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Peter Walsh

Peter Walsh

Design professional and star of TLC's Clean Sweep

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Meryl Starr

Meryl Starr

Organizing expert, author and personal consultant

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Debbie Stanley

Debbie Stanley

Author and owner of Red Letter Day, a professional organizing...

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News

The latest news on this change — carefully culled from the world wide web by our change agents. They do the surfing, so you don't have to!

Taking a Time-Out

Taking a Time-Out

Sniff sniff, cough cough. Oh no, it’s the common cold! While your body may be telling you to stay home and rest, duty calls. There’s too much work at your job, even if you do get paid sick days. And there would be so much to do at home if you did spend a few days there, so you might as well just go to work, right?
 
Carol Kaufmann at Reader’s Digest recalls getting an email that contained the word “presenteeism”: “employees who are at work, but really aren’t” because of other personal distractions or issues. Well, that sounds familiar! But what are some real ways of organizing the chaos and attaining focus?
 
Kaufmann does some research and comes up with seven ways to stay focused amidst the humdrum and rigmarole, including making to-do lists where you prioritize items, making sure you take breaks and paying attention to the “mind-body connection,” those times when stress=headache or overwork=backache. In our constant quest to stay organized and on top of life, how do you remain focused?

Posted: 9/23/08
stevewhardin

David Allen has a great book called Getting Things Done. It teaches you how to handle lists very well.

LauraLee311

I'm with Karadc. I write to-do lists each night so I can focus each day and see what my priorities are. I may not always get as much as I want done, but at least I can always cross a few things off my list each day.

Karadc

At the end of the day, I write down all the work tasks I want to accomplish the following day. In my experience, it's less daunting to attack a list in the morning than to have a lot of info swimming around in my head that's still foggy from the commute.

  • By Karadc
  • on 9/23/08 10:40 AM EST