Time Management

Do anything in 30 days

October 23, 2012

Matt Cutts works in search optimization at Google, where he’s made hundreds of training videos for webmasters. Now he’s plugging a new way to achieve any goal: Try it for 30 days.

Time management tip: Capture fleeting thoughts, then act

October 5, 2012
For busy executives, managing time means capturing to-do items and then prioritizing what matters most. Harried people often fail to list a fleeting thought (“I need to follow up with Chris”) and, as a result, forget it.

3 strategies for staying on target

August 22, 2012

Even top dogs can benefit from a little time management. Here are three tips from EffectiveMeetings.com:

Stuck in a meeting . . . again

March 13, 2012

In a sample group of 65 CEOs, executives spent 18 hours of a 55-hour work­­week in meetings, plus three hours in phone calls and five hours in business meals. For this lot, working in solitary mode averaged just six hours weekly. CEOs say they wish they had more solo thinking time to ponder strategy …

How top CEOs get so much done

February 14, 2012

Here are some surprising ways a few of the big chiefs stay so productive: Drop what you’re doing and sleep … Fire your assistant … Be consistent … Pick up a challenging habit or train for a triathlon … Give people half the time they request … Focus on handshakes, not contracts.

Building up your concentration muscle

April 6, 2011
Staying focused on one task could be the single biggest challenge in the digital era. Tony Schwartz, CEO of The Energy Project and author of The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, believes these six simple steps are the first steps to gaining control of your attention—and your life:

Even you need a break sometimes

February 24, 2011

Willie Walsh, chief of British Airways, revealed that he hadn’t had a vacation in more than five years. Walsh is known for his toughness, but it’s an open question whether anyone can continue to think straight or maintain a sense of perspective without a break from work in so long.

4 ways to beat procrastination

February 1, 2011

As people grapple with the urge to put things off, economists and psychologists have turned the study of procrastination into a significant field. And what have they discovered? That each of us is divided. If that’s true, simply trying harder to beat procrastination isn’t going to work. Here’s what will:

3 ways to accomplish more in your life

October 25, 2010

If you feel as though you’re doing more but getting less done, it may be because you’re still multitasking. Leadership expert Stever Robbins may have put his finger on why: You like to multitask. “Just don’t expect to accomplish very much doing it,” he says. Robbins has developed a system that can help you maintain concentration and do more in less time.

Is optimization your crutch?

August 13, 2010

If you can measure it, you can improve it. You can optimize. But how much of your energy are you spending on optimization vs. creation? Seth Godin, a thought leader in marketing and the changing business environment, says, “I worry that a never-ending cycle of optimization can become a crutch, a place to hide when you really should be confronting the endless unknown, not the banal stair step of incremental optimization.”