Mike Vardy's Blog, page 48
June 12, 2019
Episode 248: Productive Fundraising with Chad Barger
On today’s episode, I spent time with Chad Barger. Chad Barger is a fundraising coach, productivity guru and vlogger. Chad teaches charities how to optimize their fundraising, so they can focus on changing the world. He is the founder and managing director of the firm Productive Fundraising which focuses on implementing simple, effective fundraising systems as well as strategies to strengthen nonprofit boards of directors.
This episode is brought to you by Front . Founded in 2013, if you are ready to transform your team’s productivity with efficient email, you’ve got to give Front a try for only $9/month. Front is reinventing the inbox so people can accomplish more together. With new workflows, efficient collaboration, and all their communication channels in one place, more than 5,000 businesses rely on their Front inbox to be more productive as a team. Visit https://www.frontapp.com/timecrafting to start your free trial today!
This episode is also brought to you by GanttPRO . It is an interactive online Gantt chart software for planning and controlling multiple projects at once. You can split your projects into groups of tasks and subtasks. Aside from that, you can also organize and schedule tasks, set durations and dependencies between them. You can create a Gantt chart to set accurate estimates and manage your resources wisely. Go to https://ganttpro.com/go/TimeCrafting and get a $50 off when you sign up to GanttPRO today!
Chad Barger [BAR-jur] teaches small charities to fundraise more effectively. He is better known to many as @fundraiserchad, a trusted guide to the fundraising tactics and tools that are working today. He is a sought after nonprofit fundraising consultant, trainer and coach. Chad has spent his entire career as a fundraiser. He has worked in large shops and small in a variety of sectors (higher education, social services and the arts). He has built fundraising programs from the ground up, rebuilt fundraising programs back to their former glory and taken stagnant organizations to the next level. The campaigns that he has worked on have raised in excess of $40 million dollars for the charities that he’s had the honor of serving.
Specifics that we covered on the show include:
What Chad brings to the table when it comes to productive fundraising and the area he focuses in particular (3:55)
How to help an organization that has a small team (7:04)
What led Chad to the path of fundraising and how did he apply his productivity tactics (8:22)
Chad’s thoughts on money and expectations (14:46)
How attuned is Chad on finding gaps in processes that people have in place (18:44)
How does Chad structure his time to allow him to put his best foot forward with his work and family (25:20)
What to do when something doesn’t go right or doesn’t work (30:55)
What’s next for Chad Barger? (32:40)
How to get people on board to do the “small things” (36:01)
“I’m a big fan of harmony over balance. That is the key. How do you maintain that harmony? It’s okay if one thing needs more time now and the other ones need more time later.” ~ Chad Barger
Relevant Links
Website
YouTube
The key takeaways from this episode is that personal productivity is (at least) half of the problem when doing fundraising. You have to pivot fix that first to create a strong foundation for their new fundraising system.
Enjoy the show? Want to keep up with the podcast? You can subscribe to the podcast feed by clicking the “Share” button in the player above – and you can share it further using the same button as well. You can take things even one step further by rating and reviewing the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening and supporting the show!
The post Episode 248: Productive Fundraising with Chad Barger appeared first on Productivityist.
June 5, 2019
Episode 247: The Power of Virtual Accountability with Jeff McMahon
On today’s episode, I spent time with Jeff McMahon. Jeff is a virtual trainer turned online entrepreneurs like Amy Porterfield, Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas, and many more. Jeff work to help business owners feel more confident, strong, and healthy so they can dominate in their business and have more energy throughout their day. His degree is pre-med/pre-pharm with dual certifications in injury rehab and sports medicine. He has been a fitness expert for over a decade now working with 1,000’s of people throughout the world.
This episode is brought to you by Front . Founded in 2013, if you are ready to transform your team’s productivity with efficient email, you’ve got to give Front a try for only $9/month. Front is reinventing the inbox so people can accomplish more together. With new workflows, efficient collaboration, and all their communication channels in one place, more than 5,000 businesses rely on their Front inbox to be more productive as a team. Visit https://www.frontapp.com/timecrafting to start your free trial today!
