No, I haven’t finished Barack Obama’s new memoir yet. I’ll be making my way through its 700+ pages for another few weeks, but I wanted to share one early passage that really grabbed me. After I read it the first time, I read it again out loud to Jennifer and could hardly get through it. I kept choking up. . . .
Author: Paul Knight
Small Productivity Improvements Can Make an Outsize Difference
One thing many people don’t realize as they try to improve their productivity is just how big a difference a small improvement can make.
When I was working full time as a manager in the R&D division of a large pharmaceutical company, it was not uncommon for me and my peers to spend three-fourths of a typical workday in various meetings. Much of the remaining time could easily be taken up dealing with email. That left almost no time for our “real” work — the skilled, generative efforts that the company presumably paid us to do. . . .
How Many of Our Adaptations to the Pandemic Will Persist Once It’s Over?
The news has been full of articles about how the pandemic has likely hastened the demise of movie theaters, the decline of brick-and-mortar retail, and the growth of working from home, but I wonder how many other changes, big and small, will persist once the pandemic is over. . . .
A Coronavirus Hymn Parody
My mother came across the hymn hymn parody below on her church’s Facebook page. It was written by R.G. Huff, an actual composer of hymns. Here’s what he wrote to accompany the sheet of music . . .
Facebook is Tearing Our Society Apart
I read this interesting OpEd piece by Charlie Warzel in this morning’s New York Times about how Facebook’s newsfeed serves up “hyperpartisan rumormongering and conspiratorial misinformation” to tens of millions of Americans. “Touching family moments and Bible quotes that look like Hallmark cards” Warzel writes, are interspersed with hateful, vitriolic attacks and debunked conspiracy theories. . . .
The Neighborhood Christmas Tree
For years, my neighborhood has gathered to celebrate the holidays on a Sunday in December. The outdoor event features the lighting of a Christmas tree and a menorah, and a visit from Santa. We’re doing it again this year, though with some notable differences. Rather than sitting on Santa’s lap, the kids will chat with him from their own chair six feet away.
The party is held at a house that sits on a corner lot with a big front yard. There’s a pine tree in that yard that used to serve as our Christmas tree, but it eventually grew so too tall that we would have needed a bucket lift to decorate it. For a few years we pointed one of those holiday light projectors at the tree to illuminate it, but that couldn’t compare with a tree strung with real lights. Last year we went looking for an artificial tree, but found that any tree tall enough would have been hugely expensive. . . .
Food for Thought: Complexity vs. Simplicity
During my last few years working full time, I was responsible for overseeing a range of various initiatives my company was doing in its R&D division to improve the efficiency of various business processes. . . . During that time I came across a quote that I found hugely insightful and also highly relevant to the work I was doing. . . .
Giving Thanks
Even though there are only three of us at Thanksgiving dinner today, it’s still a multicourse meal so there’s a lot to do. Thus, I’m going to keep it short and just note a few of the things I’m thankful for. . . .
Experimenting With Time-Blocking – Part 2
Yesterday I wrote about how Cal Newport diverges from David Allen’s GTD orthodoxy regarding how to make the best use of your workday. Even though I’m mostly retired, I decided to experiment with the approach Newport recommends, which he calls “time-blocking.”
For the last few days I’ve been sitting down after breakfast and planning my day by allocating blocks of time to the various activities and projects I want to work on. To be clear, Newport does not suggest that we time-block every waking hour; he recommends time-blocking only the workday. But since I don’t have a “workday” in the usual sense of the word, and since this was an experiment, I decided to time-block my entire day. . . .
Experimenting With Time-Blocking – Part 1
As anyone who knows me is aware, I’m a fan of David Allen, the personal productivity guru and author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. I’ve been a practitioner and proponent of Allen’s “GTD” methodology for more than 20 years, have had dinner with him twice, and attended his big “GTD Summit” in Amsterdam last year.
Recently I’ve been listening to a podcast called Deep Questions hosted by Cal Newport, another productivity expert and author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World and Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Like me, Newport is an admirer of David Allen and endorses much of his GTD approach, but believes there’s one important thing Allen got wrong. . . .