How to Improve your Focus at Work

 Improve-Your-Focus-at-work

In a world plagued by constant distractions, pop up notifications and a never-ending stream of calls, texts and to do’s, it can sometimes feel hard to live in the moment and concentrate on the tasks you have in front of you. If you suffer from this modern form of chronic connectivity induced mental lethargy, these tips could help!

Remove all distractions

This is probably the hardest thing you could ask any modern professional to do, but turning off the pop up notifications, silencing the smart phone and closing the email window are the first steps to reestablishing your mental focus and clarity. Unless you work in a field that requires you to answer your phone or text messages as a matter of life and death, you need to set aside time for you to get your work done without the constant interference of instant communication! So go ahead, turn your cell on silent, disable pop up notifications, set your office line to send all calls, remove your email from your active desktop and shut your office door if you have to!

Reason with yourself and others

If you have removed all distractions like suggested in step one, congratulations! I know that was probably difficult for you to do and you are probably freaking out inside just a little with fears of all the horrible things that may happen because people can’t get in touch with you. Well, that is simply not going to help you focus if your constantly worrying yourself about the unknown, so let’s be reasonable. I know as well as you do that you can’t go all day without answering the phone or responding to messages, so the next step to improving your focus is to carve out a time-table for how long you will work distraction free before returning to your email.

This part is up to you, but I suggest 2-3 hours of solid uninterrupted work, followed by a half hour or so of responding to emails, voice mails and messages. If you are worried that this could be too long for you and your specific job responsibilities, think about what is causing you to feel this way. If answering the phone is part of your job because, lets say, you’re a receptionist, than clearly you need to leave the phone on. However, if you are simply afraid that your boss or colleagues will be upset that they cannot contact you, I suggest letting them know in advance.

Even if your boss is a stickler for quick email responses, give them a call and tell them what your thinking. Let them know you have a lot on your plate and the constant messaging is starting to derail your productivity. If you let your boss and others know how long you will be disconnected and when they can reasonably expect a response for you, it will be much easier for them to swallow and they may even encourage this sort of behavior if they see a marked improvement in your work!

Leaving an out of office response on your email is also a good way to temper the expectations of others that depend on you. A simple message that explains that you are working on an important task or project but that you will be checking emails intermittently will give fair warning to those trying to contact you via email. You can do the same on your phone as well to ensure that everyone knows your busy but will be able to respond to their needs in a reasonable amount of time.

Have a plan of action

Once you are sufficiently distraction free you need to have a clear plan of attack for the work you want to accomplish. Make a list of everything you need to get done, ranking it in order of importance, urgency and time required. Making a list like this may require you to check some voice mails, print out a few emails and gather some information outside your office, but once you have your to do list ready, sit down and get to work!

Reward Yourself

Successfully sticking to a new plan or schedule is a hard thing to accomplish in and of itself. If the lure of improving your focus to get more work done isn’t enough of an incentive for you to stick to your plans, try giving yourself a more tangible reward. Perhaps it means a trip to Starbucks in the afternoon for a caffeinated pick me up or an extra stop on the way home to your local Redbox for a relaxing movie night. Whatever it is that will motivate you to stick to your action plan, commit to it, because eventually a new habit will form that will improve your focus in the long run!

xoxo,

Alexis-Signature

This article was first published on Strange & Charmed on August 8th, 2013 and is being reposted as part of my Holiday Prep Hiatus! For the months of November & December I will be recycling some vintage S&C content that you may have missed in order to give myself some extra time to finalize projects and spend time with my family during the holiday season. All reposted content will be marked as such. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past blog post!

7 Ways to Wear a Scarf for Fall + a DIY Blanket Scarf!

7 Ways to Wear a Scarf for Fall

It’s that time of year again when we break out our favorite scarves for fall! Although we had something of a long summer into October here in the mid-atlantic, I am excited to report that in the last few days, the weather has started to turn and it officially feels like fall now! This weekend was great- although it rained a bit on Saturday, you couldn’t have asked for more quintessentially fall weather, and I even had the chance to wear my new DIY Blanket Scarf out and about to keep me warm with a light jacket!

