Life Of E's

Lencioni, Patrick. Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business.
First of all, what a great title! As someone who has endured hundreds…no, make that thousands…of meetings that were deadly, the title caught my eye immediately. The content did not let me down. Lencioni’s “fable” books (e.g., The Five Dysfunctions [...]

Tags: book review, business meetings, meetings, Patrick Lencioni

Here are five more ways to be proactive about keeping chaos at bay. Implement the following ideas to avoid letting the telephone “steal” your time:

Use caller ID. If calls are coming through that are “unknown”, then you can feel better about not picking up the phone.
Put your number on “Do Not Call” registries. This works for home [...]

Tags: telephone, time thieves

Implement the following ideas to avoid letting the telephone “steal” your time (and of course, it’s not the “telephone” that is stealing your time, now is it?)

Don’t answer the phone. If you are doing something that has your attention, don’t pick up the phone. Let your machine or voice mail pick it up. We often [...]

Tags: interrruptions, telephone, time thieves

OMG!  I love this idea.  It fits right in with my idea of setting my timer for 30 minutes for LOTS of my projects, but I love how this is explained.
I first read about it in Daphne Gray-Grant’s column in www.MyFavoriteThesaurus.com’s daily e-magazine.  She recommended this fabulous blog post… 
…and also let readers know about the [...]

Jay, Joelle. The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership
This may be my favorite book of 2009 – and on into 2010.  WOW!  Dr. Joelle Jay is a master coach who has worked with executives around the country.  The insights and wisdom she has provides in this book, along with the tools available in [...]

Tags: book review, innner edge, Joelle Jay, leadership, personal development

I’m a big Getting Things Done (David Allen) fan.  He shared this in one of his recent email messages:
The fundamental thinking process of GTD (Getting Things Done) is simple, but not simplistic. Whether you are applying it to an email that just landed in your inbox, a problem that just showed up for you to solve, [...]

Tags: David Allen, Getting Things Done

Used with permission from Melinda Copp, who is one of the contributors to the TTPT for Writers:  www.TopTenProductivityTipsforWriters.com. 
Copyrighting your book is an important step in the process of becoming an author because it helps protect against people taking or using your work without permission. But how do you get a copyright? And when should you file for [...]

Tags: copyright, copyrighting, Melinda Copp, Writer's Sherpa, writing

If you are a teacher or presenter or speaker, I highly recommend Throat Coat tea.  You can buy it at Trader Joe’s or other stores.  It is not the best tasting stuff but it makes a huge difference.

Recently, a subscriber to the Top Ten Productivity Tips (the original series…so named since there are now 8 different series) recently sent me this:
I was just re-reading this great TTPT about using your planner productively and realize that I struggle with implementing this. I’m hoping you can point me to some answers.
For many years, I’ve used [...]

Tags: Circa, Franklin Covey, planners, projects, tasks

How is it that a bright, motivated professional can procrastinate day after day, month after month, and year after year? Because procrastination works. It keeps you from having to do the task that you just hate to do. Well here’s the news, folks, you can break the habit!
1.  Can you pay (a reasonable sum) to [...]

Tags: delegate, Delegation, procrastination, procrastinator, Productivity, projects, put off