Leanne Nelson+ by | Mar 7, 2014 | Time management
Friday afternoons are tough. Focus wanes. Motivation has already left for the weekend. The clock ticks slower & slower. These five quick tips can help bring a sense of accomplishment to your Friday afternoon AND get you hitting the ground running on Monday. 1. Clean out your inbox (ruthlessly) That time sink that is email. Delete, file, unsubscribe, quickly reply. Do whatever you can to tame it so Monday morning isn’t consumed with email. 2. Review your schedule for next week Take a look over your diary to get a feel for the week ahead. Are there any meetings you can now cancel or consolidate? Do you need to do any preparation? Can you schedule another hour or two on your top priorities? 3. Evaluate your to do list – cull, reprioritise & determine next actions Your priorities over the week have no doubt changed. Take a few minutes to rejig your to do list, making sure you have clear next actions for each of your projects or to do’s. 4. Get your first task for Monday ready to go Don’t spend the first three coffees on Monday shuffling papers, trying to remember what it was you’d planned to do. Get everything ready for your first task (this might be as simple as a post-it on your desk), so you can walk in that door on Monday & Get. It. Done. 5. Tidy your work area File papers, bin rubbish & go wash the coffee cups. You’ll need them on Monday 😉 Bonus tip: Revisit your gains from the week. Finish the day on a high & give your self a...
Leanne Nelson+ by | Mar 5, 2014 | Time management
Are you looking for a 31% increase in productivity? Shawn Achor, psychologist and expert on the connection between happiness and success, says that five simple actions can make all the difference. Write 3 things you are grateful for each day Journal one positive experience from the last 24 hours Exercise Meditation Random acts of kindness Doing each of these for 21 days can create “ripples of positivity”, changing your outlook and making you more likely to achieve. Watch his very entertaining TEDx talk to learn more. [ted...
Leanne Nelson+ by | May 21, 2013 | Time management
You turn on your computer, go make a coffee and sit at your desk psyched for the day ahead. First things first, you check your email. Ugh. The inbox fairy bypassed you again last night. Even worse, there’s a good number more emails in there than when you shut it down last night. The scenario repeats during the day as you check, shuffle, reply and reread. All the while your inbox is growing more unwieldy, a greater source of stress, by the hour. What are the benefits of maintaining a nice inbox? You don’t waste valuable time checking each (usually not time critical) email as it arrives. Not only does it take time to check the message, it distracts your focus from the work you are doing. Time to check email + time to refocus on task at hand = Time you probably don’t have You don’t run the risk of missing important messages in a sea of irrelevant “stuff” When you do check your messages it will be a much quicker exercise There are a few simple processes that you can put in place, rather than let email chew up any more of your valuable time and mental energy that it needs to. 1. Keep the checking in check The first and possibly most important change is to minimise how often you check your email. Don’t let your time be guided by your inbox! Turn off email notifications. Very, very few people need an alert for each and every email as it arrives. If you have a job where it is critical you must see every email as...
Leanne Nelson+ by | Apr 5, 2012 | Time management
This is one of my favourite TED talks. It’s by Jason Fried, co-founder of Basecamp (online collaborative software) and author of the book Rework. Here, Jason talks about something we’ve probably all experienced – why it is sometimes so difficult to get any work done at...
