In my last article here at Stepcase Lifehack,one of the comments I received suggested that there is a fine way to get around the question of having a “sacred’ calendar. Popular books like Getting Things Done and others advocate the use of calendars for appointments, trips and other activities that “must” be performed on a particular…

While I love Getting Things Done (GTD) as one of the best time management systems around, many of its user struggle to implement its recommendations. The reason? GTD was developed in the 1990′s at a time when email volumes were low, mobile email access was limited, there was no such thing as tweeting and 2…

Most of us think of time management skills as something that we happen to have, and others desperately need. It’s easy to do so when we believe that a lifetime of learning can be contained in a single lesson that we happen to have learned. But are we as good at managing our…

GMail’s latest feature, Priority Inbox, was rolled out this week to much fanfare, amidst claims from Google that it will speed email processing and reduce information overload. The fact that it produces neither result, in spite of the latest secret technology it uses, could help us all learn some important lessons about productive…

What makes a smartphone “smart?” This may sound like a dumb question, but I have actually been asking it ever since I made a commitment to upgrade my time management system with the purchase of a shiny, new 2011 smartphone in January. Setting aside the question of the costs (which I understand can top US$2,000 per…

Imagine this: you are the pilot of a Navy fighter jet. You’re flying in formation when you come under attack from ground-based rockets. The plane nearest you takes a hit and spins into your path, while another rocket screams toward you. And out of the corner of your eye, you see enemy…

Working With Athletes Over the last twenty five years I have (amongst other things) worked with many athletes at all levels of development and competition; boxers, aerial skiers, runners, throwers, swimmers, footballers (Australian Rules Football, Soccer and Gridiron), basketballers, netballers, bodybuilders, power-lifters, martial artists and lots more. From complete novices through to experienced Olympians, I have…

I’ve said it before: the best approach to productivity is a simple one, and that approach is to know what needs doing, and then do what needs doing. I’m not talking systems. How you manage the knowing and doing is another issue. But approaching productivity on this simple level is important. In our effort to…

We humans are story-telling creatures. On the face of it, telling stories seems absurd, for anything other than entertainment, and yet throughout the various societies of humankind, and throughout all the history we’ve uncovered in dusty libraries and remote archaeological sites, humans have told stories not just to entertain, but to teach, to build and…

Hands up with you want to speed up your thinking, improve your memory for names and numbers, or increase your alertness and awareness? Okay, there is a new site called Lumosity which is a brain fitness program designed to improve your memory, attention and processing speed. Research proves Lumosity trained people has noticeable improvements…

In the early days of my management career in the hotel industry, there was a standard practice that seems to have fallen by the wayside, and I can’t imagine why. Well, I take that back, I think I know why. It’s a thing called ‘cost’ when the cost of a lost opportunity isn’t factored into…

At Say Leadership Coaching (SLC) we concentrate our efforts on just that which our name implies; coaching the leadership in companies to reach their greater potential. Executives are but one group we work with; there are leaders at every level of a company’s official org chart, and we find that titles can be irrelevant…

One of the things I spend a lot of time doing at my job in association management is getting volunteers to do things for free. Some people call it “volunteer management,” while other people call it herding cats. Still, the practice warrants some attention. Before we get started, let me explain why volunteer management is increasingly…

If you want learning to work for you, you must create the conditions in which exploration can take place and discoveries can be made. It’s very clear what these are. Without them, all your efforts to learn and grown will be in vain.

With the release of OpenOffice.org 2.0, this office suite is getting closer to commercial office suite (for instance, Microsoft Office) with new features such as open document formation (odt), better user interface, new database frontend and enhanced PDF support etc. However the only drawback for users is that they are so used to Microsoft…