Each cycle takes about 90 minutes, and each has a specific assignment that...
Are we beginning to outlive our minds?
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorIn the late 1800s, life expectancy was about 40 years. By the end of the 1900s life expectancy had increased to about 79. In 2021, at last report, it was 82.7. Better health care and living conditions have proven to be great...
Undertime will eliminate the need for overtime.
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorEnterprise-Rent-A-Car several years ago surveyed 1000 Americans and found that 70% worked at least one weekend a month, with 63% saying that their employer expected them to put in time on Saturday or Sunday. And if they were...
What happened to our travel time?
A Time Management Article by Harold TaylorTraveling on business used to give us an opportunity to get caught up on our work. In my first book, Making Time Work for You, published in 1981 by General Publishing in Canada and Beaufort in the United States, (and out of...
Don’t burn the candle at both ends.
The expression, “burning the candle at both ends,” was first coined in the 18th century. At that time, “both ends” was a reference to both ends of the candle. Candles were both useful and expensive in those days, and...
Efficiency & Effectiveness in review.
When we have a lot of things to do and we start to get behind in our work, we tend to speed up. This could backfire since the faster we go, the more we focus on how much we are getting done and less on what it is we are doing. It goes well if we are always doing the...
The principles of pacing.
If you want to get the right things done in this digital age of speed, work slower, not faster. Your progress is greater when you do not undertake too many projects or tasks at the same time. Have you ever taken on several large projects only to realize that you have...
To maximize efficiency, get in sync with your body’s rhythm.
Pay attention to your body's clock Have you ever felt completely exhausted after work with barely enough energy to flop on a couch after ordering a family-size pizza for dinner? You had completely used up your supply of energy for the day, and yet an hour or two later...
How to become a patient person.
In last week's article, I provided a dictionary definition of patience as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.” But more accurately, I should have just said that patience is the opposite of impatience.”...
Quarterly newsletter from Harold Taylor, March 2021.
New Book The Proactive Manager, my latest e-Book, published this year by Bookboon, expands on my 2020 introductory book, How to Become a Proactive Person, and with the aid of more recent research, introduces you to our innate proactive brain and how you can enhance...
A patient person is a productive person.
John Dewey, a 20th century philosopher, psychologist, said that the most useful virtue in the world is patience. It is certainly true today. We have plenty of opportunities to be impatient. Most people in business face a plethora of interruptions, delays, rush jobs,...
The power of anticipation
To anticipate means to predict, expect, or think about what is likely to happen. Whenever you anticipate that something might happen, you can immediately take action instead of saying after the fact, “I was afraid that might happen.” The action you take...
The 7-day work plan.
Do not allow your workload to accumulate on a long “To-do” list or you will be paralyzed by the weight of it all. Just the sight of it will prompt you to procrastinate. You will lose time trying to sort out the priorities and making up your mind which ones to do...
Leave space in your life.
Angela Watson, a motivational speaker for educators with 11 years of classroom teaching experience, in her book, Fewer Things, Better, uses the analogy of margins on notepaper to illustrate the importance of leaving space in your daily schedule. On most notepads,...
Don’t let your garage be a victim of overflow.
As car ownership increased in the early 1900s and repurposed carriage houses were no longer adequate to serve as garages, separate sheds began to appear, sans the smell of animals. These early garages, originally located not far from the houses, soon adjoined them,...
Do you really need a “Junk” drawer?
There was an interesting study done by Joybird, a custom furniture company, on how Americans organize their homes. It involved a survey of 1900 people who were asked among other things, how often they organized their homes. Responses indicated that 48.1%...
The importance of hearing loss
I denied any hearing loss for years, accusing everyone of mumbling, or claiming that the TV interfered, or “I could not hear you because the water was running.” As Mary Jordan suggests in her book, Coping with Mild Cognitive Impairment, it is sensible to have...
A capsule course in time management.
There are hundreds of books on time management and it would take thousands to describe the topic in detail. But here is my summary of what time management is all about. Do not try to manage time. You cannot manage time, but you can manage how you use it. ...
Memories consume little space
Glenn Adamson, a curator, and scholar, in his book Fewer, Better Things, claims that purchasing a crafted object prompts you to respect the person who made it. If you respect the object, he says, it is likely that you are going to respect the person who made it. I...
Time to be a proactive person.
Proactive people are action-oriented and start tasks before they are motivated to do so. The motivation comes after they have already started. They let their behavior drive their motivation to finish the task. In this case, it is action before...
Work on the most important, most difficult tasks first.
People tend to work on the easiest tasks first and leave the more difficult tasks until later in the day. If the easiest tasks are also the most important, that is not as bad, but still not the best idea if there are important, difficult tasks to do. Despite the...
Getting the right things done
I was reminded by the titles of many time management books on my shelves that some people may get the impression that “getting things done” is what life is all about. The titles on the covers are deceiving, even though the...
Checklists are tools for proactive managers
Proactive means “acting beforehand.” By taking note of the past and acting in the present, proactive people assure themselves that things will go smoothly in the future. Proactive people are not only excellent time managers, but effective leaders, because they are...
Importance and urgency vary with the situation.
We are oversimplifying when we say that important tasks are those that relate directly to our goals or they are tasks or activities with innate value. In most cases it may be true. But importance depends to a great degree on the situation at the time. Importance is...
To get organized and manage your time, start with your attitude.
David Rock, author of Your Brain at Work, says that one of the most common concerns he hears from organizations is that the more technical their people are, the worse their social skills seem to be. And a 2018 Labor Day survey indicated that 49% of Americans are...
Don’t criticize meetings, change them.
Tuesday is the best day for meetings, according to survey after survey. Of course, Tuesday wins by default since Monday is deemed the worst possible day for meetings, according to the same surveys, the reason being that Monday it is the most productive day of the...
Packrats lose time, space, and money
A survey on living spaces conducted by the magazine Mindful, and published in the June 2016 issue, asked people where they put things that they had not used in three years. Here are the results: 55% donate it to charity. 22% let it petrify at the bottom of a closet...
Shop less, toss more.
The logical place to start when you decide to limit the stuff in your home or office is at the source – shopping. If you have a broken water pipe, you do not start by mopping the floor, you turn off the water. In the same way, if you can resist those needless trips to...
Hang onto your memories.
In my last four blogs I have emphasized the importance of being proactive in the prevention of Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. The reason is threefold. First, the incidence of dementia is increasing to the extent that one in three people will die of...
Exercise your body and your brain.
Last month I started a series on being proactive when it comes to your health. Where proactivity is most important is in the maintenance of brain health. Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia can get its foothold in your brain 20 or 30 years before you have any...
Sleep: the medicine with healthy side effects.
Three weeks ago, after the publication of my e-Book, How to Become a Proactive Person, was published by Bookboon, I decided to write a few blog articles on proactivity as applied to Alzheimer’s disease. The reason for this is that there is no known cure for...
Keep in constant contact with others.
Last week I started a series on being proactive when it comes to Alzheimer's disease. It might seem strange in a business blog to be discussing a disease that most people attribute to seniors. But my latest e-book, published by Bookboon, How to Become a Proactive...
Engage in lifelong learning
Never be satisfied with a formal education. The real learning starts upon graduation. The usefulness of the information you receive before and after graduation is directly proportional to the number of years you spend in the workforce. I believe this, because...
Structure is the key to productivity
I recommend that people find their high energy time in the morning and start working on their top priority for about 90 minutes. Then take a break of about 15 or 20 minutes before starting the priority task. Following the second 90-minute work session there should be...
Do not confuse procrastination with delay
Procrastination is the continual, deliberate postponement of tasks that are best done now. It is putting off what you want most in favor of what you want at the moment. Deciding to complete a task at a future date is not procrastinating; it is planning. And...
A manager’s attitude is important
Matthew Lieberman, in his book, Social: why our brains are wired to connect, mentions a poll that asked past employees which they would prefer, a raise or a better boss. Two-thirds answered that they would prefer a better boss over a higher salary. A good attitude...
Soft skills are more important than ever
In this high-tech, digital-crazed culture, schools seem to be emphasizing the business hard skills to the detriment of the essential basic soft skills. For example, as reported in a Toronto Star article, a 2015 study showed “a staggering 83% of educational...
It takes time to manage time
Time Investments are those activities that eventually free up more time than they initially consume. For example, many people fail to plan because planning takes time. And there would be no visible tangible task completed as testimony to this wise use of time; just a...
Budget your time
To manage money, we budget it, allocating a certain amount to the different types of expenses that we must meet on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis. Without this control we may find we have no money left for some of the important items in our business or life. We...
Need time for something? Try bartering.
You already know that bartering is exchanging goods or services for other goods and services without using money. But did you realize that you can also barter to get more time to spend on something you really need or love to do? To barter effectively, you must be...
How to memorize and recall anything.
Jeff brown and Mark Fenske describe how our memory works in their book, The Winner’s Brain. At about 18 months, toddlers learn and retain the meaning of up to 10 words per day, and by the time they reach adulthood, most recognize at least 60,000 words. Plus,...
Proactivity is the enemy of the urgent
Being proactive involves doing the important things before they need to be done. If you want to avoid the tyranny of the urgent, you must plan well into the future so you know what to expect, who you must call and when, who you must meet, where and when, and what...
The power of reframing
Reframing is expressing a concept, idea, or product differently. When we change our point of view on any given situation, the facts remain the same, but a deliberate shift is made in how we see it. We are reframing when we see a problem as a challenge and can imagine...
Pessimists seldom prosper
Lastt week’s blog article, as well as the next one, are based on my latest eBook, “A Positive Attitude that Gets Results,” soon to be published by Bookboon. Dr. Edward Creagan in his book, How not to be my patient, refers to research indicating that pessimists have a...
Attitude can make you or break you.
During my career as a time management trainer and facilitator, I have learned that some people feel that they have little control over their time. They believe that their lives are completely controlled by external events. Those people will likely gain little, if...
Deadlines are your ally, not your enemy.
Here are a few suggestions from my recent eBook, Making Deadlines Work for You published by Bookboon. At our website, you can see descriptions of this book and about thirty others that I have written. Set the “Due date” for yourself a few days ahead of your promised...
How to set realistic deadlines
To determine how much time you will allow for a specific task or project, you should start by recalling how much time you normally took in the past and subtract any distractions, interruptions, unforeseen delays and so on – in order to get an ideal time. In the case...
The need for deadlines
The following article is an excerpt from my recent e-Book, Making Deadlines Work for You, published by Bookboon.com. “A deadline is a time or date before which a particular task must be finished or a particular thing must be done,” according to Collins English...
The trend towards telecommuting
In this and the last few blog articles, I have been sharing some of the information from my recent e-book, How to set up an office in your home, published by Bookboon.com. You can access all 30 or more of my ebooks at taylorintime.com. There has been a trend towards...
Organizing a bedroom office
This is a continuing series based on my recent e-book, How to set up an office at home, published and available from Bookboon.com. If you want to derive the full benefit of working from home, including an increase in your personal productivity, I recommend you...
Coping with loneliness at home and in outer space
This is a continuing series based on my recent e-book, How to set up an office at home, published and available from Bookboon.com. Loneliness is a factor if you work alone in an office all day. And during the pandemic more people have been working from home. And...
