When I wrote about the fact that a massive clean up once in a while isn’t enough to keep our workspaces cleared from distracting clutter, in the Swedish edition of our weekly newsletter Done! before Christmas, Gun-Britt Karlsson got in touch with me.
With regards to keeping the desk clean, she wrote ...
Does your agenda have a tendency to quickly fill up with meetings?
Do you tend to schedule too many meetings during the day and perhaps even have colleagues who “help you out” by calling you to meetings when they know you are not due somewhere else?
Does this result in that ...
I am sure it happens to you, just as it does to everyone, that problems show up in your work as well?
It might be: ...
Isn’t it nice when everything falls into place, when you go from clarity to clarity, when your job runs smoothly and you really feel you’re getting something done???
Well, every now and then, everything stalls.?? You know what it can be like: ...
You spend quite a substantial amount of hours of your life working every week. If everything you do is about the details here and now, you’ll find that everything just keeps on spinning.
??You might have become quite good at ...
When you decide to improve your personal structure in some way, by starting to work with new tools, by from now on planning your time differently or even simply stop doing something you have done before, it is easy to slip back into old habits, into a rut.
??Your new approach works brilliantly for a while, but ...
Last Tuesday, it was time for me to give my first Pecha Kucha-talk.
It was incredibly fun and an experience that I truly can recommend each and everyone.
If you have ...
You know how it is. You’ve got a task you really need to get done right now, but you keep getting distracted by other things.??
Maybe you have writer’s block or think the task is so boring that you find it hard to work focused with it. You check your e-mail, flip though Facebook, call someone just for fun, you go and get another cup of coffee and happen to hang around the coffee machine for a while and small talk, read an online newspaper, Google something you’ve come to think about, and so on.??
You do anything except what you actually know is the right thing to do right now.??
Now you are going to learn ...
Every now and then, I am invited to speak about structure and productivity at breakfast- or lunch-seminars hosted by business networks, business associations etc.
A short while ago, it was at a Rotary Club in Kungälv, Sweden, and again I was astonished by with what warmth the Rotarians receive their guests (me included). As tradition dictates, I had the privilege to sit at the president’s table and we began to talk about ...
Do you feel that you’re constantly lagging a little behind with what you’ve got to do, that you always complete what you’re working with at the last moment, that deadline is always a bit too close??? From time to time I experience this myself and ...
I just hung up after a follow up over the phone with a customer of mine that is halfway through my program “Individual sessions in personal productivity”.
He has learned to ...
The fact that papers and documents which are trash should be thrown away and that good-to-have-material should be saved may sound obvious.
??However, ...
Do you remember the early 90’s legendary series “Twin Peaks”? Each episode contained at least one scene in which Kyle MacLachlan’s character “Agent Cooper” grabbed his dictaphone and began by saying “Diane,…” and then freely recorded his thoughts onto the tape.
?The story never revealed who ...
I sometimes get the question whether it really improves the efficiency to be structured.
Doesn’t it create even more work if you write down everything you have to do (which you’re not going to do right away) and categorize every task in different ways? Doesn’t it just turn into a constant shuffling and moving of papers from one folder to another, which in turn are to be browsed and emptied at different dates?
Since ...
Right now, today, I’m writing about how to say no and still have a clear conscience.
When I give talks or work with individuals within organizations, I often meet people that would like to be able to “say no to more things”.
To me, it is all about ...
For most people there are times when we during a longer stretch of time have had a heavier workload than we are comfortable with.
If you are the manager or leader of a company, an organization or some kind of group, it might be that you don’t have the time to perform all the tasks which are dependent upon you in particular to perform them (you having the position that you do).
If you have coworkers, ...
A while ago, I held one of the instances of my recurring open course in personal productivity in Malmö in the Southernmost part of Sweden. One of the participants was Danish expert on self-led work Sanina Kürstein from Sensio.
She had found a ...
Have you, just like me, from time to time attempted to establish a new habit, and have had some trouble with succeeding? Maybe you attempted trying a new approach to improve your personal structure.
You have used the new approach for a while, but run out of steam and direction and started to run in the same old tracks again. Sometimes ...
There are some things we’ve got to do which, like the constant buzzing of a summer fly, annoys us so immensely that it makes us spend too much time and energy on grieving over and dwelling on it, or maybe even walk around really irritated due to it.
We lose perspective, and not only do those annoying things feel numerous, ...
Have you ever thought about how much a prolonged meeting really costs extra?
Now you can easily look it up, even during the meeting.
