Tag Archives: productivity

Beyond the Blog

The people who bring you the Portfolio Javelin also produce a monthly podcast, the Penguin Business Beat. This month, we interviewed professionals in the creative fields who shared their expertise on turning vision into reality and ideas into successful finished projects.

Check it out to hear Portfolio’s president and publisher Adrian Zackheim, Behance CEO and author of Making Ideas Happen Scott Belsky, 800-CEO-READ‘s Jack Covert, and Dan Roam, author of Unfolding the Napkin and The Back of the Napkin.

You can listen to all our shows here.

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We’re also on the radio! Listen to Sirius Book Radio on Mondays at 3 pm and Thursdays at 11:30 pm to hear the Business Beat and other shows from our fellow Penguin radio hosts.

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Godin and Pressfield on what’s really holding you back

Fans of Seth Godin and Steven Pressfield, authors of Linchpin and The War of Art, respectively, were in for a treat last night. The two authors and motivators of creative productivity met for the first time at the Columbus Circle Borders to discuss why they write and what holds so many people back. They were tossing out gems faster than we could write them down. Among the best:

  • Self help is the only real kind of help there is.
  • Seth on success: The only thing all successful people have in common is that they’re successful, so don’t waste your time copying “the successful strategies” of others.
  • Steven on fighting the resistance: There is no trick, no royal road, to not take that drink or watch that TV show.
  • Seth on schools: Facts are free – you can look anything up on Wikipedia. What we need to teach now is how to interpret.
  • Steven on how to consistently do creative work: It’s the difference between thinking of yourself as an amateur or a pro. Anyone can be an amateur, but only a pro will be out there training on the rainiest day of the year.

The place was pretty packed, so we had to sneak a photo of the event from behind the Borders’ Valentine’s Day table:

Luckily, the authors agreed to a close-up later in the night:

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Time Management and Planning Your Day

A thoughtful post by Peter Bregman at the Harvard Business blog offers advice on setting priorities and planning your day first thing in the morning. It aligns with what I’ve read in books on time management like The Now Habit and on time management blogs like Zenhabits (where I learned the similar MIT technique), and with my own experience:

STEP 1 (5 Minutes) Set Plan for Day. Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful. What can you realistically accomplish that will further your goals and allow you to leave at the end of the day feeling like you’ve been productive and successful? Write those things down.

Read the rest of the article for the complete 18-minute routine.

Harvard Business blog: An 18-minute plan for managing your day

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In Search of Lost Time…Spent in Meetings

meetingThere’s a thoughtful essay in the New York Times about the inefficient use of meetings, and how that impacts our productivity:

In business, we like to convert time to money, and the reverse. But in practice, time and money are different. We can get more money, save it, move it between accounts and use it on demand. These operations don’t apply easily to time.

Time is the most perishable good in the world, and it is not replenishable. You can’t earn an extra hour to use on a busy day. Nonetheless, we usually have a vague feeling that there is plenty of time — somewhere in the future — so we waste it now and carelessly steal time from our families, friends or ourselves when we come up short at the end of a workday and need to stay an extra hour.

The author, Reid Hastie, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, offers some good advice, particularly the idea of holding one person accountable for each meeting’s success. If the meeting-leader doesn’t get things rolling and make sure everyone’s time is used judiciously, someone else runs the next one.

New York Times: Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time

(photo courtesy of officenow)

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