DIY Blanket Scarf
Me, wearing my DIY Blanket Scarf this weekend in a corn maze! Don’t worry, I made it out!

So, I’m sure some of you are wondering about my DIY Blanket Scarf, so I will let you in on what that’s all about! I think most of you are probably familiar with the concept of a blanket scarf- Zara sold a wonderful tan and red plaid version last fall and I have been waiting for it to come back for what feels like forever, but apparently, I keep missing it… epic sad face! It just got to the point where I was sick of waiting and decided to take matters into my own hands, so I did the only logical thing I could think of- I headed to the craft store! JoAnn’s Fabrics to be exact, and searched through rows and rows of lovely fall themed plaid fabric until I came across a wonderful super light fleece material that I thought would make a perfect blanket scarf. I believe the Zara variation is made from a woven cotton and is very soft, but not as thick and warm as you might expect (at least, that is what I have heard from friends and around the internet). One thing the Zara Blanket Scarf is, however, is large! Something like 53″ squared! That’s like most of my height people, no wonder they call it a blanket scarf! My lovely fleece material, however, was only something like 45″ wide, so I had to make do with a slightly shorter, although still massive, piece of material. I just had the fabric cut into a square and it cost me something like $6 after I used a coupon! Can’t beat that for a DIY scarf that’s made of warm fleece and only slightly shorter than the original. I’d guess my version saved me something like $30, which I’m pretty happy about!

Now, onto the real meat of this post, the seven ways to wear a scarf! Well, for that, I assembled a very simple tutorial video to walk you through my favorite styles! The first three styles are ways to wear a blanket scarf specifically and then the final four apply to a traditional oblong scarf! The styles range from cozy to super chic, so no matter what weather you’re experiencing you will find a style to wear your favorite scarf that keeps you seasonally dressed and stylish! If you don’t have the time or ability to watch the video right now, just make sure to bookmark this post and refer back to it later on so you can learn these great styles! I know I am always looking for new ways to wear a scarf, so hopefully you learn a new style or two that you can integrate into your wardrobe this fall. Enjoy!

I hope you all enjoyed this video and this DIY Blanket Scarf information. If you have a tutorial with other ways you like to wear your scarves, please feel free to tweet me the link and of course, if you try any of these methods I teach you in the video, be sure to snap a picture and TAG me in it on Instagram so I can check it out!

xoxo,

Alexis-Signature

 

 

 

This article was first published on Strange & Charmed on October 13th, 2014 and is being reposted as part of my Holiday Prep Hiatus! For the months of November & December I will be recycling some vintage S&C content that you may have missed in order to give myself some extra time to finalize projects and spend time with my family during the holiday season. All reposted content will be marked as such. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past blog post!

Treat Your Tech Right this Winter!

winter-tech-tipsYou probably didn’t know that the cold winter months can take a toll on your gadgets and tech devices! Its true, the cold weather creates a unique set of issues for gadgets that you should be aware of in order to keep your tech working properly. Here are 5 tech tips to help you treat your tech right this winter!

1. Do not leave gadgets like computers, smartphones or iPods in your car while its cold outside. The weather can freeze internal parts of your devices and potentially cause damage.

2. Keep your gadgets in heavy duty cases to protect from precipitation and drops onto snow or ice. Otterbox and Lifeproof cases that cover ports and openings in your gadget will help to make sure no excess moisture builds up in sensitive areas of your device.

3. Keep a stylus on hand in case your fingers are too cold to register on your touch screen devices.

4. If a gadget is excessively cold, be sure to bring it up to a normal temperature before turning it on or using it or else you could compromise internal parts.