How did Jeff McMahon got into Virtual Training? Jeff’s mom has had health issues since he was born. He originally wanted to be a surgeon to help take care of her, but being colorblind made that dream impossible. She had a major stroke when he was a freshman in college and lost the use of the left side of her body. Then came breast cancer [twice], brain deterioration, a heart attack. One day she suggested to Jeff that he should train people online that have suffered strokes and can’t get out of their home. Jeff thought about it, they tried it with his mom’s stroke support group, and then he took that format to the online entrepreneur world. Basically, his mom’s handicap has transformed the fitness world and started a whole new revolution.
Specifics that we covered on the show include:
On how Jeff helped people live a better life through fitness and wellness (3:01)
How does virtual training work? (4:58)
How did the virtual training started? (6:01)
What made Jeff choose that kind of program? (8:55)
On the benefits of accountability (14:23)
On the challenges Jeff faced when building his business (17:05)
On Jeff’s take on peloton workout (19:50)
On giving personal touch (23:10)
On having “new year’s resolution” and the role that accountability play (23:53)
On personalization becoming a critical part of the business (25:48)
The thing/s that can get people from zero to step one when trying to get fit (27:17)
On having patience and accountability on doing things (29:17)
“Nothing is permanent. Once you stop working out you will not have the same body that you had when you were working out so the key is just to workout for the rest of your life.” ~ Jeff McMahon
Relevant Links
Website
The key takeaways from this episode include: you should not miss out on taking care of yourself so you can take care of your to-do list, your accountable responsibilities and all the other things that you have to take care of on a daily basis.
Enjoy the show? Want to keep up with the podcast? You can subscribe to the podcast feed by clicking the “Share” button in the player above – and you can share it further using the same button as well. You can take things even one step further by rating and reviewing the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening and supporting the show!
The post Episode 247: The Power of Virtual Accountability with Jeff McMahon appeared first on Productivityist.
May 29, 2019
Episode 246: How to Be Great at Your Job with Justin Kerr
On today’s episode, I spent time with Justin Kerr. Justin is a self-described efficiency monster, He is the author of the rogue corporate playbooks How to Write an Email and How to Be a Boss. He is also the mouthpiece of the MR CORPO podcast and has been the youngest senior executive at some of the world’s biggest apparel companies (Gap, Old Navy, Levi’s, UNIQLO) running billion-dollar businesses while finding time to write 14 books, tour the country with his rock band and keep 100,000 bees on his roof. He is currently president of Imprint Projects in New York City.
This episode is brought to you by GanttPRO . It is an interactive online Gantt chart software for planning and controlling multiple projects at once. You can split your projects into groups of tasks and subtasks. Aside from that, you can also organize and schedule tasks, set durations and dependencies between them. You can create a Gantt chart to set accurate estimates and manage your resources wisely. Go to https://ganttpro.com/TimeCrafting and get a $50 off when you sign up to GanttPRO today!
Justin Kerr climbed to the top of the corporate ladder before reaching age 40. His book, entitled How to Be Great at Your Job takes the guesswork out of career success and breaks down what it takes to excel at your job. It covers the basics, like the universal requirements of every workplace—working with other people, making stellar presentations, communicating effectively over email. And it also goes into how to get promoted sooner, impress the people high up on the corporate ladder, and do it all while maintaining your personal life and without working crazy hours. With helpful tips and simple advice, this professional guidebook is just right for someone new to the workplace or for a mid-life career changer.