Lessons learned from the coronavirus pandemic
This is a continuing series based on my recent e-book, How to set up an office at home, published and available from Bookboon.com. Marie Kondo, author of the book, Joy at work: Organizing your professional life, in an interview during the COVID-90 crisis, said that,...
How to set up an office at home
As governments either encouraged or ordered people to stay home during the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly of working from home for the first time. The “good” included the elimination of commute time, savings on gas...
The power of reading
People who read actually live longer I read an article on the power reading in the October 2017 issue of Reader’s Digest. It mentioned that in 2016, Yale researchers collected data from 3600 men and women over fifty, discovering that people who read books for thirty...
The cost of a website
A website is an integral part of any business When I ask people why they don’t have a website, the most frequent answers are the cost of setting one up, or the time it would take to set it up and maintain it, with a few saying they don’t think they need it or saying...
An easy way to set goals
If you want an easy way to set goals stop thinking of it as some structured process that takes a lot of work. It doesn’t have to be any more structured than keeping a “To Do” list. And you don’t have to be afraid of losing the spontaneity and flexibility of simply...
Taking control of a situation nullifies the stress
If you work in a stressful environment, chronic stress can affect more than your health. It can reduce your performance, weaken your willpower, curtail your memory, impede good decision-making, interfere with sleep, and lead to burnout. Most managers recognize stress...
How are you doing with your New Year’s resolutions?
How many of you have made New Year’s resolutions, but have given up already? How many of you had made New Year’s resolutions but never even got started? How many of you never even bothered making New Year’s resolutions this year? Of the three groups, I believe the...
Patient people show improved performance.
It has been said that patience is a virtue. This certainly holds true in practice. It is even truer in this fast-paced society where “rushaholics” are in the majority and companies seem to believe that faster is better. Although patience is sometimes mistaken for...
Energy control can facilitate habit formation.
There are many ways you can conserve energy when forming habits so that you don’t deplete your resource of energy needed to maintain self-control. And as we mentioned in past articles in this series, habits themselves, once formed, conserve energy. Piggyback a new...
Routines and habits consume less brain energy.
Building routines and forming habits are easy, because our brains love to conserve energy. Forming the right habits – those that are more conducive to health, productivity and general well-being – is more difficult. We are forming habits all the time, unconsciously,...
Conserving mental energy aids self-control
In one of the past articles on self-control titled “Pace yourself for improved performance,” I explained how energy-depleting mental tasks such as decision-making and multitasking make self-control even more difficult. This is due to the belief that we have a limited...
Stress is the enemy of self-control.
In the last three articles I have discussed creating an environment that supports self-control and strategies such as pacing yourself, managing energy, adequate sleep, regular exercise, and balanced work scheduling. But if you want to develop self-control and maintain...
Pace yourself for improved performance.
If you want to strengthen your self-control or any of the executive skills mentioned in previous blogs, you will have to pace yourself. Too much exertion, fatigue and information overload tend to weaken the executive skills and leaves you more susceptible to...
How to strengthen your self-control.
As I indicated in my last blog article “Self-control: the key to successful time management,” self-control is a prerequisite for the successful management of time. Other strategies are of little avail if you don’t have the self-discipline to put them into practice....
Self-control: the key to successful time management
Self-control is not just another way of managing your time well. It is foundational to all other time management strategies. Without self-control, you will not be able to plan effectively, achieve goals, resist interruptions, focus on priorities, say no when...
One more reminder: manage your time
Poor time managers usually disorganized, lack clear-cut goals in writing, rarely plan or schedule adequately, have misplaced priorities and generally manage themselves poorly with respect to time. The procrastination parasite thrives on these individuals. They are so...
How to keep on top of your job
“Just-in-time” might be a great strategy for inventory control, but not for keeping on top of your job. You should actually keep ahead of the game as much as possible. You could get a head start by building an inventory of completed tasks that you will need in the...
Principles of scheduling.
In the last article, I discussed how you can get the important things done in a timely manner by scheduling those tasks and activities directly into your planner and using the “To do” list section of your planner for the less important activities. In this article, I...
Choose carefully; you can’t do everything.
In my last article, “Planning your week 90 minutes at a time,” I suggested that blocking off 90-minute chunks of time in your planner a week ahead to work on your priority projects is a proactive way of ensuring they get done. This is in lieu of leaving them on a “To...
Planning your week 90 minutes at a time.
In my last article, “Packing life’s suitcase,” I suggested that people should plan at least one week in advance. I did not say we should ignore the weeks beyond that, since God willing, we will still be active and motivated to achieve great things well into the...
Packing life’s suitcase.
I heard a great analogy the other day comparing a suitcase to a person’s life and urging us to pack well for life’s journey. The point was to organize everything in your suitcase, take the right things, don’t try to stuff in too much, and take advantage of the space...
How to be a top performer.
Florida State University researchers found that more than one third of workers eat their lunch at their desks. I would imagine that at least an equal number of workers work on business related tasks and projects after work while on personal time and vacation time. And...
Activities that drain your energy
In the last blog article I discussed energy sources, and this article, drawing on information from my eBook, Manage your personal energy, published by Bookboon.com, I indicat how our energy is quickly depleted. Excessive use of technology. We seem to be obsessed with...
Example of a Proactive Person
Proactive people are always looking ahead at future activities, projects and events and anticipating needs, problems and possible outcomes. For example, if they are attending a conference in a different city, they go beyond actually booking air travel, arranging...
Are you an early bird or an owl?
Either way, work with your biological clock, not against it. “Larks” or “early birds” are not often appreciated by the “owls” or “night hawks,” especially if they live in the same house. It’s important to recognize that everyone’s biological clock is not the same....
One-on-one communication beats all others hands-down
Let your entire brain do its thing. According to Gayatri Devi, author of A Calm Brain (Plume, 2012), your core brain, also known as the primitive brain, has the ability to quickly and accurately read and respond to the emotions of others. Your rational frontal...
Getting organized requires forming new habits.
The difference between mechanical and behavioral ideas The various ideas on saving time fall into two major categories: "mechanical ideas" and "behavioral ideas". The mechanical ideas are those that can be put into practice immediately without the necessity of a...
How investing time yields dividends.
It takes time to manage time Time Investments are those activities that eventually free up more time than they initially consume. For example, many people fail to plan because planning takes time. There would be no visible tangible task completed as testimony to this...
10 suggestions for managing time.
Make the best use of your time. By Harold Taylor Here are a few of my favorite suggestions for managing time. Put your goals in writing. Determine where you would like to be in 10 years and 5 years and one year and put those goals in writing. Then each week schedule...
Bad news – We can’t manage time.
Good news - We don’t have to manage time, only ourselves. By Harold L Taylor Effective time management is a difficult process since it involves resisting four of the following five natural tendencies of people. Effective time management involves managing ourselves,...
Interruptions are on the increase
When you leave the office, the interruptions follow We are ill-equipped to deal with the onslaught of interruptions introduced by technology. Our brain's natural inclination is to react to them. We coped with this in the old days by isolating ourselves from...
How to handle rush jobs.
Defeating the tyranny of the urgent. Based on hundreds of surveys of time management seminar participants over a thirty year period, “rush jobs” are among the top ten time problems faced by managers and staff alike. It seems that they are on the receiving end of tasks...
Memory is declining as we age
Is memory declining faster than ever? There are many causes of dementia and memory loss declining faster as we grow older; but I believe the two main ones, both involving brain activity, are outlined below. In the past when we needed to know something or solve some...
5 simple ways to save time
Time management doesn't need to be complicated... There are many ways to maximize the effective utilization of time, such as set goals, plan your day, schedule your tasks, delegate and organize your work area. But there are many other simple ways that you should not...
Organization & time management: partners in productivity.
Organizing is the act of rearranging items that are in a disorganized, cluttered state so that everything can be retrieved quickly with less effort, maximizing both their utility and visual appeal. Time management refers to increasing both the efficiency and the...
History of Time Management
The History of Time Management Dates Back to the Late 1800s People have always searched for better and more efficient ways of doing things, whether it involved a more effective way of trapping animals for food or a more efficient way of starting a fire with friction....
Be an active listener.
B The most important thing you can do when facing a customer, or anyone for that matter, is to engage in active listening. There is no greater way of displaying respect than listening attentively to what people have to say. Lean forward to show interest....
When listening, use your eyes as well as your ears.
We communicate with our whole body and our actions and behaviours must be consistent with what we are saying. Although the oft-used figures that came from Albert Mehrabian’s experiments have been convincingly debunked long ago, it is normally agreed that our body...
Are you feeling overwhelmed?
When we are confronted with multiple priorities, all of which seem to be urgent, we sometimes freeze – like a deer caught in the headlights. It’s a case of paralysis by analysis as we try to decide where to start. If this happens to you, stop and take a deep breath,...
How time is lost.
Microsoft Corporation’s study of people working found that on average, they were interrupted 4 times per hour, and a distracted worker takes nearly a half hour to get back to and continue a task. 28% of a typical worker’s day is taken up by interruptions and recovery...
Time Management Bulletin #4
Manage your email through self-discipline. Handling email is one activity that you must control if you are going to master technology. It seems to be increasing exponentially for most people. With the mobility of today’s workforce and work itself being more a state of...
Time Management Bulletin #3
Is the Internet making us stupid? We tend to ridicule those who print articles from the web instead of reading them in electronic format where they may be accompanied by links to supporting information, images and videos. But according to Nicholas Carr, author of The...
Time management Bulletin #2
A balanced life requires planning. Regardless of whether we are on a flexible hour system, or we’re a telecommuter or a frequent flyer, the line between work and personal time has become blurred. We can work in the evening, in a car or at a ball park. Work is no...
Time Management Bulletin
How to Decide Mark McCormack, in his book, What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School (Bantam, 1984), gives some good advice on decision-making. He claims that many times we actually make a decision without realizing it, even as we are still trying to come...
How to keep on top of your work
The more things in your life that you leave undone, the more anxiety and stress you experience. Completed work does not produce stress. People feel great and are energized when they get things done. It’s the uncompleted items that distract them and drain their energy....
Change your habits and you change your life
You are your habits How much of your life is habit? Charles Duhigg, in his book The Power of Habit, quotes a Duke University researcher who in 2006 found that more than 40% of the actions of people performed each day were not actually decisions, but habits. More...
Have you abandoned your New Year’s resolutions yet?
Chances are that you will abandon your resolutions by the second week in February if you haven’t already done so. Yes, most of us will keep procrastinating as the year progresses. It makes sense, since people who make New Year’s resolutions are usually those who are...
Communicating via e-mail messages.
Email, because of its speed, convenience and low cost, is now one of the most frequently used forms of business communication. A 2018 statistic revealed that the average office worker receives 121 e-mails per day. The volume of e-mail has increased by 2000 percent...
Communication – the glue that holds the teams together
Famous investor Warren Buffett was once asked what advice he would give to new graduates entering the workplace. His answer was to improve their communication skills. He said that honing your communication skills, both written and verbal, would improve your value by...
Your most important time management tool.
In my last blog article I suggested that the Pareto Principle applied to time management seminars, books and training programs as well. And that 20% of the suggestions actually provide 80% of the value. In this article I will venture to provide one of those high-value...
The 80/20 Rule applies to time management books as well.
