Time management strategies with a new baby
Each of the four times I brought home a new baby I found myself wondering: What did I used to do with all my free time!? As I adjusted to the new baseline of sleepless nights and a constant awareness of “who’s watching the baby?” I wondered at how it was always possible to insert a…
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How to do things when you just don’t want to
What is it for you – the big, daunting projects, or the boring, mundane tasks? Those are the two most common things that professionals I work with procrastinate on. Sometimes it’s because they can’t muster the motivation, other times, it’s because of the fear of failure, or an avoidance of the emotions the task will…
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New Year’s Revelations
It happens every year on January 1st. We join the ranks of the New Year’s Resolutioners who sign up at a gym, vow to stop eating sweets, promise to pay our bills on time, and cross our hearts that we’ll never procrastinate again. Then by February 20th, the gyms are back to their usual patronage,…
The magic of willpower and habits
Do you ever feel so exhausted after making difficult choices or doing unpleasant tasks all day that all you can do is sit on the couch and ‘veg out’? That is a state called ego-depletion. Willpower, it turns out, is a limited commodity. When you resist temptations repeatedly, you use up your willpower. In the…
“I’ll feel more like doing this later” and other lies we tell ourselves
Procrastination means postponing things when we expect to be worse off for it. We know it would be better if we just started the report, studied for the test, sent the email, did the homework, or made the difficult phone call now. But we put them off in large part to avoid the negative emotions…
Continue reading → “I’ll feel more like doing this later” and other lies we tell ourselves
Are you being lazy or running on empty?
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot” – Michael Altshuler Sometimes it can be hard to tell whether we’re being lazy and need to get into gear, or whether we’re truly running on empty. When you have a task you’re avoiding, and you find yourself yet again distracting yourself…
Don’t die before your time
“Despair over the brevity of our chaotic lives is common to us all, even the rich and the famous.” – Seneca What makes life short How often do you notice that minutes or hours have passed and you have wasted time that you can now never recover? How often do you listen to yourself and…
How to write… and do other unpleasant tasks you’ve been avoiding
“Ask: What is so unbearable about this situation? Why can’t you endure it? You will be embarrassed to answer.” – Marcus Aurelius Among the dozens of academics and busy professionals I’ve worked with, writing projects were the number one type of work that they procrastinate on. If writing projects are a breeze for you, then…
Continue reading → How to write… and do other unpleasant tasks you’ve been avoiding
How to overcome the activation barrier
It is ultimately liberating to realize that you don’t have to feel like doing something in order to sit down and do it. Why we procrastinate You have a task to do. Maybe it’s a paper you have to write, a test you need to study for, charts you have to finish, or a presentation…
The compass, the clock, and the key
You need three lenses to think about how well you are managing your time: strategy, efficiency, and mental clarity. These lenses can also help you figure out the underlying causes of common problems like: I have too much on my plate; I can’t focus well when I sit down to work; I constantly procrastinate on…
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