focus
A senior coworker once gave me a great piece of advice early in my corporate career. I was feeling overwhelmed and whiny about all the projects I had been assigned. I was paralyzed with indecision about what to work on next. What was his advice? Finish something.
Once upon a time I was taught the Transcendental Meditation technique. It’s a mantra-based meditation that is done for 20 minutes twice a day, but that is not my point. The thing about the training that keeps coming back to me is this frequent admonishment: If you are too busy to meditate, then you are…
I know how to get stuff done, and I can teach you how, too. I have tools and systems for all the stages of workflow (collect, process, organize, review and do). I have an inbox and project lists which I clear and review weekly. I say no to activities that don’t support my goals and…
I have always struggled with the phrase “Less is more.” I suppose I have taken it a bit too literally, thinking, “Less is NOT more. Less is BETTER, in many cases, but it’s not MORE, so why would anyone say that? “ But now, from an organizing perspective, I understand the phrase to mean that…
Several years ago, before I moved to Albuquerque (a detail which will be important here in a minute), my neighbor called to ask if I would come over and help her middle-school-age boys with their math homework. Their father wasn’t home, and she was at a loss. I agreed because: 1) I loved my neighbors,…
One time on a cruise ship sea day, when there were only on-board activities to choose from, I attended a little seminar on improving one’s memory. Greg Gleason, who doubles as a stage magician at night, amazed and entertained us with his memory tricks and taught us “One is for Gun”. “One is for Gun”…
It’s popular these days to claim that a balanced life is impossible to achieve. So why try? I agree that it’s a waste of energy to strive for a perfect balance between your work life and personal life. And it’s certainly not going to be balanced every day, or every week. To the extent that…
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