There are three ways to change your behavior. You can have an epiphany. If you know the story of Byron Katie’s remarkable turn-around, you have an example of an epiphany. These are hard to engineer, so looking for one to show up can be a long and frustrating wait. You can change your context. When…
Category Archives: Following Through
What’s In It For You? How to Reward Yourself For Meeting Your Goals
How can I motivate and reward myself when I am both the boss and the employee? So, one of the skills I teach in my Plan to Thrive productivity program is how to use a four-month rolling plan to keep up your momentum. And one essential part of the rolling plan is a way to…
The Price of Procrastination
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. William James
Why Tasks Hang On – Three Productivity Traps to Avoid
Take a look at your to-do list. Are there things that have been lurking there for weeks, maybe months? How do you feel when you think of those tenacious tasks? Tired? Discouraged? You can get rid of those “Velcro jobs” faster if you know how they got to be clinging to your days in the…
Update: In-box zero
Back in June I pledged to achieve in-box zero by the first day of autumn, so I owe you, dear readers, an update. How did I do? In a word: busted. I managed to keep up with most everything that came in during the past three months, but the backlog is a mere 10 percent…
Worth Repeating – July posts from New Leaf News
I’m sharing a few posts from the New Leaf archives. Here’s what was on our mind in Julys past. How can you make progress on a goal that, for lack of a “natural” deadline, seem to take a back seat to everything else? Here are a couple of ideas to help you get it done….
In-Box Zero
Remember merit badges, those embroidered circles used to mark achievement for Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts? Now there is a company that makes merits badges for grown-ups, and there’s one I desperately want to earn: In-Box Zero. My goal of an empty email in-box is more elusive than live tech support. I crossed into the…
Humans are natural procrastinators
A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times. – Sir John Dalberg-Acton Hold on, Sir John! Is it possible that delay serves a good purpose? And if, like our appendix, delay has outlived its usefulness, how can we work around it with…
Five steps for ending "tolerations"
I call them “tolerations” – those little irritants we hardly notice. Maybe it’s something small, like a sticking wheel on a desk chair. Maybe it’s something you try to ignore because you feel you can’t change it, like a noisy neighbor. It could be your life-long habit, such as piling your papers rather than filing…
Plan from your passion
Last week I received the audience feedback from a conference workshop I led in November. One respondent commented anonymously: “So inspiring, clean. Made a promise to myself as a result of this session.” This is what I live for! I was leading my popular session “Plan to Thrive – how to shape, track, and follow…