Displaying All Posts tagged with time management

The 80/20 Rule Revisited

The 80/20 Rule can save massive amounts of time and energy when properly understood and applied. As with many observations described as rules, failing to understanding the operating principles underlying the 80/20 Rule leads can lead to some pretty academic debates about its veracity, which ultimately leads inaction.

Repopularized in Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, the 80/20 Rule is a shorthand term for a series of observations made by an Italian political economist in the 19th Century, Vilfredo Pareto (hence the other name for the 80/20 Rule, the “Pareto Principle”). He noted that 20% of Italy’s population owned 80% of its wealth. He saw this reciprocal distribution play out in other domains: 20% of all of the pea pods sown in the ground produced 80% of the peas, for instance. But just how universal is the 80/20 Rule, and can you apply it in your work and life? Click Here to Read Article …

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Work Unplugged: Going Off The Grid

“Inaction speaks louder than words.” – Mike Vardy

I’ve always wanted to quote myself. Call it self-adulation or self-indulgence if you will, but there’s a truth behind it: not making progress on something often can’t be saved by reasoning or excuses. You need to see things through to the end.

Let’s face it…we are getting inundated with email, RSS feeds and other types of information on a daily basis – it seems never ending. Because it is. The web has opened up a floodgate of pertinent and trivial news stories that come at us from all angles, memorandums and tasks arriving in our email inbox at breakneck speed and an endless stream of voice mails begging for us to respond to thanks to that blinking red light on our telephones. I’m feeling overwhelmed just writing about it.

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10 Online To Do List Manager Solutions to Get Things Done

Microsoft Outlook still reigns supreme for to do list management in the corporate office. It’s favored by IT departments, integrates with company email, sports awesome calendar sharing, and has a ton of other features that most of us will never use.

But cloud-based task managers are becoming more compelling and practical every day. It’s not uncommon for employees to spend their professional and personal time between three computers: a laptop, work desktop and home desktop. Throw an iPhone or Blackberry into the mix, and synchronization across all of these devices becomes an unwieldy engineering project. There has to be a better way.

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How Not to Become an Overachiever

There’s something to be said about being too productive, which my WorkAwesome colleague, Mark Garrison, alluded to in a recent article, I’d say that the old adage “less is more” is the best practical approach to any workplace situation.  We’ve all heard the quality usurps quantity time and tie again, yet it seems as if we’re always trying to do more…better.  The problem is, you can’t do “more” better if you first don’t learn to do “less” best.  The practice of doing more stuff adequately is classic underachievement.  You take on so much and even if you manage to pull it off and appease your superiors you know deep down that you’re capable of much better.

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The Value of the Weekend

Oh, how we all long for the weekend. There’s a certain buzz in the air once Wednesday passes by (ergo, we’re over the hump) and in the home stretch of what is known as “The Work Week.”

Well, to some of us anyway.

There are, however, those who work hard and play…er…occasionally. The cubicle is not necessarily everyone’s work environment, nor is a 9 to 5 schedule everyone’s to adhere to. Schedules can be static or fluctuate, often depending on the type of work but there is also the likelihood that it is the person themselves that dictates the work day—and work habits.

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The Power of Preparedness

With the end of the year rapidly approaching (I know – seems just like yesterday that we were ringing it in) pretty much everyone is taking into account what he or she did achieve in the year speeding by and what he or she hopes to achieve in the one speeding towards us. The time of year is upon us where we take stock on we’ve got and (some of us) fill stockings hoping to give someone something they haven’t got.

(Personally, I’m hoping for a nice LiveScribe pen in my stocking, so I’m hoping I haven’t been too naughty this year…)
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Stop Deliberating and Start Delivering

“The waiting is the hardest part.” – Tom Petty

This adage applies on many fronts (remember desperately wanting to open gifts early as a kid?) and the feeling never really goes away, it just comes and goes in waves. Sometimes it is a result of others making you wait, and sometimes it’s because you’re either hesitating or are just plain stuck. It’s not unavoidable, but it’s bound to happen now and again. It’s a behavioral thing more often than not, and it’s not necessarily your behavior that has the greatest impact.

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Time Management 101

For those of us who are gainfully employed, we all want to work awesome at our jobs. In order to get there we need to be able to juggle our time effectively. I’ve been working full-time for the better part of the last 30 years and have had a chance to take many Time Management courses. In this post I’d like to share with you a little of what I have learned about managing my time at work.

If you take any type of Time Management course there will be some discussion of four different types of issues that can take up your time. Let’s call them buckets.

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