Blog Posts

When we think about productivity, we think about the people who seem to get everything checked, done, and dusted off on an arbitrary ‘to do’ list. We think about the account manager who has more work, more clients, more logged hours. We think about the parent who gets the shopping list right, the kids bathed […]

Despite our best efforts of decluttering our work stations, the average office worker spends 13 minutes and 13 seconds every day searching for missing things on their desk – like paperwork, desktop files (yes, those explode into chaos, too), and stationery. How do our work stations explode into chaos when a fourth of the office […]

How long ago have you taken a break? And I don’t mean for lunch or coffee. I mean a mental break where you relax and decompress without your work laptop present or your phone on call. I get it, you’re busy, you’re important, you’re indispensable at work. People rely on you. You can’t stop now. […]

Ah, Microsoft updates…don’t you just love them? They take up a chunk of time and you don’t always like what they have changed – this time around. But, it is prudent to always update your OS, not to mention your antivirus. Keeping your devices running smoothly takes a lot of work. You’d have to defrag, […]

A survey done by Gallup in 2015, reports that 37% of the US labor force is working remotely…and that number is rising. The option to do remote work is one of the perks that is being made available to employees today. It certainly is one of the perks that millennials look for when job hunting. […]

Aside from the bed, in front of a computer is where we spend most of lives. Well, that’s very true today. CNN reports that the average American spends more than 10 hrs a day staring at a screen – with computer screens taking up an average of 7 hours of that time. That number is […]

The average shelf life of a desktop PC is 5 years. After that, bugs and kinks start to show up, and they show up earlier if you’re a heavy (and quite careless) user. If you want your desktop or laptop to run smoothly and prolong its life, you should set time aside to do annual […]

Some employers have an open time policy. They set a window of log in hours, say from 7 am to 10 am and then it’s up to the employees to come as they please provided that they finish 8 working hours. Having a flexible schedule is one benefit that most employees look for in a […]

A famous and overused tip is to “follow your dreams” and a hundred other iterations of it. We’re all told to dream big and then do whatever it takes to achieve that goal. That tip is, more often than not, followed up by proclaiming your goal to the whole world. You know, to keep yourself […]

Ever wonder why you make bad food choices at the end of a tiresome day, why normally sound people snap at loved ones, or why it’s so hard to decide on where to have dinner with your group of friends? Apparently, we have a finite store of mental energy for exerting self-control. People make bad […]

I use a large 36” x 24” whiteboard to keep track of all my work projects – I use the personal Kanban Method to manage this. Actually, the personal Kanban is a pattern – there is no set method and it is highly customizable. It is simply a (highly organized and effective) management system to […]

Working while on vacation has become the norm. But it is still wise to use your vacation leaves in order to recharge and make sure you increase your productivity when you get back to work. According to this survey from Wrike, 40% of men and 30% of women plan to work while on vacation. So […]

No matter how intent we are at trying to manage our productive time, there will always be a cause for a delay that is due to forces beyond our control. The possibility of delay can stem from various reasons, some of them are due to lack of foresight, some are due to bad time management, […]

Our bodies have a pre-programmed response to stress. It has a built-in safety system that, in the olden days, was meant to protect us against predators and life-threatening situations, such as bushfires and tornadoes. This is our fight or flight response, and it is a natural and healthy response to any perceived threat. Under stress, […]

Do you know what the biggest time waster at work is? No, it’s not checking your social media updates. Take another guess. It’s meetings. A few years back, emails were the biggest time wasters at work. Sending and replying to emails takes the top spot of biggest time waster at 57%. But if you factor […]