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We all try to help our organization be flexible. We hear about the benefits of flexibility, responsiveness, and flat organizational structure. In addition, we all hear about the power and benefits of teams. We feel that fast communication is good (fast information exchange). So, we avoid structure in the belief that this benefits our organization […]

In this episode, I’m going to refine our definition of productivity in knowledge work. If you think you know the definition, there’s a good chance you’ll be surprised. I have my customers tell me their definition of productivity; I believe that the typical definition is broken. I’ve seen it lead people to over-think, hesitate, or even

This will be a review of Cal Newport’s book, Slow Productivity. By the way of introduction, if you’ve listened to much of my podcast, you know that I pay a fair amount of attention to Cal and what he’s doing, because I think he’s really bright, really focused on the idea of productivity. If you

When I talk about task and attention management, I usually talk about wastes of attention. And there are three primary wastes of attention that I’ve been able to identify with my clients. They are, in order of easiest to deal with to hardest to deal with: The first is interruption – external things in the

Let’s talk about email, and communication metaphors. You’re not going to be shocked when I tell you that we don’t handle email well. It’s not that we don’t know how to use the app that produces email; that’s pretty straightforward. And I’m not arguing that we don’t know how to deal with emails as items

I try to help you think about how you’re using your attention and, thus, how to manage yourself. What you need to manage is your attention. So, when I see systemic waste of attention or weak self management practices, I try to call them out for you so you can begin to think “do I

In the podcast, we study knowledge work and how to get better at it. This touches on a lot of different disciplines, notably management. Typically, I discuss management as how we should manage ourselves. So, when I talk about managing knowledge work, I usually mean how do we manage ourselves as knowledge workers. I believe

David Allen on Information Overload – if it were real, then when you walked into a library, your head would explode. Let’s consider that idea in the context of Attention Overload. When we feel overloaded and overwhelmed, we can’t just blame that on the increasing amount of information. It’s true that the amount of information has

I talk about how information storage and access is changing. Note that it is changing in ways that mean our old metaphors (and their associated ‘affordances’) are now inaccurate in a couple of meaningful ways. We don’t want our metaphors to constrain our organizational thinking, particularly if they’re inaccurate or push us toward the wrong

I was talking to a prospect about Attention Compass. Her primary objection seemed to be a misunderstanding of the role of formal planning in our work management system needs. She had tried to implement bits and pieces of legend and lore. Nothing had worked. She felt that work wasted and had given up to some