Early Bird Productivity: Use These Powerful Strategies Every Day

The early bird catching the worm isn’t merely a worn-out cliche – it’s a proven fact. Research by Christoph Randler, a biology professor at the University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany, found that people who started their days earlier were more goal-oriented and more active, and even felt more in charge — all elements of business success.

In this article by Lydia Dishman in FastCompany, learn some great strategies for upping your productivity from five successful executives who are early risers. Maybe we’ll never all be morning people, but we can always take a few super-effective tricks from from the playbooks of these thought leaders. How to do it.

Time is All We Have: 3 Ways to Increase Your ROI

Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.
- Benjamin Franklin

If you think of time as your primary investment rather than money, then you see it: everything you do is an investment of time.

This piece from pickthebrain.com examines why, in many ways time, is more valuable than money. When you think of time as a commodity – and every one of your actions as investments – it changes the way you approach your everyday decisions.

See the thoughtful guidelines you can use to improve your decision making.

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Greater IBM, what do you think of this idea? Let us know in the Leave a Reply field below.

- Posted by Regan Kelly

Organizing: How to Spring Clean Your Inbox(es)

If your life’s biggest mess this Spring is the condition of your Inbox, help is on the way.

In this helpful piece at The Daily Muse, Alex Cavoulacos shares a few tips for clearing out your closet—and how to apply them your inbox.

Get started.

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Have you ever gotten to Zero? Share your tips with your community in the Leave a Reply field.

 

10 Ways You Waste Other People’s Time

We like to defend our time, against endless meetings, the friend who instant messages us just to chat, the overlong phone calls. We get bothered when other people steal our time.

But there are, of course, two sides to every situation. Have you considered how you may be wasting others’ time? Do you respect their time, or are you guilty of some of these 10 things?

(- from Time Management Ninja)

 

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– Posted by Regan Kelly, Editor/Community Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

11 Easy Productivity Hacks from Super-Productive People

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”-–Paul J. Meyer.

Do you need to procrastinate less and accomplish more? Here are 11 productivity tips from the pros – the CEOs and other high-performing types that are covered in FastCompany.com.

Here’s a quick list of proven, effective hacks you can implement quickly, and watch your own productivity shoot up. Make that change!

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– Posted by Regan Kelly, Editor/Community Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

Stuck in a Long Commute? No Problem – 5 Ways to Time Manage It

Today, many IBMers work at home. But lots of companies don’t take this approach, and that means commute time, to from work, probably every day.

How long is your commute? Have you considered how much time that amounts to over the course of a week?  A month?  A year? You might not believe how quickly the time adds up – 360 hours a year, sadly, is typical.

The question is, how can you take advantage of that time better to make your commute more productive (and less stressful)? Get 5 surefire strategies here (timemanagementninja.com).

More: 10 Excellent Apps. to Improve Your Commute

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Your turn: what do you do to manage YOUR commute? Let us know in the Comments.

Relax! and You’ll Be More Productive

“More, bigger, and faster,” has been the relentless ethos of the market economies since the Industrial Revolution, but it’s grounded in a mythical, misguided assumption — that our available resources are infinite. Time, of course, is the resource we rely on to get more accomplished. When there’s more to do, we invest more hours. But time is finite, and many of us feel we’re running out, that we’re investing as many hours as we can while trying to retain some kind of a life outside work.

More and more of us find ourselves unable to juggle today’s overwhelming demands. But paradoxically, the best way to get more done may be to spend more time doing less. A growing body of research shows that strategic renewal — including daytime workouts, short afternoon naps, longer sleep hours, more time away from the office and longer, more frequent vacations — boosts productivity, job performance and, of course, health. See how this can work, in this fascinating, extremely popular piece recently published in The New York Times.

Quit Thinking So Positively (+ 4 Other “Good” Habits It’s Time to Ditch)

Productivity is an ever-evolving study of what works and what doesn’t. And the way we work can change quickly: what was once accepted as a best practice can now do you more harm than good, writes Sean Blanda in this top story from lifehacker.com.

Here are a few creative insights that weren’t taught in school which, sometimes, means that it’s time to unlearn habits previously perceived as being “good.”

Read these thought-provoking tips that go against the grain of the more typical productivity advice.

Need a Refill? 46% of Us Are Less Productive Without Coffee

Nearly half (46 percent) of people are less productive without coffee, according to an infographic from OnlineMBAPrograms.org. The infographic traces the history of coffee—from how it was discovered to its rise as the second-most traded commodity on earth—and explains some of its benefits. Get the rest of the story in this post from Mark Ragan.

6 Simple Daily Rituals to Reach Your Potential EVERY Day

Becoming productive – and staying productive – isn’t about complicated, hard-to-follow programs or logging your every move in an app. In fact, it’s about caring for yourself.

Here are the simple, straightforward daily to-dos to get you started. See the list here.