Five Myths of Time Management

There are so many prescriptions for how best to manage time and a bunch of them actually don't help you in any way. Author Laura Stack lists five of these time management myths below:

1.  If you plan properly, you can do it all. Well, no, you can't—because at some point, the sheer number of things you need to do outweighs the available time you have to do it. “Do-it-all” thinking got you into this mess in the first place. So examine your priorities carefully, focus on the important, and let the trivial go. Something can always slide—just make sure it’s not a key project.

2.  Multitasking makes you more productive. Quite the opposite, actually. Multitasking may work for computers, but for people, single-tasking—focusing tightly on one task at a time, to the exclusion of all others—actually works better. That way, you don't waste time switching between tasks and then refocusing on the new one.

3.  Breaks? I don't need no stinkin' breaks! Workaholics often skimp on breaks, under the impression that this makes them more productive. Big mistake! While you may not want to quit working on something when you're on a roll, stopping occasionally between tasks and taking a breather will recharge your energy. A nice lunch spent chatting with a co-worker may be just what you need to get back on the high-performance track.

4.  More is better. Some people believe the more they check off their to-do lists, the more productive they are. Be careful—don't confuse busyness with true productivity. If you accomplish two tasks worth $50,000 each in the course of an eight-hour day, then you've far out-produced your neighbor who polished off 35 items worth $500 each during a twelve-hour session.

5.  I need to stay connected at all times. While your smartphone, the Internet, and email can certainly make you more productive, tread carefully here. Responding instantly to calls, email alerts, and Tweets shatters your focus and diverts you from real work. So slip the electronic leash. When you need to concentrate on a critical task, shut down your email, skip Facebook, and turn off your cell phone. Take care of your communications when you come up for air.

Don't fall for these time management myths! Better yet, read Laura's book, so you can learn all the secrets of achieving fantastic productivity without succumbing to overwork! Finally, a “work less, more success” guide to time management!

Five Community-Owned Businesses That Are Thriving

Marjorie Kelly's latest book explores a new model of ownership where an entire community shares a business which in turn gives their best interests (and not shareholders' interests) priority and focuses on long-term growth and yield over short-term profits.

The model is already working successfully in different communities all around the world. Here are just five examples:

 1. Community-owned banks – like credit unions of the U.S., building societies in the UK, and cooperative banks found across the globe, all of which are owned by their depositors. At a time when the mega-banks of the U.S. were receiving billions in bailouts, the vast majority of the nation’s 8,000 consumer-owned credit unions needed none. In Europe, the cooperative banking sector holds 21 percent of all deposits. In the Netherlands, the enormous Rabobank holds 43 percent of the country’s deposits. These cooperative banks are member-owned and run democratically in the interests of their customers.

2. Community-owned wind – like Lynneten Wind Farm, standing offshore in Copenhagen harbor, where three turbines are owned by a local utility, four by a wind guild. Wind guilds are owned by small local investors who joined together to fund and own wind installations, with no corporate middleman. Denmark today generates 20 percent of its electric power from wind, more than any other nation. And many credit that success to the grassroots movement of the wind guilds.


3. Community-owned forests of Mexico – where the rights to govern and profit from the forest are often held by indigenous peoples, like the Zapotec Indians of Ixtlan de Juarez in southern Mexico. At Ixtlan, the problems that bedeviled other forests in Mexico, like deforestation and illegal logging, have become relatively unknown. The reason is community members have incentive to be stewards, because forest enterprises employ 300 people harvesting timber, making furniture, and caring for the forest. Community forests represent 60 to 80 percent of all forests in Mexico. Worldwide, more than a quarter of forests in developing nations are managed by local communities.

4. Community land trusts – like the Jewish National Fund, a public but nongovernmental institution established over a century ago to hold land that, as its founder said, would be “the property of the Jewish people as a whole.” Today the fund still holds title to substantial land in Israel, overseen by trustees who lease portions to kibbutzim and others who use it in the public interest. Mexico once had the ejido system, involving village control over communal land. And traditions of common land ownership were known in ancient China and Africa. Today these traditions survive in the British custom of the town common in New England. There are also community land trusts in the U.S. where a cluster of families own their homes, while a community nonprofit owns the land beneath those homes. In the housing crisis that began in 2008, community land trust homes in the U.S. had foreclosure rates one-tenth those of traditionally owned homes.