5. Carry backup chargers for important gadgets as batteries drain quicker in the winter!

I hope these tips were helpful to anyone who is experiencing cold winter weather or who may live in a region where cold weather is the norm! Do you have any other tech tips to share to help us get through the chilly winter months with our smartphones intact? Let us know in the comments!

xoxo,

Alexis-Signature

This article was first published on Strange & Charmed on January 28th, 2014 and is being reposted as part of my Holiday Prep Hiatus! For the months of November & December I will be recycling some vintage S&C content that you may have missed in order to give myself some extra time to finalize projects and spend time with my family during the holiday season. All reposted content will be marked as such. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past blog post!

Blogging 101: Organization Tips for Bloggers

Organization-Tips-for-Bloggers

Blogging 101 is a 10 part series where I share my tips and tricks for creating and growing a blog from scratch. This is the fourth installment in the series, and you can find more information on the topics of this series here.

Blogging 101: Organization Tips for Bloggers

Being a blogger is like having another job. If you already work one full-time, you need to be very organized when it comes to your focus for your blog, your posting schedule and the time you allot to managing and responding to emails, comments and social media outlets. Now, I don’t work off a strict schedule for every hour of my day. Generally, I do what I can when I can, but I have a few organizational tools that help me stay on track, and make it easy for me to maximize my time.

First and foremost, I use an editorial calendar to plan out my posts. Now, what an editorial calendar looks like to me and what it looks like to you can be two very different things. My first editorial calendar was a printed one page monthly calendar where I planned out which blog posts would be scheduled for which days. Now, I use a monthly calendar in my Filofax. You could use a paper calendar, a list in a notebook, or even a digital calendar to map out your posts, but whichever way you choose needs to be convenient for you so that you can plan your posts and refer back to the calendar when you need to write them.

The next thing I use to help plan out my posts is a list for brainstorming blog posts. Whenever I think of a post idea, I write it down in my list that I keep in one of my Filofax’s. When I am on the go or don’t have easy access to my planner, I use an app on my iPhone called Clear. I will periodically move the blog post ideas from my iPhone app to my master list, which I then refer to when planning out my blog posts on my editorial calendar for the next month. I normally plan out a month at a time, but I have planned up to three at a time in the past. You could plan as much or as little as you want, as this system is extremely flexible.

As for managing my social media presence, there are a variety of apps I use to help me connect with my current readers and potential readers! I use a service called Twitter Feed that automatically posts links to my blog posts to my Twitter feed. That way, I don’t have to worry about forgetting to tweet out my posts. But Twitter Feed alone is not the best way to get my blog posts out on Twitter, so I also use a wonderful app called HootSuite that is one of the few apps that I have found that will allow me to schedule Tweets and even Facebook posts from my iPhone! I cannot even explain to you how convenient it is to plan out the Tweets you want to publish and set it to publish on its own without me having to babysit my Twitter! I will normally go ahead and plan out a weeks worth of posts and schedule them so I don’t have to remember to stop and Tweet during my busy day!

Are you ready to learn how to use photography to elevate your brand online?

The final organizational tip I have for bloggers is not related to apps or planning tools. This has to do with photography and finding images for your blog posts. Now, I will be going into the topic of photography in a later post, but for now I want to talk about photo shoots and talking your own blog photos. If you’ve noticed, for some time now I have been relying on my own photographs to supplement my blog posts. It is very rare for me to use someone else’s images because I don’t own them. When I do use other peoples images, I make sure to source them from creative commons websites. Specifically, I like to use the Flickr Creative Commons Image Database. Like I said, I try to use my own images whenever possible, so to accomplish this, I plan frequent photo shoots where I take a look at my blog post topic list and get ideas for photo’s that I could use to accompany those posts. I set up vignettes, make sure my lighting looks nice and take an hour or two to just shoot as many pictures as I can. I would say I do these sorts of photo shoots once or twice a month and they give me plenty of images to work with that may pertain to specific posts I already have planned out and sometimes even posts that I may write in the future. I organize these photo’s on my computer by the date they were taken and the general theme for the photos so that I can always find what I am looking for in the future! If you are interested in learning more about how to take great pictures for your blog posts and social media, check out this video training on 7 Strategies for Using Photography to Elevate your Brand Online or if you want a more in depth training, sign up for my Digital Styling Lightroom video course today!

