Personal Productivity

We manage our time around what truly matters to us, and our difficulty is not in finding more available time but instead in better prioritizing the time we have.

There are 168 hours in each week. How do we find time for what matters most? Time management expert Laura Vanderkam studies how busy people spend their lives, and she's discovered that many of us drastically overestimate our commitments each week, while underestimating the time we have to ourselves. She offers a few practical strategies to help find more time for what matters to us, so we can "build the lives we want in the time we've got."

Effective meetings aren't simply a matter of having an agenda and starting on time. Here's how to run meetings like a pro.

Meetings are a necessary part of professional life, but most of us spend too much time in "bad" meetings - meetings that are inefficient or worst, ineffective. Sarah Goff-Dupont shares tips on the elements, characteristics and composition of successful meetings, complete with a downloadable chart. A continuous improvement meeting plan so you can have more time to actually create value.

Predicting future success based on the three criteria Warren Buffett uses to choose the people in which he trusts with his investments.

If you had €1000 and you could invest that money in someone's future, who would you bet on? Is it yourself? Outstanding speaker Conor Neill from IESE Business School illustrates how to self apply the three criteria Warren Buffett uses to choose the people in which he trusts with his investments.

Explaining why the office is not a good place to get great work done, and offering three suggestions to make work work.

An interesting Ted Talk inspired by BlackBerry about ''Why work doesn't happen at work''. Experienced manager Jason Fried explains why the office is not the best place for people to do work citing that they face involuntary interruptions from managers and meetings (M&Ms) that are the main problems hindering great work delivery at the office. Jason also argues that people need long stretches of uninterrupted time to get meaningful work done and the office does not necessarily provide such an environment. According to him, people have different places where they go when they want to get things done, like the coffee house or the basement and it's high time to replicate that environment in the workplace. View the Ted Talk now to learn more about the suggestions he gives to make employees deliver great work at the office.

Examining the procrastinator system to think harder about why we procrastinate and how it is different with and without a deadline.

In a very light-hearted and insightful talk, Tim Urban walks us through the inner operation of the mind of a procrastinator. with relatable illustrations, he takes us in a journey through YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes and bouts of staring out the window - encouraging us to think harder about what we're really procrastinating on, and that there are more than one type of procrastination.

Three approaches to uncover, accept, and act on what's true, so we can be more effective at work.

An interesting talk about uncovering the truth by Janice Fraser. The presentation happened at mtpcon, London in 2019 where Janice explained what is the truth and some of the truths we have to accept at work. She also detailed on how she created three approaches to uncover, accept, and act on what’s true, so we can be more effective at work. Open the slides to enjoy the presentation and learn more about the approaches that she created.

Time is our scarcest resource.

Most people value money more than time and make decisions based on the present value of money vs. the future value of their money investment (ROI). In this illuminating article Ash Maurya explains that exchanging sweat equity for financial expenditure (thinking one is time-rich and cash-poor) is a huge fallacy - and that the true value of one's time is much higher than we anticipate, when we factor in all aspects.

Looking at the elements that make virtual keynotes more engaging, and how to change your mindset when presenting online.

Expert business conference performance artist and a teacher of stagecraft Marcus John Henry Brown share his top tips on how to write craft and perform a virtual talk at a virtual conference in this engaging Ted Talk. He states that virtual conference performers should always picture themselves as a film that the audience is watching from a very distractive environment. As such, the audience can easily switch the film off or stop paying attention. Thus, Marcus suggests that virtual talks need to be concise and exciting to be effective. Let's find out more from the video.

What if multitasking is a key to creativity, rather than a bad habit? Tim Harford explains how great minds like Darwin and Einstein multitasked for decades to unlock their biggest ideas.

What can we learn from the world's most enduringly creative people? They "slow-motion multitask," actively juggling multiple projects and moving between topics as the mood strikes -- without feeling hurried. Author Tim Harford shares how innovators like Einstein, Darwin, Twyla Tharp and Michael Crichton found their inspiration and productivity through cross-training their minds.

The mnemonic ‘Must I do this now’ can help you redefine your priorities, and keep ourselves and our teams focused.

People who get distracted during an ad-hoc question or assignment are not usually confident about priorities. The problem also escalates in situations where there is more work to do than is doable time-wise. Therefore, it's good to prioritize to keep ourselves and our teams always focused. The 'Must I do this now'' phrase is a key to helping people redefine priorities. We clearly learn how the mnemonic can be used to bolster priorities in an agile context for successful delivery in an organization.

How time tracking can help each of us to visualize where we are spending our life and help to make those "down" times become productive.

How tracking time spent improved the authors' understanding of life and helped create more time for essential activities. Laura Vanderkam notes that the process only took 3 minutes per day and amazingly ended up yielding great results. She started recording her time to know exactly how she spent it. Later, she realized there was more time in her schedule than anticipated that could be utilized for meaningful activities, and that she had enough time for her kids despite being a working parent.

Working smarter, not harder, is the key to better results.

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix: How to Distinguish Between Urgent and Important Tasks and Make Real Progress in Your Life

Using small wins to generate motivation, engagement, and creativity.

The Progress Principle is the idea that there is inherit motivational power in small wins. The feeling of accomplishing a goal, achieving an objective, or even as little as completing a task is a key component of motivation. This fact was discovered by Teresa Amabile researching thousands of diary entries of employees to identify what had happened on those days where high motivation was reported. The feeling that an accomplishment had been achieved that day was ranked as most important.