5. Community-owned restaurants and grocery stores – like the County Seat Café in Gove, Kansas, which is housed next to the GCIA Grocery Store, both of which were created by the community after a local restaurant and store closed. A group of citizens formed the Gove Community Improvement Association (GCIA), and built a new building with volunteer labor, local donations, and a loan from the local electric cooperative. Local residents can join the GCIA for $25, which brings certain purchasing privileges at the grocery store, such as the right to charge. Different from cooperatives, community-owned stores can tailor their ownership structures to meet the unique needs of their communities.

Roles and Responsibilities of Leaders in the Future.

Carol Pearson worked with the top minds in leadership research to edit and create the edited collection, The Transforming Leader. Here she lists the Five Most Important Things Leaders Should Keep in Mind When Addressing the Roles and Responsibilities of Leaders in the Future:

 

1.  Have a strong, positive intent but let go of the illusion of control.

The pace of modern life and the reality of interdependence make it increasingly unrealistic to think we can predict the future or accomplish linear goals and objectives.  However, if we are not clear about our intent, we can simply be tossed to and fro by changing circumstances.  Effective leaders today must recognize that moving toward their goals will be more like an adventure than a controlled project.

2.  Always stop and take stock of both yourself and the groups you lead.

Effective leaders today practice mindfulness to know themselves better. Similarly, they must take time to understand the social network within their organizations, identifying opinion shapers and current direction of thinking and trends.  They also recognize that while they are influencing their group— the group is also influencing them, resulting in both negative and positive tendencies within the system that should not be ignored.

3.  Find a way to harvest intelligence wherever you find it in yourself.

Because our unconscious minds track and process more information than is available to our conscious minds, effective leaders facing unpredictable situations today find ways to access and evaluate intuitive guidance from the unconscious, paying attention to their hunches, gut feelings, dreams, and/or images that suddenly arise into consciousness..

4.  See greater possibilities by getting rid of projections and appreciating the dual nature of things.

Effective leaders today must develop the capacity to help themselves and the groups they lead to question and even potentially withdraw projections in order to move beyond limiting dualistic patterns of thinking such as right/wrong, good/bad, inferior/superior.   In doing so, such leaders foster greater empathy for other people and groups, and gain an enhanced understanding of why they think and feel as they do.

5.  Demonstrate the narrative intelligence to choose the stories you tell and live.

Most people interpret the experiences they have through the lenses of certain familiar story lines, thereby confusing their stories with reality. Many leaders who have been very successful in the past, are stymied, not only because they’re inadequate to what is required today but also because they are oblivious to the fact that their stories are not reality.  But effective leaders today must notice what stories they are telling and living and how and if they are relevant and have impact to the groups and people around them.

Five Ways Shareholder Primacy Hurts the Very People It Is Supposed to Serve

As author and professor Lynn Stout has pointed out numerous times, shareholder primacy -- of always focusing on maximizing shareholder returns -- remains one of the most detrimental and dangerous myths operating in business markets today. But just in case anyone tries to dismiss her argument as "liberal leftie talk," she outlines below five ways in which shareholder primacy actually hurts shareholders themselves:

1. Shareholder Primacy Erodes Long-Term Returns. Shareholder primacy leads corporate managers to focus obsessively on raising the next quarter's earnings.  Often the most reliable way to do this is to defer maintenance, cut safety corners, or reduce customer support -- short-term strategies that harm long-term business performance.

2. Shareholder Primacy Stifles Innovation. Because so much focus is put on today's stock price, potentially innovative and revolutionary research and products are neglected as requiring too long-term an investment. Instead of creating groundbreaking products or services, companies settle for less ambitious projects that produce modest but reliable profits without challenging the industry -- meaning only modest returns for shareholders.

3. Shareholder Primacy Undermines Employee Effort and Loyalty.  In the relentless drive to raise today's share price, companies reduce their workforces, outsource good jobs, and relentlessly drive the employees who remain into exhaustion.  Employee dedication and loyalty suffers -- and eventually, so does the business.