So, do you already implement any of these organizational tips in your current blogging process? Do you have any other tips and tricks that help to keep you organized that you can share with us? Drop us a line in the comments below!

xoxo,

Alexis-Signature

This article was first published on Strange & Charmed on March 24th, 2014 and is being reposted as part of my Holiday Prep Hiatus! For the months of November & December I will be recycling some vintage S&C content that you may have missed in order to give myself some extra time to finalize projects and spend time with my family during the holiday season. All reposted content will be marked as such. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past blog post!

How to Find Peace and Unwind

how-to-find-peace-and-unwind

Do you ever feel like life is so hectic sometimes that you just don’t know how to unwind? I mean, we hear about the importance of finding time to locate your inner peace and all, but how does one actually start that journey? Do we need a map to locate peace of mind? Sometimes I think so! In all honesty, I am writing this post for myself because I have been so out of it and stressed for so long that I need to remind myself to take time and unwind, even if it’s really really difficult to do it! So, I sat down and thought about all the things that are mentally blocking me from unwinding and relaxing and some ways that I cope with stress when it gets too out of control on my own life. Hopefully this list will resonate with you, too!

1. Turn off notifications that ding: The threat of a dinging notification is a stressor in and of itself in my life. I have taken to turning my iOS devices on airplane mode just to escape them!

2. Light candles all over your home: I don’t know what it is, but for some reason candles make me feel like I have a clean home (…even if my home isn’t clean) and this releases an OCD stress about everything having a place and being there!

3. Take a nice relaxing bath: I suggest using epsom salts for a deep muscle relaxation and using whatever aromatherapy bubble bath or oils you have available to do. When I take a bath when I am stressed, I drown myself in the stuff!

4. Drink plenty of water: If you are well hydrated you are less likely to get a headache and I feel like water also helps me feel fresh and clean on the inside. Its like the water is cleaning out all the toxins from my cells and flushing them out (I actually think that might be what water does, so the more the merrier)!

5. Listen to soothing music or a book on tape: This one is pretty self-explanatory. If I take a bath with epsom salts and then put on a book on tape (usually the Hobbit!) I am guaranteed to fall asleep in 5.7 seconds!

What other tips do you have for relaxing and unwinding when you are stressed out? Please, please, please tell me, because I really need to know!!

 xoxo,

Alexis-Signature

This article was first published on Strange & Charmed on February 27th, 2014 and is being reposted as part of my Holiday Prep Hiatus! For the months of November & December I will be recycling some vintage S&C content that you may have missed in order to give myself some extra time to finalize projects and spend time with my family during the holiday season. All reposted content will be marked as such. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past blog post!

25 Blog Post Ideas for Any Blogger!

25-blog-post-ideas-any-blogger-can-write

In my opinion, one of the most difficult parts of starting a blog is the whole starting part. It can feel overwhelming clicking on “new post” and then being faced with a blank screen just sitting there waiting to be filled with awesome and unique content. So, if you are suffering from a little bloggers block, I have put together a list of 25 interesting and unique blog posts that any blogger can do. Hopefully these ideas can help you get started with your own blog or inspire you to breathe new life into an existing one!

