A few months ago, my husband and I went on a cross-country road trip where we spent long but fun days in the car. One of the things I noticed during our trip was how often we found ourselves having to repeat whatever we had just said. Whether it was the road noise in the car or the fact we were in our own little worlds, more than half the time one of us said something, the other would answer with one word.

“What?”

This was annoying for both of us as it felt like the other person wasn’t really…

I have a love/hate relationship with cookies.

I love all kinds of cookies, especially those that contain flour, butter, and sugar. So, basically, all of them. I hate them because they always seem to disagree with the numbers I want to see on my bathroom scale.

I know that I’m so defenseless against cookies that I never even walk down the cookie aisle in the grocery store. Cookies represent an obstacle to achieving what matters the most to me right now: lower numbers on my scale. …

It’s Back-to-School season in most parts of the country. And while what back-to-school is going to look like continues to be up in flux, what kids do at school, either virtually or in real life, doesn’t really change.

Ideally, they learn.

That’s their job. And just like grown-ups, kids need tools to be successful at their job.

Depending on their age(s), kids need, among other things, pencils, erasers, crayons, notebooks, and hand sanitizer. But there are four other tools that they (and you, as a parental figure) can benefit from.

First up is a couple of whiteboards.
Whiteboards aren’t just for…

People (and that includes you and me) love to procrastinate. In fact, depending on which study you believe, people procrastinate between two to three hours every day.

You don’t need to be a math genius to know those numbers can quickly add up, resulting in missed deadlines, stress, and frustration.

Since procrastination is never going to go away, I’d like to suggest something of a compromise: a way to change unproductive time-sucking procrastination into, well, productive procrastination.

All you need to do is put together a Procrastination List and use it.

This is a List of typically small tasks that…

Getting a good night’s sleep is one of the well-known building blocks to being successful. When you sleep well, everything just works better the next day: you think more clearly, you move more easily, you make better decisions. It’s like having a superpower.

The problem is: getting a good night’s sleep can be hard to do.

This is why many people turn to a bedtime routine designed to help their body and mind relax and move into sleep mode. Routines can include things like:
• Turning off all of your screens 30 minutes before bedtime.
• Taking a warm bath.
• Making sure…

The average adult makes about 35,000 decisions (give or take a few) every day, and every one of those decisions uses up a little bit of mental energy. Many of the decisions are made out of habit, which means the energy drain is low. But decisions made on more new and novel things exact a more energy-heavy price.

The more decisions you have to make, the more mental energy you’re going to burn through. This can become a problem when you need the energy to make big decisions or perform at your best, and the energy isn’t there.

My husband…

Are you a victim of Application Creep? Like Scope Creep, where the parameters of a project just keep growing and growing, Application Creep occurs when you keep adding and using apps on your digital devices without consciously thinking about it. Chances are, you’ve been a willing victim of it.

How do you know if you’ve been afflicted? Grab your phone or your favorite screen, and you can easily find out. Click it on and look at the number of apps you have. I’m guessing you might be surprised at how many there are.

You obviously didn’t start using them all…

Take a moment right now and look at your to-do list for the day. Among all the tasks and jobs you are hoping to accomplish today, do any of them have a clear Definition of Done attached to them?

Probably not, but for the sake of your productivity, they all should.

A Definition of Done tells you your task is completed. You have reached your destination. It’s time to move to the next thing.

You wouldn’t get into your car to go run errands without knowing what you needed to accomplish. You wouldn’t drive through town looking at businesses and…