Time Management

How To Manage Workflow For Pressure-Prompted Procrastinators

Posted by on Jul 23, 2019 | 0 comments

This post first appeared on Forbes.com Confession: I don’t always practice what I preach. As a coach, I work with my clients to build habits that will support them in achieving their goals. Our approach typically involves creating structures that promote steady effort and accountability. Clients practice mindfulness to learn how to self-manage their emotions; leaders schedule a weekly “meeting with myself” for planning and prioritization; some create spreadsheets for tracking networking targets and follow-up; others write in gratitude journals. All of these are effective in cultivating the...

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How You Slice It

Posted by on May 27, 2011 | 0 comments

How You Slice It

What are your priorities? Are you living them? There’s a group called NotMyPriorities.org that hands out postcards depicting a pie chart of the United States’ budget. The Pentagon’s slice is well over half the pie, with each of the other categories (education, health, environment, justice, housing, etc.) occupying just a tiny wedge. My older daughter picked up this postcard from a sidewalk protester and asked us about the chart. Next thing you know my husband had us all (including our preschooler) drawing our own pies and dividing them up as we saw fit. “Imagine...

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Find Abundance Through Sharing

Posted by on Dec 18, 2010 | 0 comments

These days, scarcity is everywhere. As the media tell us daily, jobs are scarce, money is tight, credit is hard to get, and hope for speedy recovery is in short supply. On top of the financial pinch, many of us feel caught in a perpetual time crunch — there never seem to be enough hours in a day. Everywhere you look seems constrained, diminished. One great way to create a feeling of abundance is to share. Example: last weekend our family hosted our annual holiday party. Each year we invite friends and acquaintances from all aspects of our lives, I bake hundreds of cookies and other...

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The Four Bs of Balance

Posted by on Nov 30, 2010 | 0 comments

When my pals and I were in our twenties, I don’t remember worrying much about finding balance in our lives. We worked hard, played hard, stayed up late and damn the consequences. But now as a mid-career professionals, many of us with children, I find we are all talking about it, and I also hear it from my clients. We know that imbalance is inherently unstable and unsustainable, but it can be hard to envision a different way. So what is balance, and how can we achieve it? Stand on one foot and you’ll see that balance is not static. You wobble and waver. Even if you manage to stand...

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Bedtime Chicken

Posted by on Sep 19, 2010 | 0 comments

Lately, my husband and I have been playing a game of chicken. It goes like this: Both of us say that we want to go to bed earlier, but then as evening progresses, we each keep on working and wait for the other to blink first. Finally when it is well past our target time, one of us turns off the computer and heads upstairs and the other follows. Result? If anything, our bedtime has actually gotten later over the past month, even though we have started getting up earlier (FIVE AM!) to go to the gym. So what gives? Part of the explanation is epitomized by Jerry Seinfeld”s Night Guy/Day...

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Take a Day Off From Tech

Posted by on Aug 30, 2010 | 0 comments

I hereby declare my first No-Tech Sunday a success! After hemming and hawing, resisting and justifying … I did it. Saturday night I sent my last email and made a Facebook post (about going offline, of course!), and turned off the laptop. So that I wouldn’t forget, I stuck a Post-It on the lid announcing “NO TECH SUNDAY :)” And that was it until Monday morning.  Yes, I felt the urge to check, but I held firm.* On my quest to re-condition my responses  (see previous post), I achieved the following positive reinforcement of my behavior: Nipped several escalating conflicts in the bud...

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