working from home

How To Manage Working From Home

Working from home...many of us are doing it right now. Some are doing it better than others. So how can you make working from home successful? Today we look at various ways, including how to make the mental shift to and from working; maintaining an office space; keeping up motivation and the importance of notes.
pareto

Applying Pareto to Pareto, or Math Doesn’t Work That Way

The Pareto Principle has been much abused in productivity circles. But I recently saw something that blew me away. Someone suggested that if 80% of the results comes from 20% of the work, then it must also hold that 64% of the results comes from 4% of the work.

Umm, no.

So I'm going to put on my math teacher hat here for a bit.
over-systematized

Are You Over-Systemized?

I've believed for a while it is possible to be over-systemized. At the point where our productivity systems, whatever flavor they are, begin to take up more time than they save, they have crossed the threshold and have run up against the Law of Diminishing Returns, where at some point, each additional unit input yields less output.

So where is the sweet spot?
get started faster

Get Started Faster

How many times have you started something just to be stopped by having to fetch needed material or run to the store or do another task first? Wouldn't it be nice just to have everything ready to go? It would certainly help us get started faster.
little and often

Little and Often: A Key To Consistent Progress

One of the things that I still struggle with, years into the productivity space, is making my to-do list doable. I don't want to put each step to complete something on the list, because a) I don't need to be reminded that I need to fetch the stepladder when changing a light bulb, and b) the list gets far too long the more granular I go.

On the other hand, if the tasks are too big, then I can't get them done in a small amount of time.

Enter Little And Often, one of Mark Forster's concepts.

I've been a fan of Mark Forster for a long time now. Besides being an eloquent writer, he takes it upon himself to innovate new systems and then try them out in his own life.
phone

Productify Your Phone

A friend of mine called from the road and asked me for the phone number for my mechanic. She had a breakdown, and even though I had given her the number when she told me about her concerns weeks before, she had lost it and never made the appointment. She writes down phone numbers in various places, and never has them with her when she needs them.

If you have a central place to keep your important phone numbers that is always with you, you will never face this situation. And if you enter important phone numbers - before you need them - you'll be even further ahead of the game.
right tool

The Right Tools For the Job

I am aware that you can re-purpose things to serve functions the designer never intended. For example, in college I never owned a tool set. If I had to hang up a picture, I would use a high-heeled shoe to do the pounding.

Not only can the right tool make the job go faster, but finding places where your productivity is pinched can help you pinpoint where you need to find better tools.
5 Tips for Moving Back to the Office

5 Tips for Moving Back to the Office

As we start to reemerge after the quarantine, many of us are headed back to the office. But after working remote for so many weeks, it's hard to think about going back to the way we were.

Today I offer some tips to keep your productivity up as you move back to the office.
Why Productivity Still Matters

Why Productivity Still Matters

In a world where everything has changed, and we all have a lot more time on our hands, does productivity still matter? What passed for productivity before is not relevant, but true productivity still matters. Today we will look at what this new productivity is, and how it applies to life post-quarantine.
How I Do Longer-Term Planning

How I Do Longer-Term Planning

Daily and weekly planning will get you through the day-to-day without having tasks pile up for a massive weekend task-fest. But isn't there more to life than just the day-to-day?

For a long time I existed on daily and weekly planning only. Partially it was because I was just so busy juggling all of my commitments (work, child, house, spouse and volunteer) that I didn't have room for anything more. I would plow through my days, insanely productive, falling into bed at night exhausted. But there was never anything more. The novel I wanted to write remained a remote dream, and my craft closet morphed into a craft room with supplies for unstarted projects.

Partially it was because I was completely flummoxed by the thought of thinking of a 5- or 10-year plan. I couldn't even see the end of the week for the enormous pile of tasks. How could I plan for anything more?