You’ve probably heard of Covey’s four quadrants of productivity. If not, here are the basics: as we work on tasks, we sort them by importance and urgency, which makes for four different quadrants to sort the tasks into: 1) Important AND Urgent 2) Urgent But Not...

Sometimes, the solutions to our own problems are staring us right in our face. I was recently talking with a client about their frustrations at work — they just felt like they weren’t getting anything done. They weren’t being productive. “That can’t be the total...

Do you ever feel like your work schedule is simply out of your control? Every day is a series of fixing problems & putting out fires, rather than prioritizing your own work and your own projects. You’re needed so desperately to help out others that you don’t feel...

We all know the old saying: “If everything is important, nothing’s important.” Hogwash, I say. Seriously! Because everything actually is important to somebody. And the problem with words is that they have more than meaning; they have feeling as well. If we say...

We’ve all heard about the benefits of journaling recently, haven’t we? You can do a quick Google search and get a TON of information about the value of this practice. You can also find a lot of how-tos and tips — almost too many, in fact. The information overload can...

A few weeks ago we talked about how interconnected trust and communication are — each affects the other, and when they’re failing, you can quickly find yourself with a toxic work environment. But it’s worth noting that while broken trust will almost always break down...

My brother used to say that the secret to success is "Keeping your boss's boss off of your boss's a--." Roughly translated: if you make your boss look good, you look good, and success is sure to follow. And as Derek Severs teaches us in this brilliant TED Talk, if...

I work with a lot of teams, and I’ll be honest — people usually don’t call me in because things are going well. Which means, in my work, I see a lot of dysfunction. And in my experience, dysfunction is so very often caused by one of two things: 1) Broken...

One of my clients decided to try meditating recently. I have to admit, I’m not a meditator — not because I haven’t tried, however. I have. But it’s frickin HARD! It’s one of those tricky things that seems like it should be easy — but trust me, it’s not. What’s more,...

A few things we’ve been talking about — building a culture with our team, having tough conversations, clarifying terms and decisions — all of it is uncomfortable, I know. All of it is difficult. If you don’t think so, I’m sorry, but you’re likely kidding yourself....