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productivity

A collection of 70 issues

Productivity ≠ Self Worth

'Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” - Ferris Bueller Societally, we venerate productivity. Or at least a flattened version of it. Amanda Mull, staff writer at The Atlantic, wrote recently, “Americans invest personal productivity with

Appreciating a Disaster

Welcome! If you enjoy the blog, consider subscribing and forwarding to a friend. Join me every Tuesday as I develop my working theory of Three-Dimensional Productivity. A few weeks ago, I went to a concert with my mom. It was a disaster. Being the odd person I am, I

Your Contextual Value

Last week, a trip to the doctor led me to reflect on how one can provide their maximum and unique value. This week, I'm thinking about how the value that one brings depends heavily on the situation. Your value can be context dependent, which means that the more

Your Maximum & Unique Value

Ask any professional paid to provide me some type of service, and I think you'd hear something similar: I am a strange client who takes things off track (other than with lawyers — I know what they charge). The other day, I had an appointment with a new primary

2023 Productivity Year in Review

In December 2022, I wrote my first annual productivity review. As I started drafting the 2023 version, I hesitated about framing it like this again. Life is about so much more than being productive, right? One of my professional foci is productivity. I love learning about productivity tools, trying out

Solitude

I am a person who practices solitude. The syntax of that sentence probably sounds off, even clunky. We’ll come back to that. One of the unexpected benefits of going to University of Michigan in 2010 to complete my undergrad (after initially getting rejected - a blog for another time) was

The 5 AM Flight (and other questionable decisions)

So, here's the dilemma. Travel is an ever present part of my job, and I love it. I'm actually hard-pressed to think of a work trip within the last few years that I haven't been excited about for one reason or another. I&

Two Thousand and Two Ways to Feel Inadequate

Hello inadequacy, my old friend. I've come to battle you again. This morning, I woke up and did a quick scroll through LinkedIn. Within the first few minutes, I saw: * A project someone launched that I wish I had launched * A post from someone I keep meaning to

Write. It. Down.

I’m at a conference this week, where thousands of people will make thousands of connections and will commit to thousands of follow-up actions that won’t come to fruition. Sometimes that’s because the committers realize after walking away that the thing isn’t actually worth the follow-

2022 Productivity - Year in Review

In the last week of each year, I strive to do two work-adjacent things: (1) review the systems and mentalities I rely on to keep me on track, and (2) reset my caffeine tolerance (I read years ago that it only takes four days to do so, and I&