You’ve heard the saying, “the early bird get’s the worm”. Well a new study by Philippe Peigneux, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium, compared the performance of subjects who woke up around noon with subjects that routinely work up at 5-6am.
According to the article “Want to Get Ahead? Sleep In” at Globe and Mail.
After 10 hours of being awake, the early birds showed reduced activity in brain areas linked to attention span, compared with the night owls. The early risers also felt sleepier …

There is a good case for the argument that the improvements in technology, especially information technology, has made our lives more difficult. We are now constantly connected to others via our mobile devices, and constant streams of information from the internet can be overwhelming. One of the consequences of the abundance of easily accessible information is the potential to distract us from focusing on high priority tasks. The previous post about the myth of multitasking discusses the inefficiency of switching between tasks.
Find a Zen-like place to work
Sometimes I struggle to …

There is a common belief that you can do multiple things at once and be more productive. The problem is that your brain can not focus on more than one thing at once, unless they are tasks that require very little thinking. For instance you can chew gum while you work, however your brain can not simultaneously focus on multiple complex tasks at the same time. Instead your brain must switch its attention from one thing to another, and every time you do this your brain undergoes a process …

Cogi is an interesting productivity tool that records your phone conversations and can transcribe your calls into text. Cogi calls your cell or landline, you answer it, then Cogi connects you to a third party. The call gets recorded in a MP3 format so you can listen to the call later, or share it with coworkers. Instead of having to take notes during the call, you just highlight parts of the conversation you would like to have transcribed.
This is a paid service and costs $29.95 a month, which gives you …

Many executives spend more than their share of time checking and answering emails. We often feel obligated to answer emails promptly when we receive them. AwayFind is a brilliant tool that can potentially save you hours of time per day on your email.
How it works is simple. When someone sends you a message they receive an auto-responder message informing them that you only check email a couple times a day, but if it is an urgent matter they can click on a link to fill out a webform. People with …

A smart way to get more things done is to delegate lower level tasks. That’s where a virtual assistant can be a tremendous asset. Written about in books such as The World is Flat and The 4 Hour Work Week, a remote virtual assistant from firms like Brickwork will take care of numerous time consuming tasks that can free up your time to do things that are more important to you. From a business approach, virtual assistants can do data entry, sales support, calendar management, and other administrative tasks. But …

by Marc Evers
This post is about the principles of time management that underlie the book Do It Tomorrow by Mark Forster:
Have a clear vision
Have a clear vision of your goals, of the things you want to do and the things you don’t want to do. A clear vision directs your priorities. Setting priorities is only meaningful between projects, not between tasks that have to be done anyway (’project’ is loosely defined here as an activity that leads to some desired result and that cannot be finished in one go).
Your vision …

Merlin Mann is an expert on productivity and speaks about how to think about time management.

Have you asked yourself recently if your time is going toward things that matter and bring value to your life? Merlin suggests that we should be examining how we are spending our time and questioning our decisions on how we allocate the fixed 168 hours we have each week. To save you 35 minutes, I have summarized some of the key takeaways from Merlin’s presentation.
An interesting concept he talks about is that when we …

Bill Gates swears by his three monitors for greatly enhancing his workspace productivity. Now a new study suggests that using two monitors instead of one can increase the speed of certain computer tasks.
According to the New York Times:
In a study commissioned by the electronics company NEC, researchers at the University of Utah recently asked office workers to perform several common tasks using various monitor configurations. They found that people who used two 20-inch monitors were 44 percent more productive at certain text-editing operations than people using a single 18-inch monitor.

People …

Advancements in photovoltaic cells, which convert sunlight directly into electricity, have greatly decreased the once prohibitive cost of solar panels. Additionally, high costs of energy that are likely to ascend in the future suggest that an investment in solar panels for your home may provide you with healthy returns.
One company that is lowering the barrier of entry into owning solar panels is SolarCity Inc. in California. They offer a 15-year lease for solar panels that includes installation, free repairs and free removal at the end of the lease. They also …