Most time management books and training programs explain the 80-20 Rule, at least superficially, emphasizing that 80 percent of your results are obtained from 20 percent of the things you do. Authors and workshop leaders give example after example of this principle....
A little empathy can go a long way.
Feeling empathy for another person is being able to know what the other person is feeling or going through even though you are not sharing the source of those feelings or emotions at that time. For example, when someone suffers a loss or injures their hand, you can...
How do you get started in the mornings?
Do you dive into the day like some people dive into a swimming pool without even testing the water temperature? Or do you start by dipping a toe into the shallow end and inching your way gradually into deeper water where you can start your serious swimming? Different...
Knowledge without application is like a book never read.
If you multiplied the number of books that I have purchased in the past six months (both electronic and printed) by the number of hours that it would take to read them, it would probably amount to over 400 hours. How could anyone free up 400 hours or more from a busy...
What’s in your life’s suitcase?
You have probably heard or read the admonition by Benjamin Franklin, “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time for that is the stuff that life is made of.” Time may not actually make up life as we experience it, but certainly it is the stuff that we trade for...
Tools and techniques that help speed up my writing.
My goal has been to write four e-Books year, one newsletter a quarter, five tweets a week, one blog article a week, and as many “Special Reports” as possible in the time available. So far, I’m more or less on course – at least for the last few years. I couldn’t do it...
Print books are still alive and well.
Not only did I buy a Kindle for e-books, I downloaded the app for my PC, iPad, iPhone and android. I thought for sure we were heading for a world of digital when it came to books, magazines and newspapers. I didn’t like the idea since I loved my hardcover books that I...
The pros and cons of e-Books and Print books.
I summarized below some of the advantages of both eBooks and Print books. And there could be many others. For example, printed books may offer a feeling of pride or prestige when you have an impressive library in your office or studio. In the same way, being an...
Add a little more music to your life.
In 2016 I wrote and posted here an article on the power of music that summarized over a dozen benefits of music. It included its beneficial impact on stress, creativity, pain, depression, healing, sleep, fatigue, memory, performance, blood pressure and more. But music...
Cut costs to improve your bottom line.
Back in 2005, Angie Mohr, in her book, Managing Business Growth, claimed that 96% of all small businesses fail within 10 years. Today it isn’t much different. Brian Martucci, in an article posted in Small Business, states that according to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10...
Work on the critical, the crucial, and the quick.
Always focus on the critical, the crucial and the quick tasks in order to maximize your use of time. Everyone tells us to prioritize or work on important things first or avoid the tyranny of the urgent or to draw a priority grid consisting of four possible...
Making time to sell
In no profession is time management more important than in sales. For a salesperson, the greatest resource is the time available for customer contact. All the selling skills in the world are to no avail if there is not enough time to put those skills into practice....
Plan for a purposeful retirement.
The trouble with steady, full-time jobs for over 40 years or more is that we become associated with our job. We know as much about our fellow workers’ families as we do about our own. We make friends at work, learn skills at work, receive enjoyment and self-esteem at...
Time is the currency of life.
Don’t make your job your whole life. If you become too focused on picking the fruit you may miss the flowers that are there as well. Always keeping busy at your work not only keeps you from working smart, it keeps you from fully enjoying life. Participating in other...
Increase the effectiveness of your training.
When it comes to learning, it has been shown that the more senses that are involved, the better you learn – regardless of your so-called “learning style.” For instance everyone learns better when they’re moving. Motion engages more parts of the brain. So does emotion....
Procrastination or intentional delay?
In a regular chess game you would be foolish to make it lightning fast move when you have the time to think over the possible repercussions of such a move. But in hockey, deliberating for any length of time over whether you should pass or shoot could mean a lost...
Let the rest of your life be the best of your life.
Every goal you set, by definition, is in the future; but life occurs in the present. Don’t be so focused on what you are aiming to accomplish that you miss the joy of living in the now. There is an old anonymous saying, “The work will wait while you show a child the...
Customer service in the age of speed
In one the first books I wrote over thirty-five years ago titled “Making time to sell,” I told the story of how a successful advertising salesperson explained his secret of selling advertising space by saying that he was a “six-minute salesman.” In those days, at...
Reading this article could kill you.
Not really. But it did get you to at least read the first line, didn’t it? And did I detect a sigh of relief as you did so? Some people’s curiosity exceeds even their fear of death. This illustrates the importance of a title when writing a book, article or promotion...
Does deep reading differ in digital?
Deep reading involves slowing down, concentrating on the meaning of what you are reading, highlighting key sentences, and sometimes flipping back to previous pages as necessary so you are sure to understand the information being communicated. Reading is an active...
You don’t have to throw a fit when you throw something out.
In the August, 2018 issue of Psychology Today, Glen Adamson, author of the book, “Fewer, better things” is said to believe that we should limit our purchases to things we find to be beautiful, meaningful or useful. Since at least two of these three requirements are in...
Fatal phrases at the front and finish of meetings.
We have all had our fill of the common suggestions for conducting effective meetings – everything from starting on time and ending on time to working with a timed agenda. But I want to add some statements and questions that as a chairperson you might want to avoid....
Bringing you up to speed.
27 years ago, I wrote the following article titled, “Don’t become obsessed with speed: save some time for the things you enjoy.” I thought I would reproduce it here in its entirety, complete with its outdated references to such things as speedy memos and videos. We...
Writing things down improves your memory
An old proverb claims, “The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory.” And those of us still using paper planners can rest assured we are making the right decision, according to information contained on an article in the October 11, 2017 issue of Fast...
How to overcome writer’s block
What about writer’s block that you hear so much about? Well if you know what you have to say, you won’t have writer’s block. Some writers spend more time staring at a blank computer screen than they spend writing. Others may freeze after a paragraph or two. What...
Creativity and organization are not incompatible.
In case you haven’t read my last couple of blog posts, I have been discussing how some books, articles and other literature have been claiming that messiness aids creativity, while others claim the opposite. Mehmet Oz and Mike Roizen, authors of YOU: On a Diet, claim...
Creativity is all in your mind
Most of the articles associating a messy environment with creativity (mentioned in my last blog article) referred to the ping-pong study where participants were asked to write down as many uses as possible for ping-pong balls in a given time frame. Those participants...
A time to be messy
Many years ago a TV personality from Montréal, Canada, interviewed me during a National Association of Professional Organizers conference in the U.S. It was for a TV special he was doing on messiness. Naturally, considering what I do and what I preach, I explained the...
The importance of punctuality
I read an article recently that claimed that people who are late are more successful, and live longer. Don’t believe it. Chronic lateness is stressful, unacceptable in business, and can be detrimental to your success – and even your job. Most people don’t want to be...
Develop a positive attitude
We can grow old physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually or we can simply continue to mature in all of these areas until the day we die. Yes, sorry about that – we will all die someday regardless. But don't make this your goal. Don't make death your...
Ways to conserve your personal energy
In previous blog articles I discussed energy sources and activities that deplete your personal energy. In this article I suggest how you might conserve your energy. Much of the information is summarized from my eBook, Manage your personal energy, published by...
Activities that drain your energy
In the last blog article I discussed energy sources, and this article, drawing on information from my eBook, Manage your personal energy, published by Bookboon.com, indicates how our energy is quickly depleted. Excessive use of technology. We seem to be obsessed with...
Tapping energy sources for peak performance.
Managing your energy is as important as managing your time. The next few blog articles will be discussing personal energy management. Most of the information was excerpted from my book, Manage your personal energy, published by Bookboon.com. Consider taking advantage...
How to say no
A small word like “no” can have a huge negative impact on our mental and physical health, energy level and the accomplishment of meaningful personal goals. Getting involved in business, community and social projects can be a great way to expand your personal...
Measuring the results of time & organization training
The closest instrument that I have developed to a quantifiable measurement of results obtained from a time management and personal organization workshop is the Personal Organization Self-Analysis Quiz. It attempts to evaluate the individual’s current state of...
Got a problem? Sleep on it.
Do you find yourself mulling over problems and reviewing the day's activities as you try to sleep at night? You're wasting your time and depriving yourself of sleep. Your brain won’t start working until you're out of the picture. Once you are asleep, your brain can...
How to handle the stress in your life
Being able to manage stress is critical since it can weaken the immune system, raise cholesterol levels, accelerate hardening of the arteries, disrupt the digestive system, and lead to overeating and obesity. And according to Tiffany Chow, in her book, The memory...
22 ways to get more sleep
If you haven’t heard or read something on the importance of sleep within the last month or so, you haven’t been paying much attention to the media. Magazine articles, blogs, books, newsletters, newspapers, TV specials and radio reports have all covered some of the...
Be smart when using your smartphone.
Years ago we were warned about the dangers of using a cell phone while driving. One recent article reported that about one quarter of car accidents in the U.S. are caused by texting and talking on the phone while driving. Then it became obvious that the increase in...
Holistic time management revisited.
In the past I have described holistic time management, as I see it, as the application of strategies necessary in order to lead a happier, healthier, longer, and more productive and fulfilling life. It addresses the person as a whole as opposed to simply their...
Organization can extend your lifespan.
Will getting organized help increase longevity? It makes sense to say yes; because it puts you under less stress, reduces the frustration of continually having to search for things in your home, and reduces accidents by having everything in its place. One study even...
Avoiding dementia and increasing longevity.
In a previous article I said I would provide a list of actions that are recommended in order to guard against dementia and improve longevity. Here is an abbreviated list of strategies from my new book on growing older without growing old. An electronic version of the...
The sound of silence
In my book, How to grow older without growing old, to be published in late February, 2018, I discussed over a dozen strategies for strengthening body, mind and spirit. But one significant strategy that I failed to discuss is “silence” – probably due to the incessant...
Planning the rest of your life
Life begins at _____. Fill in the blank with your actual age. Because at this moment, regardless of your age, life really does begin now. This is the beginning of the rest of your life. Anything you ever wanted to do should be started now, and anything you started but...
Health management is more important than time management
In general, we mature and grow wiser as we grow older. Time management experts used tell us (and most still do) that in a lifetime we could get the equivalent of two extra years of work done if we applied their time management strategies. I bought into this concept of...
I'll never forget what's her name.
Back in the late 1970s, when I first decided to carve out a full-time career as a speaker and trainer, I experimented with management topics such as time management, delegation, stress management, leadership, motivation and creativity. I also studied memory training...
How to communicate with the elderly
The author of The Brain Training Revolution claims that two thirds of Americans older than 50 complain of memory problems. According to the Alzheimer's Association in Canada, where I live, over 747,000 Canadians are living with Alzheimer's or other dementia. Dementia...
Friendly forests and nurturing nature.
South Korea even has a Jangseong healing forest where 2000 plus visitors per month walk through its expanse of cypress trees seeking healing and relaxation - in addition to taking in its sheer beauty. Described by Florence Williams in her book, The nature fix, the two...
Friendship clubs can increase longevity.
I promised periodic updates on country living and how it can increase health and longevity. Here is a description of a local friendship club, simple and informal, that I mention in a new book I am writing with the working title of “How to grow old without growing...
Growing old is optional.
It’s important to get rid of the myth that you’re old when you reach retirement age. There's a difference between growing older and getting old. Old age is a destination. Growing older is a journey. I'm not old. I'm only 83, getting older all the time, and enjoying...