Specifics that we covered on the show include:
Background on who Justin Kerr and how the book, How to Be Great at Your Job came to be (3:01)
On the term “efficiency monster” (4:50)
On being caught with the email trap (6:58)
The processes put in place to allow a person to be more efficient (7:49)
On how to over-communicate that works best for a company (9:35)
On building credibility over time (13:30)
On doing work by breaking them into smaller components (15:50)
On giving updates (17:30)
On getting so far ahead and in return getting more work thrust upon you (23:20)
How does Justin manages his time (26:40)
The best thing about the book (32:40)
“Always be giving the updates because keep in mind the people you worked with are human beings and a lot of us can lose the side of that. We get titles and VPs and assistants but they are human beings – they get nervous, they have their own concerns, they are worried about their own boss – all of these different things. So telling people what is going on is just gonna lower the temperature a little bit.” ~ Justin Kerr
Relevant Links
Website
Podcast
Google+
Book: How to Be Great at Your Job
The key takeaways from this episode include: how to work with other human beings, how to balance life and work, what to do if someone at work hates you, and (of course) the critical skill of how to win an “email fight”.
Enjoy the show? Want to keep up with the podcast? You can subscribe to the podcast feed by clicking the “Share” button in the player above – and you can share it further using the same button as well. You can take things even one step further by rating and reviewing the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening and supporting the show!
The post Episode 246: How to Be Great at Your Job with Justin Kerr appeared first on Productivityist.
May 24, 2019
Why I Stopped Saying You Can’t Use Email to Manage Tasks
For years I’ve been a champion of steering clear of email when you’re trying to manage your tasks. Every time I have witnessed someone using Outlook or Gmail as a to do list, I cringed and did my best to get them to see the light of day and start using an actual task management or to do list application for getting things done instead.
But I’ve since changed my tune.
Now I wouldn’t say that I’ve seen the light of day and realized that you can use any email app as a to do list – far from it. There are plenty of reasons why you wouldn’t want to use any old email app in that way.
Instead, I’d say that there’s an app out there I’ve been using that removes the friction between an email app and a to do list app (especially when working with a team).
That app – the one that convinced me that an email app can function as a fantastic bridge between your communications and your tasks – is called Front.
I rarely write about apps on the blog but when the Front team approached me and showcased their product, I was overjoyed. The features that Front offers lets me keep in touch with my communication portals and my tasks in a way that nothing else I’ve seen or tried before.
Getting Started with Front
Front has some excellent tutorials to get you going with the app but if you’re used to using other email apps then you may find the move intimidating. That’s not because Front is overly complex – far from it. It’s that when you are switching from something so entrained and familiar to something new and not-so-familiar that it can hinder your progress. It can even keep you from taking any sort of action.
So for the first few days, I simply used Front on my devices – desktop and mobile – with my own email addresses. I have three that I check personally (one for work related to this website and company, one for personal use, and one for other professional work). I did this so I could get used to the basic interface of Front, discovering any sort of differences between it and my old app.
Front has all of the features you’d expect in a modern email app. Things like snoozing emails and scheduling emails to be sent later are also options you can use right within the composition interface. That said, there are a few features hidden under the hood that are destined to keep you as productive as possible:
Canned Responses: Even though I use TextExpander for this kind of thing, having canned responses can be helpful once you start to have a hard time remembering shortcuts for all of your email snippets.Do Not Disturb: You can set this up manually or have its scheduled, which I’ve done to give me a longer break from email than my Do Not Disturb settings are set up for my iOS devices. (There’s also an “Out of Office” feature that turns off all your notifications and makes sure any new messages you get aren’t assigned to you by default and are left unassigned.)My Rules: If you’ve set up rules in another email app, you can make them happen in this area of Front. You can get pretty granular with these so Front has put together a section that will help you understand how they work in the app. (Unless you’re already familiar with email rules, I’d hold off working with these until you’re more comfortable in the app.)Customizable Preferences: If you want to personalize your Front experience, this is where you can do it. From timing your snoozes and scheduled “send later” times to assigning your top canned responses to mirroring the keyboard shortcuts available in Gmail, Front allows you to design the app to suit your communication needs on multiple levels.Multiple Signatures: Since I had initially placed three email addresses in Front I wanted to make sure I had signatures for each. This is a pretty common feature in email apps and I’m glad it wasn’t overlooked by the Front development team.
