Organizing Your Priorities

January 4, 2026Leave a comment

What do you want to accomplish in 2026?

The start of a new year is a traditional time to think about desired goals. However, to be successful in achieving those goals it is important to have one’s personal priorities in order. The right mental approach is vital to success. So, how do we get organized enough to create the conditions to make it happen?

For helpful advice on how to organize priorities, we turn to Marie Kondo. Her KonMari Method™ has helped many people organize their belongings. This year she gives advice beyond tidying a closet. Instead it starts with tidying your digital life.

One of the tenets of the KonMari Method™ is to always tidy first. We can only fully organize when we’ve let go of what’s weighing us down and holding us back.

Before layering on new goals or routines, take a moment to tidy the items and techniques that support your daily routine, weekly schedule and year-round priorities.

Kondo recommends focusing on getting the calendar in order, emptying the inbox, and then organizing the digital desktop. These non-physical items can easily be forgotten or seem unimportant. Yet, maintaining them is an important first step for getting priorities in order.

Next, she suggests creating on a set of clearly written goals.

Your goals are the guideposts that bring clarity to your path. Take some time to identify what you’d like to accomplish in the coming month, six months, and year.

Short-term goals anchor your weeks, like completing a project or trying a new organizational tool.
Mid-term goals sustain your momentum, like improving a skill or cultivating a new habit.
Long-term goals inspire you, pulling you forward toward a vision of your ideal life.

Write these goals down, either in a journal or planner, to bring them to life. Studies show that putting pen to paper significantly increases your likelihood of achieving your aspirations. For more, read our guide to setting joy-sparking goals.

To discover her remaining three suggestions for organizing priorities, please read the rest of her posting.

Time for a Yearly Review

December 28, 2025Leave a comment

With 2025 coming to a close, have you taken the time to review the entirety of the past year?

A core component of the GTD methodology is the weekly review. This is an ongoing opportunity at the end of your workweek to review what was accomplished, identify unfinished work, and to look ahead to the following week. In fact, David Allen, GTD’s Creator, has always stressed the importance of this habit.

“The Weekly Review is the time to: Gather and process all your stuff. Review your system. Update your lists. Get clean, clear, current, and complete. You have to use your mind to get things off your mind.”

A yearly review is the logical extension of the weekly review, but on a higher level of focus. This is an opportunity to consider the status of your larger goals and update your long-term vision. It is a chance to bring clarity to the big dreams and ambitions that provide forward momentum. Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to focus solely on your job. The yearly review can cover all aspects of your life, including personal goals, health concerns, financial plans, and relationships.

Where does the yearly review start? It can begin with the following questions:

What were your wins?
What are you grateful for?
What risks did you take?
What is your unfinished business?
What was your biggest surprise?

After evaluating the past, the yearly review shifts to exploring the future. Again, focusing questions help with this task.

What would you like to be your biggest win?
How are you planning to improve your financial situation?
What are you looking most forward to learning?
What will be your biggest risk?

Are you ready to take on this challenge? If so, then dive right in. The steps to do a yearly review can be found on the GTD website.

Happy 2026! I wish you all a great new year!

Give Yourself a Gift – Take Time Off!

December 14, 2025Leave a comment

With the holiday season fully upon us, no doubt you have made a gift list for the loved ones in your life. However, what do you plan to gift yourself? While new clothes and fancy toys are always fun, why not give yourself a gift that improves your health and leads to greater connection opportunities. It is the simple act of taking time off.

In an article for Psychology Today titled, The Importance of Taking a Break from Work, clinical psychologist Monica Vermani explores the reasons why taking time off of work is a health care prescription. She starts the article with the sad fact that most Americans fail to take their allotted vacation time.

According to a recent Pew Research survey, 46 percent of employees take less time off than their employer offers. In 2022, according to Qualtrics research, American workers left an average of 9.5 vacation days unused. Recent Canadian statistics paint an even bleaker picture, with just 29 percent of employees taking full advantage of paid time off.

That’s not all. In a 2023 ELVTR poll of 2,300 North American employees, most reported working while on vacation. Many also reported that weekends and nonworking hours are far from off-limits.

