Do you have a reading-pile? A pile for what you are going to read? If you do, when you look at it, what do you feel? Do you long for when you ...
The things we need to do are not only put on the to-do-list on our own initiative. On the contrary, we are often asked to do something by others.
It might be our boss who ...
You’ve tried it all. You have structured and systematized your workday so that you are aware of all things you need to do, you know where you have your material and you have all your various ongoing projects under control.
You know what your ...
Do you get easily distracted by all the papers on your desk when you really need to focus on a particularly difficult, complicated or urgent task?
Do these papers and piles concern ...
We are approaching one of the times during the year when most of us take a longer continuous break. It might as well be the summer vacation, but right now it’s the Christmas holiday.?? During these breaks, a ...
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 ...
This tip is a continuation of last week’s post. In it, just as I will in this, I promote the great structural tool that the “mind-map” is, especially digital versions, that is, those made in one of the mind-map-software available for purchase or downloading free (also referred to as “open source”-software).
A mind-map is especially practical when ...
This week I spent for the most part in Kramfors, a sawmill town on the Swedish High Coast in Västernorrland, which ...
Unfortunately most of us don’t just have e-mails, phone-calls and good ideas which need to be dealt with in our daily lives, but also a continuous inflow of physical papers and material to process.
We receive mail, notes from colleagues, we have ...
Presumably, there are days when your to-do-list just keeps growing, when most of the tasks are bigger and more time consuming, so you have difficulties applying the two-minute rule.?? If you would have had a lot of short and simple tasks on the list, it would have been easier, because then you would have been able to take fifteen minutes to quickly handle a handful of two-minute tasks.
Now it feels like ...
Whenever something shows up in your everyday life, ask yourself if it takes less than two minutes to do or complete.??It can be an e-mail, a colleague who asks you to do something, or something you come to think of yourself. If something can be done in less than two minutes, do it right away.??
When something takes that ...
Have you too experienced arriving at work Monday morning, skimmed through what you’ve got to do this week and felt so overwhelmed that you’ve felt completely blocked out? ??You can’t get started and you get nothing done, and this in itself doesn’t exactly improve things.??If this is the case, you’re not alone.
It’s in moments like these ..
To be effective on your own as if you were isolated in your own bubble is one thing, but what about when we work together with other people, in a project or in any form of team?
As soon as we are more than one person, it is easy ...
In times like these, it is more important than ever to work efficiently in the sense that we spend our time doing the right things. ??Now is the perfect time to better refine and elucidate our tasks and assignments so that we really have time for the most important ones, meaning, those which ...
Are you in the habit of writing a new to-do-list every morning? Do you have to transfer tasks from yesterday’s list to today’s list, because you didn’t have time for what you had in mind? ??
Do you then feel ...
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 ...
If you are in the habit of using a to-do list, it probably mostly consists of tasks you’ve realized you have to do and therefore wrote on the list. They are tasks you will carry out soon after that and then cross off or delete.?? But you have to keep even less information in your head if you let the to-do-list generate new tasks on its own.?? We all have tasks we perform on a regular basis. It may be tasks that you ...
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 ...
Some of us are fond of electronic gadgets, such as an iPhone or a smartphone with calendar- and task-functions which can be synchronized with the desktop computer or the mail server.
There are many advantages with digital systems. One can easily sort and filter out the to-do lists, you’ve got better opportunities for back-ups, etc.
But there are also ...
