The words you use when planning your week matter.

It may not seem like a big thing - but depending on how you are phrasing things in your calendar or to do list, you can end up procrastinating or not wanting to take action.

I see many leaders - including myself - sometimes delay doing things because how they are listed in our calendar is not helpful.

In this episode I share simple tips to help you plan your week so you are ready to take action and be more productive during your week!

Another year is almost over, and if you're like me, you may be asking... where did my time go?

And better yet, what have I accomplished?

Depending on how much you respect your own time, you may find yourself either doing urgent work for others, or doing important work for yourself.

What's interesting is many of us don't even realize when we are not respecting our time.

We think we are being productive, or being helpful.

But when you take a step back and think about it, this is a habit that...

In aid work, time is precious.  And although we know that spending time on our team's professional development will pay off in the long run, it often seems like competing priorities get in the way.  In today's episode you'll learn about a very efficient way to use your time during professional development, and three reasons why it's so effective.

A philosophy I am aspiring to live by right now is to take more responsibility in my work and life.  That means recognizing that the results in my life and work are consequences of the choices I have made.  Sometimes we confuse what is within our control and what is outside of it, meaning we do not always recognize how much control we have over certain outcomes (health, professional advancement, etc). 

In this episode I present three primary areas aid workers forget we have...

Whether it's managing email, determining which working group meeting to attend or balancing time to respond to our team's needs, as aid workers we need all the help we can get to be able to make deadlines and maintain a work-life balance.  Of course there are a ton of resources on how to increase productivity - but what are some of the best tips for aid work?  

My guest today has figured out quite a few - with a ninja twist.  Lauren Pelascini's role as Sub Regional Head...

This is one of the things I enjoyed the least about aid work--- the number of ridiculous meetings we have to attend. Of course some meetings can be very productive, but let's face it, most of them are at least a partial waste of time.   Because I have heard this is a challenge for so many of you, I am doing a two part episode on meetings - so you can free up more time during your week to focus on other more important things. 

In this episode we focus on how to get the most out of...

Do you ever feel like you are in reactive mode, responding to what is going on around you during your day but not having the time to work on tasks that require focused and undistracted thought time?  Making time for focused time or “deep work” as Cal Newport claims in his in his bestselling book, is linked with innovation, greater productivity and staff morale.  But deep work isn’t just something you can do right away, it requires advanced planning and...

One of the major struggles in aid work that I have encountered both myself and amongst other aid workers is around protecting a certain number of hours during the work week to work on those “important” tasks. You know, the tasks that can help us make a bigger impact, and advance our teams and ourselves professionally. But somehow, it always seems like other things get in the way of working on the “important” stuff. Proposals drop, supervisors invite us to meetings, or...

Over the last few months I took the advice of some time management books and tried batching.  Batching means implementing similar tasks in one block of time. I am surprised by how much this simple act has freed up my time! For example, I used to spend 8 hours on producing one podcast episode, but after batching I can do about three episodes in four hours! There is much to be said about batching tasks, and especially as applied to aid work. In this episode I share some ideas on how you...