Maximizing your productivity is not about working as hard as you can for as long as you can. Balancing both your dedication to work routine and your ability to take breaks are crucial for quality results, thoughtful breakthroughs, and maintaining mental well-being. Incorporating routine into your workday—think of it as a way of automating your approach to your efforts, to minimize effort—can pay big dividends. Conversely, knowing when to step
We’ve all been there. We get one of those elusive “a-ha” moments at work, and we spend hours developing the plan. We write the slide deck, we pitch the idea, and we put the roll-out plans in place, dreaming of glory. And then a coworker casually mentions that they tried the same idea—three years ago. Oh, and by the way, it didn’t work. Or, it happened five years ago and
In a perfect world (or, at least a more efficient one), you could be productive whenever you wanted. Just sit down and start typing/put that pen to paper/invent the next app or Fidget Spinner. Unfortunately, productivity isn’t as easy as just plugging in for humans—we experience energy and creativity peaks and valleys. Those valleys are necessary—they’re your brain and body telling you that you need a break. While you can’t
Had a bad day at work? If you find yourself ending your day frustrated and grumpy, it may be because you spend too much time looking for something you needed, and you aren’t getting things done. Details and important documents are hidden within scattered projects, and you couldn’t reach teammates located across multiple time zones. Or maybe it was because of this: so many people were trying to get your
Even in the digital age, paper is still very much a modern reality. Don’t let it be a burden. Instead, manage it all with Evernote. Scan receipts, business cards, and documents as they come to you. Or, address a large cluttered pile in a single sitting. Whatever your approach to paper may be, Evernote’s powerful paperless features let you handle it all with grace. Here are eight tactics to help you manage
We’ve all been encouraged to feel more grateful. But in today’s fast-paced life, we can find ourselves perpetually focusing on what’s next at the expense of recognizing the beauty around us. The rise of the smartphone means that we could always theoretically be responding to work emails. When we scroll through our Facebook timelines, it’s easy to compare ourselves to other people’s highlight reels and feel we aren’t enough. But
A year ago, just before my son went off to college, he got a tattoo of a pr’ankh, an Egyptian hieroglyph meaning “house of life.” As a lifelong actor and dancer, he proclaimed his body as the “house of his life” and promised to take care of it for the rest of his days. Among other health-related pledges, he swore off drinking coffee and all caffeine products. By the time
You can get rid of a bad habit and form new, positive ones through a series of scientific experiments, says Tiago Forte, a San Francisco-based productivity expert. He should know. In his quest to help others become more productive, he’s taken some hard looks at his own life and change some behaviors. If you look at your habits through a filter of data, he says, instead of through a lens
Joshua Zerkel is a busy man. As Evernote’s Director of Global Customer Education and Community, he brings together productivity experts and Evernote fans around the world. He’s also a Certified Professional Organizer, dedicated to helping people gain more control over their work and lives. In the previous episode of Taking Note, Josh gave us some simple steps for beginning the battle against clutter. In this episode, Josh tells us how
We all procrastinate. Whether it’s hitting the snooze button again, not wanting to go to the dentist, or putting off an unpleasant task awaiting you (you know, that one …), we all have things we love to do and things we hate to do. We do them — eventually; the question is, what will it take to get us to do them? That sage of the early 20th century, Robert