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Category: Time Management (Page 5 of 9)

The musicianʼs relationship to time

11/08/2016 /

In his book “Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life“, the great music educator Wynton Marsalis explains how swinging can alter how we experience change.
The musicianʼs relationship to time can be of ultimate assistance to us in:

1) adjusting to changes without losing your equilibrium;
2) mastering moments of crisis with clear thinking;
3) living in the moment and accepting reality instead of trying to force everyone to do things your way;
4) concentrating on a collective goal even when your conception of the collective doesnʼt dominate;
5) knowing how and when to expend your individual energy.

Wynton Marsalis, “Moving to higher ground: How jazz can change your life”

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Image source: Flickr – music2020 – (CC BY 2.0

Boost your memory and sharpen your time

28/07/2016 /

Just as time management is vital to the effectiveness of managers, so the management of memory is vital for their productivity and success. Organizing our thoughts is as important as organizing our desk. Our multitasking reality puts a strain on our memory since we have to manage at the same time different information and deadlines belonging to different duties and tasks.

In this free book “Boost your memory and sharpen your time” , Harold. L. Taylor explains how to train and increase our memory using it in our everyday job.

 

boost-your-memory-and-sharpen-your-mind

Brevity (in diplomacy)

14/04/2016 /

On August 9th, 1940, Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of UK, sent a Memorandum to the War Cabinet . He asked his staff to write shorter Reports and to avoid those useless phrases which could be replaced by one word.

In particular he wrote, in the final part of the Memorandum:

The saving in time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real point concisely will prove an aid to clearer thinking.

Copy of the original document is available at UK National Archives http://www.ukwarcabinet.org.uk/documents/345

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15 ingredients to be (emotionally) wealthy

07/04/2016 /

Sherrie Campbell in a post for the blog “Entrepreneur“ investigates a particular area of life which, if fully developed, may lead to everlasting happiness and success.

Sherrie’s thoughts could be considered as a recipe! You can imagine emotional wealth as a well-prepared dish to impress your loved one and each ingredient needs to be carefully picked!

Here are the ingredients:

1.Confidence is like the salt we put in boling water to cook pasta

2.Resilience is like the cooking pot

3.Keep looking forward is refraining from testing  during the preparation

4.Don’t compromise yourself: if you don’t like molecular cuisine, don’t do it!

5.Faith: believe in yourself and your abilities: the object of your desire will be satisfied!

6.Maturity: be patient, and choose no shortcuts (no frozen pizza, pre-packed sushi or home-delivered chinese, please!)

7.Discerning: proportion and quality of ingredients are always better than quantity, just as friends

8.Reality: you cook what you really want: no trendy recipes!

9.Readiness: put your cooking tools on the working board,

10.Self-preservation: you know when to stop cooking and have a sip of wine

11.Value time: or your soufflè will deflate…..

12.Have limits: no red wine with lobster, please!

13.Altruism: you cook for your loved one, not for your own glory

14.True to yourself: see n. 8!

15 Create happiness: it’s not a given, it’s an happiness-generator

For the full article read here

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Image source: Flickr – Anders Sandberg – (CC BY 2.0)

 

05/04/2016 /

Everyone strives for a reasonable work/life balance, but it’s a common experience that it is often very hard to reach. Professional help may come in handy.

In a recent Time magazine article Tim Ferriss, author of the international bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek, has shared six tips to enhance productivity, illustrated the science behind them, why they really work and have a positive impact on your daily routine.

  1. Manage Your Mood. Most productivity systems underestimate the impact of feelings. If you are calm and happy you are more likely to get your work done sooner and better.
  2. Don’t Check Email in The Morning. Checking your inbox first things first in the morning amounts to having your priorities hijacked by whoever has decided to send you a message.
  3. Before You Try To Do It Faster, Ask Whether It Should Be Done At All. Not all the things you are planning to do really need to be done before you call it a day. Focus only on what is really important and set your priorities accordingly.
  4. Focus Is Nothing More Than Eliminating Distractions.
    Concentration is key to successful prioritization.
  5. Have A Personal System. Productive people have a routine, a system of their own to get things done, and they stick to it.
  6. Define Your Goals The Night Before.
    If you wake up and you have already thought about what should be your priority during the day you are halfway to success.