A hug a day could keep the doctor away.
One study described in the book, Younger next year, involved rabbits stacked in cages up to the ceiling and being injected with cholesterol to study plaque buildup. The rabbits in the lower cages had 60% less plaque than those in the higher cages. Not a correlation...
Tips for getting organized at home
Time management in any environment, whether in an office or at home, involves working both efficiently and effectively. You are working efficiently when you complete tasks in the best possible way. You are working effectively when you concentrate your efforts on the...
Take charge of your health
You might think that neuroticism, frequently linked to depression and anxiety, would be considered a trait that would shorten your life span. But it could actually lengthen your lifespan, according to one study that was published in Psychological Science and reported...
Work never killed anyone
“Work never killed anyone,” my mother used to tell me. No doubt her motivation was to get me to clean my room and finish the household chores; but basically she was right. Oh sure, overwork is harmful, and dangerous work might cut your life short, and distasteful work...
The power – and hazards, of repetition
There are many advantages of repetition – whether it is committing a body of knowledge to memory or developing skills such as baseball or golf. In fact a highly touted book is termed the process “the 10,000 hour rule,” explaining that 10,000 hours of practice can make...
The greening of my life – and results to date.
I have been periodically updating my readers on my personal experiences with a greener, more active, and yes – more productive life. “Productive” does not necessarily relate to work or business. A person is productive when he or she receives maximum value from life...
A second look at multitasking
There are three types of multitasking. By multitasking, I mean the apparent simultaneous performance of two or more tasks. And since research has confirmed that it is impossible for the brain to fully focus on two things at the same time, all multitasking is not the...
Are paper planners making a comeback?
Michael Grothaus, a novelist, freelance journalist, wrote an article for the April 4, 2017 issue of Fast Company titled “What happened when I ditched my smartphone for a paper planner.” Of course he didn’t really ditch his smartphone, but he used a paper planner for...
“To do” list or “Wish” list? Planning is the key.
“To do” lists can be frustrating if not the stressful. They keep in mind those things you know you should be doing but don't have time for. It would be less stressful to call them “Wish” lists. At least that way you wouldn't feel guilty or suffer anxiety when they are...
Can I interrupt you for a minute?
In his book, the Age of speed, Vince Poscente mentioned a study of office workers that found on average they spent only 11 minutes of a typical workday focused on a given task before they were interrupted. The real problem was that it took them nearly half an hour to...
Deadlines can become your lifelines.
Deadlines can become your lifelines. Without deadlines, efficiency decreases and productive results are diminished. Opportunities are missed, projects are delayed, costs are increased, and procrastination is enabled. Without deadlines, Parkinson's Law takes effect,...
Stop playing the “catch-up game.”
There’s an old story about a man chasing after a bus as it left the station only to return exhausted. A young lad watching his failed effort told him, “Too bad, mister. You should have run faster.” The man replied, panting, “No son. I should have left home sooner.”...
Efficiency, effectiveness and productivity in your personal life
Any task you do should be done both efficiently and effectively. Efficiency is doing something in the best possible way, while effectiveness is doing the best possible thing. When you do something as efficiently and effectively as possible, you are being productive....
Why time flies as you age and what you can do about it.
The September/October, 2017 issue of Popular Science gave the usual explanation as to why time seems to pass more quickly as we grow older. To quote, “To a child, one year can feel like an eternity, but to that kiddo’s grandparents, it passes in a flash.” They...
Are you taking a shortcut through life?
I lived in the city of Toronto for over 60 years before finally moving to New Brunswick. For the last 23 of those years I actually lived in a condo in Markham, a city in itself, immediately north of Toronto. There’s a walking trail back of the condo in Markham that...
Feeling a little scattered? Time for a “work break.”
Decades ago, we used to take coffee breaks to escape, if only momentarily, from the stress of continually focusing on one task after another - with few distractions or variety in tasks to provide any mental relief. Today, we need “work breaks” to escape the...
Who says money can't buy happiness?
Money certainly can buy happiness – if you are willing to part with the money! In fact a recent study reported in the July 25, 2017 issue of Science & Environment revealed that using money to free up time is linked to increased happiness. According to the...
Adult coloring books: stress relievers or waste of time?
In the United States in 2016, adult coloring book sales topped $14 million compared to $10 million in 2015. Recently, sales have slowed down, possibly because the books have reached the saturation point. But that's a lot of people who still believe the books are...
Time management training: communicating your worldview.
“Worldview” is a term that Seth Godin uses in his book, “All marketers tell stories,” to refer to a consumer's rules, values, beliefs and biases. Something is true in the mind of an individual because the person believes it's true. That is the basis of a placebo. It...
The Pareto Principle in Action
The Pareto Principle, named after an Italian economist-sociologist, Alfredo Pareto, states that the significant items in a given group normally constitute a relatively small portion of the total items in the group. The ratio that holds true in most cases is 80:20. For...
The greatest time management strategy is to live longer.
I suppose whenever I pass another birthday (83 this month), my thoughts return to thoughts of loving life. The good news, according to statistics, is that we’re living longer. The bad news is that our bodies frequently outlast our minds. Dementia is on the increase....
Ten time management myths: Part 2.
Myth #6. The biggest time wasters are interruptions, which include email, meetings and rush jobs. I call that a myth because none of those are really time wasters – not if you follow my definition of a time waster, which is an activity, within our control, that does...
Ten time management myths: Part 1.
Myth # 1. We can manage time. The biggest myth is that we can manage time. We cannot influence time one iota. Time is managed perfectly by itself. We can only manage ourselves in the time we have available. We are given 1440 minutes each day to use as we please. We...
A new broom sweeps clean
Getting rid of the clutter. The logical place to start when you decide to limit the stuff in your home is at the source – shopping. If you have a broken water pipe, you don't start by mopping the floor, you turn off the water. You can resist those needless trips to...
Organize your home and office
Organization aids peace of mind, creativity, and attention as well as time effectiveness. Disorganization, on the other hand, causes stress, fractured thinking and wasted time. It could even contribute to obesity. For example, a Psychology Today article posted on May...
Dive into the day. A good start leads to greater productivity.
Some people go swimming an inch at a time. They stick a toe into the water and shocked by the temperature, commence to first immerse a foot then a leg, and gradually the torso. It's an agonizing process. Each step into deeper water brings another cold shock to the...
The great outdoors. Are we becoming nature-deprived?
According to Richard Louv, in his book, The nature principle, “Reconnecting to nature, nearby and far, opens new doors to health, creativity, and wonder.” Florence Williams, in her book, The nature fix, adds “Our nervous systems are built to resonate with set points...
Goals can launch a second career
Gone are the days when retirement meant being put out to pasture to spend your final days in a rocking chair on the front verandah. Retirement today usually means the start of a second career, whether that be starting a business or tearing up the golf courses. People...
A closer look at time management
What is more valuable than gold, weighs nothing, disappears as you attempt to measure it, and is wasted more than any other resource? You guessed it - time. If we could bottle it and sell it to the aging population, we’d be rich. Unfortunately, each of us is...
Develop a mission statement – for your company and yourself.
Every organization should have a mission statement. Dale McConkey, in How to Manage By Results, urges companies to develop a concise mission statement that is reviewed periodically. Then employees will feel more motivated to meet daily goals once they understand the...
Improving group brainstorming
Alex Osborn came up with the brainstorming technique back in the late 1940s, and a set of guidelines that we followed for decades. Basically, it involved a group of people blurting out ideas, no matter how ridiculous, without fear of intimidating guffaws, prejudgment...
Busyness is the enemy of creativity
Our lives are being filled with so much activity that we no longer have time to think creatively. The old adage that “busyness is not effectiveness” never applied more than it does today – when we are working longer and faster, and multitasking more frequently. Our...
Say no by first saying yes
You have probably heard it said that every time you say yes to a request or a supposed opportunity, you are saying no to something else. In other words, since you only have 24 hours a day and no more, spending any amount of time on another task makes that time...
Is there no such thing as an objective decision?
The amygdala area of the brain is known to generate feelings. It is the emotional part of the brain, generating such responses as fear and desire. The prefrontal cortex, sometimes referred to as a manager, houses the executive functions and is considered the thinking...
Mindfulness and life balance go hand in hand
You cannot achieve life balance without mindfulness. Mindfulness involves being in the moment mentally as well as physically. For example you could be at home or on a golf course and yet mentally be back at the office thinking about the project you are working on or...
Balance your life by making wise choices.
Balance has its rewards. It reduces stress and provides greater intrinsic rewards, such as a sense of satisfaction and peace of mind. A survey of 2500 male and female senior executives by the Families Work Institute and the Boston College Center for Work & Family...
Schedule your projects in 90-minute chunks
Some people try to work all day on a project, and on the surface it would seem to make sense to focus on one high-priority task at a time until it is completed. But many things can distract you in the course of a day. Disorganization, for instance, can distract you...
Helicopter planning – getting a better view of the future
In this digital age of speed, change is taking place so rapidly, we have to spend more time planning and less time working from a traditional “To do” list in order to survive. Planning could be seen as bringing the future into the present where you are able to change...
Purposeful living
Having purpose in life refers to being dedicated to a cause that is bigger than you. One that you will never fully attain in a lifetime. Whereas goals are specific, measurable and have a deadline, purpose is general in nature, a way of living as opposed to a means of...
You deserve a break today
According to one study, a 17-minute break every hour is ideal; but most of us spend most of the day setting at a desk squinting at a computer screen, putting both our productivity and health at risk. People who take breaks in the morning feel more refreshed and less...
The paradox of speed
Speed has become a valuable commodity for companies selling a product or delivering a service. In this time conscious age, where everything from same-day delivery and two-minute bedtime stories are in demand, faster has become synonymous with better. People seek...
Organize your office for maximum productivity.
Organize your desk and surrounding area so that frequently used materials and supplies and equipment are within reach. The less frequently you use materials, the farther away they should be stored. For example, your stapler, paper clips, writing materials might...
Organizing your home can be fun
We used to store our burn ointment in the bathroom. I never once burned myself in the bathroom – it was usually in the kitchen. And if you ever had a headache it was more convenient to have it in the bathroom because that was the only place you could find aspirin...
The year I got organized: a personal story of triumph over clutter.
I have a little magnetic sign on my refrigerator that claims, “Organized people are just too lazy to look for things.” There is more than a little truth to that. I am definitely too lazy to look for things, and that’s what spurred me on to become as organized as...
Let me tell you about the birds and the trees
I would love to be able to say that everything I know about healthy living I learned from nature. But I can’t. It was only after I slowed down enough in my early eighties to actually pay attention to the environment in which we live that I even noticed the marvel of...
The tortoise and the hare – more than just a fable?
Balancing high-tech and high-touch. Research shows that things left undone cause stress. And an expanding to do list, which never seems to empty, is a constant reminder of all the things left undone – important or otherwise. This is true whether it is a hardcopy or...
How to make good decisions
Slow decision-making wastes time, as do spur-of-the moment decisions, which frequently result in costly and time-consuming mistakes. But the worst thing you can do is to procrastinate on decision-making. Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, once conducted a...
Are you an effective listener?
