Posts Tagged ‘work/life-balance’

Disconnected Productivity: 9-Step Program to Cure Email Addiction

The biggest obstacle to productivity is connectivity. Too many of us have become addicted to email, to our feed readers, to Twitter and IM, to forums, to social sites like MySpace and YouTube and Digg. It’s an addiction, and as yet, no good cure for it has been found.

Today let’s crank up our productivity by curing our addiction.

Going through this program won’t be easy, but think about all the… » Continue

May 16 2007 | By Leo | Tagged: email, procrastination, Productivity, work/life-balance | 17 comments»

How Not To Take Work Home With You

The folks at Dumb Little Man read my mind when they got an email asking how to keep your work at work. I am a firm believer that work should stay at work and enter as little as possible into people’s personal lives.

Obviously this becomes quite hard if you work A LOT. Thankfully this little article focuses on just such workaholics. It’s a list based on personal experience with… » Continue

February 26 2007 | By Craig | Tagged: home, work/life-balance, workaholic | 3 comments»

Are you a Workaholic?

In a world where it is so easy to work from anywhere at anytime, the lines between your professional life and your personal life can blur very easily. Dana Mattioli gives her take on how to assess whether your professional life is taking over your personal life. The following are the five indiciators Dana believes can be used to determine if you are a “workaholic.”

Preoccupation with work. Workaholics… » Continue

January 25 2007 | By Kyle | Tagged: Management, work, work/life-balance, workaholic | 1 comment»

Finding More Entrepreneurs . . . and Fewer Jerks

I have two topics this week: the present-day obsession with clinging grimly to the status quo, when we have rarely needed change and entrepreneurial flair so much; and the obnoxious jerks whose presence in leadership positions disfigures too many organizations. These topics are linked by a recurring theme: the way that Hamburger Management—that dismal system of cutting corners, hounding people to reach crazy targets, and driving down every cost except… » Continue

November 20 2006 | By Adrian | Tagged: achievement, behavior, bestpractices, business, business-fundamentalism, businesslife, competition, creativity, effectiveness, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, Hamburger-Management, innovation, leadership, Management, motivation, organization, performance, respect, slow-leadership, work, work/life-balance | 1 comment»

Change Here

After the election last week in the United States, change is a hot topic, but it isn’t political change that I have been thinking about recently. It’s how organizations and their leaders cope—or, more often, fail to cope too well—with the need for changes in business practices to promote growth and foster creativity.

It’s a truism to point out that no one can avoid change. It’s part of the reality in… » Continue

November 13 2006 | By Adrian | Tagged: breakthrough, business-fundamentalism, change, civilized-work, corporate-culture, creativity, dignity, effectiveness, Hamburger-Management, happiness, improvement, lifebalance, Management, priorities, slow-leadership, strategy, thinking, thought, trust, work, work-life, work/life-balance, worklife, workplace | 1 comment»

Why We Should Put an End to “Hamburger Management”

Hamburger Management is a shoddy, debased version of real leadership that focuses on just three things: whatever demands least, can be used fastest, and costs least. It thrives wherever organizations seek to meet unrealistic targets with insufficient resources to maximize short-term profits. Indeed, Hamburger Management is short-term by nature, and will habitually sacrifice long-term advantage and value for the immediate gratification of bosses and investors.

To force people to work long… » Continue

November 6 2006 | By Adrian | Tagged: accomplishment, anxiety, business-ethics, change, civilized-work, competition, creativity, effectiveness, Hamburger-Management, innovation, leadership, lifehacks, Management, manager, micro-management, organization, slow-leadership, strategy, stress, trust, value, work-life, work/life-balance, worklife, workplace | 3 comments»

Focusing on What Matters (and Ignoring What Does Not)

As I look back at this week’s postings on Slow Leadership, I notice that most of them were concerned with helping people stop wasting their time and energy on fruitless endeavors.

Take the first post, entitled: To Succeed, First Forget About Leadership Technique. In it, I argued that belief that success—in just about any business or leadership —comes from one simple source (applying the correct “leadership technique), is both… » Continue

October 30 2006 | By Adrian | Tagged: civilized-work, decision-making, firstthingsfirst, freedom, Hamburger-Management, lifebalance, Lifehack, Management, overwork, prioritization, problem, problemsolving, technique, timemanagement, work-life, work/life-balance, working, worklife | 1 comment»

Antidotes to Hamburger Management

I’ve been thinking and writing quite a lot this week about Hamburger Management: the type of management approach that is based on always doing whatever is quickest, simplest and (above all) cheapest. Hamburger Managers provide the kind of leadership that is best described as: “Never mind the quality, look how fast it goes and how cheap it is.” Sadly, this approach is being forced on a great many otherwise perfectly… » Continue

