Personal Productivity

7 Bad Habits That Aren’t, plus a Great Title That Is

April 24, 2012

Here’s a great title: The 7 Bad Habits of Insanely Productive People. That was on copyblogger last week, posted by Sonia Simone, one of the nicest plays on contradiction and irony I’ve seen a while. There’s some real truth here, but hidden in paradox, and a lot of humor too. Who wants bad habits? You have to [...]

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Oh No! Microbreaks Are Productive, Real Breaks Aren’t

April 23, 2012

What, no coffee break? This feels vaguely like the idea that so-called grazing all day is better than three good meals and nothing else. Clearly, I’m way too old-fashioned. I just discovered that traditional coffee breaks do nothing for productivity.  And I do mean traditional. The idea brought me quickly to this old number, from a [...]

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I Love These 5 Use-Everywhere Apps

April 10, 2012

What makes good software? For me, the use-everywhere factor is a big deal. I work with a desktop using Windows 7, a Mac at home and a Macbook for travel, mobile phone and a tablet computer. The more my gadgets spread, the more I appreciate the apps that let me get to my workspace wherever [...]

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Double Your Productivity with Real Focus

March 30, 2012

According to the emails and comments, Tony Schwartz’ post The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time on the Harvard Business Review is getting a lot of attention this morning. He says: Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? Do you bring your laptop [...]

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Do We Have Any Idea What Productivity Really Is?

November 7, 2011

Have you thought about productivity lately? And how anybody measures productivity? I think it’s a concept that grew up with the industrial revolution. Productivity was measured as factory work, in units produced per hour. Visualize finished cars flowing out of the assembly line. What’s productivity today and how can we measure it? The modern work [...]

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1 Great Tip for Better Story Power for Business

November 2, 2011

Here’s a great tip for anybody presenting anything to an audience: Skip the boring preamble. Many times we feel like we have to do a lot of prefacing, but four minutes goes by quickly. If you spend two minutes on background, you’ve lost an opportunity to grab attention. Far better to leave the identifying bits [...]

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Tell the Truth: Where Are You Most Productive?

October 31, 2011

Interesting post today where Steve King at Small Business Labs asks Is The Traditional Office the Least Productive Place to Work? He cites professional research and uses clear logic. But I still think there’s a catch. He starts with surveys indicating that people who work in coworking locations say they are more productive than working [...]

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Do You Understand the Power of Instant Rejection?

October 28, 2011

A friend referred me to Vinod Khosla’s Five-Second Rule at Forbes.com. It’s about the slide decks we use for presenting, and its wisdom is a lot like what you get in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink or thousands of blog posts about the importance of headlines. Here’s the Vinod’s test for slide decks: he puts a slide [...]

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Kick the Clutter to Reverse a Bad Day

October 3, 2011

Bad day? Frustrated? I’ve found a few times that I can get through one of those days by finding those chores that I put off. You know the ones I mean … paying bills, calling about the insurance, scanning documents, keeping the books, organizing emails … these are all things I know I have to [...]

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I’m Loving the New Version of Business Plan Pro

August 4, 2011

If you’re a regular reader you know I don’t normally do sales pitches here on this blog, but this is special. Last week Palo Alto Software introduced a brand new version of Business Plan Pro incorporating (finally) my Plan-as-You-Go Business Planning ideas into the mainstream of the software. With this new version, when you start [...]

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