Poor communications is one of the top time problems identified by workshop attendees. Much of this could be a simple lack of communications – a failure to share relevant information with those who need to know in order to perform their jobs effectively. But much of it...
Personal productivity revisited.
Ever since I broadened my field of interest to include holistic time management, I have been amazed at how many factors influence our productivity besides the usual efficiency – organizing – planning triad of strategies. I have written about them in previous blogs –...
Life in the slow lane
A preliminary report on country living. We have a definite link with nature, and the human brain is influenced by our environment – what we see, smell, hear and feel. The book, How the body knows its mind, by Sion Beilock reported that city dwellers are at a 20%...
How to survive in the digital age of speed.
As the pace of life increases, along with our use of technology and 24/7 connectivity, a blurring of the separation of work and personal time takes place, stress increases, and we feel pressured to steal time from health-giving activities such as sleep, exercise and...
How to run effective meetings
To run effective meetings, you must control both the length of the meeting and the meeting itself. Regardless of whether you spend an average of one hour or six hours each day in meetings, there is considerable time savings to be realized by running them efficiently....
An office is for working and a bed is for sleeping.
In past blogs we have covered productivity boosters – everything from an organized office and reduced distractions to color schemes and office greenery. But there are productivity killers as well, and one of them is using your bed instead of your well-organized...
The power of music at work
I’m not sure whether music soothes the savage beast, but I am convinced in the power of music to soothe our body mind and spirit. According to an article in the May/June, 2014 issue of Scientific American Mind, a study at our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center...
Increasing your commitment to get things done.
Research has discovered that deciding in advance when you will do something increases your commitment to do it. Adding something to a weekly list of things to do – even though they are only intentions – is better than simply being aware that something has to be done....
The power of social relationships
According to Matthew Lieberman, in his book Social: why our brains are wired to connect, research shows that our brains are wired to connect with other people. And people with a close friend at work are more productive and more innovative. It goes beyond the...
Have a purpose when using technology.
Technology should be used as a tool, not a pastime. As a tool, it can increase efficiency and free up time for priorities, including leisure, and improve quality and performance. As a pastime, it can waste time, displace priorities, precipitate stress and quicken the...
Can colors actually improve your performance?
In my last blog article I mentioned that the presence of potted plants in offices improves productivity, creativity, performance and learning ability. One of the reasons given was that plants and trees act as vacuum cleaners, absorbing the indoor pollutants that have...
Improving performance with office greenery.
We are all aware of the benefits of walking; but it has been shown that a 40 minute walk in a forest results in lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol then an equivalent walk in the laboratory – plus improved mood and feelings of vigour. It also lowers blood...
7 ways to maintain focus in your office.
Rather than drain your current energy, you should protect it by choosing a suitable working environment, adopting policies that eliminate continual interruptions, and maintaining a work pace that does not create stress or put an unrealistic demand on your brain. This...
Use the “Triple 90” strategies to get the important things done on time.
There are three rules that might help you maintain focus and get the essential things done in the today’s hectic environment where 24/7 connectivity is the norm and your office is more a state of mind than a specific place. They involve the three essential...
Get maximum results with minimum effort.
Put your digital “To do” list in writing. By minimum effort, I don’t mean you should not concentrate fully on the task at hand; but rather that you should complete the task with a minimum expenditure of energy. Being disorganized consumes energy, multitasking consumes...
Boosting performance in your home office
In past blogs I reviewed the impact of environmental factors such as noise level, lighting, office decor, colours and greenery on productivity and creativity. It’s also important to have an organized office to minimize distractions, boost efficiency, lower stress,...
Find an office away from the office
If you find it difficult to focus on certain tasks in your current environment, try changing your environment. It is possible that simply being in your office, where you may have built a habit of checking email, staring out the window or twisting paper clips, prompts...
Is your office killing you?
Most Canadians spend at least half there waking hours sitting – and for business people most of this takes place in their office. According to research, spending this much time sitting can increase the risk of health issues. Tom Rath, in his book Eat Move Sleep,...
How your work environment can impact productivity.
Your environment definitely affects your actions, and in turn, your productivity. This holds true in situations other than work. For example, if you use a larger spoon or a larger plate, you will eat more, hospital patients with a window view need less medication and...
A little self-discipline goes a long way
Many of us have allowed the demands of technology to bypass our minds and go directly to our core brains. Your core brain doesn’t think on its own: it simply reacts according to past programming, even answering the smart phone when it rings, responding immediately to...
Are you going to work or working on the go?
For some people an office is still a physical place of work such as a fully equipped room, a cubicle or a desk in a fixed location. But for more and more people, the office is their digital handheld device, which goes with them wherever they go. They feel it’s no...
Who is calling the shots, you or your computer?
In today’s work environment our brain is on constant alert - both the reactive core brain, and the frontal lobes, which are constantly called upon to make decisions, choices, as well as plan our day minute by minute. At the same time, we play nursemaid to technology...
Effective time management requires making wise choices.
Researchers have claimed we get a dopamine rush whenever we capture a Pokemon creature or receive favourable news in an email message or see our name mentioned in a Facebook or Twitter post. This carrot and stick approach motivates us to enter deeper into the...
Stop trying so hard to save time.
Focus on what you would like to accomplish rather than attempting to practice all those time management and organizing ideas that come your way, which may or may not have any relevance to your situation or the goals that you are attempting to achieve. This is not to...
“Everything in moderation” includes email and augmented reality games.
There are obvious signs that smart phones are being used in excess. For instance, as reported in the June, 2016 issue of Mindful magazine, a one-ton, 20 foot sculpture outside Salisbury Cathedral had to be moved because too many people walked into it while staring at...
You deserve a hug today.
A smiley tacked onto the end of an email message or social media post will never replace a good old-fashioned hug. According to an Associated Press article in the July 16, 2016 issue of Telegraph Journal.com, people in America spent an average of 10 hours, 39 minutes...
Conserve your energy by chunking and batching.
Our brain prefers to work on brief projects as opposed to longer ones; battles are invigorating; but wars are exhausting. Chunking and batching make longer tasks more doable. David J Levitin, author of The organized mind, says that “working in chunks gives a...
Important decisions are best made off-line.
According to Gayatri Devi, author of A Calm Brain (Plume, 2012), your core brain has the ability to quickly and accurately read and respond to the emotions of others. Your rational frontal lobes may be fooled by polite laughter or phony tears or any false display of...
How to break bad habits and form better ones
Whether we were made from clay by the hand of God or whether we evolved from single-celled organisms who somehow made themselves from clay long after a Big Bang, it does not change the reality of how our body, brain and mind currently interact. One thing seems...
Don't confuse busy work with real work
You will never seem as busy doing real work. Mark Forster, in his book Do it tomorrow, points out that real work advances your business or job while busy work it is what you do to avoid real work. Real work includes things such as planning, goal setting, creative...
Managing your brain, part 12
Always check email in the morning. My apologies to Julie Morgenstern, for the contradiction to her excellent book’s title, “Never check email in the morning,” but I am now convinced this is not the best strategy. For years I have been telling people that checking...
Managing your brain, part 11
It’s becoming more difficult to focus. Sustained attention is the capacity to focus on a task despite fatigue or boredom. If this brain-based executive skill is strong, you are able to maintain attention and are not easily distracted or side tracked. You are able to...
Managing your brain, part 10.
Listen to what your brain is telling you. Strong friendships give both your physical and mental health a boost. The February, 2014 issue of Scientific American Mind reported on a quantitative review of numerous studies, concluding that having few friends is the...
Managing your brain, part 9
Creativity in action. My habit over the past twenty years or more was to go for a walk in the morning with my writing tools tucked inside a computer bag, thinking along the way about the article I was to write that morning. When I reached my destination – a coffee...
Managing your brain, part 8
Develop goal-directed persistence. The brain develops gradually, and continues to build neural connections throughout our lifetime. A person’s “executive skills” take from 18 to 20 years to develop. The executive skills are mainly located in the prefrontal cortex,...
Managing your brain, part 7
Avoiding perfectionism. Perfectionism is said to be the desire and the self-imposed expectation to achieve the highest level of performance. So for some people, nothing less than perfect is acceptable. But perfect cannot really be defined; because most things can...
Managing your brain, part 6
Developing willpower There are different theories on willpower. Originally it was thought that willpower was like a muscle that was easily depleted. And research backed this up. But newer research also suggests we have as much willpower as we expect we have. If you...
Managing your brain, part 5.
Reducing procrastination requires help from your brain When we think of procrastination, we visualize someone rushing like crazy to get things done on time – risking mistakes, getting less than satisfactory results, and suffering undue stress and discomfort. But...
Managing your brain, part 4
Tell your brain what you want. How do you develop a positive attitude? Feed your brain positive information. Studies in neuroscience prove that we can change our brains just by thinking. One example is the placebo effect. It’s not the sugar pill or saline solution...
Managing your brain, part 3
Action is the essential main ingredient of goal achievement and success. Action relies on the brain. Healthy brains are wired to continuously set, act on, and achieve goals. But just as you manage your business efficiently in order to make a profit, you must manage...
Managing your brain, part 2
In my last blog I talked about the necessity of managing your brain for maximum effectiveness. To do this you must first make sure you maintain a healthy brain. There are indications of many unhealthy brains in the world. According to Mike Dow, in his book, Brain Fog...
Managing your brain, part 1
Brain research provides the missing link to effective management. Effective management over the years has involved managing people, managing time, managing energy, managing stress and managing technology. I have studied and written books and articles on all of these...
A solution to shrinking planning times
What does a day's work consist of? A weakness of all planning calendars, whether hard copy or electronic, is that they allow you to schedule and list more work than you can possibly get done in a week. We probably all know that we should not attempt more than a day’s...
Working environment can impact your energy & productivity
Your office can make you more effective Your surroundings not only impact your energy level and personal productivity; they can also affect your health, mental attitude and general well-being. For example, studies have shown that the presence of potted plants improves...
To be productive, outsmart your brain.
Do first things first; but not always priorities. Conventional wisdom tells us that we should not check email first thing in the morning. Instead we should start working on our priority tasks and ignore distractions as much as possible. I have passed this wisdom onto...
Don’t work in isolation
What most workers need are more quality interruptions The trend towards cocooning – squirreling yourself away in a home office with a laptop to get your work done – can have a negative impact on both your effectiveness and your health. You need the energy, experience...
Disorganized? Don’t blame it on your brain.
You are not your brain You were going to clean out that cupboard today, but a TV program came on that you didn’t want to miss. And after all, if you miss this program it may never air again – and you can always clean the cupboard tomorrow. In the old days we used to...
Positivity at work
Positively eliminate the negative Emotional well-being is when a person consistently reports more positive than negative feelings. And according to research reported in the November/December, 2015 issue of Scientific American Mind, we become more positive and...
One more advantage of paper planners
Planners leave hard copy evidence that you lived “To do” lists are fine when you’re young, but as you get older you also need the encouragement of “Have done” lists. At least, I do. There is nothing quite as satisfying and motivational as glancing at the myriad of...
Working from home can boost your productivity
The trend is to a more mobile workforce People seem to thrive in a work environment where they have clear performance objectives and are allowed more freedom to choose their own work methods, hours and location. A January 11, 2012 Toronto Globe and Mail article cited...
