The Productivity Show

It's been a while since we talked about Evernote on the podcast, and this episode was triggered by the end of year letter that the CEO makes every year. In his 2021 recap, he said this "Your subscriptions propelled Evernote to its highest annual revenues in history. When we read that, we both said "What!!? Really?" So we thought it would be good to do a little dive into where Evernote is now, what...

Today's episode was inspired by feedback from a listener: "My only feedback would be that the barrier to entry might be a little high, particularly for people who are already efficient and motivated but not bought in." It made us realize we all know people like that: people who maybe could benefit at least SOME productivity advice, but are generally skeptical of the whole "productivity thing" So w...

Today's episode is going to be a bit different: we're going to talk about… Date Nights! You might be asking yourself … why on earth would a productivity podcast be talking about date nights? Am I listening to the wrong podcast? We know Valentine's Day is coming up and that many of you are in a relationship. You might need last-minute ideas but more importantly, this wouldn't be a productivity podc...

In today's episode, we're going be talking about the 3 P's of productivity to use everyday to make an impact. We'll talk about what the 3 P's are, and how to make the system work for you. We'll talk about some specific tools and techniques you can use to stay on top of everything you need to do in the day, and reduce the overwhelm in your life. You're not a "goal setting" person, but you want to m...

This episode is all about how to Keep Momentum Going, no matter what time of year it is. You've always struggled with accomplishing your goals. You set goals, and then lose momentum by the end of January. Maybe you get past January and February OK, but by half-way through the year...your goals still not accomplished. You're not a "goal setting" person, but you want to make sure you follow through...

In today's episode, we're going be diving into the world of Personal Knowledge Management This is a topic that is super-hot right now, and linked editing tools like Obsidian, Roam, and others are having an impact in a way that I haven't seen since the early Evernote days. There's definitely something big going on here, and we've wanted to do an episode on it for quite some time, and there's no one...

Today we are going to talk about something that has been in the news a LOT this year and will likely impact most of us in the year ahead: issues with the global and local supply chain. You might have experienced that prices are going up, packages are delayed, and stuff you want to buy is backlogged by months or even out of stock. Whether you're a business owner, employee, academic, or retired - we...

In today's episode, we're going be talking about productivity and procrastination, but with a special focus on STUDENTS. 90% of students procrastinate, but the reasons are very different than with adults. We're going to dive into that, and we're going to share some special strategies to help the students in your life manage their time, develop smart study skills, and become FUNCTIONAL procrastinat...

In today's episode, we're going to share how to set boundaries and SAY NO. This is the last episode of 2021. If you could set one intention for this upcoming year, a great one is to say No to more things to prevent yourself from being overcommitted. It's hard for a lot of us - me (Brooks) included. Saying no is my productivity kryptonite. You find yourself overwhelmed with everything you need to d...

In today's episode, we're going to share how to get ready for next year. In our last episode, TPS382, we talked about how to review the past year, see how you did, and maybe come up with some changes you want to make for the next year. In THIS episode, we are going to connect that to the upcoming year. 1: What are the things you need to do to wrap up this year? 2: How do you figure out what you're...

Today's episode is going to be a bit different. From time to time we do episodes about how we do things at AE, for two reasons: 1: Going back to the early days of the blog in 2011 and the podcast in 2015, we get a LOT of questions about behind the scenes aspects of running AE 2: We are always doing experiments to try to improve the company, be more productive, and have happier team members You kno...

Today's episode is going to be slightly different than what you might be used to from us. This is Thanh Pham, the founder of Asian Efficiency. I was recently interviewed by Sachit Gupta, the host of the Conscious Creators Show: https://link.chtbl.com/thanh If that name sounds familiar, I actually interviewed Sachit on episode #348: https://www.asianefficiency.com/podcasts/348-sachit-gupta/ This ti...