This failure to disconnect from work can lead to burn-out and other health issues. Therefore, Vermani advocates for taking a true and complete break from work. She points out that doing this is vital to your mental health.

The value of taking that postponed vacation and setting reasonable boundaries around minimizing communication with work colleagues outside of working hours are many, including stress and burnout prevention, gaining new perspectives on workplace stressors, improving mental and physical health, and improved sleep. Furthermore, vacations can be especially effective at raising levels of happiness, making time to reconnect with family and friends, and exploring locations and activities that foster joy and inspiration. Vacation time is also known to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. Time away from the daily grind also expands our creative abilities.

She then shares why setting heathy boundaries is important to everyone.

Our time and energy are valuable—and finite—assets. At the end of the day, it is our responsibility to build healthy boundaries around our finite resources. Building healthy boundaries is all about prioritizing our mental and physical health, well-being, and needs, and building awareness of the causes and signs of workplace burnout, including trouble concentrating, exhaustion, irritability, a decrease in productivity, and physical symptoms, like headaches, muscle aches, gastrointestinal issues, and changes in sleep routines.

To learn more, including her six steps to creating a healthier work/life balance, please read the rest of the article. In the meantime, it is not too late to schedule that holiday vacation. Whether it is a trip out of town or staying home, either way make sure you enjoy some much-needed downtime.

The Important Thing That Kind People Do Differently

November 30, 2025Leave a comment

In case you missed it, November 13 was World Kindness Day. It is a special time to remind everyone that being kind does not cost you a penny. In fact, when people perform an act of kindness, they not only benefit the person who receives it, but they themselves and everyone who sees it happen all feel better as a result.

Of course, you can, and should, be kind every day. Yet, people often underestimate the power of kindness. They believe that in this cruel world only pure self-interest will make a person successful. Therefore, is kindness a form of weakness?

The Kindness Extremist Shola Richards would say firmly that kindness is a strength. In a recent blog post, Shola shared the main thing that kind people contribute to the world.

Here’s something that kind people do, that the rest of the world does not:

They give a damn about issues that don’t affect them personally.

In our increasingly polarized world, this kind of expansive empathy has become not just uncommon, it’s damn near revolutionary. he shared the main difference that kind people have over others.

Why is this important? Shola starts by pointing out why selfish people offer very little to the world.

When we only care about issues that directly affect us, we create a world where problems persist because the people with the power to solve them don’t experience the pain of those problems personally. (Please re-read that sentence).

He then shares why approaching the world through the lens of kindness makes a huge difference not only to others, but to yourself as well.

Here’s what I know for sure: kindness isn’t about creating a world that works just for me and people like me. It’s about creating a world that works for everyone.

And to be painfully clear, this isn’t about unnecessary guilt or performative activism.

This is about recognizing that our individual wellbeing is connected to the collective wellbeing of our communities and our world.

Read the full blog post on Shola’s Kindness Extremist website.

The Winner’s Curse

November 11, 2025Leave a comment

Can you win and yet still lose?

It is a common assumption that winning is a positive thing and most of the time that is true. However, are their situations when being the winner is actually a net negative experience? According to Nobel Prize winning Behavioral Economist Richard Thaler, this happens more often than you think.

In a recent Planet Money episode, host Greg Rosalsky, explores Thaler’s concept of “The Winner’s Curse.” This idea arose from Thaler’s pushback against traditional economics.

In column after column, Thaler shined a spotlight on anomalies that didn’t fit with the tidy, mathematical portrayal of humans in popular economic models (“Anomalies” was actually the title of the column.)

One anomaly Thaler highlighted was what he called “The Winner’s Curse.” The winner’s curse refers to the winners of auctions. That includes the classic auction with auctioneers speaking really fast, selling antiques or paintings or whatever. But it also applies to markets where people competitively bid against each other to buy something, which includes things like bidding wars over buying a house, companies competing to acquire other companies, and sports teams fighting to sign star rookies in a draft.