The return of the notepad
A simple notepad on steroids might be all you need Research shows that things left undone cause stress. And an expanding to do list, which never seems to empty, is a constant reminder of all the things left undone – important or otherwise. This is true whether it is a...
Can’t say no? Practice the pause
Don’t be so quick to say yes. People who claim they can’t say no are actually saying no when they say yes; because they can’t do everything. There’s only so much time available. And every time they say yes to something, they’re saying no to something else. And that...
Getting organized adds meaning to your life
Get started by developing routines. Organizing your office and home not only helps you to find things, it helps you to find purpose in life as well. According to recent research reported in the July/August, 2015 issue of Scientific American Mind, an ordered life lays...
Work smarter, not harder
Delegation is the greatest timesaver available to managers A school superintendent in Arkansas was accustomed to having the morning newspaper on his desk each morning when he arrived at 7:30. A lady custodian who had the boring, routine job of keeping a few offices...
The Best of Both Worlds
How to use a paper planner in combination with an electronic planner (iPhone, iPad, Android etc.) I mentioned in a previous article that there are at least 5 ways a paper planner is better than an electronic one. Of course there are many ways digital is better than...
In praise of paper planners
A merging of high-tech and high-touch Hand-held electronic computers can boost productivity immensely. But they are computers, not planners. Don’t throw away the kitchen sink just because you buy a dishwasher. With a hard copy planner you can see your entire week,...
5 Reasons a hardcopy paper day planner is better than an electronic one (iPad, iPhone, android, tablet, etc.)
Is an electronic planner as good as a paper planner? Here are 5 Reasons a Paper Planner is better than an Electronic One In the age of the gadget there’s really no limit to what your device can do. And though it can do a lot there’s a lot it doesn’t do well....
Wisdom does not devalue with time
Never judge a book by its birthdate In one of my articles I mentioned my love of books and my tendency to hang onto them. I have been criticized more than once for citing time management reference books that were over ten years old – as though ideas had a “Best...
Life is a trade-off
You can’t have everything; but you can have anything It's a life of trade-offs. If you pay someone to cut the grass while you work late at the office, you're trading one job for another. If you're paid overtime, you might come out ahead in the trade. If you pay...
We need good old-fashioned rest and renewal
Time to sharpen ourselves Time management experts for the last 100 years or so have been using the analogy of a woodsman chopping down trees who worked harder and harder to get more work done in a day. In competition with another woodsman who consistently outperformed...
Don’t be a computer clutter bug
Packrats and computers don’t mix The electronic packrat is here. It had to happen eventually. It’s so tempting to keep everything that you have ever written, received or downloaded because they consume no visible space, can be stored instantly and are hidden from the...
Investing time yields dividends
It takes time to save time Time Investments are those activities that eventually free up more time than they consume. For example, many people fail to plan because planning takes time. As a result, they lose more time battling crises than the planning would have...
Budget your time
Select your fixed and variable times Time management writers frequently remark that time is money. By doing so they hope to convey the importance of time. But of course, there is no comparison. Time is so much more valuable than money. It is life itself. And yet, some...
Time management: where do we start?
The first step in managing time is to get organized. The three major resources that are essential to a successful business are time, money and people. If you lose money, you can always earn or borrow more. If you lose people, you can re-hire. But if you lose time,...
Why 70% of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned within one month.
Don’t wait until New Year’s – set goals now. People who make New Year’s resolutions are usually those who are least motivated to follow through with their plans. They have already procrastinated by saying they will leave any changing until the New Year. If they were...
Sleep is a new time management strategy for the digital age of speed
An old handheld device for managing time – a pillow. An older strategy was to sleep one hour less and get more done. The newer strategy is the exact opposite: sleep one hour more and get more done. In the years that intervened, as Daniel Levinson expresses in his...
Gaining control of your time can impact health and longevity
Organization is an indication of control According to Daniel Gilbert, in his book, Stumbling on Happiness (Random House, NY, 2007) at the root of most stress is the feeling of being out of control. I’m sure you know the feeling if you have ever been stuck in traffic,...
Increasing the efficiency of meetings
The 60-minute modular meeting & rule of seven Deadlines make us more efficient without detracting from the effectiveness of our meetings. To minimize the impact of Parkinson's Law (activities expanding to fill the time allowed for them) try breaking all your...
Batching as a time management strategy.
Grouping similar tasks together increases efficiency Batching refers to scheduling blocks of time in your planner for tasks that are similar in nature and require similar resources. The length of time could vary, but I frequently tie it in with my practice of...
Work: not a place to go to, but a state of mind
Are we witnessing the end of personal time? We have become a mobile society with fewer people working in 9 to 5 offices, and many people working at home, on the road or sharing a desk with others. One of my past clients consisted of case managers who seldom visited a...
Be mindful of people
Spend more time with your "real" friends, not the ones online There is a common expression concerning mindfulness that suggests “wherever you are, be there.” In this age of technology, we should add, “And whomever you are with, be with them.” It’s interesting to...
We are overwhelming our brain
Does technology really make us more effective? Getting more things done faster is no longer limited by technology, but by our brain. Our brain has a limited capacity for processing information, and this limit is being approached and frequently passed by the...
The single most effective strategy for managing email
Is it the end of personal time? The single most effective strategy for handling email is to control it and not allow it to control you. Personal life coach Valorie Burton, author of How Did I Get So Busy (Broadway Books, 2007) relates the story of a woman who sleeps...
What's the number one time management problem that people experience?
Based on our in-house clients and public seminars to date, interruptions is the number one time management problem that most people experience. That’s probably not too surprising since we have so many ways of being interrupted – email, cell phone calls, text messages,...
Remove the filters and have a clear view of life
After my cataract surgery I saw things more clearly. At least I thought I did. But it was only from the perspective of clearly viewing objects like road signs and eye charts. Those things weren’t fuzzy anymore. Many of us have fuzzy thinking or reasoning or...
Where are you focusing your attention?
Can technology actually waste time? Regardless of what people may say about their priorities and what they value most, it is where they focus their attention that reveals whether they are really ‘walking their talk.’ Whether inadvertently or not, the Internet and...
Poor memory or attention problem?
Is it poor memory or simply poor memory skills? Some of us have poor powers of observation. We may be uninvolved, passive, and inattentive or distracted, day dreaming or preoccupied with other things. We could be short-changed in a store and not even notice it. We...
Go ahead and worry a little
But don't dwell Most people would probably prefer a worry-free life. With little to worry about, we would reduce anxiety and stress, improve our relationships with others, sleep better, live happier, and increase our personal productivity. Worry normally refers to...
Manage your energy
Without energy your brain can't function properly Although managing your time is important, if you have no energy, all the time in the world will not get you the results that you want. Your brain needs large amounts of energy just to carry out its normal functions. It...
A new strategy for success is emerging.
If you want to succeed you need to unplug In this age of stress where 96% of leaders interviewed say they feel burned out, and sleep, exercise and proper diet take a backseat to 24/7 connectivity and busyness, a new concept of success is emerging. The new success...
Brain drain: multitasking is counterproductive
Dr. Amir AllenTowfigh, a neurologist with Weill Cornell Medical Center claims that multitasking can jam up your brain processing. He says our frontal lobes are the main engines directing our attention, and they have a limited amount of processing power. Multitasking...
Are smartphones interfering with your relationships?
Smartphones can be bad for your relationship According to an article in the March/April, 2015 issue of Psychology Today, smartphones are interfering with relationships. When one person in the relationship is frequently checking email or text messages it is sending a...
Live longer – without outliving your mind.
How to avoid dementia and Alzheimer’s According to the World Health Organization, as reported in the March 22, 2015 issue of the Toronto Star, it is estimated that 1.4 million Canadians will be living with dementia in 20 years. Worldwide, there are about 7.7 million...
Holistic Time management increases longevity.
How to live longer Life expectancy in America has increased by about 30 years in the last century – primarily through medical advances, senior care improvements and decreased infant mortality. Any further increases in life expectancy will be mostly up to the...
We are not our brain
Can you change your mind? Most neuroscientists believe that we are our brain, and that when our body dies, along with the brain, so do we. Through functional MRIs neuroscientists attempt to determine which parts of the brain, and even which neurons, are responsible...
Life after retirement should include people
Being lonely is bad for your health and longevity A major cause of health problems after retirement is the loss of social connections with co-workers. A 2013 London-based report suggests that retirement can cause depression, mobility issues, diabetes, hypertension,...
Volunteering can extend your life
Helping others can help you live longer In 1999, for instance, scientists tracked 2025 Californians aged 55 and older, for five years and found that those who volunteered for two or more organizations were 63% less likely to die during the study than those who didn't...
Increasing performance with plants
Plants increase productivity The more we gravitate toward the cities and hole up in our offices, the more we withdraw from nature and it's largely unrecognized or unappreciated benefits. Studies have shown that the presence of potted plants, for example, improves...
Eat a hearty breakfast
Increase energy and performance by eating a good, healthy breakfast Skipping breakfast frequently results in unhealthy snacking throughout the day and overeating at lunchtime. Skipping breakfast has been linked to health risks such as high blood pressure, unhealthy...
Holistic time management goes beyond efficiency and effectiveness
The internet and technology robs us of our time Holistic time management aims to improve the whole life of an individual, not just his or her efficiency and effectiveness. Michael Harris, in his book, Absence: Reclaiming what we’ve lost in a world of constant...
Our brain has a mind of its own
Our unconscious mind is a powerful thing “There are times when the brain contains hidden wisdom that if monitored could help us in various ways, whether in marketing, in lie detection, or even in predicting daily stock market fluctuations. People might not ‘know’...
The healing power of nature
Nature has the power to heal At the start of the 20th century cancer was absent in many populations in the world. According to John Ratey and Richard Manning, in their recent book, Go Wild: Free Your Body from the Afflictions of Civilization, cancer among Native...
All memory loss is not equal – nor serious
Memory loss is normal as we age Age-related memory loss is normal; but it is not inevitable. Normal memory loss, as opposed to MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment), involves forgetting information that is not terribly important to you - such as the name of that stranger...
Procrastination revisited
Procrastination is your brain's fault When it comes to procrastination, it seems like our brain has a mind of its own. According to Esther Landhuis, writing in the January/February, 2015 issue of Scientific American Mind, you can trick your brain into meeting any due...
Obesity can decrease your health & well-being
Obesity is killing us More than a quarter of Americans depend on fast food, and over 30% of people consume some fast food on any given day. Americans spend over $134 billion on fast food each year, according to the October, 2010 issue of Psychology Today. In 1995, no...
The price of technology
Too much technology can harm our performance and even contribute to ADHD Technology helps increase our personal productivity, provides instantaneous access to information, answers any question we might have, and opens the world to us – everything from and products and...
How to gain control of your life
Attitude is an important aspect of success In a previous blog article I discussed how gaining control of your life affects both your health and productivity. But controlling events and projects in your life are not easy. The fact that only about 10 percent of people...
Go ahead; waste a little time.
Human interaction is not a waste of time It has been nearly forty years since I presented my first time management seminar to an enthusiastic group of young managers. They were anxious to improve their personal productivity and eagerly took notes and absorbed...
Simplify your life
We are drowning in clutter and unneeded stuff! Simplifying your life by getting rid of a lot of the “things” in your life is an important step towards getting organized and gaining control of your time. We are complicating our lives with all the stuff we buy and...