October 23 2006 | By Adrian | Tagged: attitude, behavior, bestpractices, business-ethics, civilization, civilized-work, competition, decision-making, effectiveness, empowerment, engagement, expectations, guideline, Hamburger-Management, innovation, integrity, leadership, lifebalance, Management, meetings, organization, performance, priorities, prioritization, slow-leadership, strategy, stress, success, trust, work, work-life, work/life-balance | 4 comments»

Doubt, Conformity, and “Hamburger Management”

When you write an article on a topic, it’s traditional to start with the problem, explain the causes next, then move into offering a solution. On the Slow Leadership site this week, I took things more or less in the opposite order, starting on Monday with part of the solution, giving my views on the reasons for the problem mid-week, and finally explaining the problem itself on Friday. This… » Continue

October 16 2006 | By Adrian | Tagged: business-ethics, business-fundamentalism, civilized-work, doubt, Hamburger-Management, lifebalance, Management, office-politics, performance, slow-leadership, strategy, success, timemanagement, work, work-life, work/life-balance | 3 comments»

Heresy and Progress

We live in world full of pressures to conform: to believe what others tell us is true, to toe the line, to accept the values of those in positions of power, and to follow conventional, approved paths. That’s the way to get on in life and business, we are told. You need to fit in, play the game, and avoid rocking any boats.

Fitting in and following generally accepted views on… » Continue

October 9 2006 | By Adrian | Tagged: accomplishment, achievement, career, civilized-work, consumption, creativity, decision-making, delegation, economics, enjoyment, freedom, happiness, kathy+sierra, leadership, lifebalance, Lifehack, Lifestyle, Management, micro-management, Money, priorities, prioritization, slow-leadership, spending, strategy, stress, success, time, work-life, work/life-balance, worklife | 1 comment»

Speed, Accidents, and Anxiety

You’re driving along the freeway. The traffic is heavy and the weather is bad; there’s water on the road and occasional patches of ice. You’re already late for an appointment and you’re worrying that your boss is going to find out and get mad at you, so you’re driving way too fast for the conditions. Everyone else seems to be in a hurry too. Your hands are gripping the wheel… » Continue

September 4 2006 | By Adrian | Tagged: anxiety, business-fundamentalism, discontentment, fear, insanity, leadership, lifebalance, Lifestyle, living, Management, motivation, organization, overwork, slow-leadership, speed, strategy, stress, work-life, work/life-balance, workflow, working, worklife, worrying | 2 comments»

Thinking About Trust

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 believe people will put in the required time without constant supervision. They attend pointless meetings… » Continue

July 31 2006 | By Adrian | Tagged: attitude, behavior, boss, burnout, business, businesslife, civilized-work, control, corporate-culture, delegation, discontentment, fear, happiness, leadership, lifebalance, Management, manager, micro-management, office-politics, organization, respect, team, teamwork, timemanagement, trust, work, work-life, work/life-balance, working, worklife | 1 comment»

Work is Not a Game

Sport and competition go together. Taking the competition away from sport would reduce it to a pointless, illogical activity. Competition and business go together too, and many links are made between sporting achievement and business success. But work and business are not games. Competition is no longer healthy in the workplace when it gets out of hand.

The essential difference between sporting competition and competition in the business world is choice… » Continue

July 3 2006 | By Adrian | Tagged: accomplishment, achievement, commitment, competition, evaluation, freedom, fun, mentoring, motivation, winning, work/life-balance | 1 comment»

Motives, Manipulation and Morality

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about why people do things, and what they have in mind when they ask others to act in a particular way. It’s common to find that what people say is the reasoning behind their actions or requests isn’t the real motivation for either. I may do or say something that I claim is aimed at helping a colleague, but my real reasoning is… » Continue

June 26 2006 | By Adrian | Tagged: business-ethics, business-fundamentalism, corporate-culture, ethics, honesty, integrity, leadership, lifebalance, Management, motivation, office-politics, organization, work-life, work/life-balance | 1 comment»

The Soul of Business

When people speak about the soul — outside of a purely religious context — they’re usually referring to the qualities of something (or someone) that they see as fundamental to its identity. The word “soul” is shorthand for the innermost, truest or most obviously unique nature of whatever or whoever they are referring to.

Used in this way, the word can apply to people (where it means whatever they feel is… » Continue

June 19 2006 | By Adrian | Tagged: anxiety, attitude, balance, behavior, civilization, civilized-work, corporate-culture, happiness, leadership, lifebalance, Management, organization, performance, soul, stress, work-life, work/life-balance, worklife, workspace | no comments»