What Thaler challenged was the idea that winning is everything. In his view, sometimes it was better not to win because the economic benefit of the item in question is outweighed by the cost of acquiring it in the auction.

In the standard economic way of seeing auctions, the winner is someone who values it the most after a careful cost-benefit analysis of what they’re bidding on, using the best available information. Presumably, the winner is, well, the winner. But what if the winner is, more often than not, actually the loser? What if winners, systematically, are the ones who pay too much for what they’re buying?

In one of his columns, Thaler suggested exactly that. That, actually, in competitive auctions, the winner is often the one who makes a mistake and overpays. That is, the winner is someone who — perhaps irrationally — buys something for more than it’s worth. Hence the curse.

The Winner’s Curse is not limited to auctions. Think about the number of times you have rushed to buy the last item on sale and later discovered it wasn’t worth the money. Or consider the game show contest who wins a prize yet is now required to pay high taxes afterwards in order to claim it. We see it in professional sports teams who trade away too many players and draft picks in order to claim on supposed superstar who then flops.

So how does one avoid The Winner’s Curse? Thaler has a simple answer.

Thaler told us: “The way you have to think about bidding in an auction is: if I win the auction, will I be happy?”

To read more about The Winner’s Curse and how to avoid it, please read the rest of the Planet Money article.

Surviving vs Thriving

October 26, 2025Leave a comment

Are you only surviving at your job or are you thriving at work?

Every year the folks at O.C. Tanner release their Global Culture Report. This is an insightful look across the world at how organizations of all types are holding up in terms of developing strong cultures. In last year’s report, one element that O.C. Tanner explored was whether employees are thriving at work or merely surviving. How do they define the difference between the two states? Below is an excerpt from the report’s introduction.

People who are merely surviving feel anxious, financially uncertain, doubtful of growth opportunities, and pessimistic about the future. Their struggles at work impact their ability to survive outside of work. As an employee in one focus group said, “Not surviving at work will affect everything to a point where it’s scary.”

Contrast that with people who are thriving. They feel their organization cares about their mental health, they work in a cooperative workplace, and they have opportunities for growth and mentorship along a clearly defined career advancement path. They have hope.

How does an organization move its employees from a survival situation to a thriving state? O.C. Tanner suggests using what it calls a Total Rewards strategy.

The modern workplace requires a Total Rewards strategy designed to help employees survive and thrive. Rather than provide an exhaustive list of offerings, organizations should prioritize meeting employees’ basic needs, and the goal of Total Rewards should be to demonstrate how the organization cares and wants everyone to thrive at work.

Categorically speaking, offerings like competitive compensation and health benefits are considered basic, help provide financial stability, and meet survival needs. Offerings such as career development and skill building move beyond the required to provide long-term growth and satisfy other criteria to thrive. Interestingly, recognition is a practice that provides a bridge to help employees feel seen and valued at any stage of surviving or thriving. Keeping these distinctions top of mind helps Total Rewards leaders prioritize care at the core of their compensation and benefits mix.

To learn more about the Total Rewards strategy, please read the rest of the O.C. Tanner Culture Report Introduction.

Do You Do Low-Value Work?

September 28, 2025Leave a comment

Do you have more to do than you have time to do it in?

It is a common problem for knowledge workers to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of possible tasks and projects on the table. The challenge is determining which one of the many items are priorities, which would be nice to do, and which are really not worth the time. Is there a way to make this assessment?

A few years ago, Priscilla Claman tackled this problem in the Harvard Business Review with an article called Stop Doing Low-Value Work. She believes part of the problem is that knowledge workers tend to inherit tasks from other workers, especially when those people leave the organization.

Although the jobs went away, much of the work didn’t. Teachers ended up with more children in a classroom; customer service representatives ended up with more phone calls; and managers ended up with more people to manage as teams were consolidated. No matter the job, everyone ended up with a lot more work.

Image generated with WordPress AI Image Generator

Therefore, how can a knowledge worker identify and eliminate low-value work? One way is through automation. This is especially true with the new AI tools, although the article was written before the Chat GPT revolution.

Whether you are talking about scheduling, acknowledging, or making standard arrangements, there are probably existing applications that you could use. Just figure out what you want to do and find someone to help you do it.

