Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or entrepreneurship book. This book attracted me from the title alone – The Myth of Multitasking is something I’ve observed over and over again in my own life. In fact, I’m observing it right now – I can write better and faster if

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal development, personal productivity, or business book of interest. One of my mentors once told me that there’s usually no difference in content between a good job and a great job, but that the spoils go to those who do the great jobs. What’s the difference between

There are many, many days where I feel completely buried in little tasks. Pay the bills. Help my son draw a picture. Make dinner. Write an article. Write another article. Answer correspondence. Do a phone interview. Vacuum the carpet. Do the dishes. Wash the kitchen floor. Do a load of laundry. And on … and

“Caleb” wrote in recently with a concern about building connections with people in the workplace: One thing that comes in your blog from time to time is building and expanding professional and personal network. What about people who are at it but still seem to be going nowhere? For example, I have worked in a

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business/entrepreneurship book of interest. Over the last several years, I’ve worked very hard to become more and more organized with my stuff. I used to have a very difficult time finding things that I needed when I needed them and I also

Last Sunday, I posted a detailed review of Mark Forster’s excellent time management book Do It Tomorrow. During the review, I mentioned that I had actually started using several of the ideas from that book, mixed them together with ideas from Getting Things Done, and started using my own task and idea management system based

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a book on personal productivity, personal development, or entrepreneurship – books not directly related to personal finance, but deeply relevant to personal success. I’ve long been a fan of time management books. My philosophy is that if you can get just one really useful nugget out of a

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business/entrepreneurship book of interest. One profound thing I’ve always noticed is that if you give something of value away freely, with no strings attached, and don’t expect anything in return, and do it routinely and often enough, you’ll get far more in return

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business/entrepreneurship book of interest. When I was a young boy, my grandmother passed away very suddenly, on Mother’s Day, actually. While I don’t remember her passing away very distinctly, I do remember my grandfather living alone afterwards, and I remember that he just

Over the past month, I’ve been doing quite a bit of traveling – family-related trips, vacations, and so on. That basically means that I’ve been managing my writing and other professional obligations out of my travel bag for the most part. How do I do that? How do I manage to keep up with my

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business/entrepreneurship book of interest. One of the most interesting aspects of writing a great deal is that I’ve found that writing works much better if you break it down into littler pieces. First comes the brainstorming: what basic idea is behind this piece?

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business/entrepreneurship book of interest. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about overcoming the tendency to lie to yourself about money. In it, I strongly encouraged people to set microgoals for themselves, pushing themselves towards small successes that would eventually build into

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business/entrepreneurship book of interest. Over the past few months, several readers have written to me asking for me to seek out quality e-books to review – e-books being documents you can download to your local computer for your own use without the need

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business/entrepreneurship book of interest. A little while back, I discussed my thoughts on finding a career – in a nutshell, my belief is that the best possible career is one that balances your passions and your natural talents. Is Your Genius at Work?

I have this nice big list of projects in front of me. Twelve creative projects, all related to The Simple Dollar or my writing ambitions, just waiting there to tackle. I have a nearly mountainous pile of books to review for the site. Many of them look really compelling. My office is cleaned up and

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business/entrepreneurship book of interest. When I was in college, I switched majors three different times, bouncing around the hard sciences and the humanities like a rubber ball and finally settling on multiple majors that balanced my interests. I started down the path of

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business book of interest. Being a person with a pretty packed schedule, I’m always looking for little tips and techniques for squeezing a little bit more out of my day. I’ve read Getting Things Done many, many times, and I’ve absorbed little tips

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business book of interest. Many people in the information economy are creative workers. Writers. Programmers. Photoshop wizards. Bloggers. Photographers. Analysts. Businesspeople. Engineers. And many more. We all use the creativity locked within our minds to achieve amazing things. Things that inspire and inform

Each Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or business book of interest. “Do you miss important deadlines at work? Forget to return urgent phone calls? Lose papers that were ‘just here a minute ago’? Have multiple layers of sticky notes on your computer? Leave projects unfinished for days, weeks, or even