I played with Front as my primary email app without doing more than what I mentioned above when I first started. But I knew that Front was really going to shine once I started bringing the emails of my team members into the mix. So after 3-4 days of testing Front on my own, I decided it was time to see how that was going to work.
Email Evolved
I didn’t want to go overboard with this at first, mainly because I was going to have to ask my team members to shift the email app they were using and their mindset about how we were going to use our task management tools in tandem with Front. I decided to do the following to get collaboration and communication started so my team could experience email evolved:
1. I added just one team member to Front first
Deciding who that was going to be was a cinch. Without hesitation, I brought my assistant into Front and immediately began to assign emails that had been sent to me to her. These emails were for things like possible podcast guests, requests to share items of interest on social media, and so on. Instead of having to forward these emails to her and losing track of those things within email, I was able to assign them to her and give her further direction in the conversation area of the message. This was saving several steps of forwarding the email to her or to our task app and then having to copy the recipient’s email address back into email to deal with it. All I did was assign the email to her like I’ve done similarly in our task app, give her some directions in the conversation area, and she was ready to go.
2. I integrated Asana with Front
I used the built-in integration tools that Front has to connect our task app, Asana, to our new communication hub. That doesn’t mean I’m going to keep up the practice of forwarding emails to the task app. After all, one of the reasons I was excited about Front was that I’d be able to lighten the load of emails being sent to Asana. So we came up with a couple of ways to limit the emails coming into Asana while leveraging the assignment and conversation functionality in Front.
Rather than move every single email that had a task of some sort within it into Asana, we would assign that email to the person in Front first. Then inside the conversation portion of Front it could be determined by both the assignee and the person it was assigned to if the email needed to be put into Asana for a deeper form of task management. If not, then it could stay in Front.
As a safeguard – especially during the onboarding of Front to the team members – we created a task in Asana called “Check emails assigned in Front” to those team members using Front. This effectively allowed my assistant to either check Asana first and then deal with Front later or start in Front and then move to our task app. Assuming the rules were followed, nothing would fall through the cracks.You may want to try something similar to help with the learning curve of using a new tool, but you don’t need to go to those lengths. But I recommend you bring in one person to Front and get them well-versed in how you’re using it so that you have an ally (and training partner) once you start bringing in other team members.
I’ve created a video that illustrates how we’re using Front, specifically how we use it in conjunction with Asana. You can check out the video below.
Even if you’re not using Asana, you could integrate other popular task and project management tools directly (Trello, for example) or indirectly through using Zapier using Front’s integration settings. In addition, you can connect plenty of other apps to Front and even leverage Front’s API to connect more apps that work for you and your team.
3. I added more team email accounts to Front
Once we had a good flow going between us – both in Front and in our task management app – I added all of the remaining email addresses for the company. I’d say that happened after about a week of just having my assistant, myself, and our task app in Front. Adding the rest of our company email addresses that didn’t belong to a particular person (hello@, sales@, podcast@, etc.) allowed me to remove any forwards I had set up beforehand. Now either me or my assistant could review these email accounts and deal with them accordingly.
As of this writing I’m still waiting to add another team member to Front but because a couple of the email accounts that were forwarded to her are now in Front we’re able to let her slowly make her way into the mix. So even though she’s not using Front (yet) we’ve been able to remove some of the friction that was in place because her email inbox isn’t teeming with as much activity. That’s right – Front has indirectly helped me help her out with email overwhelm.
Taking Communication Management to the Next Level
By the way, Front isn’t just for email. You can add other communication portals to the app as well. You can add team inboxes or individual inboxes as your see fit.