She also suggests simply asking around to see if there are tasks that are now unnecessary. Then with that permission drop the items from your list.

Another approach is to ask your clients if you can not do something, just the way retail store clerks now ask people if they really want their receipts. The idea is simply to stop doing something that isn’t important, but to check first so that it doesn’t get you into trouble.

To learn more about how to eliminate low-value tasks from your lists, please read the rest of the article.

Don’t Get Fooled or Conned Again

September 21, 2025Leave a comment

Have you ever been fooled?

For example, being tricked into a purchase you didn’t need, or falling for an online scam. It seems like we are exposed to more and more cons every day. Therefore, how can we better defend ourselves from in person and online tricksters?

A few years ago, Daryl Chen posted an article on the TED Ideas website titled, Don’t Get Fooled or Conned Again: Here are the 5 Tactics to Look Out For. Chen began by examining the problem. The challenge he finds is that being fooled happens internally.

What’s fascinating about examples like these is that while they’re perpetrated by other people or entities, the real work of persuasion largely takes place in our heads, according to UK-based presenter and broadcaster Alexis Conran. “Magic and sales and scams and political beliefs all happen in the mind of the spectator,” Conran points out in a TEDxBerlin talk.

Chen proceeds to discuss the first way that we are often fooled. It is through the simple use of misdirection.

Misdirection is an age-old tactic used by thieves of all kinds. It’s why pickpockets snatch wallets when they know we’re occupied by an outdoors concert or fireworks display or by reading our phones or books while we commute.

Misdirection can occur on a more subtle level, too. It’s why companies and governments often release bad news on Fridays or before major holidays — they’re obliged to announce a weak earnings report or the so-so unemployment rate but they’re hoping that the weekend or holiday distracts us from fixating on it.

To learn the other four ways we get fooled, please read the rest of the article.

Systems Over People – The Key to Productivity?

September 14, 2025September 14, 2025Leave a comment

I have taught personal productivity skills for over twelve years. It is personally satisfying to see people finally understand the importance of clearing their inbox and getting clear on their next action. However, even the most productive people have to interact with those of lesser skill. Therefore, what is more important, teaching people to be productive on their own, or developing the systems that they work under?

According to Daniel Markovitz, writing for the Harvard Business Review, what the organization does is more important than individuals. In his article, Productivity Is About Your Systems, Not Your People, he argues that working on individual worker productivity alone is not going to solve the bigger problems.

The problem isn’t with the intrinsic logic of any of these approaches. It’s that they fail to account for the simple fact that most people don’t work in isolation. They work in complex organizations defined by interdependencies among people — and it’s often these interdependencies that have the greatest effect on personal productivity. You can be an email ninja, but with the explosion of email (not to mention instant messages, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack, and countless other communication tools), you’ll never be fast enough to deal with all the incoming communication. Similarly, your personal urgent/important Eisenhower categories fall apart when the CEO asks you to do stop what you’re doing and handle something right away.

Therefore, if it is more important to work on the systems, what can an organization do to better coordinate its workflows? Markovitz provides four strategies. The first is the tiered huddle.

Many highly productive organizations have instituted a system of tiered daily huddles, with a clear escalation sequence for all problems. The first huddle, consisting of front-line workers, begins at the start of the workday. The next huddle, consisting of supervisors, follows 30 minutes later. Managers meet 30 minutes after that, followed by directors, VPs, and finally the executive team. Problems are addressed at the lowest possible level. If a decision can’t be reached, the issue is escalated to the next level. This system improves the linkage between the C-suite and the front lines; it accelerates decision making; and perhaps most importantly, it improves productivity by reducing the number of scattershot emails about a variety of problems.

Anyhow, to learn the other three strategies for improving systems, click over to read the rest of the article.

So will I stop teaching personal productivity classes because of this article?

Not a chance, because it is still very useful for employees to have GTD skills. It is another piece of the puzzle to create a successful work environment.

Efficient Librarian

Exploring the Intersection of Efficiency and Librarianship

Category: Success Thinking