For a lighter Monday, I thought I would give you the top signs you know you’re addicted to lists:
Productivity
What To Do About Busy Work?
A reader asked me, “What are your thoughts on ‘busy work’? For some whose jobs are based more on time than production, it’s easy to get caught up doing some busy work to justify one’s existence.”
I realized that there are actually two types of busy work: that which we engage in when our time is our own, and that we engage in to fill working hours owed to someone else. But we can turn busy work into productive time with a bit of planning and action.
Podcast Episode 81: My Weekly Review Questions
The weekly review, made popular by David Allen in Getting Things Done, is supposed to help you look back and assess the week as well as plan the next week. I have done various forms of the weekly review for years, but the “review” part of it always slid away in the face of planning for the next week. Recently I made a list of questions that will allow me to do a look back with intention, so that I can assess what happened in the past week – and more importantly, what is outstanding and why. I’m going to call this Episode 81: My New Weekly Review Questions.
Reclaiming Small Pieces of Time
A mindset shift and a timer can help us in reclaiming time in small pieces, yet most people will tell themselves that they can’t possibly get anything done of worth and will fritter it away.
A large part of managing time is to use the time that we have. Small chunks of time can be used effectively if we shift our mindsets and use tools to help us stay within the bounds.
My Excel Billing System
I’ve gotten quite a few questions about how I translate my work notebook into my billing. Today I will show you how I use the OneNote notebook and an Excel spreadsheet to do my timecard, billing and status reports.
Estimating Without Time
It’s really hard to estimate how longs things will take. When faced with a list of items and trying to figure out how long it will take to get through them, most of us will drastically overestimate or underestimate the time. It’s because humans are really not good at estimating time. But what if you could estimate without time?
The Ten Commandments Of Productivity
And the website opened up, and they were pleased to behold a new set of wisdom, shining before them. It shone forth on them, bathing them in a white glow from the screen. And thus it read:
How To Recognize and Avoid Extending Sunk Costs
According to Wikipedia, sunk costs are “past costs that have already been incurred and cannot be recovered.” Usually an economic term, it also applies to other areas of our lives. Failing to recognize them means we put time and energy into something simply because you already have. That is not necessarily wise.
How To Decide What Task To Do Next
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that it is easier to choose between two options than it is to choose between twenty. By ranking your tasks in two different ways, you can limit your choices and make deciding what to do next easy.
Using and Creating OneNote Templates
Since I released my video on my OneNote work planning system, I have gotten questions about how to personalize the notebook. This video is about how to save time and effort by using templates to customize a OneNote notebook.