Do you want to know more?

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Image source: Flickr – Matt Gibson (CC BY-NC 2.0)

 

Be orderly in life, be original in your work

22/03/2016 /

The contemplative life requires discipline and hard work, for sure. But it also seems to require some time indulging pleasures.

There is much fascinating variety in the daily habits of celebrity and creative humanists to be discovered browsing their biographies.

Monkish and lonely Nietsche used to eat incredible amounts of fruits at lunch, and a much loved beefsteak, before setting himself for long mountain walks in the Swiss Alps.

Prodigious Karl Marx was accustomed to working long hours at night, accompanied by ceaseless smoking.

Rather predictable and orderly Immanuel Kant tried to stick to the rule that he would smoke only one pipe, but the bowls of his pipes increased considerably in size as the years went on…

Remember Gustave Flaubert’s maxim?

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” Maybe, the addition of a little “bad habit” or two might help too!

Discover more here…

 

Nietzsche & Overbeck

 

Image source: Flickr – Karl-Ludwig Poggemann (CC – BY 2.0)

In praise of slowness

08/03/2016 /

Nowadays, we do everything fast. “We used to dial; now we speed dial. We used to read; now we speed read. We used to walk; now we speed walk. And of course, we used to date and now we speed date.And even things that are by their very nature slow — we try and speed them up too”. 

In this TED talk the journalist Carl Honoré, recalling his book “In praise of slowness”,  underlines how the Western world erroneously believes that to do things better you should speed them up. Instead, doing fast impairs our productivity and, above all, the quality of our life. Fortunately, according to Carl Honoré the trend is…slowly changing!

In praise of slowness

How jet lag hurts diplomats

03/03/2016 /

Jet lag is a pain for every traveler. For diplomats and leaders it can be a killer.  The effects of jet lag can impair leaders, diplomats and the negotiations they are engaged in.

In this article, published by The Washingotn Post, Dan Caldwell and William G. Hocking give us some examples of well-known leaders who suffered from the effects of jet lag.

This is the story of Secretary of State J.F.Dulles. In 1956 he agreed to provide Egypt with economic aid to build the Aswan dam. After a long return flight to the USA, he found out that Egypt had bought weapons from the Soviet Union. Therefore, he immediately decided to cancel the agreement just signed. Years later, Dulles regretted this decision and affirmed that it was due to the effects of jet lag.

The article indicates other anectodes involving leaders such as J. H.W. Bush, H. Kissinger, H. Clinton.

Possible strategies to cope with jet lag are the use of melatonin, a substance that helps sinchronysing the cyrcadian system, or the use of sleeping pills, as many leaders admit to do.

Another alternative for the Gouvernments could be the return to residential diplomacy, that means relying more on their diplomats posted in the foreign countries.

Read here the full article

Jet.Lag

Image source: commons.wikimedia.org

How to survive your day at work

23/02/2016 /

An article by The Guardian includes 10 tips on how to keep healthy at work by exercising and taking breaks:

1. Stand up: stand up frequently and do the same exercise you would on a long distance flight.

2. Get some fresh air: get out of the building and take a walk around the block.

3. Take the stairs, not the lift: great way to exercise!

4. Look away now: look away from the screen and at the furthest place you can see.

5. Turn your devices off in the evening and overnight: don’t give up your resting time!

6. Go to sleep: get enough sleep and nap if possible.

7. Take time for your lunch: no sandwiches at the desk!

8. Drink water:  keep hydrated.

9. Cut down on caffeine: coffee is dehydrating and it can affect how we sleep.

10. Do tasks for other people: altruism makes you feel better.

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Image source: tao-wellness.com

 

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