Tag: productivity
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How to Deal with Email
One of the biggest problems that I commonly hear from my friends is that processing email is completely unmanageable. The most important thing to remember is that your attention is the most precious resource that you have, and you need to guard it jealously. All of the following principles flow from this fundamental insight. The…
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My Current Productivity Stack
One of the main topics of conversation on this blog is productivity, as you can tell by its weighting in the tag cloud below. Much of the discussion thus far has been about productivity hacks, various techniques or environmental factors you can tweak to optimize your performance. What I haven’t talked much about is what…
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Feeling Overwhelmed While Working?
After our recent productivity webinar, I did some one-on-one IFS work, and I (again) ran into what I think is actually a pretty common not-so-uselful belief: “Until I’m finished, I can’t feel okay.” I used to think this way too, that I had to feel overwhelmed and guilty until I got all my important things done.…
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Productivity 101 Recap!
On Tuesday night, we gathered together to discuss the productivity techniques that me and Divia actually use in our daily lives (instead of the ones we think would be helpful, but never use in practice). Some of the main topics we covered were: Goal setting and formulation Reducing cognitive load Utilizing social pressure Taking very…
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O, Fragile Productivity!
As long as I stick to my systems I don’t get sick very often, and thus I sometimes forget what it’s like. Getting enough sleep seems to render me immune to infections, though sometimes I stay up late or wake up too early. If I do start to feel a cold coming on, a complete…
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Ten Ways to Change Your Behavior Immediately #10: Actively Recover and Try Again
Suppose you have tried everything above and you still can’t seem to bring yourself to work. First, I want you to repeat step two and show yourself a little compassion. Did you do that? Good. I’ll bet you’re feeling better already! So given that you can’t seem to get yourself to work, what should you…
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Ten Ways to Change Your Behavior Immediately #9: Commit to One Minute
The hardest part of any task is getting started – or maybe even before getting started, while you’re still busy worrying about doing the task instead of getting it done! Luckily inertia works in both directions: once you’re already underway with a project you realize it isn’t nearly as bad as you originally thought. So…
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Ten Ways to Change Your Behavior Immediately #8: Break it into Sub-Steps
One of the most common causes of procrastination is that the task at hand feels incredibly daunting – the project is so large that it seems impossible to complete. Somehow even thinking about the project makes you feel tired! When you imagine the project it feels like a giant monolith in your mind, leaving you…
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Ten Ways to Change Your Behavior Immediately #7: Be Mindful
The most common response to encountering resistance is to try harder, feeling a host of negative emotions about the situation, and retreating into thoughts that cycle repeatedly with no resolution in sight. By now you may have experienced this resistance so often that it feels like is just the way the world is, that it…
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Ten Ways to Change Your Behavior Immediately #6: Turn it into a Game!
Work couldn’t possibly be fun… or could it? The very word conjures up images of endless factory lines with single repetitive tasks for hours on end, or row upon row of cubicles with people chained to their desks… Of course this is all very melodramatic, but you get the point: work is not something that…