I’ve added our Facebook page to Front for one specific reason: I don’t want to have anyone on my team spending too much time wading through Facebook looking to help those trying to connect with us via direct message. Whenever someone sends us a message, it shows up in Front. From there it can be assigned to the right person to respond and our response rating doesn’t take a hit because the message sat in our page inbox too long for Facebook’s liking.
There are other portals you can add to Front as well. They include Twitter (both feed and direct messages), SMS (using Twilio), Intercom, several chat options (including FrontChat by Front), and a custom channel you can control using Front’s API. You can add these portals for your own use – meaning only you have access to them unless you assign them to someone – or for the team to use together.
Front has really upped our communication management game. It’s saving us time, energy, and allowing us to pay more attention to the work that we need and want to be doing. I’ve still only scratched the surface of what Front can do for me and my team (I haven’t spent much time in the analytics component of Front yet) but I know that it has transformed the way we work and our overall team productivity.
I never thought an app where I find my email would do that. Let alone on so many fronts.
In the interest of transparency, Front is a paid sponsor of this post. That said, longtime followers of my work now that I don’t write these kind of pieces unless I strongly believe that the product I’m endorsing will help you – and that I use it myself. So if you want to give Front a try – and I believe you should – click here to make that happen .
The post Why I Stopped Saying You Can’t Use Email to Manage Tasks appeared first on Productivityist.
May 22, 2019
Episode 245: What Happy Successful People Do Differently with Marc and Angel Chernoff
On today’s episode, I spent time again with Marc and Angel Chernoff. Marc and Angel Chernoff are New York Times bestselling authors, professional coaches, full-time students of life, admirers of the human spirit, and have been recognized by Forbes as having “one of the most popular personal development blogs.” Through their blog, books, course and coaching, they’ve spent the past decade writing about and teaching proven strategies for finding lasting happiness, success, love, and peace.
This episode is brought to you by TextExpander . TextExpander lets you instantly insert snippets of text from a repository of emails, boilerplate and other content, as you type – using a quick search or abbreviation. Good news is that TextExpander 6.5 is out now with the new visual editor for snippets. Visit TextExpander.com/podcast for 20% off your first year .
This episode is also brought to you by Front . Founded in 2013, if you are ready to transform your team’s productivity with efficient email, you’ve got to give Front a try for only $9/month. Front is reinventing the inbox so people can accomplish more together. With new workflows, efficient collaboration, and all their communication channels in one place, more than 5,000 businesses rely on their Front inbox to be more productive as a team. Visit https://www.frontapp.com/timecrafting to start your free trial today!
Millions of readers turn to Marc and Angel Chernoff as they wrote 1000+ Little Things Happy Successful People Do Differently for fresh, intimate insights for a fulfilled life. In this pithy and empowering guide, they collect the very best advice they’ve discovered, on topics that include overcoming setbacks, letting go of what’s holding us back, nurturing relationships, finding time for self-care, and cultivating passion in order to achieve our wildest dreams.
Specifics that we covered on the show include:
On their new book: 1000+ Little Things Happy Successful People Do Differently (3:10)
On the idea of the list in the book (11:15)
Revisiting the content of the book and choosing which applies to them now (13:30)
On writing the book as new parents (16:55)
The writer vs. the reader perspective (18:51)
On the process of editing the book (21:20)
The idea of the “little things” (26:53)
On the adding triggers to the “to-do list” (33:02)
“Keep doing what you are doing and you will keep getting what you are getting. That is how it works! You have to make a shift. You have to make changes. And the changes need to be small and consistent.” ~ Marc and Angel Chernoff
Relevant Links
Website
Book: 1000+ Little Things Happy Successful People Do Differently
This episode teaches us that millions of people live their entire lives on default settings, never realizing they can customize everything and we should not be one of those millions of people. We should not settle for the default settings in life.
Enjoy the show? Want to keep up with the podcast? You can subscribe to the podcast feed by clicking the “Share” button in the player above – and you can share it further using the same button as well. You can take things even one step further by rating and reviewing the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening and supporting the show!
