Category: “Personal Productivity”

Getting organized is relatively simple. Many believe that it is only a matter of choosing a good task management application and start to put things there. But then you have to maintain that organization. Most of these people jump from one application to another every time they start to lose control, believing they will find a tool that will provide them the balance their life needs. Good luck with it.

An Internet user just needs 50 milliseconds to form a first impression of the page he is visiting. It is even more interesting to know that, after a much longer lasting exposure to that page, the final impression hardly changes compared to that first and brief impression.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, thirty-fourth president of the U.S., thought that we should devote attention and time to our activities in accordance with their importance and urgency. He said, rightly, that we are too inclined to focus on the things that are both important and urgent, generating a reactive behavior based on what has to be done right now, instead of focusing on the things that are important and not urgent, which would be the basis of a more strategic behavior based on long-term goals.

Daniel Pink ensures in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us that the traditional motivation based on rewards and punishments is practically useless in the age of knowledge workers. Money may work at first, but once the needs you think are important are already met, it is not a source of motivation anymore. From there, the one that works is the intrinsic motivation that exists within the individual.

Some time ago I heard a very interesting podcast in which Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, was interviewed by David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, in an attempt to delve deeper into the intersection between the management of habits and personal productivity.