30 Things You Need To Stop Wasting Time On The modern world is fast paced and time often seems to slip by with us barely noticing. It’s for that reason that it’s important that we don’t spend time or attention on things that are frivolous, negative or just plan stupid. Check out our comprehensive guide to things you shouldn’t be wasting your time on, and see if there’s anything on this guide that you can cut out of your life. 1. Putting Makeup on for the gym and sports It looks weird and it’s only going to melt off, which negates the purpose of putting it on in the first place. 2. Get your lazy butt out of bed. 3. Try living life rather than waiting for an acquaintance to update you on how their lunch is going. 4. Life is far too short to waste your time on doing something you hate. 5. Did you hear your message tone? 6. In the immortal words of Vanilla Ice, “If there was a problem. 7. It’s similar to above. 8. Unless you’re getting good advice from people you love, disregard it. 9. 10. 11. Just do it. 12. 13. It’s what they want.
On Being Too Much for Ourselves: Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on Balance and the Necessary Excesses of Life by Maria Popova “There are situations in which it is more dangerous to keep your balance than to lose it.” “Something is always born of excess,” Anaïs Nin wrote in her diary in June of 1945 as she contemplated the value of emotional excess, adding: “Great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.” And yet our compulsive pursuit of balance — take, for instance, the tyrannical notion of work/life balance — is predicated on eradicating “excess,” pitting it as a counterpoint rather than a complement to equilibrium and inner wholeness. That paradoxical relationship is what the celebrated psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips examines in On Balance (public library) — a marvelous collection of essays on “the balancing acts that modern societies involve us in,” exploring the many myths that bedevil our beliefs about balance and impede our pursuit of it. We can only be really realistic after we have tried our optimism out.
Workaholic Americans don't take all their vacation Glassdoor's data are based on a Harris Poll of about 2,000 adults, including about 1,000 full- and part-time employees who were included in the questions about vacation. Stupid things employers ask job candidates The findings are in keeping with other research showing that Americans are likely to leave at least some of their vacation on the table, even when they are granted it. Of course, not all Americans are even getting the option of a paid vacation. The Glassdoor survey found that 78 percent of employees surveyed receive vacation or paid time off, while the remaining 22 percent reported not getting any paid vacation or time off. Stay-at-home dads struggle to shake Mr. Other researchers have found that the United States is an outlier when it comes to vacation. CEPR said its analysis found that 77 percent of U.S. workers get paid vacation time, and on average those workers receive 13 days of paid time off a year. Read MoreYes, your boss probably is happier than you are
The Importance of Punctuality The life of George Washington was characterized by a scrupulous regard for punctuality. When he asked a man to bring by some horses he was interested in buying at five in the morning, and the man arrived fifteen minutes late, he was told by the stable groom that the general had been waiting there at five, but had now moved on to other business, and that he wouldn’t be able to examine the horses again until the following week. When he told Congress that he’d meet with them at noon, he could almost always be found striding into the chamber just as the clock was striking twelve. Washington’s promptness extended to his mealtimes as well. And when Washington’s secretary arrived late to a meeting, and blamed his watch for his tardiness, Washington quietly replied, “Then you must get another watch, or I another secretary.” We may no longer live in an age of knickers and powdered wigs, but being punctual is just as important as it ever was. Why Is Being Punctual Important? Here’s why.
How To Achieve Work-Life Balance In 5 Steps Achieving work-life balance can look impossible. And, frankly, it seems like it’s getting harder. In the ten years from 1986 to 1996 work-life balance was mentioned in the media 32 times. In 2007 alone it was mentioned 1674 times. Via The ONE Thing: A LexisNexis survey of the top 100 newspapers and magazines around the world shows a dramatic rise in the number of articles on the topic, from 32 in the decade from 1986 to 1996 to a high of 1674 articles in 2007 alone. The Onion jokingly implies that the only way to achieve effective work/life balance is to not have a job: That’s hysterical — because it’s not remotely realistic. You Need To Draw A Line I’ve posted plenty of research on productivity, time management and procrastination — but that’s not the issue here. Those are hacks that help you be more efficient but in the modern world you are getting 25 hours of to-do’s thrown at you every 24 hours. Thinking that if you spend enough time you will “get everything done” is an illusion. Sum Up
Checking work emails at home? It's part of the job for most Americans The Single Most Important Habit of Successful Entrepreneurs In his book No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, business coach and consultant Dan Kennedy reveals the steps behind making the most of your frantic, time-pressured days so you can turn time into money. In this edited excerpt, the author describes the one habit you should adopt--and stick to without fail--if you want to be successful. I’m sure there are exceptions somewhere, but so far, in 35-plus years of taking note of this, everybody I’ve met and gotten to know who devoutly adheres to this discipline becomes exceptionally successful and everybody I’ve met and gotten to know who ignores this discipline fails. The discipline I'm talking about is punctuality -- being where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there, as promised, without exception, without excuse, every time, all the time. First of all, being punctual gives you the right—the positioning—to expect and demand that others treat your time with the utmost respect. Let me give you one example. Dan S.