  1. 25 facts about you
  2. What’s in your bag
  3. The story of how and why you started your blog
  4. A day in the life chronicle
  5. A list of your favorite blogs
  6. Show and tell
  7. Something you collect
  8. A guide to your city or town
  9. Your favorite things
  10. How you’d spend your perfect day
  11. Your bucket list
  12. A top 5 list
  13. Your blog goals
  14. Someone you admire and why
  15. The book(s) that changed your life
  16. An interview or Q&A with another blogger
  17. Your room tour
  18. Your favorite smart phone apps
  19. How you stay organized
  20. A video introduction to your blog
  21. A photo journal
  22. Your wish list
  23. Introduction guide to your favorite hobby
  24. Post from the POV of your pet or an intimate object
  25. Inspirational quotes you love

Do you have any other ideas for blog posts that any blogger could write? What are some of your favorite blog posts? Leave your suggestions in the comments below and if you need additional help getting your blog up and running, check out my Communication Blueprint!

xoxo,

Alexis-Signature

This article was first published on Strange & Charmed on April 8th, 2014 and is being reposted as part of my Holiday Prep Hiatus! For the months of November & December I will be recycling some vintage S&C content that you may have missed in order to give myself some extra time to finalize projects and spend time with my family during the holiday season. All reposted content will be marked as such. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past blog post!

How to Clean Your Devices

How-to-Clean-Your-Devices

It’s that time of year again, and no I am not referring to the return of the Pumpkin Spiced Latte at Starbucks, but if you want my DIY PSL recipe, click here! I am referring to the return of cold and flu season! I know, so much less delicious than a pumpkin spiced latte, but it’s here and we all have to deal with it! I know we have it drilled into our heads to make sure we carry around little bottles of antibacterial hand gel and to wash our hands frequently and sneeze into our elbows (gross, but it does help fight the spread of germs), but how often do we stop to clean our devices like our iPhones and laptops that we are constantly touching? Your iPhone can actually carry more germs than the lever on a toilet and you are putting that up to your face on holding it in your hands countless times a day! So, I thought I would review the steps to help properly clean an electronic device like a computer or smart phone so that you can start keeping your gadgets clean without fear of shorting a circuit!

Step 1: Turn off your device. Whenever you are going to clean your device, make sure its off. This helps prevent you from getting some sort of electric shock in case you do make a mistake and get moisture into a crevice in your device.

Step 2: Use an antibacterial wipe to gently whip down the surface of your device. I like to use Wet Ones wipes because they are antibacterial and easy to take along with me. The problem with some “tech wipes” is that many aren’t antibacterial so you may be cleaning dirt off your device but not preventing cold and flu germs from spreading! Make sure the wipe is moist but not to wet before you begin. If it is let it sit out for a minute or two to dry or try ringing out any excess moisture.

Step 3: Avoid any openings in your device like headphone jacks or charging ports. You can get close, but don’t try to clean inside because those openings go directly to the innards of your device and can cause damage! If you are cleaning a computer keyboard, you can wipe over keys and in the spaced between, but just make sure you don’t get moisture into the openings under the keys!

Step 4: Dry your device with a microfiber cloth. Although your device shouldn’t be wet, you will have some moist spots on the casing or screen from the wipe down. So, use a microfiber to quickly wipe off any moisture left on your device before you turn it on. Once your device is dry and clean, turn it back on!

Step 5: Repeat this activity 2-3 times a week! Technically, I think this should be done everyday, but I understand that not everyone has the time to do that so if you can do it 2-3 times a week you will probably do a lot to cut down on the amount of germs your devices are carrying around. If you think you will forget to do it, set a reminder on your phone!

Do you frequently clean your devices? What products do you use? Do you think that cleaning your gadgets helps to cut down on instances of illness for you? Let us know in the comments!

xoxo,

Alexis-Signature

This article was first published on Strange & Charmed on October 8th, 2013 and is being reposted as part of my Holiday Prep Hiatus! For the months of November & December I will be recycling some vintage S&C content that you may have missed in order to give myself some extra time to finalize projects and spend time with my family during the holiday season. All reposted content will be marked as such. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past blog post!

How to Build Confidence, Boost Your Productivity & Be Your Own Boss!

How to Build Confidence, Boost Productivity & Be Your Own Boss- Link Roundup October 2015

How to Build Confidence, Boost Your Productivity & Be Your Own Boss!

