I’m trying something new. I haven’t been doing a great job of making the switch between my second life (things I do for myself and for passion) and my day job (that which pays me). When I sit at the desk for my day job, I’m consumed by the million things that need doing for…

Over at Slow Leadership, this week has been all about using your time. I don’t set out to give each week’s postings a single theme, but sometimes it happens that way. It began with considering the relationship between time, action and thought in a posting I called Taking Your Time. Some people…

Trust in other people is one of the foundations for creating a civilized working environment. Many managers are overworked primarily because of a lack of trust. They take on too much themselves, because they don’t trust their subordinates to do the work properly. They cannot allocate enough time to their own work, because they don’t…

Note from Chris – No, not the game of the same name Related to yesterday’s post about process flows, I’ve got a concept that I call My Second Life that I want you to consider. It takes just a little explaining, but then, the idea’s fairly easy to understand, adopt, and modify to your personal…

Google Calendar is my choice for organizing my schedule. I don’t like Microsoft Outlook, but only because I loathe client-side applications for non-creativity-based processes. Here are 7 ways to use Google Calendar to better schedule your life, with a really cool add-on idea to boot. Use Monthly View for Big Ticket Planning- Plan your life…

A leader forced to utilize “hamburger management” is like a cordon bleu chef told to work as a short-order cook and produce nothing but hamburgers with french fries every day. Any organization that uses this approach is like a diner who eats nothing else. The first becomes bored, frustrated and disillusioned; the second becomes sick…

There’s been a robbery, and you’re involved! Scene of the Crime For those two hours last night that you watched television, someone else stole that time and applied it to writing a little bit more on their new, completely obvious, “I had that idea already” book, and they’re going to sell it for $200,000 up front. When you…

I’ve got Jeffrey Gitomer on the brain, as I’m reading his LITTLE RED BOOK OF SELLING. In one part, he says that lessons on time management are pretty much a waste of time. It’s provocative, sure, but is he right? Becoming more productive and learning to master the ways in…

I’m wired wrong. I’ll be the first to admit it. To be in the Getting Things Done crowd, I’m supposed to blissfully work along on a project until I’ve completed all the next actions, pausing one might assume, for lunch and bathroom breaks. Not me. I can’t do it. I need chunking. Computer processors can…

A frequently asked question about my productivity is, “How do you find the time to do all that?” I often joke that I don’t sleep (and well, I don’t really sleep enough), but the truth of the matter is that I’ve spent a lot of time really examining the way I spend my time, and…

There are lots of services out there that will do things on your behalf. You can drop your clothes off at the laundromat to get them washed and folded for you. You can purchase your groceries online and have them delivered to the house. You can pay people to mow your lawn and rake the…