Mark Ellwood’s Brainy Blog of Fascinating Facts and Timely Tips

Productivity and the Home Renovator

Productivity and the Home Renovator

You can learn a lot about productivity from a home renovator. We had some work done in our basement recently. It’s the kind of work that anyone might do. We wanted to fix up an unfinished room, the size of a bedroom. We needed it because we rented out our house for...

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The Cure For Boredom

The Cure For Boredom

300 kids come to our house every Halloween. Instead of candy they get stickers and a “magic scroll”, a rolled up poem that I write every year.   This year, my son inspired me to write  ”The Cure For Boredom.”  I’m passionate about inspiring people...

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Eliminate Time Wasting At Work

Eliminate Time Wasting At Work

“What a waste of time!” Do you ever hear this at work? It’s an incriminating observation for what is often just a petty inconvenience. Time was wasted, and someone is to blame. Though it’s curious how no one ever dares to take ownership of the problem. In so many...

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Conduct A Time and Motion Study To Improve Productivity

Conduct A Time and Motion Study To Improve Productivity

Pick up just about any time management book and you’ll find a common piece of advice somewhere near the beginning. “Conduct a time and motion study on all of your activities for a week”. This will be accompanied by a nifty table with snappy rows and impressive columns...

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Please Interrupt Me

Please Interrupt Me

A day without any interruptions would be a very strange day indeed. Would you really want to eliminate all the interruptions that you get? Imagine arriving at your work space early in the morning. You write out a to-do list, and then launch into your first task,...

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Procrastination Definitions

Procrastination Definitions

Here are a number of defiintions of procrastination. Do any of them fit? To voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay – Piers SteelThe intentional and habitual postponement of an important task that should be done...

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Productivity Hurdles

Productivity Hurdles

What really bugs people about productivity? We conduct time and motion studies using our proprietary electronic TimeCorder device, gathering thousands of hours of real-time data from employees. We like to complement the time study results with additional data, so we...

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