Often I come across highly productive people in their business environment whose home life can only be described as horrendous chaos. They are in control at work but the minute they step through the door in the evening, their control, order and discipline eludes them. The work habits and ethics don’t carry through. How can…

We’re well into the new year, and chances are you’ve made resolutions. They’re the same ones as last year: lose weight, stop smoking, drink less, exercise more… After all, the new year is a great opportunity to have a fresh start. You can evaluate what you’ve accomplished during the last year, and clarify what you want…

Will 2012 be a year for change or will you keep doing what you have always done? “It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein Seems obvious, only an idiot would try to keep doing the same thing and expect different results, no? But the truth is…

If you have been reading about personal productivity on the Internet, I’m sure you’ve read plenty of articles on how to build a new habit. One of the common pieces of advice is to work on one habit at a time until it sticks and then move on to the next one. If you try…

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” – Aristotle “Life wasn’t all too bad really, but I wasn’t that happy either,” recalls Henrik Edberg, creator of The Positivity Blog and author of The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness. “I think the…

I was a big fan of productivity, and, in some respects, I still am. I’ve been a very early adopter of GTD, and, for years, I did my weekly reviews with the discipline of a zen monk. But, eventually, I hit a roadblock. GTD is about getting things “done”, but in life we have…

I was watching “The Big C” on Showtime the other night, and one of the characters mentioned off-hand that it takes 28 days to break a bad habit. A quick Google search showed me that this wasn’t just a bit of silver screen writing, but a fairly well-accepted theory. Some people argue it’s more…

We all have our weekday morning routines. You roll into the office a little before 9 am (or a little after, if traffic was really bad), settle in at your desk, maybe grab a cup of coffee around 9:30 or 10, check Twitter and Facebook, and then dive in to your inbox. And while…

Now that 2011 is well underway and most people have fallen off the bandwagon when it comes to their New Year’s resolutions (myself included), it’s a good time to step back and take an honest look at our habits and the goals that we want to achieve. Something that I have learned over the past few…

A couple of months ago I wrote an article on 10 Reasons To Stop Watching TV. I was half expecting resistant replies, but was surprised to read many readers expressing the same sentiments. Some of them have removed TV from their lives since years ago, while some are on the way towards cutting TV…

What does it mean to be productive? The “gurus” have given us a few ideas — it means to “get things done”, to be “highly effective”, to know who it was, exactly, who moved your cheese. What things, effective at what, and who is bringing cheese to work anyway are questions that these books don’t…

Life is wasted in the in-between times. The time between when your alarm first rings and when you finally decide to get out of bed. The time between when you sit at your desk and when productive work begins. The time between making a decision and doing something about it. Slowly…

A single day is one of the core cycles in life. In your lifetime you are probably going to experience about 29,000 of them, so you might as well make them count. A habit, run once, may seem unimportant. But a single change can add up when you consider you will be…

“There are two ways to increase your wealth. Increase your means or decrease your wants. The best is to do both at the same time.” – Benjamin Franklin Misery shouldn’t be the price for ambition. Somewhere I believe many people got the idea that to want more, you have to be dissatisfied…

Most people have negative habits they are holding on to. Smoking, procrastination, Freddy Prinze Jnr movies; how do we quit? Dr. Sharon House indicates the problem isn’t battling your, maybe, weak will, but rather that you’re not identifying the habit’s payoffs. These negative payoffs are really what keep you involved in the habit. The key…