4 Ways To Free Up 1 Hour of Your Day

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clock-407101_640Do you wish you had an extra hour in your day? Some time to finally get to all those things at the bottom of your to-do list or start working on that personal project?

There’s no need to wish for longer days, instead you can just make better use of the time you have.

The first thing you need to do is stop making excuses. It’s easy to put something off, claiming you’re too busy to get around to it. If you feel that way it’s probably because you aren’t using your time efficiently.

I recently wrote a blog post on how being aware of how much time you spend on various tasks can help increase your efficiency. I like to use RescueTime.com as it tracks how much time I spend on websites and applications. This helps me to pin point my biggest ‘time-wasters’ which I can then cut down on, or eliminate completely in future. Read more

Get a Stopwatch — You Need It!

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clock-782536_640The most common excuse for not being more productive is saying that you have too much going on.

“I’m too busy.” — you often say.  

Am I right?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret — no you aren’t!  

The thing with productivity is that it’s not how much you do, but how you do it. Do you get the most out of the time you have?  Or are you so busy because you fill your day with stuff you don’t really need to be doing.  That’s precious time you could be wasting!

The easiest way to find out is to track your time.

When I started making a note of how I spent my day I had a few surprises. For example, that thing I thought took only five minutes, actually took way longer than that.  It’s never just five minutes in the end.

There are a few apps and techniques to help you track your time. You can find them in the Entrepreneur.com article I wrote on time management.

Also if you want to know more about tracking your time, my friend and fellow author Laura Vanderkam is giving away her time tracking guide for free! Laura’s written several books including What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast and I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time.  If anyone knows how to manage time it’s her!

What’s Happening in 2016

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sylvester-1097596_6402015 was a very exciting year for me. In January my book Listful Thinking came out!  I got to meet so many interesting new people at book signings and at Book Expo America plus I got to meet some of you — the readers of this blog!  What an incredible opportunity.

In 2015 I also created my first online course, Take Back Your Inbox: Stop Drowning in Unread Messages, Respond Quicker and Finally Achieve Inbox Zero. I designed the course to help you feel less overwhelmed by your email. Something I struggled with big time but found some smart solutions to fix!

I also took some exciting vacations to Florida, Puerto Rico, Mexico and San Francisco — with a visit to the Google headquarters!

I have a lot of exciting plans in mind for ListProducer.com in 2016. I made a video to share them with you. Hopefully this is the start of a new trend and I’ll be sharing more videos this year!

Click here to watch it.

The Payoff of Being Anti-Social for a Month

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alone-1031338_640At the beginning of December I took a stand and took the month off from networking and going to events.

I was drained.  

I normally really enjoy going to these kinds of events, so when I started to dread them — I realized it was time for a break.

As part of my anti-social plan, my husband Jay and I went to Puerto Rico, back to the resort where we got married 7 years ago for a little relaxation.

I set myself the challenge of doing absolutely no work while I was there. It was amazing to just lay on the beach and enjoy the moment!

When we returned and people asked me to meet up for tea or dinners after work this December I replied simply, “I’m sorry, I’m not available.”   Read more

Listful Thinking is Published in Dutch

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2edd36a12109c37fa5c2542134911455_cache_In September, I was excited to discover that my book Listful Thinking had been published in Spanish and Chinese. It’s so interesting to me how a love of lists can translate into different cultures.

Well it’s happened again.

My book is now available in Dutch, under the title ‘Everything at a Glance‘. That title makes the book sound so much more philosophical!

As part of the release in the Netherlands I was interviewed by one of their largest newspapers this week called Algemeen Dagblad.

During the interview I discovered that lists where incredibility popular in the Netherlands. Clearly it’s a country I should visit!

For the Dutch, list making is seen as a way to keep your mind and your life in order. Isn’t that great?

Just had to share the exciting news with all of you.  Can’t wait to see where else my love of lists will go!