The post Episode 245: What Happy Successful People Do Differently with Marc and Angel Chernoff appeared first on Productivityist.
May 20, 2019
How to Build an Achievement Structure: Getting the Front End Work Done
The title may seem daunting, but the idea behind it is simple: You must set yourself up in advance so that you can keep yourself from simply going through the motions every day — which is really what you’re doing if you’re using a simple to-do list. I call this building An Achievement Structure. In order to really achieve, you need to spend some time working on your approach and structure well before you get down to the day-to-day tasks and projects you need to take action on.
So…what’s the first component in getting your front-end work done? First, you need to pick your tools and — more importantly — get to know them. Having a tool you don’t really know how to use all that well will result in substandard work. Think about it. Using a hammer to bash screws into wood will have less than ideal results. But if you use a hammer to tap in the screw and then grab the right tool to get it into the wood (a screwdriver), then you’re building things better. Further to that, you need to make sure that you pick a tool that can support other tools when required.
The first tool you pick should be a larger tool — one that can scale with you as your work, life, and ambitions around those two elements grow and evolve. Now when I say larger tool, I’m generally talking about a task management solution of some sort. (And I’m not talking about an email application when I say this, either. That’s another post for another time.)
Whether you choose a paper-based tool or an electronic tool, you need to get acquainted with whatever you’ve chosen before you can really get the most out of it. That means less productivity for a few days while you begin to adopt the tool, but you’ll get that time back in spades the more you use the tool. (Above all else, resist the temptation to go back to simply using to-do lists once you realize how seemingly daunting the idea of taking on a task management solution is. The front end work is never easy, but it is rewarding.)
One way to think about it is in the real-world sense of going camping. When you first arrive at your empty campsite, the first thing you’re going to do is set up your tent. That way you can enjoy your camping experience knowing that you’ve got a place to sleep at the end of the night — or a place to go if it starts to rain. Setting up the tent frees you up to do the things you really want to do on the camping trip; waiting to set it up keeps your mind just a little bit captive until you do.
Another way to think about it is that when you begin with an app that allows for you to create your own structure within it (i.e., use a system that makes you comfortable — either because it is familiar, effective, or both) it is incredibly tempting to start to fill with stuff right away without thinking of where it should go within the app. Apps like Flow, Asana, and Trello allows you to certainly throw things into it right away, but it further allows you to create places (workspaces, projects, boards, etc.) so that you can be more specific with where your stuff goes. You can get even more specific by putting those lists into folders so that you can place lists in areas that are interrelated (Home, Office, Website, etc.). Folders can act as overarching projects, locations, or roles you have undertaken — the choice is yours.
You can’t underestimate internal features like modes (also known as tags in some apps — like Evernote and Asana, for example) when it comes to adding to your system through front end work. modes can be used to signify location, energy levels or even things that are emotion-based or quality-based. For example, keeping a journal would be a task that could use the mode of “Writing” or you could go one step further and use a mode like “Gratitude” instead. You simply need to use modes or tags that resonate with you the most. These can also change over time, so don’t go overboard with them at first. Instead, be thoughtful (aka mindful) about your modes so that you can be more thoughtful — or mindful — about the tasks associated with them.
Ultimately, it’s those internal tools that makes app like these so powerful…they are flexible and versatile. That is exactly what you want in your larger tool — scalability and power.
Let’s get back to talking about some of those other tools I mentioned earlier. These tools can exist within the larger tool or can be external ones used to augment or enhance the larger tool. There are plenty of tools out there that can add things like fostering habits (and tracking them) as well apps you can use to house reference material. These tools can be used in conjunction with a digital solution or an analog one. I know a lot of people who’ll use a lot of apps for things like keeping tabs on the hours they spend on writing but still use their trusty paper planners to map out their days. I also know people who will capture like crazy on paper all day and then move it into their digital apps so they can be dealt with in that medium.
