8 Productivity Lessons from the Teacher’s Desk

8 Productivity Lessons from the Teacher’s Desk

Teachers have an immensely difficult job. Faced with a classroom of children, they have to plan the lessons, produce the materials, manage the classroom and deal with the politics of the front office and parents. If a teacher is not productive, they end up working hours beyond their contract hours and adding to their stress burden.

It has been four years since I entered the classroom to teach high school math. Even though I only lasted a year in that environment, it was enough to pull lessons for my own productivity that I still use today. In this article we will look at the 8 productivity lessons I reinforced during that time.
30 Day Challenge: Spending Freeze

30 Day Challenge: Spending Freeze

My 30 Day Challenge for the month of September is a spending freeze involving no spending outside of the necessities.

I will confess that I have a shopping habit. It's not for clothes or decoration or even anything big, but I still shop for a lot of stuff. There was a time when Amazon was delivering multiple times a week.

As I looked around my house, there was too much stuff. Things that were duplicated, things we weren't using, things that seemed like a good idea at the time, but never were implemented...I felt smothered.

Add to that that money is tight right now...and I wanted to see if I could do a spending freeze.

Read on to hear more about the rules and what I hope to gain.
How I Process My Email (2019 Edition)

How I Process My Email (2019 Edition)

How many emails are in your inbox? How much time do you spend scanning over emails that are already seen, thinking about what you have to do to each one? Inbox zero, which is not the number of emails in your inbox, minimizes the time you spend in your inbox. Today I share my current (as of 2019) method of processing email.

I had a shock the other day. I was at a co-worker's computer to help her with some code, and saw that she had 32,000+ emails in her inbox. Unread. I understand that we get a lot of email every day, mostly status messages from the system. But this floored me. How many are in my inbox? Zero. Now I understood why she could never find anything that wasn't from the current day, and was always saying, "I didn't see that email."

It's really not that hard to stay on top of your email.
How I Do Web/Blog Reading (2019 Edition)

How I Do Web/Blog Reading (2019 Edition)

Today we take a look at a targeted way to read content from the web. I'll look at RSS readers, and share an even better way to read the content when it's convenient for you.

Most bloggers will offer free content in exchange for your email address. This is to give them an audience to pitch products and other offers to. There's nothing new in this - every blogger is told to do this, and I do it myself.

On the flip side, I give people an email address when I am interested in their freebies. After I get the freebie, I generally hang out, reading the first few emails. And then I unsubscribe.
How I Listen To Podcasts

How I Listen To Podcasts

Podcasts are a great way to get information for a busy person. It's like blog articles in audio - you can listen on your commute, while washing dishes, weeding, exercising and more. Today we'll look at what podcasts are and how I listen to them.

I discovered podcasts with my first MP3 player over 10 years ago. I was frustrated with commercial radio, and public radio often left me depressed. I had tried listening to books on tape, but they were long and I often lost track of the plot because of the time between my listening. Enter podcasts, and my viewpoint changed.

Podcast Episode 6: How I Use A Calendar

Calendars form the basis of any productivity system. These are the single item that tell you where you need to be and when. But calendars have evolved massively from 30 years ago, when everything was on paper. Today I'll look at my own calendar evolution and share how I use a calendar today.
How I Use My iPad (2019 Edition)

How I Use My iPad (2019 Edition)

Tablets are a great way to have productivity on the go. With the latest hardware and apps, some people are using them to replace their computers. Today I'll give you an update on how I use my iPad.

When I first bought an iPad, I thought it would be an asset, but I never thought it would become a mainstay of my productivity. I use my iPad every day, and on a recent vacation didn't even open the laptop, using the iPad exclusively instead. Here is how - and when - I use my iPad.
30 Day Challenge: Touch It Once

30 Day Challenge: Touch It Once

What's a great way to avoid procrastination and clutter? Touching things once. My 30 day habit for August of 2019 will be exactly this: training myself to complete little things so I don't have piles of unfinished tasks everywhere. Read more about this challenge and join me.