faith and work on Procrastination

Social scientists define procrastination as “delaying a task for a maladaptively long time,” and it bedevils almost all of us. One study found that more than 70 percent of university students procrast...

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

When we truly need to do is often what we most feel like avoiding.

Of course, speed has a role in the workplace. A deadline can focus the mind and spur us on to perform remarkable feats. The trouble is that many of us are permanently stuck in deadline mode, leaving l...

In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

A primary resistance to a less hurried way of life—a resistance I find in myself and in others—is the belief that “I won’t be as productive” or that “I will fail to seize the opportunities God sets be...

When we insist on doing too much, we are not only inflicting the damage of this choice on ourselves, we are sharing this damage with those we love the most.

Never mistake motion for action.

Lose an hour in the morning, chase it all day

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

Are these hyperscheduled, overactive individuals really creating anything new? Are they guilty of passion in any way? Do they have a new vision for their government? For their community? Or for themse...

Studying your own failures as well can make them seem less earth-shattering. One researcher suggested in a 2010 article in Nature that people maintain a “CV of failures,” a written list of the things ...

The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

Start by doing what is necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

All good work is done in defiance of management

Underneath our frantic pace is a question: Is this work I do good enough?

As early as April 2020, a debate raged about the responsibilities of those of us turned safely inside during this global storm. For those time privileged enough to find their calendars suddenly cleare...

Multitasking is the drive to be more than we are, to control more than we do, to extend our power and our effectiveness. Such practice yields a divided self, with full attention given to nothing.

The best way out is always through.

The key to time management at the end of the day is simple: you need to know where you are going and focus on the things that will get you there.

Let’s talk about how our beliefs shape our actions, especially when fear is involved. You've probably heard the phrase, "ideas have consequences," right? It's easy to see this in act...

The other afternoon, in an effort to avoid doing my work, I picked up Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. It turned out to be a fitting choice, as Thoreau has quite a bit to say about wasting time. “The cos...

We cannot prioritize our doing before being, our assignment before healing, our service before freedom.

Sometimes Working More Decreases Productivity Maybe we know this on some level, but how many of us actually live this way? How often do we just keep grinding away at a job even though we know that i...

In this modern day parable, Alan Fadling describes a king and his two servants. Each of the servants desires to do the will of the king, but they approach their work very differently: One of the ser...

You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burn...

Would you like a no-stress life? A wise person would not accept that option, no matter how tempting it might sound. A stress-free life would be fatal. If we do not have change, challenge, and novelty ...

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.