A holistic approach to increasing your get-up and go, from the productivity expert whose previous books showed people how to Find More Time and Leave the Office Earlier. If you want to be productive but are just too tired all the time, you need to read this book! Laura Stack combines invaluable insights and practical advice in this guide to becoming more energetic and more productive in every area of life. Stack describes the factors that contribute to low energy (the "energy bandits") and explains how to reduce their effects and build up or renew sources of positive force (with "energy boosters").

Available now from Amazon.com and at better bookstores everywhere.

Leave the Office Earlier, Laura shows you how you CAN get more done than you ever thought possible and still get home to your real life sooner.Available now from Amazon.com.

More of The Productivity Pro's Resources

These are all private client engagements with Laura Stack. At this time, Laura does not offer open enrollment seminars to the general public. If you're interested in bringing Laura to your organization to present a training seminar for your employees on the day prior or the day after one of these engagements below, please contact John Stack for special "piggyback" pricing.

March 2010

18::Atlanta, GA

29::Denver, CO

April 2010

1-2::Seattle, WA

8::Denver, CO

10::Charlotte, NC

14::Sioux Falls, SD

20::Denver, CO

26::Denver, CO

28::Tampla, FL

30::Denver, CO

May 2010

13::Washington, DC

18::Denver, CO

19::San Antonio, TX

24::Denver, CO

27::Greensboro, NC

June 2010

7::Denver, CO

16::Suitland, Maryland

13-15::Fargo, ND

24-25::Vail, CO

28::Denver, CO

29::San Diego, CA

July 2010

12::Denver, CO

13-16::Orlando, FL

17-20::Orlando, FL

26::Denver, CO

August 2010

8-10::Breckenridge, CO

23::Denver, CO

26::Denver, CO

Visit Laura's Calendar On-line for her complete availability.

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Recent posts:

SUPERCOMPETENT KEY #2: AVAILABILITY

Business Efficiency: The Productivity Minute #25: Do You Really Need to Answer That?

Time Management: The Productivity Minute 26: The Value of Hiring Others

Audio Podcast: The 12 Dysfunctional Personal Productivity Personalities

How to solve work-at-home ethical dilemmas

Maximizing Your Talent in a Shrinking Economy

Grumpy workers: Let's not 'touch base' Survey shows what pushes people's buttons most in the workplace

E-mail is Making You Stupid

SUPERCOMPETENT KEY #3: ATTENTION

This month's article correlates to the third key in my newest book SuperCompetent: The Six Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best (Wiley), to be released on August 16: ATTENTION. Simply put, attention is the ability to concentrate and not get distracted.

SuperCompetent workers are always tightly focused: on getting the job done, on their department's success, on their company's success, on the success of their own careers. They home in like a bloodhound on the task at hand, rather than flitting from one thing to another. Distractions are ignored or shunted aside. They avoid negative chat and whining and are proud of what they've accomplished at the end of the day.

SuperCompetent people don't have nifty time-stretching devices like the one Hermione uses in the Harry Potter series to cram in extra courses at Hogwarts. Nope, they have the same number of hours and minutes we do, but they use them more efficiently. They know how to pay Attention to their work, and nothing else, when it's necessary--so they can stop paying Attention when they need to devote time to other important parts of their lives.

When fine-tuning your ability to pay Attention, it's especially important to avoid an overdependence on business technology. You must school yourself to ignore the Internet, except where it's necessary to do your job. Don't take a few minutes to check your eBay auctions or Facebook page when you should be working, and for heaven's sake, don't let your email rule your life.

Modern technology can be a phenomenal productivity tool, but it will eat your day alive if you let it. So don't. Learn to turn off Outlook, block out those distractions any way you can, and get to work. You don't have to be a social pariah, but don't let your social interactions (online or in real life) take over your workday, either.

To achieve a SuperCompetent Attention level, you have to constantly work on these five factors (which also correspond to the chapters in my new book):

1. Stay focused consistently on your work. Don't get distracted. No, do not open Outlook, and turn off all your email alerts. Sure, it may only take a few seconds to check your mail or go for a cup of coffee, but any interruption breaks your concentration, wasting valuable minutes as you refocus on your task.

2. Leave the distractions for your downtime. Most people lack the ability to refuse attractive distractions, and this costs Corporate America billions of dollars per year. When you're supposed to be working, work. Wait for lunch or break time to check YouTube or your social media sites.

3. Limit your multi-tasking in order to maximize your productivity. Despite our technological achievements, it's difficult for the human mind to focus on more than one thing consciously at a time. Rather than achieving more, you end up slowing down because your perceptual channels get jammed. Stop opening 17 browsers.

4. Don't allow socializing to overwhelm your productivity. Human beings are social creatures, so of course you'll need to interact with the people around you--but don't let it get out of hand. This is especially a problem now that it's so easy to go online and lose yourself in social media of all kinds.

5. Don't let your productivity technology take over your life. Realize that your handheld, cell phone, laptop, and other forms of business technology are just tools to help you become more productive--end of story. You need to be able to turn all these things off at the end of the day; how else can you ever be off work?

It all boils down to time. Do you really have time to check your social media accounts constantly, especially if they have nothing to do with work? Of course not, but doing so is tempting, particularly when it takes you away from tasks that are boring or onerous. The fact that we can be constantly connected makes it even easier to lose track of what we're doing and waste time enjoying ourselves with our shiny new technology and social interaction.

But let's face it. There's a time for work and a time for fun, and most of the time, you can't do both effectively at the same time--and accomplish anything worthwhile. Focus, focus, focus. For the working professional, social media, handheld devices, email, and the like are tools. You need to learn to learn to use these tools for what they're intended, instead of letting their expanded purposes of entertainment get out of hand in the workplace.

You shouldn't let their utility trick you into trying to do too much at once, either. Just because it's easy to communicate via email and social media and to get more work through your contacts, don't get sucked into the multi-tasking trap. You're only human; you can only do so much.


Make it a productive day! ^(TM)

(C) Copyright 2009 Laura Stack. All rights reserved.

Dear Laura,

I have been a fan of yours for several years and attended the webinar you hosted on 1/7/10.

Even though I have read your book, Leave the Office Earlier, read your monthly e-zine, and have implemented many of the time allocation and productivity strategies you recommend, I found your webinar incredibly helpful. It was a great reminder of some things I've let slip and really helped get me re-focused on managing my ever-expanding task lists (now daily and universal, thank you!) more effectively. I'd gotten pretty sloppy about doing my daily planning the night before and Thursday evening, I did it. As promised, I slept better and hit the ground running on Friday morning.

I really value all you do to keep Type AAA personalities like myself focused and on point.

Thank you.

Best wishes for a happy (and productive) new year.

Your pal,
Meryl Hooker
Sales Rockstar
877-277-1171

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