4. Shareholder Primacy Hurts Investors' Other Assets and Interests. In the quest for more and more profit, companies take on leverage that hurts bond values, pursue anti-competitive strategies that raise consumer prices, and create mortgage bubbles that hurt real estate values.  The price of some stocks in the investors' portfolios may go up, but the value of their other interests and assets go down.

5. Shareholder Primacy Makes Corporations Act Like Psychopaths, and Makes Shareholders Look Like Psychopaths.  When managers feel they have to focus only on profits without regard to ethics or the welfare of others, they cause corporation to act like conscienceless psychopaths: maiming employees, polluting the environment, breaking the law.  This works against the interests of the many shareholders who want their firms to earn profits honestly and ethically.

Five Mantras for the Work Day

To celebrate the release of their newest book, "Being Buddha At Work," authors Franz Metcalf and BJ Gallagher have compiled five simple mantras to carry you through your work day's trials and tribulations:

1. Remember, every day is a good day

Yunmen addressed his monks and said, “I do not ask about before the 15th of the month; tell me about after the 15th.” Nobody said anything, so he answered himself: “Every day is a good day.”

—The Blue Cliff Record, case 6

The past is gone and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Likewise, the future is not here yet and there is nothing anyone can do about that either.  Zen Teacher Yunmen is testing whether we are worrying uselessly about time, past or future. He is asking about now, the moment of awakening. It is pointless to divide up our years and days, living as if we were calendars. From a pure Zen perspective, there is no future or past. We’re not like calendars, we’re more like clocks. We tell the time as it happens. Our hands are always pointing to now. There is no 15th, nor any day before or after. All we really have to work with is today—and today is a good day.

2. Nothing wanting, nothing extra

It is completely open,

Nothing wanting, nothing extra.

Hold or reject and

You lose its thusness.

—Sengcan, “Trusting in Mind”

The third Zen Ancestor, Sengcan, describes the great way, the path of the sages. No “too much” here. It is we who create categories such as “too much” and “too little.” But in the Buddha mind there is only what is—no evaluations of excess or insufficiency. And, since there are no evaluations, there is also no stress caused by judgments and assessments, nothing wanting and nothing extra. The Buddha mind surveys your e-mail, the piles of paper on your desk, the work in your briefcase, and simply says, “Thus.” The Buddha mind does not suffer, because it has no pre-conceived ideas about the volume of work. Without suffering, we are free to work without the distraction of holding on to our imagined reality or rejecting our actual reality. We are free to find the ease of openness.

3. Be kind to yourself, first

May I be physically healthy.

May I be mentally happy.

May I be free from fear.

May I find peace.

—Variation on the metta (loving-kindness) prayer

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has told us, over and over, the simple truth that the purpose of our lives is to be happy. But do we listen, really listen? Seemingly not, since we slip back into the patterns that continue to frustrate us. But ask yourself: What if the Dalai Lama had decided he’d never be happy until he freed Tibet? He’d have been too miserable to share his wisdom with others; too angry to win the Nobel Peace Prize; too drained to devote his life to freeing his people. But there’s Tibet, still dominated by China, and there’s His Holiness, still working and still smiling. Why? Because true happiness—ours and the Dalai Lama’s—comes not from external success but from the internal peace of feeling that your life is aligned with your values and beliefs. How can you be happy? Start by being kind to yourself and you immediately can expand that kindness to others. Just as the Dalai Lama does with China.

4. It’s okay to be wealthy

When he uses his wealth properly, kings don’t take it, thieves don’t take it, fire doesn’t take it, floods don’t take it, and unworthy heirs don’t take it. His wealth, used properly, goes to good ends, never to waste.

—Samyutta Nikaya 3.19

The Buddha had no problem with people making money, or even getting rich. The sutta quoted here tells that, when people of integrity become wealthy, they provide for their families, underlings, and friends, and they give to worthy causes, aiming toward supreme happiness. There is nothing wrong with this picture. Wealth is neither good nor bad: wealth is neutral. It’s a tool we can use for noble and laudable purposes—or to wreak havoc and destroy others. Goodness follows from neither riches nor poverty. Goodness follows from wise choices.

5. Other people’s faults are other people’s problems

Treating others the way he’s treating me,

He’ll be destroyed and then I shall be free.

