Insights
How to follow through with your best laid plans: Create nested goals
Sarah Hart-Unger plans for a living. She is a practicing pediatric endocrinologist, host of the Best Laid Plans podcast, co-host of Best of Both Worlds, and author of Best Laid Plans: A Simple Planning System for Living a Life That You Love. I asked her to walk me through her own planning system from the […]
Systems beat willpower: Avoiding the dragon is easier than slaying it
I’ve been interviewing high performers in a range of fields to find out how they work, and how they win the mental game of time management. This week’s high performer is Alex Ostberg. He is a full-time program manager for the Geriatric Emergency Department Collaborative, which is how I know him, and he is also […]
Done is better than perfect
I’ve been interviewing high performers in a range of fields about how they win the mental game of time management. Some themes come up again and again. Other things are very individualized, such as the systems each person has built to fit their own life and work. I’ll be sharing the best of it here, […]
Invest in each other: A strategic approach for success as a couple
Invest in each other: A strategic approach for success as a couple If you’re part of a couple then guess who will have the biggest impact on your life and your success? Yep, it’s your partner/spouse. Despite that, it’s easy to go for years without sitting down and thinking through your individual and shared goals. Here […]
Create more holiday harmony
How to create more holiday harmony. First, take a deep breath, and take a look at your expectations. During the holidays, we often feel more stress than at other times of the year. It’s a time when we pack in more things than usual, we may have stressful family interactions, or we may miss loved […]
Let your soul catch up with your body
This quote about the effect of constant distraction on our brains always stops me in my tracks: “Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work.” – Cal Newport, Deep Work That idea always renews my desire to cut down on frenetic shallowness and avoid […]
Why your identity narrative matters
Why your identity narrative matters Do you know how lobsters grow bigger shells? First, they start to feel a little tight in their existing shell. Then, they go find a rock or safe space to hide under while they shed their protective exoskeleton. Free of the restrictive outer shell, they then grow a new, bigger […]
How to get rid of distractions
How to get rid of distraction Imagine a workday in which you are fully focused on the tasks you are doing. Your phone is silent, off, or stowed away. You have no constant dings of new Teams messages or emails. Your door is shut. Your computer only has the files that you need open. And, […]
Time management tips: Wrong answers only
Time management tips: Wrong answers only In honor of April Fools’ Day, here are my top anti-hacks, welcoming pitfalls, and wrong-answer-only time management tips. Watch out though, some of them may hit a little too close to home. We have probably all fallen prey to some of these pitfalls in the past. If you find […]
How to get off the rumble strips and love your journey
How to get off the rumble strips and love your journey Do you ever find yourself overwhelmed or constantly at your wit’s end with all that you have to do? This can feel like driving a car bumping along the “rumble strips,” those grooves in the payment designed to slow vehicles down and alert them […]
Make New Year’s habits not resolutions
Make New Year’s habits not resolutions Setting New Year’s resolutions that quietly fall by the wayside within the month is so common as to be cliché this time of year. What if this year could be different? What if at the end of 2023 you thought differently, acted differently, and accomplished more of what mattered […]
What’s the big deal about coaching?
What’s the big deal about coaching? Coaching can help you break through barriers, get unstuck, rediscover your passions, and be more effective in your life and career. When my kids were little, they took gym classes. At five years old, they didn’t need a professional coach. They had fun and learned some skills at a […]
To-Do List Don’ts – Part 2
To-Do List Don’ts – Part 2 To-do lists can help ensure we are working on what matters most to us. A to-do list can also reduce the cognitive load in trying to keep track of too much in our brains. Research shows that just the act of writing something down that comes into your head […]
To-Do List Don’ts – Part 1
To-Do List Don’ts – Part 1 A functional system to manage your projects and tasks can save you heartache, missed deadlines, and mental overwhelm. But here’s the key, it has to be functional. The best-laid plans and resolutions to finally use that to-do list app, put everything into your google tasks, or get yourself together often fall by the […]
Deep Reset for a Midlife Renaissance – Part 1
Deep Reset for a Midlife Renaissance – Part 1 I’m in the middle of a deep reset. This is a time in which I’m assessing my current practices, how I spend my time, where I focus, and deciding what habits and practices I want to keep or change. Having just finished my MBA and received […]
How to fill the unforgiving minutes
How to fill the unforgiving minutes How many times do we tell ourselves: I only have 5, 10, or 20 minutes free, I can’t get anything done? I frequently think about the lines from the poem If by Rudyard Kipling: If you can fill the unforgiving minute With 60 seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the world […]
How to (almost) never have a bad shift
How to (almost) never have a bad shift Walking through the sliding glass doors at 10:55pm on a Monday, I found myself wondering if it would be a good shift or a bad shift. In Emergency Medicine a “good shift” has to strike many delicate balances. It can’t be too busy, but it also can’t […]
How to persevere
How to persevere The end of COVID is in sight but there are still months to go. Maybe you have been struggling with getting things done while working from home and de facto homeschooling your kids. Perhaps you’re feeling cooped up after a year of going only from your home to the grocery store and work. Or, […]
The Joy Quest
The Joy Quest Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow. HELEN KELLER At the start of this year, I decided to go on a Joy Quest. Too often, we rush from one mental worry to the next and we don’t take the time to notice, experience, and create […]
Time management strategies with a new baby
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 […]
How to do things when you just don’t want to
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 […]
New Year’s Revelations
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 […]
The magic of willpower and habits
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 […]
“I’ll feel more like doing this later” and other lies we tell ourselves
“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. […]
Are you being lazy or running on empty?
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, […]
Don’t die before your time
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 […]
How to write… and do other unpleasant tasks you’ve been avoiding
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 […]
How to overcome the activation barrier
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 […]
The compass, the clock, and the key
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 […]
Don’t lose today
Don’t lose today “The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what is in Fortune’s control and abandoning what lies in yours.” – Seneca, On the Shortness of Life1 When you think about how to manage your time, it may seem counter-intuitive to focus on the present. […]
Why time management?
Why time management? What would it feel like for you to have no stress at all around how you manage your time? What would it mean for you to be in total control of everything you have to get done? If you feel like you’ve hit a plateau with how much you can accomplish, what […]
