The podcast is paused for the summer, but I already have eight amazing guests booked for the fall. This means I have some prep to do, including reading some new books they’re releasing in the next couple of months. New episodes will be coming out early in September. Things are mostly quiet around the university READ MORE
Category: Productivity
For Your Listening Pleasure – Some Better Me Episodes to (Re)Listen to
I’m taking a bit of a break from recording new episodes of the podcast because, well, I deserve a break. The 95th episode dropped about two weeks ago so there are a lot of episodes to listen to or relisten to. Below are ten suggested older episodes for you to check out. To give you READ MORE
Making Up For Lost Time Doesn’t Work
I’m on a roll right now. Ideas are popping, and I’m thinking strategically about a lot of things at work. All or most of my brain cylinders are firing. This is very different than how I was doing three and a half to four years ago. My thinking was fuzzy, my creativity was shit, and READ MORE
The Next Six Months
On Friday, the first half of 2022 will be done with six months remaining. For many people, the first six months of the year were hard, scary, draining, and many other adjectives that don’t describe “a good time was had by all.” In the 94th episode of the podcast, which came out yesterday, I talked READ MORE
Talking to Solve Problems
I’m co-facilitating a course for faculty at the university with my amazing friend and colleague Aditi Garg. Recently the faculty members need to get feedback from one of the other participants on an activity they’d been working on related to their teaching specifically. Instead of just sharing their papers and writing feedback on them, I READ MORE
From Day-to-Day to Your Purpose
I recently wrote a post about doing a “Weekly Review”, an idea that comes from David Allen’s book Getting Things Done (GTD). Another important aspect of the GTD method that I think often gets overlooked is the “Horizons of Focus”. According to Allen, there are six horizons of focus that he explains using a “flying READ MORE
Figuring Out Hybrid Work
Throughout the first two years of the pandemic, I worked at home, but now I’m back on campus two days per week, which is the ongoing plan. As part of this arrangement, I agreed to give up my office at the university. Moving forward, I will have a cubicle to work in and stash books READ MORE
Block Time and Untouchable Days
It doesn’t matter if you keep a paper to-do list or use an app of some kind, if you don’t have the time to do what’s on your list, it’s pretty pointless. I’ve written before about needing to give yourself time to breathe throughout the day, as well as giving yourself regular time to create READ MORE
Taking Notes About Books
While I’ve spent a lot of time in my life as a student, I was never particularly good at taking notes. I would just jot down was on the board, often missing important things and not hearing what the instructor was saying. I know there are a lot of note taking methods out there including READ MORE
Going Deeper
I often see advertisements online for subscription services or opportunities to purchase individual summaries of books. This has never appealed to me. I’ll admit that I made use of Cole’s Notes while in school, but that was for books I didn’t want to read. Today, I get to choose which books I read, and if READ MORE