Again, the choice is yours. It doesn’t matter what sort of structure you set up, as long as you set up something that supports you and you can support.
Once you’ve created a workflow built upon the structure of the larger tool you’ve chosen as well as any internal and external tools you have decided to use to augment, then you’ve done the bulk of the front end work and you’ve created that much sought-after Achievement Structure. It’s that work — and that structure — that really allows you to get the things that you need (and want) to do done efficiently and effectively, which means it’s that work that will enable you to really achieve.
The post How to Build an Achievement Structure: Getting the Front End Work Done appeared first on Productivityist.
May 15, 2019
Episode 244: Living a Conscious Life with Bob Rosen
On today’s episode, I spent time with Bob Rosen. Bob is the founder and CEO of Healthy Companies and is a trusted global CEO advisor, organizational psychologist, keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author of eight books. His latest book entitled CONSCIOUS: The Power of Awareness in Business and Life was published by Wiley in July 2018.
This episode is brought to you by GanttPRO . It is an interactive online Gantt chart software for planning and controlling multiple projects at once. You can split your projects into groups of tasks and subtasks. Aside from that, you can also organize and schedule tasks, set durations and dependencies between them. You can create a Gantt chart to set accurate estimates and manage your resources wisely. Go to https://ganttpro.com/ and get a $50 off when you sign up to GanttPRO by using the coupon code timecrafting !
Bob Rosen discussed how our world is changing faster than our ability to adapt. Ambushed by speed, complexity, and uncertainty, many of us are unprepared for this acceleration. We act on autopilot as new challenges confront us. We are too reactive to problems and miss out on opportunities. We get hijacked by conflicting values and polarizing relationships. We face uncertainty with fear and mistrust. Stress and burnout are pervasive as many of us do not perform up to our potential.
Specifics that we covered on the show include:
On the term “conscious leaders” and what happens when you found those leaders (3:15)
The commonality of people who are consciously aware (6:57)
The four reasons why people aren’t changing fast enough (9:38)
On the idea of reflection (12:01)
How do people get past cognitive biases? (17:55)
Where can people start to “go deep”? (22:56)
On what is next after the book CONSCIOUS: The Power of Awareness in Business and Life (29:30)
On the book Grounded: How Leaders Stay Rooted in an Uncertain World (32:30)
“Organizations are healthy only when the leaders are healthy. The very best leaders were a combination of self-aware and deeply committed to their own development.” ~ Bob Rosen
Relevant Links
Website
YouTube
Book: CONSCIOUS: The Power of Awareness in Business and Life
Book: Grounded: How Leaders Stay Rooted in an Uncertain World
This episode teaches us to be aware, awake, and accountable. Nothing is more important than understanding ourselves, our relationships, and our surroundings. Conscious is the new smart.
Enjoy the show? Want to keep up with the podcast? You can subscribe to the podcast feed by clicking the “Share” button in the player above – and you can share it further using the same button as well. You can take things even one step further by rating and reviewing the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening and supporting the show!
The post Episode 244: Living a Conscious Life with Bob Rosen appeared first on Productivityist.
May 13, 2019
The Speed of Right
“Slow and steady wins the race.” – The Tortoise and The Hare
In our quest to get things done, we can find ourselves moving too fast. When that happens we run the risk of missing key components of task completion, which can result in lower quality results. The need for speed is alluring because the rewards associated with speed are compelling: we get to finish something we started and that gives us a sense of achievement and accomplishment.
But that feeling is not only false…it’s fleeting.
The feeling is false in that while the job might be done, you’re cheating yourself how well it could have been done if you’d applied more critical thought and attention to the job instead of blazing rough it as quickly as possible. The feeling is fleeting because it disappears just as quickly as it arrived on the scene, and leaves a bad taste in its wake. To be clear, not every task needs to be done slowly. But it needs to be done at the right speed, and if you’re always moving at the speed of light then you’ll never be able to gauge what the speed of right is for any of the tasks you need (and want) to complete.
