Don’t depend on answers in uncertain times We live in a world that seems endlessly hungry for answers: preferably quick, unambiguous, definitive, once-and-for-all, simple answers. We want to be told what to do, how to solve our problems, how to live our lives to best effect. At work, bosses grind out the old chestnut, “Don’t bring…

How to use a vacation to conquer work addiction Workaholism is as much an addiction as those to drugs, tobacco or alcohol. Those who suffer from it crave the constant ‘highs’ they get from throwing themselves into work’s deadlines, problems and constant hustle and bustle. Even those near-impossible targets and deadlines can provide an adrenaline rush…

Being bored will help you be better at what you do There are a great many books, web sites, and training courses today more or less dedicated to the idea that being bored is a major sin, for which the only cure is to find ways to be busy and productive every waking moment. People who…

Why you can trust poor leaders to be sound teachers Macho, insensitive bosses share certain characteristics. Their behavior is arrogant, quick-tempered and controlling. Their motives are typically selfish and manipulative. They show little concern for others and few signs of understanding why others don’t trust them. Most of all, they are quite unaware of their failings…

A world painted only in black and white is a hard place to live or work In our time-starved, action-obsessed approach to work and life, we easily drop into the habit of seeing every choice or decision in terms of simple opposites: good versus bad, right versus wrong, success versus failure, winners versus losers. Every choice…

It’s high time business slimmed down and stopped fooling itself with crash ‘diets’ of job cuts and outsourcing The media are happy to keep reminding us that people in the developed world, especially the United States, are growing ever fatter; that obesity starts in childhood and continues thereafter to pump itself up on a diet of…

Recycling and energy-efficient lighting don’t even begin to do it for me. They only touch on a few of the physical areas of impact our organizations have on the planet and the creatures that live on it. I’m not saying they don’t count at all, just that they don’t count for much in the great…

Why choices about what to do with the time and effort you save are more critical One reasonable definition of increased personal productivity is creating the ability to do more with less effort and in a shorter time. Nothing wrong with that — at least until you ask what you will do with the time and…

Too much of today’s personal productivity is stuck in repeating the past A genuine increase in productivity means getting the same, or greater, output with less effort and a smaller use of resources. Yet most personal productivity software still relies on various ways to categorize old-fashioned to-do lists. That focuses on getting more done by improved…

Fresh research suggests our bias for action is emotional, not rational. An article by Patricia Cohen in the New York Times “Business Day” section on March 1st, reporting on a study made by economist Ofer H. Azar at Ben-Gurion University of Negev in Israel, adds another dimension to the topic of the…

Maybe today’s fashion for increasing personal productivity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be Increasing your personal productivity is the subject matter of a slew of books, magazine articles, and more than a few successful blogs. It’s fashionable, popular, and, most of all, highly profitable for the authors and writers of software. But does that make…

Using “concentric defenses” to keep off interruptions you can’t avoid in other ways Most of the articles you read about dealing with time- and attention-wasting distractions concentrate on avoiding them altogether (shutting yourself away, better organization, better time allocation) or not adding to their number yourself (minimizing responding to e-mails and IMs, filtering phone calls, avoiding…

Try these powerful ways to boost your innovation further…

Try making a single change in your outlook Regular readers will know that I am not much attracted to the type of article that can be summarized as “x simple ways to do y.” I distrust overly simple responses to life’s endless complexity, just as I distrust simplistic ways of thinking. However, I can think of one…

Do you want only simple, specific tips, or something wider and deeper? It’s a very old journalistic cliché that stories should always contain answers to these six questions: What? Who? Where? When? How? Why? For example, a story about a murder could accomplish all of this in a single sentence: “Jones was murdered in his own…