The last time I looked, you're the only YOU there is. What is it that Only YOU Can Do? As an experienced leadership coach working directly with CEOs and other senior executives, I’m constantly telling leaders: Focus intensely on what only YOU can do. I was reminded of the importance…
Can't help yourself? Maybe you figure you're so adept with technology and juggling a bunch of balls at the same time that, of course, you're damn good at multitasking. I know I'm very adept with technology, am 100% paperless and have proven systems I've developed over 30+ years. And, yes,…
Wait a minute? Aren't we supposed to focus on winning? Victory and all that? Maybe, but let's think about that for a minute. Is winning really your primary objective ... or are you seeking the outcome that flows from a proven set of processes ... relentlessly repeated? Photo by Jason…
You may find this an unlikely category in which to talk about stress and I agree it could appear in many different segments in Sword Tips. I've put it here to emphasize the effect of stress, how we manage it and how it affects our Productivity. Stress is Good? Of course, we…
Many years ago … and after coaching senior leaders for many years before that … it became clear … crystal … that the senior leaders I was coaching had never taken the time to develop a trusted productivity system to manage everything that had their attention across all phases of…
Go Back to Sword Tips Newsletter | Jan 27, 2022 As you know, there are constant distractions that prevent us from achieving our objectives in a given day. Too frequently, they join forces to prevent us from finding time to think. One of those forces is the “drop-by“. (You may…
You may be using something like the "Two Minute Rule" to help you get quick things done quickly. B ut what are you doing with everything else? You'll Be Surprised When You Try This Experiment You might be thinking, “Two Minutes? You can’t get anything done in 2 minutes? What’s…
"How did you get so much done?" You've probably heard the question many times, asked of interview guests the world over ... "If you could interview anyone, living or not, who would it be?" For me, that's an easy question. Winston Churchill. What if I could only ask him one question?…
It’s not the clutter of the desktop or inbox … but the clutter of the mind that scuttles our personal productivity plans and leads us into unproductive habits and wasted time.
Yes, I know, our inbox is spawning new life forms, ending the paper flood has been about as successful as ending world hunger and our mobility means that we have to juggle all of this like we’re riding a unicycle.
Sometimes we’re infected with the attention span of a mosquito.
We’re moving fast … but we aren’t getting anywhere.
A lot of it starts with The Great Multitasking Hoax: It’s killing us.
Most of our conversations about personal productivity seem to revolve around related fields like organization or time management … but it’s probably more about mind management.
The consequence of a cluttered mind is our inability to focus on one thing at at time, fueled by our obsession with multi-tasking.
In many ways, technology has driven us to overestimate our multi-tasking abilities … and science has repeatedly confirmed that we are misguided about this.
Consider the debate in Is Technology making us Smarter or Stupider, or the results of one man’s decision to stop multi-tasking for a week.
Late last year, the New York Times summarized the most recent data on failed multitasking.
Don’t overlook the Atlantic’s detailed analysis, either, in Is Google Making us Stupid, which looks more closely at what the Internet is doing to our brains as we become increasingly focused on short mind-bites of information.
One thing really works for me … and the more I talk to others, the more this seems to work for them, too.
It’s stupidly simple and it doesn’t seem like it should work at all. In fact, I’m not exactly sure why it works … but it seems like it’s connected to our ability to focus.
What is it? (more…)