I can’t imagine living in a more distracting time in human history. But to get real work done, we need to focus. Here are ten tactics I use to increase my focus and power through my task list.

At work, you feel stuck in the deepest rut of all time. You try to move forward but the groove is deep and you’re wedged in there pretty good. Sound familiar? It happens to most leaders at some point. I’ve found the best way to get yourself out of the rut is to understand the […]

I’ve said before many times that the key to job satisfaction is moving away from your Drudgery and Disinterest Zones and toward the Passion and Proficiency of your Desire Zone. Some readers have raised a good question about this shift. “It’s easy to tell what I’m passionate about,” they tell me, “but how do I […]

I am not a big fan of computer mice. Every time I have to take my hand off the keyboard, it costs me a few seconds. This may not sound like much, but it adds up over the course of a day. Instead, I like to keep my hands on the keyboard. With a little memory work and the right tools, you can boost your productivity and run circles around your mouse-dependent colleagues.

No sleep.” “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” “Sleep is for the weak.” I often see motivational statements like these hashtagged on social media. The idea is to spur high-achievers on to work harder for better results. But what if that’s exactly backwards? What if our willingness to shortchange our sleep is actually sabotaging our success?

How many of your work hours are wasted on distractions? Probably more than you think. Financial management service Think Money researched the question, and their findings are eye-opening. According to their 2015 report, distractions annually eat up 759 hours per worker. That’s just one hour shy of twenty complete 40-hour workweeks every year! Now flip […]

A few years ago, I read David Sax’s book, The Revenge of Analog. The premise? After years of being pushed aside by digital solutions, analog applications have been making a surprising comeback. That resonated with my own experience. Most of my audience knows me as a techie. But I was in the book business for […]

Tell me if this sounds familiar: You’ve got big goals for the year. Maybe for your career, your health, your family, and the like. But it’s easy to lose visibility in the whirlwind of daily life. You’re productive, no question. Sometimes you’re flying faster than a tornado. But to what end? It’s like there’s no […]

Elon Musk is widely regarded as one of the most influential entrepreneurs working today. He’s one of the founders of PayPal and the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He wants to help put a colony on Mars and be buried there. Because Musk is considered such a visionary, many people want to learn his methods […]

Have you ever found yourself feeling like you have too much work and not enough margin? The good news is that it can change. Here are seven strategies I am following.

Productivity doesn’t just increase your efficiency. If you do it right, it can also increase your income. The problem is that traditional systems get productivity all wrong. They define productivity as the ability to do more and do it faster. But that approach just accelerates the hamster wheel we’re already on. Instead of getting ahead, […]

Is it just me, or is our modern work culture bleeding us dry? It’s not just our cell phones and computer screens that draw our eyes at all hours. As much as we might want to blame technology, the root of our struggle to have satisfactory days goes much deeper. Far too often, we think, […]

We all know that sitting for long periods of time isn’t good for our bodies. Standing boosts our energy and our mood. That’s why I use and recommend a standup desk. But there’s more to it than more time on your feet. It’s also important to get those feet moving. Our bodies just aren’t designed to […]

The fear of missing out isn’t worth much, but FOMO costs us a lot. That’s especially true when it comes to our productivity. It’s like a powerful undertow, invisible on the surface of our work, which can pull us away in the current. Right after I left as CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, an online […]

Email is indispensable. But it can feel like a necessary evil for a lot of us. Our inboxes are flooded with information and requests from customers, clients, coworkers, friends, and family. Not to mention all the spam, BACN, and random junk. I’ve seen inboxes with tens of thousands of emails—hundreds, even thousands unread. People feel […]

When I think of one word to describe contemporary work habits, it’s unsustainable. We’re working drastically longer hours, while incurring high physical and emotional costs, for only marginal gains in productivity. We created this infographic to illustrate some interesting (and surprising) stats on our struggle with productivity in the modern workplace. Feel free to share […]

To some people, ritual is a bad word. Many folks recoil at the religious association, even though most rituals aren’t religious. For others, the thought of following set, predetermined actions makes them feel boxed in. But rituals are inescapable. We are creatures of memory and habit. The only question is whether our rituals are intentional […]

When it comes to setting personal or professional goals, how do you determine what makes your list? We’re often tempted to commit to important or urgent tasks that have been nagging us for a while. But that’s a mistake. A woman in our 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever private Facebook group faced this […]

Every year comes freshly stocked with 104 weekend days. That’s 28 percent of all available days in the year. It’s like a full quarter! The trouble is that we treat our weekends like a slush fund to bankroll more work. We’re forfeiting a tremendous amount of time we could invest in better uses. Almost a […]

I’m a fairly conservative person but not when it comes to setting new goals for myself or for my business. We may think setting conservative goals is wise, but it actually makes us and our teams less productive. Too many leaders believe they’ll accomplish more if they lower the bar and set goals they can […]

Did you skip lunch last week—either by gobbling down something at your desk or forgoing food altogether? The odds are good that you did. A 2012 workplace survey by Right Management found just one in five employees take actual lunch breaks. That’s a problem because both the lunch and the break are good for you.

I’m a serious reader and have been most of my life. Most leaders I know are. We realize there’s a major ROI on time dedicated to reading. As I’ve blogged about before, reading makes us better thinkers, improves our people skills, and helps us master communication—not to mention the rest and rejuvenation it offers. We […]

When I coach people on reaching their goals, I advise them to be flexible on their strategies. The goal might be sacred, but we can change strategies as often as we need. But that’s not a blanket endorsement of flexibility. In fact, flexibility can significantly damage our productivity if we’re not careful. How?

If there’s one thing that has the power to encourage and motivate us unlike anything else, it’s the feeling of accomplishment and the momentum it brings. It’s a feeling we all want, but one that often eludes us. The busyness of the day takes over, and instead of celebrating the day, proud of what you’ve […]