Back in 2011 I gave my first TEDx talk, and it focussed on how we need to work on speeding the right things up so that we can slow the right things down. Three years later, despite the age of the talk and how I’ve improved at speaking since, the talk is more relevant than ever. Instead of looking at how we can get more things done — which involves speed — we need to look at how we can accomplish more of the right things. And the only way we can do that is to take time to make the time to figure that out. Awareness doesn’t come with an increased pace, it comes with increased clarity. If you’ve ever sat on a river bank, you know that you can see a lot further and a lot deeper when the river is still than when the rapids are flowing fiercely.
Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Yet so many of us treat it that way by focusing on getting things done with speed in mind rather than effectiveness in mind. It’s time to stop this pattern by simply slowing down and figuring out what the right speed we need to apply to our work. That way we can treat our work right…and our work can treat us right in return.
The post The Speed of Right appeared first on Productivityist.
May 8, 2019
Episode 243: The Art of Noticing with Rob Walker
On today’s episode, I spent time with Rob Walker. Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, business, the arts, and other subjects. He writes the Human Resource column for Lifehacker, and has contributed to The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, TheNewYorker.Com, Design Observer, The Organist, and many others. His book The Art of Noticing (Knopf) comes out in May 2019. He is on the faculty of the Products of Design MFA program at the School of Visual Arts.
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Rob Walker wrote the book, The Art of Noticing . This gorgeously illustrated volume will spark your creativity and most importantly, help you see the world anew. Through a series of simple and playful exercises with 131 of them, Rob maps ways for you to become a clearer thinker, a better listener, a more creative workplace colleague and finally, to rediscover your sense of passion and to notice what really matters to you.
Specifics that we covered on the show include:
How do you define “noticing” and how does that play a role in how we craft our lives? (3:23)
On the notion of productivity and efficiency (5:27)
On “noticing” as the backbone of curiosity (7:15)
What is being productive? (09:10)
What led Rob to spend time on the topic of noticing? (11:15)
Is Rob the Jerry Maguire of noticing? (13:01)
On “noticing” when it comes to comedy (14:30)
On the idea of attunement vs. alignment ( 16:25)
On the idea of time management (17:20)
Why is the book, The Art of Noticing, important right now? (22:44)
How many ways did not make it into the book? (25:17)
Which of the 131 exercises stood out and which is the most unconventional? (26:50)
Does Rob journal and if so how? (30:18)
“It is not about your skill at noticing, more on the habit of noticing that sort of forces you to see differently and to see things that you weren’t looking for.” ~ Rob Walker
Relevant Links
Website
Tumbler
Book: The Art of Noticing
This episode welcomed us to the era of white noise. Our lives are in constant tether to phones, to email, and to social media. In this age of distraction, the ability to experience and be present is often lost: to think and to see and to listen.
Enjoy the show? Want to keep up with the podcast? You can subscribe to the podcast feed by clicking the “Share” button in the player above – and you can share it further using the same button as well. You can take things even one step further by rating and reviewing the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening and supporting the show!
The post Episode 243: The Art of Noticing with Rob Walker appeared first on Productivityist.
May 6, 2019
The One Piece of Time Management Advice That You Should Definitely Follow
I’ve been studying personal productivity and time management for years now and there’s one question that comes up often.
“What’s one piece of productivity and time management advice that you would give to everyone?”
I love to talk about this kind of stuff but after being asked this plenty of times I decided it’d be best to come up with something that was simple to share and do. In the end, I came up with this:
“Write everything down. No matter how inane or mundane it may sound in your head as you think of it, write it down.”
You can always edit, audit, and curate whatever you’ve written down later. But you can’t do that in the moment. So no matter what thought comes to mind – if there is even an inkling that you might want to have a record of it for later – write it down.
You will thank yourself for that when the time comes.
The post The One Piece of Time Management Advice That You Should Definitely Follow appeared first on Productivityist.
