Over the last few weeks, an unusually large number of people have reached out to me asking for help sorting out backlogs, overwhelming task lists and massively double-booked calendars. As I was helping to clear the decks, I realised there was a common denominator in most cases. The person had…

When you start a day with no plan or direction, you find yourself pushing through it just to get the right things done. It’s an exhausting, inefficient and ultimately self-defeating way of going about your day. On the opposite side, you find you are pulled through the day with a…

This week, I’m going to get brutally honest. — I get countless questions on how to manage procrastination, and I have spent a long time looking at what procrastination is and diving deep into why we procrastinate and what can we do about it. Usually, I am diplomatic when answering these questions. I don’t intend to upset anybody, and…

How do you know what needs to be done today? What is it about a task that informs you that it should be done before another one? While it is straightforward to build a task list and schedule your appointments on a calendar, if you are new — or even…

If you are familiar with the Eisenhower Matrix, you will know that quadrant 2 (important and not urgent) is the quadrant we should be spending more time. Yet, circumstances and daily priorities prevent us from doing so. For those of you not familiar with the Eisenhower Matrix, below is an…

One of the surprising drags on most people’s productivity is the system itself. There are too many steps, too much organising and thus not enough time to do the work. The way we collect our tasks, commitments, and notes need to be fast and intuitive with as few steps as…

What are your essentials today? — One of the best things about using a to-do list is that it gets off your mind all the little things swirling around in your head that are preventing you from developing creative solutions to the many issues you face. You spend all day burning mental energy worrying about everything…

Some of the biggest blocks to getting things done are planning, thinking and preparing. Unfortunately, none of these gets the result you want and are forms of procrastination disguising themselves as doing something important. Thinking, planning and preparing do have their place, but they play a very minor role in…