Action speaks louder than words
Our subtle actions can affect others Action speaks louder than words, and I mean even little actions like frowns, signs of frustration and grimaces of pain. Since mirror neurons were discovered back in the early 1990s, there has been a plenty of research proving their...
Routine and habits rob you of your past
Routine tasks get forgotten making the past seem shorter Routines and habits make life seem shorter. A long period of time spent on the same or similar activities shortens our perception of this time years later. For instance, if we fish off the same dock with the...
Hygiene theory of time management
Applying Hertzberg's hygiene theory to time management I got the idea of a hygiene theory of time management from Hertzberg's hygiene theory of motivation. I always thought it was a great theory, and when I taught management theories and leadership at college, we were...
How do you develop mindfulness?
Not being in the moment is bad for your overall wellbeing Are you mindful every day? Gretchen Rubin, in her book The Happiness Project, relates her experience of driving home with no recollection of going from point A to point B. She said she is sometimes terrified...
Control your own life
Not feeling in control can cause stress and unhappiness People have a natural inclination to control events and make things happen. Losing control makes them unhappy and stressed. Stress can induce the release of cortisol, and excess cortisol impairs function in the...
Mindfulness will preserve your memories
Stay in the moment and actually experience your life If life seems to race by and much of your past seems to be missing, practice mindfulness to preserve those memories. Our sense of how fast time passes is a function of our memory. If we don’t remember something, it...
Keep your brain fit
Keep your brain fit and reap many rewards If you want to fully take advantage of your increased lifespan, keep your brain fit. You can do that with physical and mental exercise, proper diet, and lifelong learning. We hear a lot about diet when it involves weight...
Don’t rush needlessly
Speed is the enemy of time management Just as gulping your food and rushing through meals takes the enjoyment out of eating while doing nothing for your health, so rushing through life has its consequences. If you can’t remember what you had for dinner last night, you...
Don’t try to cram too much into a day
Trying to do too much can cause multitasking and multitasking can cause big problems You may have driven along a highway while listening to your car radio or daydreaming or talking on a cell phone and actually missed your turnoff – even though you had taken that same...
Goals will make life seem longer
You can’t make the clock run slower; but you can slow the perceived passage of time by setting and achieving significant goals. Just as inactive waiting makes time drag, so a slow-paced, boring, non-eventful life seems longer while you’re actually experiencing it even...
How to stop procrastinating once and for all
Everyone talks about how to stop procrastinating; but polls confirm that most of us still procrastinate. It’s more than simply matter of everyone wanting to take the path of least resistance. Procrastination is the continual, deliberate postponement of tasks that are...
Plan for your retirement
Planning for your retirement is not just about money It’s never too early to plan for your retirement. You don’t have to be preoccupied with old age, but recognize that you will be old someday – and it’s a lot better than the alternative. You may never want to...
Reduce those self-interruptions
When the brain is underutilized, its activity turns to daydreams Stefan Klein, in his book The Secret Pulse of Time, reports that psychologist Leonard Giambre has documented our mind’s tendency to wander. He asked people to solve a puzzle. At random times he would...
The problem of interruptions
The problem of interruptions has not only persisted during the thirty-five years that I have been conducting workshops; it has increased. This digital age of speed has more than doubled the impact of interruptions on our personal productivity because we now have so...
The advantages of weekly To Do lists over daily To Do lists
About 30 years ago when I designed the Taylor Planner, I decided to have a week at a glance planner with all seven days showing and a weekly To Do list instead of a To Do list for each day. I had no survey data or other statistics to back me up. I just felt it was...
How to live longer
Most people want to go to heaven, but not many of us want to die. In fact we want to know how to live longer. Ephraim P. Engleman, a still-active, 104-year-old rheumatologist, when interviewed for an article on aging in the January, 2015 issue of Reader’s Digest,...
Don’t be an activity packrat
Don’t be an activity packrat by taking on too many commitments for yourself or your family. In general, people’s lives are too busy. If it’s not critical that you do something, then it’s critical that you not do it. Keep your life free of clutter. Take time to fully...
Too many choices wastes time
The number of choices we have to make on a daily basis has increased exponentially during the past thirty years. It’s interesting that no generation has had such a long lifespan and so much leisure time as the current generation; yet a third of all Americans report...
Planning and the Sigmoid Curve
Charles Handy in his book, The Age of Paradox, makes an interesting case for launching a second career before the first one starts going downhill. Or a second business before the first one starts to falter. Or a new product before the sales on the first one starts to...
Increase your word processing efficiency
Increase your word processing efficiency by using shortcuts and save precious minutes. Little things mean a lot when it comes to word processing. The more time you spend at the computer, the more it will pay you to become familiar with common – and not so common -...
Looking for the fountain of youth?
Sophia Loren, who just turned 80 a few months ago was quoted as saying, “There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have...
Multitasking is unhealthy, inefficient and dangerous.
Working on two or more jobs at the same time reduces the efficiency of each. Researcher David Meyer, PhD., claims that not being able to concentrate on one task for significant periods of time may cost a company as much as 20 to 40 percent in efficiency. I have seen...
The stressful cocoon
The "cocooning" trend has been with us for many years - the tendency to hole up in our homes and send out for pizza, watch home videos, shop via phone or TV and even work from home. BrainReserve describes it as "the impulse to go inside when it just gets too tough and...
Are you addicted to technology?
You know something must be wrong when companies design 12-step programs to tackle email addiction or when psychiatric investigators in South Korea find that 20 percent of Internet-addicted children and teens end up with relatively severe ADHD symptoms or when people...
Can we slow the aging process?
I believe we can slow the aging process. There is no such thing as a gene that is responsible for aging, although scientists do believe they have found one that is responsible for the aging of skin. And genes do play some role. If your parents lived to be over one...
Working in bed
From a holistic time management perspective, working in bed is not a good idea. An article in the November 17, 2012 Toronto Star reported on a survey by Infosecurity Europe in London that found that 70% of the workers surveyed spent at least a half hour a day working...
Make time to think
Do you find that you are so busy that you have little or no time to even think about goals and priorities and where you are heading? Many of us used to have plenty of thinking time while we were waiting in a doctor’s office or going for our morning walk or sitting on...
Friendships can extend your lifespan
You should not work and live in isolation; friendships can extend your lifespan. And how you interact with others – communicating, networking, delegating, socializing and collaborating – all impact your success in managing time. Although we tend to blame our time...
Time management myths
There are many misconceptions about time management. Here are five time management myths that may appear to be true at first glance. Myth number 1: We can manage time. We cannot manage time. Nor can we save it. Time ticks away relentlessly in spite of our efforts to...
Keeping productive as a senior
Now that I’m in my eighties, and officially a “senior,” I suppose I should spend more time on time management for seniors and in particular how to cope with the side effects of aging and still maintain our productivity. There may be certain barriers that we have to...
Have a purpose in life
Having a purpose in life refers to being dedicated to a cause that is bigger than you are - one that you will never fully attain in a lifetime. Whereas goals are specific, measurable and have a deadline, purpose is general in nature, a way of living as opposed to a...
Things left undone cause stress
The more things in your life that you think should be done but leave undone, the more anxiety and stress you experience. Seldom would a person think of a project they had completed or a meeting they had attended or a phone call they had made and feel stressed as a...
An introduction to holistic time management
As a way of introducing holistic time management, I’ll start by saying that time management is a lifetime journey, not an event. Time management is on a continuum – just like health and a lot of other things. For example, when most people think of their health they...
Lessons learned from the sinking of the Titanic
Did you ever watch the movie, Titanic? A few days ago I noticed a re-run of the original movie that was made back in the fifties and it reminded me of the series of errors and omissions that caused this terrible tragedy. Similarly, errors and omissions in managing...
Don’t make New Year’s resolutions
Set goals on your own timetable; but don’t make New Year’s resolutions. People who make New Year’s resolutions are usually those who are the least motivated to follow through with their plans. They have already procrastinated by saying they will delay any change until...
Advantages of working at coffee shops
There are advantages to working at coffee shops. Coffee shops are opening earlier. Most are equipped with wireless Internet. There are.no trophies or family photographs to distract you. There are few interruptions; no water cooler gossip or morning sports updates. And...
Manage your anger
It is important to manage your anger. Anger is the most damaging stress-related personality trait that precedes a heart attack. One out every three car accidents are caused by an angry driver, and 50% to 80% of all physical ills originate in our emotions. Having angry...
Effective delegation
Effective delegation may be impossible since many managers and entrepreneurs have limited staff, if any. In that case you might consider outsourcing the more repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Delegation ranges from minor assignments such as sorting through some...
Spirituality impacts time management
Spirituality impacts time management since it takes body, mind, and spirit, working in unison, to produce a long, healthy, happy, productive life. Holistic time management involves the development of all three. Your beliefs, attitude, purpose in life, personal...
Brain health
We hear a lot about diet when it involves weight control or diabetes or blood pressure or cancer or dozens of other possible afflictions. But we don’t hear nearly as much about maintaining brain health through proper nutrition. And yet nutrition as well as mental and...
Make time for creativity
It’s difficult to make time for creativity in this digital age of speed. The latest books on creativity, such as Your Creative Brain (2010) and Imagine: How creativity works (2012) agree that we are all creative and every day we perform hundreds of creative acts. And...
Focus on the critical, the crucial, and the quick.
Always focus on the critical, the crucial and the quick tasks in order to maximize your use of time. People tell us to prioritize or work on important things first or avoid the tyranny of the urgent or to draw a priority grid consisting of four possible combinations...
Time management for seniors
Why do we think that time management is not for seniors? When looking at time management for seniors we see that something strange happens to many of us during the final third of our lives. During the retirement stage, many of us seem to forget everything we learned...
Planning saves time
In everyday life, planning always saves time. Planning, according to Wikipedia, is the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Whether the goal is to write a book or buy a head of lettuce, the same process of...
Time management for students
Time management for students should refer to most of us since most of us never stop being a student. Learning is a lifelong process. At least 20% to 30% of what we have learned and understood to date is now obsolete. So we must continue with our education just to keep...
Focus gets results
We know that focus gets results; but it is hard to focus when your attention span is under attack. It has been estimated that about 13 million adults in the US have ADHD, and I would guess that almost everyone has an attention problem. With the amount of information...
How much of your life is habit?
How much of your life is habit? Well, Charles Duhigg, in his book The power of habit (Doubleday, 2012), quotes a Duke University researcher who in 2006 found that more than 40% of the actions of people performed each day were not actually decisions, but habits. Hard...
Organizing advice for seniors
As far as organizing advice for seniors is concerned, the best advice I can give is to recognize that as you age, your body and mind change, and you have to pay more attention to organizing your environment and yourself as you may have done in the past. As an...
Why I still use a paper day planner
As far as I can tell, personal productivity has changed very little in the past 30 years in spite of the efficiencies of technology. One of the results of technology has been to speed up the pace of life. We are working faster, driving faster, communicating faster,...
Exercise and the brain
In the late 1800s, life expectancy was about 40 years. By the 1900s life expectancy had increased to 70 for men and 75 for women. According to World Health Statistics 2014, in Canada, average life expectancy for males born in 2012 is 80 and for females 84. You can...
