Tag: Productivity
Staying focused
Over at the Evernote blog, Valerie Bisharat has some helpful reflections on “how to avoid focus-stealing traps.” One particularly interesting study that Bisharat cites is from the University of Texas at Austin [and] suggests that having our cell phones within reach – even if they’re powered off– reduces cognitive capacity, or ability to concentrate. The…
Toward not multitasking on the Dropbox blog
The Dropbox blog has a short essay on the downsides of trying to multitask. Rather than multitasking, deep and singular focus is just what the doctor ordered, but in our hyper-connected world, it isn’t always easy…. You could chuck all your gadgets and move to the woods, but luckily you don’t need to get that drastic.…
GTD Times
It’s certainly not new, but I recently came across the GTD Times blog run by the David Allen Company. The most recent entry is the first part of a keynote in which Allen overviews his approach to “getting things done,” as covered more fully in his book by the same title (affiliate disclosure). If academia should…
Hyatt’s Interview with Newport
Michael Hyatt has a helpful interview with Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (Grand Central, 2016). According to Newport, Focus is now the lifeblood of this economy. Why? Because focus is rare and distraction abundant. As Hyatt comments, Even when we think we are focusing, we usually aren’t.…
Better attention than a goldfish
A recent study commissioned by Microsoft Canada found, disturbingly, that the human participants’ average attention spans had fallen to 8 seconds, a shorter time frame than measured for goldfish (Evernote, New York Times). One of the major suspected drivers of these results is the propensity of the participants to use a mobile device while “paying attention” to…
Remedying overcommitment
Michael Hyatt has a new post where he provides seven strategies for remedying or avoiding overcommitment. All seven suggestions are good and worth considering. But, the capstone suggestion, number seven seems particularly key: I couldn’t go on at my previous pace, and I didn’t have to. I began building new boundaries around my margin. And…