"The really expert riders of horses let the horse know immediately who is in control, but then guide the horse with loose reins and seldom use the spurs."  —."—Sandra Day O'Connor, retired Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In a recent episode of the T.V. series Stranger Things, the four main characters, all young boys, show up at school on Halloween dressed as Ghostbusters. The problem is, two have dressed as Bill Murray's character. When they argue about it, one boy tells the other, "We decided I would be Venkmann!" and the other responds, "You decided that. I didn't." This immediately made me think about delegation, the art of sharing responsibility with team members by handing off some of your work to them. Even if you're not a manager right now, you'll probably end up in … [Read more...]

"Short is too long for mobile."  —Jacob Nielson, a.k.a. "the King of Usability," American technology expert We're all the sum of our experiences; we can be shaped by things that happened recently, decades ago, even by instinctual reactions we inherited from our ancestors. For example, there are good reasons why, even in this modern age when most have never seen one in the wild, we still fear snakes. It makes sense that as we advance into the Information Age, we should develop new fears. One I find alternately amusing and worrying is nomophobia. Despite what it sounds like, this isn't a fear that tiny people in pointed hats will invade your garden. It's a fear of being outside of cellphone contact. Before you laugh, realize this is a genuine fear defined by recent research in the … [Read more...]

"Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant." —Mitchell Kapor, American entrepreneur and inventor of the Lotus spreadsheet program. We have more information at our fingertips today than at any time in the history of the world—whether we want it or not. The media, advertisers, spammers, bloggers, educators, and others throw it at us constantly... and sometimes we don't know when to stop consuming it. As the Internet of Things really gets into gear, expect the problem to compound exponentially. Even worse, a surprising portion of that information overload, including a majority of "common knowledge," is simply wrong, passed on by well-meaning individuals who never bother to check its veracity. Recognize this one? It's "common knowledge" that a duck's … [Read more...]

"Once you have a clear picture of your priorities—that is values, goals, and high leverage activities—organize around them."  —Steven Covey, American businessman and speaker. At some point in your working life, you'll end up with so many tasks on your to-do list that there's no way you'll ever finish them all, short of a 30-hour day (a possibility in, oh, a billion years or so). You've probably blown past this point already, and applied standard time-management tools like delegating, prioritizing, and abandoning to your stack of tasks. I've written a great deal about these topics in the past, so this time, I'll come at it from a different angle. Ultimately, you want to give away or cut every task that doesn't provide the best bang for your buck. The remaining tasks are your high-value … [Read more...]

"Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other."  —Bill Gates, American businessman and philanthropist, founder of Microsoft. What would life be like if the electronics revolution of the past 30 years hadn't happened? Among other things, my mission of teaching you how to achieve “Maximum Results in Minimum Time®” might have drowned in a sea of carbon paper, adding machine tape, fax print-outs, and conference calls. If you don't have a clue what those first few things are, then you can thank thousands of creative techies for that, and count your Millennial blessings! Productivity has skyrocketed in recent years due to technological progress, and there are plenty of ways … [Read more...]

“Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity.” —Robert M. Pirsig, American writer and philosopher.. Productive people hate boredom, so they tend to go find things to do when nothing's happening—sometimes even when they ought to be resting. We all know people who eat at their desks, don't take vacations, and never seem to take a coffee-break. We often call them workaholics... but maybe they just find inactivity boring. Even the best-adjusted worker, who dutifully follows her to-do list and takes the breaks she needs to stay energized and happy, sometimes struggles with boredom. Some people call boredom a productivity killer, and with the whole world at our fingertips to distract us, it certainly can be. But I've noticed something interesting: Boredom doesn't always kill … [Read more...]

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." —George Bernard Shaw, British playwright. One of the first productivity concepts we all learn is to avoid perfectionism, and most of us do make the attempt. Even so, it's an insidious habit, one reinforced rather than overridden by many leaders. Often, your managers want you to get things right the first time, ASAP, so they can show impressive results to their managers. But true perfectionism kills efficiency. It slows you down and doesn't conform to reality. You can never plan for everything. While I'm not a big fan of the "good enough for government work" concept, I do believe there's a certain point where you do the best you can with what you have and move on, making tweaks … [Read more...]

"Eat a live frog the first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day." —American humorist Mark Twain How do you eat Twain's live frog? Most people assume he meant to choke it down all at once, but on the other hand, we've also learned the only way to eat an elephant is a bite at a time. You get some jarring cognitive dissonance when you take both ideas into account at once, but they do share a point: both the elephant and the frog represent big or unpleasant projects we must make progress on before we can move on to other tasks. Now, just because you think you know how and when to eat your frog doesn't mean you're right. Most of us assume we have a handle on how to structure our to-do lists, but even the best practice doesn't remain a best practice … [Read more...]

"We hold these truths to be self-evident..." —Opening line of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson It should be obvious to anyone that when you're happy, you're more likely to do a better job at work. Clearly, some managers don't care; we've all worked for such people. It's equally obvious you don't have to be happy to be productive. Aside from those of us who work best under pressure, many of us have learned to put our heads down, ignore our discontent, and just push until we finish the work on time. If we couldn't bull through on sheer willpower, few companies would have survived either the Great Depression or the Great Recession. Just because we can do something, however, doesn't mean it's the best way. That's one theme I hope I've driven home repeatedly … [Read more...]

“I've had to be very upfront about the fact that good telecommuting jobs require hard work, like any job.” —Hannah Wright, founder of HowToFindARemoteJob.com. I’ve heard some traditional office workers describe telecommuters as lazy, unprofessional, and unproductive: consider former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's controversial decision to ban telecommuting in February 2013. Millennials, who are better aware of the reality of pervasive Internet, high-tech options, and work-life balance, seem less bothered by telecommuting. Many actively encourage it. Numerous surveys have shown that, in general, workers who telecommute at least a few days a week are more productive. A famous study conducted in 2013 by Nicholas Bloom and one of the owners of Ctrip, a Chinese travel company, demonstrated that … [Read more...]