Performing acts of kindness
Performing acts of kindness refers to a holistic time management strategy; but it could just as well refer to Acts 20:35, which quotes Jesus as saying, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Well, some scientists may deny that Jesus is God, but they sure agree...
Death by sitting
Tom Rath, in his book Eat Move Sleep,(Missionday, 2013) called sitting “the most underrated health threat of modern times.” So are we at risk of death by sitting? He claims that sitting more than six hours a day greatly increases your risk of an early death. An...
People are just as user-friendly as computers
People are just as user friendly as computers, and we need people more than we need technology in order to thrive in this digital age of speed. It should never be an either or situation. Thirty years ago, we tended to blame other people for wasting our time. Excessive...
Procrastination is the biggest barrier to goal-setting
Procrastination is the biggest barrier to goal-setting; but you can overcome with a little self-discipline. With the average Canadian spending over 45 hours online each month, there's not much time left to focus on goals. And goals are seldom urgent so they take a...
Are we relying too much on technology?
Are we relying too much on technology to do our thinking for us? Is it making us lazy, addicted, uncreative or even sick? We still don't know the long-term effects of using technology. For example, research published by Kenneth Hansraj in the National Library of...
The best time management strategy
The best time management strategy is to live longer, healthier and happier. Until now there has been little or no attempt in time management books and training sessions to help a person extend the amount of time at their disposal by extending their lifespan. That is...
Prioritize in advance
Prioritize in advance and you can save a lot of time and grief in the future. And there’s little excuse for not anticipating many of the events that will occur. For instance, you know that the car will eventually run out gas. Similarly, you can bet your bank account...
There are three types of multitasking
All multitasking is not the same. There are three types of multitasking. By multitasking, I mean the apparent simultaneous performance of two or more tasks. And since research has confirmed that it is impossible for the brain to fully focus on two things at the same...
What to feed your brain
If you want to know what to feed your brain you might be interested in knowing which foods in particular have been found to be good for the brain. Proper nutrition can help prevent cognitive decline. For example, blueberries are believed to reduce the risk of...
Exercise your brain
You can exercise your brain and keep your brain active as well as strengthen neural connections by learning new skills. You might start by doing everyday tasks differently. Use your left hand to control the computer mouse (if you're right-handed), or to brush your...
How to manage email
If you don’t learn how to manage email, you will soon be controlled by it. Be specific and direct in your e-mails. Never simply ask for their “thoughts” or “suggestions.” Indicate what you think about it or are considering or have already been advised to do, and allow...
The power of purpose
I have seen the power of purpose in action where a dying person stayed alive long enough to see a loved one or witness an event. But I've yet to hear of one case where a person lived longer because they didn't want to die. It is not fear that motivates us; it is...
How to run effective meetings
To run effective meetings, you must control both the length of the meeting and the meeting itself. One executive claims she spends about six hours per day in meetings. Regardless of whether you spend one hour or six hours each day, there is considerable time savings...
How to listen effectively
Not knowing how to listen effectively can waste time, cause stress, and generate costly communication problems. But there’s more to effective listening than meets the ear. It’s hard work. It requires an active participation in the communication process. It takes...
The limits of technology
What are the limits of technology? Technology can reduce the time it takes to launch a new product; but it doesn’t tell us whether the new product should be launched. It may help us write a letter faster; but it doesn’t tell us what do say. It can provide unlimited...
Getting things done with internal time management
Getting things done with internal time management involves the mind, while external time management is more concerned with procedures and methods, organizing and other external and environmental factors. When it comes to getting things done, the brain has a mind of...
Deadlines increase our productivity
Deadlines increase our productivity; but the deadlines must be realistic. And we can be much more productive if we take frequent breaks in addition to longer vacations. Canadians, with a two-week starting vacation (three in Saskatchewan) spend more time working than...
How technology impacts our lifestyle
Technology impacts our lifestyle for better or worse. Too much TV for children under the age of two, whether it’s educational or not, might be partially to blame for the tenfold increase in ADHD cases, according to a January 10, 2009 article in the Toronto Star. Nine...
How to stop worrying
If you learn how to stop worrying, you will brighten your days, reduce stress and anxiety, increase your personal productivity, and improve your relationships with others. By worry, I mean having negative thoughts about a future event that may or may not happen. This...
The power of positive thinking
The power of positive thinking was illustrated in one study where cynical women who harbored hostile thoughts and mistrusted others were 23% more likely to suffer a cancer-related death, and 16% more likely to die from any cause as compared to women who were most...
Stress is contagious
It’s bad enough having to cope with the hazards of secondhand smoke; but now it’s found that secondhand stress can be hazardous to our productivity and health as well. The suggestion that stress is contagious is based on research that suggests a class of brain cells...
The difference between organizing and time management
What is the difference between organizing and time management? Organizing is the act of rearranging items that are in a disorganized, cluttered state so that everything can be retrieved quickly with less effort, maximizing both their utility and visual appeal. Time...
To Do lists don’t get things done
To Do lists don’t get things done; people do. I have always maintained that To Do lists are unreliable if you're expecting them to get things done. They are reminders, but little else. There is a LinkedIn survey of over 6000 global professionals that found that only...
How to have a healthier brain
The good news, according to statistics, is that we’re living longer. The bad news is that our bodies frequently outlive our brains. Dementia is on the increase. To gain time by living longer and healthier, we must look after our brain as well as our body. How to have...
Holistic time management extends the time in your life
It is impossible to manage time; but you can gain more time through holistic time management. As the average age of the population increases, people become less interested in how to get more done in less time and more interested in how to get more time in which to do...
What is holistic time management?
I define holistic time management as “applying the strategies necessary in order to lead a happier, healthier, longer, more productive and fulfilling life.” It encompasses both external and internal time management, as well as health, stress, lifestyle and...
Sleep deprivation causes weight gain
Research indicates that sleep deprivation causes weight gain and obesity. A CBS “60 Minutes” documentary aired on March 16, 2008, reported that four nights without sufficient deep sleep affects more than just performance, judgment and memory. It also presents a risk...
Technology and ADHD
Technology and ADHD, is there a relationship between the two? "ADHD diagnoses skyrocket in the U.S.,” is the headline of an article appearing in the April 2, 2013 issue of the Toronto Star. Referring to a report from the New York Times, the article went on to say...
Negative Effects of Stress – and how to reduce them
Although stress can help us in times where extra strength or speed is needed we now live in a society where we are confronted with too much stress. Because of this we also now see the negative effects of stress on both our emotional and physical lives. Stress can...
How our memory works
A simple way of explaining how our memory works is that we possess two separate memory systems – short-term memory or working memory, and long-term memory. Paying attention and hearing the information properly is usually enough to get it into our short-term memory,...
Memory is Important for Good Time Management
Just as time management is vital to the effectiveness of managers, administrators, students, and others, so organizing your mind, memory and recall are equally vital to our personal productivity and success. Memory is important for good time management on many levels....
We Should Limit our Use of Technology
Technology is a beautiful and wondrous thing. We can shop online, do online banking, send electronic greetings to our family and friends, download music, watch movies on our laptops, dictate to our computers using voice-activated software, and read electronic books on...
What are the benefits of sleep?
Your body is programmed to spend one third of its life asleep – and to sleep in specific cycles of light sleep, deep sleep, and active brain sleep. Each cycle takes about 90 minutes and each has a specific assignment that affects thinking, memory, growth, your immune...
Sleep is an important time management strategy
Sleep will help extend the time you have available to get things done, and thus sleep is an important time management strategy. And as I continue to write, speak professionally, and develop training programs in my eighties, I can almost speak from personal experience....
General Suggestions for Strengthening Executive Function Skills
This is the last article in the series on strengthening your executive function skills, those brain-based skills required to execute tasks – that is, such things as getting organized, planning, initiating work, staying on task, controlling impulses, regulating...
Building stress resistance
Chuck Martin, Richard Guare and Peggy Dawson, in their book Work Your Strengths, include stress tolerance as an executive skill. I would think that being strong in many of the other executive skills would help you to tolerate stressful situations, including emotional...
Metacognition – what it is and how to improve it
Metacognition is the ability to observe yourself in a situation and make changes so you’re better able to solve problems, build relationships and succeed in life. If you can see a situation objectively and evaluate how things are going, you are strong in this skill....
Flexibility – An Important Executive Function Skill
Flexibility is the ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles and setbacks. If you are strong in this skill, you’re adaptable and can easily adjust to a change in plans. You are good at coming up with alternative courses of action if conditions change. But if...
Should your iPad replace your Paper Planner?
Should your iPad replace your Paper Planner? For me the answer is no. An electronic beep will tell you when to leave for an appointment. An automated email message will remind you to buy your spouse a birthday card. No need to learn anything– just Google it. Don’t...
A Guide to Holistic Time Management
Slowing Down the Speed of Life We’re not that great at judging the passage of time since our concept of time is influenced by so many things, such as heat, activity, stress, and speed. For example, according to the March, 2008 issue of Scientific American Mind, a...
Holistic Time Management
The Best Things in Life are Free from Technology: A case for holistic time management. A heading of an article in the May 17, 2012 issue of the Toronto Star caught my attention – “Outsourcing Life.” It's true. We're outsourcing all the enjoyable, time-consuming things...
Goal-Directed Persistence
Goal-directed persistence is another important executive function skill. It is the ability to have a goal and follow through until its completion. If you are strong in this skill, you have a good record of achieving goals that you set. You are steady, persistent and...
Do You Have Time for Time Management?
Time management and organization are usually treated as two separate skills, but they are so closely related I will discuss them both together. Organization is the ability to arrange according to a system. If you are neat, detailed and orderly, generally have a place...
How to Get the Important Things Done
If you're trying to figure out how to get the important things done you may have to look at the brain. The Planning/prioritization executive function skill is the ability to determine what is important and what is not, and to create a road map or step by step plan to...
A new way of looking at procrastination
A new way of looking at procrastination is from the perspective of an executive function skill - task initiation. Task initiation is the ability to begin tasks without undue procrastination. If you have no problem digging right into a task at the scheduled time,...
Is your attention span decreasing?
Sustained attention is the capacity to focus on a task despite fatigue or boredom – to be able to maintain attention and not be easily distracted or sidetracked. You are strong in this executive skill if you are able to screen out distractions and complete a task...
People who can’t control their anger really make me mad.
Emotional control, the next executive skill that we’ll discuss, is the ability to manage emotions in order to achieve goals. If you are strong in this skill you are relatively unemotional and cool under pressure. You're not easily sidetracked, resist temptation, don't...
How Memory Effects Our Ability to be Effective
Working memory is the ability to hold information in memory while performing complex tasks such as language comprehension, learning and reasoning. In the middle of a hectic day when you're going from one crisis to another and you still remember that you were supposed...
Think before you act
Understanding response inhibition It would be great if we were all strong in the executive skills listed in last week's blog; but unfortunately few of us are. I have never met anyone who didn't struggle at times with self-control, patience, focus, time management or...
Brain-based skills that impact how you manage time
An overview of the executive function skills A 2010 book, where the same authors of Smart but Scattered, Peggy Dawson and Richard Guare, team up with Chuck Martin, who has also been researching this area, is called Work Your Strengths: a Scientific Approach to...
