Overview: Personal Productivity

This updates both my earlier Taming the Firehose and Where is social media taking you in 2016? posts, and better aligns my productivity process with my personal content strategy.

cortisol is released between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m... helps us get up and seize the day but if you add the stimulation of coffee when cortisol is already active the effect is lessened... we build up a tolerance to caffeine and its effects on us diminish over time.

If your meetings are like most, there are two or three people who always speak up and a handful of others who hang on the sidelines. ... a drag on your meetings' productivity... It's not enough just to bring a more diverse workforce in through your doors. You need to get everybody talking—meaningfully, collaboratively, and regularly—in order to m…

In response to The Power of Writing About the Things You Read, by Srinivas Rao: "Fortunately, there are loads of digital equivalents to dog-earing pages and underlining passages for when you’re reading on a PC or phone. My favourite tools and processess: ..."

What happened when I was invited to “do a Rápido” at the IABC’s conference in Rotterdam earlier this week.

The hard part is striking the right balance. The just-right spot where everyone knows enough, no one feels like they know too little, and no one feels like they’re being over-informed to the point of it being annoying or distracting. And doing it all at a variety of resolutions — big picture, medium-picture, and small picture — without overdoing i…

To feel most joyful and satisfied, you need to not only accomplish certain priority items but also prioritize certain experiences of time... Here’s how to reclaim your desired experiences of time ... make it a rule to have at least 15 minutes between meetings to wrap up your notes, get a drink of water, and have a moment to breathe... you’ll end u…

Being surrounded with ready-made solutions to problems can inhibit our creative growth... Given a problem with scarce resources, the human mind will twist and mull until it has a solution. This creativity is probably our species most important feature.

What determines whether the ideas we generate are truly creative? Recent research of ours finds that one common factor often gets in the way: we tend to undervalue the benefits of persistence.

Over 40 new resources ... some great longreads to enjoy as the nights grow long, the productivity tips you’ll need to find the time to read them, and a free set of steak knives. The Christmas season, after all, is almost upon us.

Imagine taking a team of highly creative people and sticking them in sterile, lowest-cost-per-square-foot spaces, and expecting them to achieve the best work of their lives?... we've been focussing heavily on the design of our work spaces... Chaining people to their desks (or cubicles) is a sure-fire way to kill great ideas and creativity. -…

I am done with attending badly run meetings and if you have any sense so should you be... running a good meeting comes down to the following: - I am done with bad meetings — Medium

Intention is a powerful force. But this force has its own special foes.Distraction. Multitasking. These weaken your ability to execute on your goals. What if you could get the power of setting intention, plus the superpower of beating distractions?... Niklas Goeke is going to show you how. - Destroy Your Inner Multitasker — Productivity Dea…

the key to breaking bad habits is tricking yourself into swapping out the habit you want to pick up for the one you want to drop.

This is how we should be running meetings and you should hold your colleagues accountable to this standard: - Meetings — Medium

There's no one-size-fits-all approach to productivity. Instead, we need to personalize our strategies for making the most out of our workdays so they're aligned with our cognitive styles—and that all starts with choosing tools that play to our strengths and preferences... because we’re inundated with "proven" programs, tips, and tools (backed b…

Huge longform exposé - don't know whether to be impressed, amused or horrified: "... what did it mean for an online retailer with annual sales of more than $1 billion, that fills 280,000 orders per week, to be “self-organized”?... Holacracy is ... just one example of a growing movement... that seeks to apply insights derived from evolutionar…

You have nothing to fear but fear itself. Fear, and algorithms... It has never been easier for designers and non-designers to create great websites that even five years ago would have cost a fortune to build... design is dead. There is more to design than the pixel-pushing of visual design... The real designers, problem solvers... able to co…

Storytelling at its finest... should evoke a visceral reaction in its audience. There's something to be said about inviting that audience to participate in a story ...the options for how to do so are infinite... Here, we explore some great examples of interactive and crowd-sourced storytelling at its finest. - Crowd-sourced storytelling: How…

My future self is awesome. He doesn’t mind taking up any task I save for him... and never complains about any work I decide he will do for me in the future. My past self is a dickhead. He keeps screwing things up and my current self always has to clean up after him... If he had planned ahead a little better I wouldn’t have to manage all this s…

With just a handful of hacks, meetings can be speedier, more productive, and more enjoyable for everyone involved. - 9 Science-Backed Methods for a Happier, More Productive Meeting

"Harness your productivity with these ideas." I took issue with a few of these via sidebar comments, but most are good. - 28 Ideas for Becoming 5 Times More Productive Every Week — Personal Growth — Medium

First, some useful definitions: "Imagination is envisioning things that don’t exist... Creativity is applying imagination to address a challenge. Innovation is applying creativity to generate unique solutions. And entrepreneurship is applying innovations, scaling the ideas, by inspiring others’ imagination... the way to innovate is to look a…

Technology First starts by selecting a very specific medium for communication, then creatively exploits its full potential.... the opposite of blank slate.... Enable creative thinking by embracing arbitrary constraints. ... Put emotional adjectives in front of specific technologies... Pick an everyday interaction and internet-enable it. - Ne…

In our busy modern world, I’ve found one very surprising key to bringing more quiet to the mind and in turn practicing more mindfulness, and that is using a good task management system, such as the productivity methodology GTD... knowing that I have everything captured in a trusted GTD system gives my mind space to rest and focus on whatever is…

A morning routine sets the tone for the whole day, and if you do each day right, you’ll do life right... Habit Stacking is a way to build a new habit into your life by stacking it on top of something you’re currently doing. For example, before I brush my teeth in the morning (current habit) I will meditate (new habit) for 3 minutes... Try to…

Immediately after every lecture, meeting, or any significant experience, take 30 seconds — no more, no less — to write down the most important points. - The 30 second habit with a lifelong impact — STARTUPS + WANDERLUST + LIFE HACKING — Medium

Too many of us are overscheduled, overconnected and overstimulated by all the noise, interruptions and complexity of current society... Epic performers, A-Players and World-Builders ... run their days under completely different mindsets and rituals than those who get trapped in the groove of “being busy being busy.... Here are 4 of the game…

I'm launching a enewsletter to ensure I absorb something from the social media firehose.

By generating enough internal force with our habits, we can push back against the external pressures that threaten to crush us. Here are a few to get started with ... - Survive the Hard Things with Habits — Better Humans — Medium