Do Busy Right – philosophy and some basic mindsets I’ll start out with a client story. Her name’s Kelly, and we were talking about attention compass. “Well”, she said, “I don’t know anything about all that. But I admire the Larry Zen”. I loved it. But, I didn’t know what “Larry Zen” meant. So, I asked. And she […]

What do you mean? I don’t think I’m doing busy wrong. I don’t really get this one directly, but it’s a consistent subtext when I talk to folks, and it’s not that I misunderstand. For years, I thought I wasn’t swinging a golf club wrong, but I think maybe people take it a little bit too personally,

I’ve talked previously about managing oneself, and that was about Peter Drucker and Knowledge Work. That podcast is very popular, and it probably resonated with you. It’s one of my biggest downloads. There’s another aspect to Managing Oneself. I get a lot of questions like this: You might say “I’m pretty good at my Work, when I

If we’re going to be more productive, we have to learn new skills and get better at the skills we have. Knowledge is important, but we get paid for producing results. This requires skills. I see people with limited desire to learn. And when learning does happen, it is usually more about knowledge than skill. I

Today, let’s talk about confidence.In my season of life right now, my daughter is entering the career world. She’s finished college and now has to find a job/career. She needs to enter conversations and situations that she’s never experienced before. Naturally, her confidence is not very high. This plays out in two ways: she tries to

Ever feel like you didn’t get much done? Like you were kind of stuck in the mud most of the day? Ever said: “The work just wouldn’t get done”?I ran across Parkinson’s Law on a podcast from Cal Newport and Adam Grant. You may not know it by that name, but you probably heard the

This episode is about the need for, nature of, and development of thought tools. I was having a conversation with my daughter. If you’ve listened to the podcast, you know my daughter is 23 and she’s beginning her career, just having graduated college She’s trying to figure some things out. She’s confronted with some new issues

What is the role of paper as a modern productivity tool?   Is our use of paper just a habit we need to get rid of or is it something more? Is it still a useful tool, or should we be trying to break some sort of addiction to it. This is inspired by a

I talk about the three big enemies of focus and productivity. They are interruption, multitasking, and distraction. I say they are in order from easiest to deal with to hardest. (But I’m faking that a little.) The biggest pushback I get is around multitasking – people defend their ability to do it. Let’s deal with that here. What’s our

What to do if our primary tool is not really helping us? I argue that this is the case with our to-do lists. I’ll talk about why and what you can do about it. To Do Busy Right, we are fighting three enemies: interruption, multitasking, and distraction. Distraction is the most difficult to defeat. To-do list