How Dolly Parton stays focused and productive
Dolly Parton has written over 3,000 songs throughout her career, which spans more than six decades. She has three practices she’s internalised that enable her to stay in her creative zone and focused for longer.
How to amplify creativity and problem solving with Chat GPT
It’s easy to ask Chat GPT direct questions and get an answer. However its true power lies in unleashing its iterative conversational powers in a process called exploration driven enquiry.
Feeling guilty while on vacation is much worse than not going at all
If you feel guilty about pursuing leisure or vacation time at the expense of work you won’t get any of the gains of taking time out, says University of Rutgers Business School Professor Gabriela Tonietto. In fact, it will make you feel worse.
A smarter path involves focusing on the gains to your future productivity and mental health by taking time out over the guilt of leaving work behind.
How to outsmart work overload and bring back creativity
This week I learned how smart people can easily fall into the trap of over relying on their experience to solve problems when pressed for time, instead of remaining open to new and better ideas.
Using a cue and a simple thinking hack can help smart people outsmart this problem.
How ‘focused distraction’ leads to greater creativity
The key to maintaining productivity when you need to access your creativity isn’t taking days off, it’s building in focused distractions argues Michael Roberto in his book Unlocking Creativity. Small shifts in perspective, environment and activity quickly recharge the mind and overcome the inevitable brain lag that comes from creative overuse.
Become a better procrastinator to boost your productivity
Oliver Burkeman points out in his book Four Thousand Weeks, we are becoming overly obsessed with mastering something we will never be able to achieve. That is, we'll never be able to accomplish everything we’d like to in the time we’re alive. To accomplish more in the time we have, he argues, we should aim to become better procrastinators. This article shares how you can do that.
Why we are wired to believe working hard is a virtue and how to overcome it
University of British Columbia psychology professor Azim Shariff has found we have deeply engrained societal biases that link hard work to morality, even when that work has no purpose or value. This article shows how you can overcome this culture in your organisation.
Strategies to create weeks of ‘free time’
Three strategies that will create weeks of free time each year.