In this episode, we are going to talk about Calendars, or more specifically doing a Calendar Cleanup. Any way you can get your Calendar in top shape will have an immediate impact today and going forward. There aren't many productivity changes you can make that will do that! If your calendar has become cluttered with "not real", out of date, or irrelevant events, we'll take you through some ways to...

Today's episode is going to be slightly different than what you might be used to from us. We're always looking for ways to make the podcast better, more fun and insightful. Every podcast episode is still actionable but the format might be different every now and then like today's episode. We are going to talk about something that has been in the news a LOT this year: what has been called The Great...

In this episode, we are going to do our Annual Productivity Gift Guide. What do you give to someone who is into productivity? Or maybe you'd like to give them something that would help them out. This year, we are going to do something different. We are going to share some of our favorite productivity gifts from past shows, since those have stood the test of time. We are ALSO going to share 1 new g...

In this episode, we are going to talk about everyone's favorite topic: Meetings. Believe it or not, there's a way to make meetings less painful, and to even make them events that people WANT to attend (or at least don't actively hate). If you run meetings, we're going to give you tips to make them effective and a great use of everyone's time. If you don't run meetings but just attend them, you'll...

Apple released a new feature for iOS and macOS called Focus Mode to help you focus and customize your notifications for fewer distractions. In this episode we'll unpack this feature, how we use it and how you can use it to focus and get less distracted. Even if you don't use an iPhone or Mac, we'll also cover Windows and Android alternatives. If you have never heard of Focus mode, we'll help you g...

A comment in a recent Podcast recording livestream made us realize that there's this misconception that we are these Notification-less monks, who have all of our devices on Do Not Disturb and never get notified about anything. This is not quite true - we actually embrace notifications and reminders! The only difference is that they need to do something for us - they need to remind us to do somethi...

Even if many of us are back in the office, at least part time (or never left), it is inevitable that so much of our day is spent in online meetings. We fire up our computer, connect to Zoom or Teams, sometimes for back to back calls! There are some things you can do to make your Zoom or Teams experience better, and some best practices to make the most effective use of your time. Anything we can do...

We've all been there. You had a day that just went all wrong. Maybe you or someone else made a mistake, or some crisis came up and your day went totally downhill, or maybe you have some sort of habit you're trying to keep (or break) and you backslid a bit. Maybe it was a healthy eating goal, or a fitness goal, a reading goal, or maybe you talked over someone in a meeting and you're trying to stop...

Every year at The Productivity Show we have an episode where we share our favorite productivity apps. This time we're making it different by only highlighting the apps we don't frequently talk about, but we absolutely love. We have six apps for you that are about to make you more productive and efficient.   You can find links to everything that we share in the show notes by going to theproductivit...

The average person spends about 2.5 hours a day on prepping food, cooking, eating and drinking. That's a lot of time and an opportunity to save time. Not only that, many of you struggle with eating healthy because it might be time consuming. You come home, you're tired and not sure what to eat, so you order takeout or have food delivered to you. Usually it's not healthy and you gain weight.   Luck...

Over the years, we've done many podcast episodes about organization and decluttering, but we always get questions about one specific area: photos!   We decided to call in an expert, so in this episode, I am joined by Isabelle Dervaux, a professional photo organizer and family photo curator. She has a background as an artist, is a regular speaker, and has been featured in Real Simple, the Wall Stre...

At Asian Efficiency we follow a project management philosophy called "Scrum". You might have heard of it. It's popular in the software industry but not so much outside of it which is a shame because it's a powerful way of getting things done for teams. One of the elements of practicing Scrum is called a "Retrospective" and that's what today's topic is about.   Whether you're new to the topic or ar...

Today I'm joined by Jeffrey Madoff; the founder of Madoff Productions, based in New York City. His company has produced commercials for brands such as Ralph Lauren, Victoria's Secret, Tiffany, and other big name brands you've heard of.    He also teaches a course on creativity at the Parsons School for Design, and that is also today's topic for the podcast. I asked Jeffrey, as a creative, how he t...