It’s time for another link roundup! With only two months left in 2015, we have now reached that part of the year where we make our one final push to hit our goals and get organized before the new year begins. For me, I find the best way to get inspired is to immerse myself in great content that provides insight and advice to challenge my thought processes and engage in meaningful solutions to my everyday problems. That’s why I love doing these link round up posts for you! It gives me a chance to share the content that inspires me and helps me to be a better content creator for you, and in turn, I hope you find solutions and inspiration to help you make an impact in your life. So, here are some articles I have been reading and thought you might also enjoy!

Personal Development

Business

Productivity

I hope you found something new and inspiring to read from this post! If you have any other articles you have read this month that you loved and want to share, please do so in the comments below! Also, if you are a female entrepreneur, small business owner or aspiring #girlboss, I would love to welcome you to join my #CHARMEDBIZ COLLECTIVE Facebook community filled with like-minded women who are supporting each other to build their online empires! I hope to see you there!

xoxo,

Alexis-Signature

It’s Time to Organize Your Filofax for 2016!

How to Organize Your Filofax for 2016

November is right around the corner and we only have a few precious weeks left in 2015 before our new year begins, so now is the time to start thinking about your Filofax or planner set up for 2016! My favorite thing about using a Filofax or other customizable planner system is that I have control over the inserts I use and how my planner is organized. If something isn’t working in my planner, I don’t have to trash it or live with it, I can course correct with new inserts until I find what works for me! Personally, my planner journey has been a long, but fun road! I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on some great systems and beautiful binders and if you have been following my planner journey for some time, you know I have tried nearly every type of system under the sun, but ultimately, the systems I end up sticking to are customizable ones! I need to have control over the way I view and plan my days, especially as a multi-passionate entrepreneur! This is why, from day one, I have created my own printable planner inserts that are unlike anything I have seen available before, and I’m very excited to announce that I have a whole collection of new and updated inserts now available for 2016. Let me show you what’s new!

The Charmed Life Planner + Charmed Life Personal Planner

New for 2016 are two complete continuous planner systems! What I mean when I say continuous is that these planner inserts are a mix of monthly, weekly and organization pages that cycle through on a monthly basis. So, instead of having a section with all your monthly spreads, and then a section with all your weekly spreads, in these continuous inserts, the month begins with a monthly view, then goes into some organizational inserts for the month and then the weeks of that month follow, until you get to the new month and the cycle of continuous inserts begins again. It’s a much more streamlined way to organize your planner inserts, and a request my customers have made for some time.

The Charmed Life Planner Vertical Week on Two Pages Insert

Now, the two systems are respectively known as The Charmed Life Planner and The Charmed Life Personal Planner, the former being a half -letter (A5 equivalent) and the latter being a Filofax equivalent personal sized insert. Now the A5 Charmed Life Planner was released as a 17 Month printable planner system back in August, and includes my unique vertical week on two pages layout. This layout has proven to be an amazing planning resource for my business and from the businesses of friends and fellow entrepreneurs that I know who have been using and loving The Charmed Life Planner! With room for you to zero in on your top three priorities for the day, a ruled section that can be used for taking notes, making a list, or setting a schedule, and finally an open area that is flexible enough to fill a variety of uses- this printable planner is a complete business building solution! Other inserts within this planner include month on two pages calendars, monthly master task lists, and an expense tracker for each month to help you keep your plans and your money in order!

The Charmed Life Personal Planner, Filofax Personal Sized Daily Business Planner

Now, The Charmed Life Personal Planner is the real new kid on the block! Following in the footsteps of its big brother, this personal sized planner insert set is just as ready to help you get down to business with my streamlined day per page design! Let’s be honest, as a business entrepreneur, most personal sized planner inserts just don’t provide enough room for you to plan and think, so to solve this problem for myself, I created another versatile business planning insert that provides the answers. A day per page with a lightly printed hourly schedule gives you the ability to schedule a full day of meetings, take copius amounts of notes, and make lists and plans to your hearts content. Of course this printable insert set also includes the built in month on two pages layouts, monthly task list and expense sheet as well, but this pint sized planner also has something extra- inspirational artwork acting as dividers between each of the months! So, don’t fret if you can’t keep the whole year of inserts inside your personal planner, these divider pages make splitting your inserts into months or quarters for easy storage very elegant!