Prioritize Your Life Before Your Manager Does It for You In their several years of working together, Jin-Yung had never really negotiated with her manager. She would simply say yes even if it threw her life into temporary turmoil, as it often did. She had given unknowable hours to executing every request and task, diligently delivering them in neat and complete packages, no matter the sacrifice. After attending a workshop I was teaching on “essentialism,” or the disciplined pursuit of less, she decided to create a social contract to draw some boundaries at work. However, in the midst of her wedding planning, her manager asked her to take on an additional project prior to an upcoming board meeting because someone else on the team had dropped the ball. At first, her boss was fuming. Jin-Yung was so affected by this experience that she decided to incorporate the experience into her vows, promising that she would prioritize her relationship with her husband above all others. Rule 1: You can’t negotiate if you don’t know what you want.
notes on "i am not busy" The not telling people “I am busy” plan. I’ve been working on this plan for a while now. I just added it to my daily Lift habits so I thought I would write about it. When I first started working in tech I regularly worked 10 to 14 hour days. I’d be home by midnight, sleep, get up, shower, and drive back into work. It felt like I was doing critical, valuable work. Everything was an emergency. But the truth is: nothing we did was all that important. When I left Federated Media and started my own company I decided I wanted to try working a bit slower and with more focus. I work until 6pm. During the six months we were making MLKSHK we shipped like crazy. So the final piece I have been working on is never telling people I am busy. Rather than say: “I am too busy, I don’t have any time for X.” EVERYONE has a lot of stuff to do because there IS a lot of stuff to do.
The Four Burners Theory: The Downside of Work-Life Balance One way to think about work-life balance issues is with a concept known as The Four Burners Theory. Here's how it was first explained to me: Imagine that your life is represented by a stove with four burners on it. Each burner symbolizes one major quadrant of your life. The first burner represents your family.The second burner is your friends.The third burner is your health.The fourth burner is your work. The Four Burners Theory says that “in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. Three Views of the Four Burners My initial reaction to The Four Burners Theory was to search for a way to bypass it. Perhaps I could combine two burners. Maybe I could combine health and work. Soon I realized I was inventing these workarounds because I didn't want to face the real issue: life is filled with tradeoffs. Essentially, we are forced to choose. What is the best way to handle these work-life balance problems? Option 1: Outsource Burners Work is the best example. For example:
The Origin of the 8-Hour Work Day and Why We Should Rethink It One of the most unchanged elements of our life today is our optimal work time or how long we should work – generally, every person I’ve spoken to quotes me something close to 8 hours a day. And data seems to confirm that: The average American works 8.8 hours every day. At least, those are the official statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: And yet, for most of us it is obvious that knowing how long the average person works every day has little to do with how efficient or productive that pattern is. At least, that is what I personally found for my own productivity. So what’s the the right hourly rate? With success stories from people working 4 hours a week, to 16 hours a day, it’s hard to know if there is an optimal amount. Share stories like this to your social media followers when they’re most likely to click, favorite, and reply! Why do we have 8 hour work days in the first place? Let’s start out with what we have right now. So there we have it. 1.) Sounds fairly obvious right?
No, You Don’t Have to Work 24/7 to Succeed - Michael Hyatt I love Amazon, but like many I was disturbed by what I read in the New York Times’ recent exposé. Still, I was actually more disturbed by what came next. Courtesy of iStock/NoDerog I read defenses of Amazon from entrepreneurs, leaders, tech writers, and others. That wasn’t the problem. What bothered me was the widely held assumption that this kind of environment is necessary for profitable, competitive companies—as if entrepreneur were just another word for workaholic. Can we just label this what it is? Winning at Work and Succeeding at Life Anyone who knows me, reads this blog, or listens to my podcast knows I’ve always been a high-achiever. I’ve also made a lot of sacrifices at the expense of my family and health over the years. Now my mission is to help people win at work and succeed at life. Actions Reveal Our Values The Amazon story jumped out for me because I was planning a strategic retreat for my company to look at the past year and set goals for the next several years. Why?