—Jataka 278

We’ve all had the experience of working for a bad boss. Perhaps you’re having that experience right now. First, know that this is not your problem. Problem people’s troubles are theirs, not yours. You might  feel the consequences of your boss’s or teammate’s difficulties, but the difficulties and troubles are theirs and stay with them. 

Next, there’s that little old thing called karma. In this case, you’ll be happy to see karma in action, but, remember, it’s not your job to even the score. You are not the hammer of karma. Stay out of other people’s karma and take care of your own. If you really want to be a good student of the Buddha and are willing to take on a difficult learning assignment, we have a radical suggestion: love your problem people. They can teach you lessons that wonderful people never can. Someday you may look back and realize that you became stronger and more resilient, patient, kind, and compassionate as a result of working with jerks.

Five Ways That Bridging the Wealth Gap Helps Both the 99% and the 1%

Author Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and one of the founders of United for a Fair Economy.

Bridging the income gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is not something that only benefits the 99 percent while penalizing the 1 percent in some way. In fact, here are five ways in which the 1 percent also stands to gain from such a bridge:

1. The 1 Percent Can’t Build A Wall Around Global Problems. There are real limits to how big a wall or fortress the 1 percent can erect in the face of global climate change, nuclear proliferation and economic instability. Global instability and the climate crisis will not bypass the 1 percent, even though they will be buffered from the worst conditions. Our present economic and ecological challenges require 100 percent of us to be engaged.

2. Inequality is Bad For Everyone’s Health. Too much inequality undermines everyone’s health, including the 1 percent. As the British health researcher, Richard Wilkinson, has documented in The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, extreme inequality undermines public health for everyone in the society. For example, when you eat out at a nice restaurant, remember most employees serving you are likely to lack any sick days and often any health care. So they come to work sick — and then you get sick, too.

3. Entrenched Inequality Undermines Excellence. Extreme inequalities undermine opportunity, social mobility, and meritocracy. As wealth concentrates, so does power. A segment of the 1 percent –the “rule riggers” – use their power to corrupt the economic policy and outcomes. The U.S. is drifting into plutocracy, a society where the wealthy rule. As Warren Buffett said, it’s like picking the 2020 Olympic team by choosing the children of the 2000 Olympians. Already, research shows how social mobility is declining in the U.S. and increasing in more equal industrialized countries.

4. Inequality Hurts the Economy for Everyone. Polarized income and wealth lead to economic instability, distorted markets and hurt economic growth. The 2008 economic meltdown was inevitable as consumption by the bottom 80 percent was based on borrowing, not real wage growth. Meanwhile, the 1 percent moved a huge percent of their wealth out of the “real economy” of goods and services – and into the speculative marketplace. These two trends contributed greatly to the economic meltdown.

5. Extreme Inequality Breeds Fear and Destroys Communities. What kind of society do we want to become? The wealth gap keeps people apart – creating multi-tiered societies that are fear-based. Do we want to become like Brazil, where the vast majority live in poverty and the wealthy live behind walled enclaves, drive bullet-proof cars, and hire body guards to accompany their children to school? The current drift of unequal wealth and power is moving us in that direction.

Thoughts? Reactions?

Five Everyday People Who Kissed Frogs

As Brian Tracy and Christina Stein Tracy explain in their book, we have the option of channeling the negative and destructive emotions and forces we experience into positive actions and directives that can improve the lives of many.

Here are the stories of just five individuals who experienced personal setbacks but used that experience to build something better and stronger -- both for themselves and for others:

1. After his own son was paralyzed and seeing how common high school football spinal injuries are, one father started Gridiron Heroes to offer emotional and financial support to young athletes who suffer such injuries. Read more here.

2. Parents who lost their ice hockey-playing son to an accident abroad decide to do more than donate their son's ice hockey gear, they started an empowerment program for underprivileged youth, Read more here.

3. A woman who rescued several orphans during bloody civil clashes in Burundi realized the need to do more for child victims of war. She opens a housing unit which has now grown significantly and has housed over 10,000 children. Read more here.

4. The mother of a son who was bullied and committed suicide as a result uses her son's tragedy to get anti-bullying legislation passed in her state to protect other potential victims. Read more here.

5. A young woman who was (possibly wrongfully) convicted of assault decides that education is the best thing for other kids to avoid such scenarios and so not only goes on to earn her doctorate, but also creates an educational foundation. Read more here.