2016 Calendars, Planning Supplies & Freebies!

2016 Monthly Journaling Cards. Perfect for your Planner or Project Life!

Of course, over in my shop you can also find my complete collection of individual dated printable planner inserts to fill a variety of planning needs, all updated with 2016 dates! You also won’t want to miss this beautiful set of printable monthly journaling cards for 2016 that is a perfect accompaniment to any planner, and new to the shop for 2016, I have also created a set of monthly printable stickers for you to use to keep a month at a glance view wherever you need it most in your planning system!

2016 Monthly Calendar Stickers!

Last but certainly not least, I of course have a variety of new 2016 free printables in the shop to help you add some simple organizational elegance to your planner system!

FREE Printable 2016 Year at a Glance Filofax Insert for Personal & A5

First, I have a lovely 2016 Year at a Glance Insert! The perfect date reference for your planner.

FREE PRINTABLE 2016 Yearly Tracker for Filofax Planners

Second, a 2016 Yearly Tracker tri-fold! Perfect for tracking time, health and other repeating events or activities!

FREE PLANNER PRINTABLE November Dashboard & 30 Days of Thankfulness

And finally, don’t forget to stop by the shop each month for my free monthly bundle! Each month I put out a Monthly Dashboard and seasonally inspired task list to help you add inspiration to your planner! November’s inserts are now ready!

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get started organizing my planners for 2016! I hope this overview helped introduce you to a new planner insert that will bring you closer to planner peace! Let me know what you think of the new designs and new freebies down in the comments!

xoxo,

Alexis-Signature

#InspirationMBA: How to Multiply Time with Rory Vaden

#InspirationMBA: How to Multiply Time with Rory Vaden

Not long ago, I stumbled upon this very enlightening Ted Talk given by an author and entrepreneur I had not yet heard of, named Rory Vaden. When I saw the title of this talk “How to Multiply Your Time” you can imagine that it seriously piqued my interest. After checking it out, I knew I needed to share this video with all my productivity loving friends in my latest installment of #InspirationMBA! This guy is actually pretty cool! He’s the author of a few different productivity related books, Take the Stairs and Procrastinate on Purpose, both of which I am very interested in checking out on Audible! He makes some awesome points in the talk that I think are incredibly valuable, not necessarily because they are incredibly ground breaking, but he is really able to capture a major pitfall to productivity that many people face. Enjoy!

Lesson #4: How to Multiply Time with Rory Vaden

Things you will learn

  • Why time management and how we choose to spend our time isn’t logical, and what it’s based on instead.
  • The limitation of efficiency as a time management tool.
  • The system that Stephen R. Covey gave the world for prioritization.
  • The limitation of prioritizing as a time management tool.
  • The elements of the 3 dimensional time management matrix.
  • Why you need to think about tomorrow to multiply time.
  • Why automation is like compounding interest on your money.
  • You can delegate anything.
  • How significance changes everything.
  • How and why to procrastinate on purpose.

So, what did you think? Did you just have a mind-blowing epiphany like I did when I first watched the video? I love how Rory is able to take traditional productivity methods and turn them on their heads as to why they don’t work for some people. There is certainly merit to working efficiently and implementing prioritization to help you get your most important work done, however, I feel like for the average person, many of these concepts are hard to master, and this video really explains why. Let me know what you thought and if you had any unexpected takeaways that you would like to share. I’d also love to hear about any success you have implementing these ideas in your own life. Feel free to let me know in the comments!

xoxo,

Alexis-Signature