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Staying Productive During the Never-Ending Pandemic: Four Things to Try When You’re Sick of COVID

Posted on 02/16/2022 by ·

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE "Productivity isn't about being a workhorse, keeping busy, or burning the midnight oil… it's more about priorities, planning, and fiercely protecting your time."—Gary Keller, American entrepreneur and bestselling author. As British author John Heywood noted in 1546, It's an ill wind that blows no good. As devastating as COVID-19 has been, some positive things have followed in its wake. For example, the business world has learned to leverage remote work more effectively than any time in modern history, using new technology and approaches to keep teams together. Telecommuting and videoconferencing have reached heights never before seen, and I don’t believe it will ever go back to the way it was. Countless workers have figured out how to work productively … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity, General, Personal Productivity ·

Post-COVID Productivity: Five Ways It’s Going to Improve Our Performance

Posted on 08/11/2021 by ·

 by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE  “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors."—African Proverb While we may be premature in assuming that the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic has passed with the Delta variant alive and well, it’s better than it was a year ago. However, things will never be the same in its wake, even for those of us untouched by the disease itself. Our new attitudes about social distancing, personal protection, and hygiene will remain for a long time, as will practices adopted in all aspects of our lives. Among other things, we're still weathering the worst recession since the Great Depression, when so many of us were laid off, furloughed, or otherwise out of work due to lockdowns. Now that we're piecing together the shuttered and shattered portions of our economy, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity, Personal Productivity ·

Three Steps to Greatness: Using Your Habits to Influence Your Goals

Posted on 11/06/2020 by ·

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE “First, forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit is persistence in practice.”— Octavia Butler, America author and MacArthur Fellow. As complex as people are, when it comes down to it, you might consider us intelligent meat machines fueled by chemical reactions and guided, in large part, by programs we call habits. These boil down to repeated, automated actions—something like those of a robot on an auto assembly line, though not as stringent, and not always occurring in the same order. One of my colleagues almost always makes a large cup of coffee first thing each morning, eats a bagel, and gets to work. After years of doing it daily, he doesn't have to think about the process of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Productivity ·

Stumbling into Proficiency: Four Ways Mistakes Can Improve Your Productivity

Posted on 07/06/2020 by ·

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE  "Many times what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift. And eventually we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth."—Richelle E. Goodrich, American author. Experience sets veteran workers apart from novices and is a large part of what makes them attractive and important to any organization. Most veterans aren’t necessarily smarter than their younger colleagues or more talented. They have much more experience, wisdom, and better connections. More significantly, veteran workers know what they're supposed to do, how to do it, and have done it so many times it's become ingrained habit. But here's their real advantage: Veterans not only know what to do — they also know what not to do, and when … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity, Performance ·

Managing Expectations: Five Ways to Ensure Co-workers Follow Through

Posted on 06/01/2020 by ·

“The price of greatness is responsibility.”—Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England during World War II Not so long ago, it seemed most Americans had dropped the word "accountability" from their vocabularies—or perhaps had never learned it. When things went awry, it was never the fault of those responsible, because they refused to be held responsible. Even politicians would admit only that "mistakes were made", hiding behind the passive voice instead of admitting their errors. I feel we've mostly gotten beyond this style of double-think, as the Millennials and post-Millennials — those so vilified by the previous generations of workers before they took over the economy — have jettisoned old, failed ideals and taken responsibility for all aspects of their own fates. The … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity, Leadership & Teamwork ·

My Top 8 Features of the Galaxy S8!

Posted on 06/12/2017 by ·

This post Sponsored by Samsung. "One of the great challenges of our age, in which the tools of our productivityare also the tools of our leisure, is to figure out how to make more useful those moments of procrastination when we're idling in front of our computer screens."—Joshua Foer, American Journalist I was thrilled to be in attendance as a Samsung Ambassador at the #Unpacked event at the Lincoln Center in NYC on March 29, when Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S8! And lucky me, I was given a shiny new silver S8+ to test. As background, you should understand I have ALWAYS been a Samsung Galaxy owner since the very beginning (remember the slide-out keyboards?). I have never owned any other smartphone by any other manufacturer. And if you’ve never owned a Galaxy, even if you are a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity, General, Personal Productivity ·

Just Doing the Work Isn’t Enough: Four Ways Creativity Matters to Productivity

Posted on 06/05/2017 by ·

Whenever you have no blueprint to tell you in detail what to do, you must work artfully. – Rob Austin and Lee Devin, authors of Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artist Work Though most workers let it slip their minds—if they ever think about it at all—Creativity and Productivity have more in common than the six letters both words end with. While the bottom line in the workplace is almost always profit, and you ­can ­achieve productivity without creativity in some cases, your final products are worth far more when you blend creativity with productivity as you work. It goes without saying that in some fields of endeavor, creativity and productivity inextricably intertwine. But even in the most business-oriented venture, creativity should form part of the recipe (← … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity, Leadership & Teamwork, Performance, Personal Productivity ·

Leap Before You Look! Four Times When It’s Best to Get Started Without Overthinking

Posted on 05/29/2017 by ·

Don't let perfection become an excuse for never getting started. – Marilu Henner, American actress Have you ever felt paralyzed when facing a work project or task, to the point where you just can't seem to make a decision or get started? This can happen for a variety of reasons. You may suffer from perfectionism, from classic over-analysis, or from what I call the tyranny of choice: Sometimes you just have so many options you can't easily choose. And then there's the fable about the donkey between two mangers, who starved to death because the hay in both mangers looked so delicious he couldn't decide which to eat. Animals are too practical to let that happen in real life, but I see similar situations with people all the time. Sometimes I think too much talent and intelligence are a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity, Performance, Personal Productivity ·

Learning New Tricks: Five Productive Practices Millennials Instinctively Grasp

Posted on 05/22/2017 by ·

Millennials don't just want to read the news anymore. They want to know what they can do about it. – Ian Somerhalder, American actor and entrepreneur. In recent years, I've heard managers gripe that Millennials are lazy, needy, entitled narcissists, non-team players with no sense of loyalty. From what I’ve observed in my client organizations, in my personal interactions, and with my own three Millennial children, none of these labels are true. Millennials do indeed have a sense of loyalty—to the causes and the people they care about. Businesses look out for themselves first—why shouldn’t people? More people should have this outlook! You can't expect loyalty when you offer none. The truth in some of the other claims lies in practices Millennials instinctively grasp because of their … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership & Teamwork, Performance ·

The Evenhanded Manager at Work: Four Characteristics of Fairness

Posted on 05/15/2017 by ·

"Fairness is not an attitude. It's a professional skill that must be developed and exercised." – Brit Hume, American journalist. Too often, those who rise to positions of power in the white-collar workplace are more concerned with holding tightly to their limited power, rather than liberally sharing trust, responsibility, and empowerment in order to boost that power. They fail to understand a basic reality: that while some people will take advantage of you if you're a laissez-faire manager, most will try harder than ever to prove they've earned what you've willingly offered. Wherever you fall on the managerial scale, realize that fairness and the perception of it are a very big deal to your employees (←click to tweet), determining in large part how willing they are to engage with their … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity ·