ProdPod, a Productivity Podcast
by Ray Sidney-Smith
The mission of ProdPod is to produce approximately two-minute, fast-paced and thought-provoking episodes covering instructional tutorials on productivity techniques, author & expert interviews, books, software & other tool reviews, and informational topics that are interesting to productivity enthusiasts new and advancing.
Episodes
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Don’t Start With the App
Ray was searching for a productivity timer to jumpstart his mornings better and realized the real issue wasn't technology. Many of us look for new apps when what we need is to examine our workflows, emotions, and avoidance patterns. Read more.
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Build a System That Survives a Bad Week
How does a single failure cascade into a bad week? And why should your productivity system be built to survive setbacks, not just support peak performance? That's what Ray discusses in this episode. Read more.
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Recovery Is a Productivity Skill
Recovery is a fundamental productivity skill, not a reward you earn after work. There's a difference between rest (passive recovery) and rejuvenation (active recharging), and regular recovery is essential to avoid burnout. Read more.
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The Cost of Context Switching
Context switching (what most people call multitasking) carries hidden costs: lost time reorienting, diluted attention, more mistakes, and missed ideas. Like switching systems in business, each mental shift reduces the quality of your work. Read more.
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Pondering Minimalism: How Does Minimalism Affect Your Personal Productivity?
ProdPod: Episode 118 — Pondering Minimalism vis-à-vis Personal Productivity How does minimalism affect your personal productivity? And, is there such a thing as a minimalist approach to productivity? I believe ardently that our physical and digital worlds are a manifestation of our…
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ProdPod: Episode 117 — Getting More Resilient (Resilience and Productivity)
In the last episode, I defined resilience, or emotional elasticity, as I like to call it. Here, I’d like to detail tactics for bending back into shape faster for more productive output. Read more.
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ProdPod: Episode 116 — Resilience and Productivity
A few episodes ago I covered several challenges that people face in their productive lives, including overcoming overwhelm, distractions, indecision, procrastination, and burnout. And, in this episode, I am detailing an important emotional skill that one hears in many contexts but is one…
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ProdPod: Episode 115 -- Thinking INSIDE the Box! (Part 2)
In the last episode we learned that the scientific research that told everyone to think outside the box to overcome challenges and to be creative in life and work, was summarily misguided. We can be primed that a box exists, and we’ll still see a box as a limitation, unless we are guided to work...
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ProdPod: Episode 114 -- Thinking INSIDE the Box! (Part 1)
So often I hear the cliché that you need to be an “out of the box” thinker. Creativity and problem-solving (which I feel frequently are synonymous in many circumstances) are, after all, great tools in any productive person’s toolbelt. But, is thinking outside the box really possible? (Hint: no.)...
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ProdPod: Episode 113 -- Limiting Resources for Greater Productivity
Intuitively, we know that focus is a fundamental of greater productivity. Broadly and less instinctively, focus manifests heightened productivity by training and straining any resource, including but not limited to attention, time, money, and other resources. In Episode 98, I spoke about using...
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ProdPod: Episode 112 -- Overcoming Burnout: Rest and Rejuvenation for Sustainable Productivity
Burnout is a systemic problem not a situational/circumstantial challenge. And, so overcoming burnout is more about how to build systematic “down time” and renewal into your life and work for sustainable productivity. Here are some suggestions for both rest and rejuvenation.
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ProdPod: Episode 111 -- Overcoming Procrastination
In Episode 22, I defined procrastination and even gave a few pointers about Procrasti-Doing in Episode 82. In this episode, I’d like to continue the dialog with some tips on overcoming procrastination.
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ProdPod: Episode 110 -- Overcoming Indecision
Do you have a good idea of how well you manage uncertainty and make decisions? For most people, there is no well-defined strategy for overcoming indecision in their productivity systems. I think everyone should think about how to reduce distress and increase action through some basic components…
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ProdPod: Episode 109 -- Overcoming Distractions
Without focus, almost nothing can get done. Yet distractions abound in our everyday work and personal lives. Here are some suggestions on overcoming distractions of each kind.
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ProdPod: Episode 108 -- Overcoming Overwhelm
Overwhelm is a pernicious productivity detractor that affects us all in varying degrees. In my definition, overwhelm is a buildup of stimuli that creates anxiety which, in turn, blocks action or clear decision-making. Learn more here.
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ProdPod: Episode 107 -- Managing People for Productivity
In all my years of management, I’ve learned a few things which have proved consistent, that I have wrapped into a developing, high-level leadership framework for organizations, so I thought I’d share it with you.
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ProdPod: Episode 106 -- End of Workday Routine
In the last episode I spoke about routines that were primarily designed to facilitate personal and work life improvements. However, those are not my only routines and I wanted to explain another of my most helpful daily routines--my end of workday routine. Listen/read more.
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ProdPod: Episode 105 -- The Power of Daily Routines: Morning, Midday and Evening Productivity Routines
For years I’ve spoken about the power of habits, and tangentially, I’ve spoken about many routines that I have--from meditation (Episode 32), to my Day Reset strategy (Episode 69), and more. I use a variety of routines to minimize distractions and maximize my productivity. None more than any...
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ProdPod: Episode 104 -- The Myth of the Left and Right Brain
Let’s discuss how the incorrect left and right brain paradigm impacts your productivity, and how, by thinking about it slightly differently and correctly, you can improve your productivity. Read/listen to the full article/episode.
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ProdPod: Episode 103 -- Managing Up for a More Productive Organizational Culture, Part 2
In episode 102, I introduce the idea of managing up and discussed one leg of it--managing expectations and delegation. Here in this episode, we’ll cover the next two legs of managing up--managing collaborative time wisely and managing your manager. Read/listen more.
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ProdPod: Episode 102 -- Managing Up for a More Productive Organizational Culture, Part 1
I’ve read extensively and have been honing my management skills over the past two decades, and something I’ve found to be universal is this: unless you’re at the top of the organizational chart, everyone must manage up in order to be most productive. Here’s what I mean by everyone manages up.
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ProdPod: Episode 101 -- Software Review: Mind42 - Free Web-Based Mind Map Productivity Software
In the last episode, I spoke about using mind maps as a productivity tool. And, one of my favorite mind mapping tools is the free, Web-based software, Mind42. (Note: it is free and ad-supported.) Mind42 is a comprehensive mind mapping tool that allows you to create as many private and public mind...
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ProdPod: Episode 100 -- Mapping Your Productivity Using Mind Maps
Mind maps are a method of capturing thoughts and ideas, dating back as early as the 3rd century BCE in Ancient Rome. The mind map is simply a diagram where you have a single, central thought in the center with branches off it in a freeform fashion. You can draw thoughts, use different colors, use...
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ProdPod: Episode 99 -- Be the Superhero of Your Own Life
In comics, television, film, and now Netflix, there are superheroes who come to save the day when villains attack or bad circumstances befall the vulnerable, the voiceless, and the innocent. Superheroes give us hope, and they empower us with moral fortitude to do the right thing even when the…
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ProdPod: Episode 98 -- The Power of Short-Term Challenges
Have you ever entered a competition, or a race, of some kind? Whether it’s a science fair, marathon, triathlon, March Madness, or almost any kind of contest, you know the feeling of competing. You have a period of time that focuses a large portion of your time, attention, and resources in…
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ProdPod: Episode 97–Time Thieves, Time Thugs, and Time Terrorists - How to Combat Them So You Can Get Back to Being Productive
In the last episode we covered the descriptions of time thieves, thugs and terrorists. Now, I’d like to detail how to counteract these time wasting personas so you can get back to your productive life. Read on.
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ProdPod: Episode 96–Time Thieves, Thugs and Terrorists - Who They Are So You Can Identify Them Efficiently
Using your time productively means not only managing your time but also protecting it from others who may not have your most productive interests in mind. You may know who I mean generally, when I speak of categories of people I call time thieves, thugs, and terrorists. They’re not the only ones,...
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ProdPod: Episode 95–Effective Meeting Series: More Productivity Meetings With Robert's Rules, Part II
While Robert’s Rules of Order may seem outdated, outmoded, prescriptive, and even restrictive, you’d be surprised what a little bit of parliamentary procedure can do to make meetings much more highly productive. In this episode, I continue my discussion on Robert’s Rules of Order and how this can...
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ProdPod: Episode 94–Effective Meeting Series: More Productivity Meetings With Robert's Rules, Part I
While Robert’s Rules of Order may seem outdated, outmoded, prescriptive, and even restrictive, you’d be surprised what a little bit of parliamentary procedure can do to make meetings much more highly productive. The episode is the first part, giving some context with important productivity...
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ProdPod: Episode 93–Gamification and Your Productivity
A gamified life. For the productivity and technology geek that I am, it sounds like a pretty cool existence. I’d get to live the superhero lifestyle (minus the superpower-enabling lab experiment gone wrong) I should’ve been living all along. But can I live a truly gamified life? Over the past...
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ProdPod: Episode 92--Rewarding Yourself for Productive Habit Development and Reaching Goals
One of the most unproductive outcomes of the last century’s shift from the Industrial Age to knowledge work in the Digital Age has been the loss of seeing the fruits of our labor firsthand. In the Industrial Age, Americans made things and saw them come to life. There’s an inherent satisfaction in...
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ProdPod: Episode 91 -- What Do You Own?
Have you ever been in a situation where you lost all your worldly possessions in one day? I have. It’s a life-changing event, even for someone not too attached to material things, to find out it’s all been burned away, water-damaged or otherwise destroyed in a catastrophic event. Other than the...
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ProdPod: Episode 90 -- Biology, Self-Actualization and Your Productivity
When the idea of self-actualization developed in the mid-20th century, far before the field of positive psychology was fostered by Dr. Martin Seligman, there was a desire to study and cure illness, mental and physical. Dr. Abraham Maslow tried something different; he studied the role model, the...
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ProdPod: Episode 89 -- Multi-Sensory Productivity
Humans have five common senses. (We actually have several more senses not commonly discussed.) Your sense of touch is mostly dedicated to your largest organ, your skin, comprising 22 square feet (or, 2 square meters), which holds millions of touch receptors of various sensitivity to map your...
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ProdPod: Episode 88 -- Defining Happiness
As I’ve written about before, “happiness” is a terrible word to me. It’s my version of a four-letter word in regard to positive psychology and personal productivity. And yet, we continue to keep using it; I’m guilty of it as well from time to time. While it seems like a universal term, it’s...
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ProdPod: Episode 87 -- Two-Minute Book Summary: The First 20 Hours
Learning, in the way that humans can, is one of the fundamental ways that set us apart from all other species on Earth. Skills acquisition is one of those kinds of learning that we do really well, and many of us want to do more of, better and faster. I’m one of those people, and when I picked up...
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ProdPod: Episode 86 -- The Kaizen Way: What Are the Elements of Kaizen? with Sally Reinholdt (Part 2 of 2)
Welcome to Episode 86 of ProdPod, the podcast of productivity lessons in two minutes or less. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith and I have Professional Organizer Sally Reinholdt here for Part 2 of our discussion of One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by psychologist [ http://amzn.to/1lKpijP ],...
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ProdPod: Episode 85 — The Kaizen Way: What is the Kaizen Way? with Sally Reinholdt (Part 1 of 2)
Welcome to Episode 85 of ProdPod, the podcast of productivity lessons in two minutes or less. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith and I have Professional Organizer Sally Reinholdt back on ProdPod to tell us about One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by psychologist [ http://amzn.to/1lKpijP ], by...
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ProdPod: Episode 84 -- Two-Minute Book Summary: The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
I first became aware of Shawn Achor as the funny, charismatic presenter of the popular TEDxBloomington Talk, "The Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance.” And, subsequently, I came to know his eponymous book, The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive…
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ProdPod: Episode 83 -- 31 Folders Instead of the GTD 43 Folders
If you are familiar with Getting Things Done by David Allen, or the GTD methodology, you probably know about the 43 folders concept. If you don’t, basically, it’s a tickler file-like tool where physical, time-based items can be managed. There are, you guessed it, 43 folders, constituting 12 file...
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ProdPod: Episode 82 -- Procrasti-Doing
There’s a common misconception about procrastination that it only means you’re not doing something you planned to do. Many times we are unaware that procrastination is usually coupled with doing something, if not the thing we planned. This is what I call “procrasti-doing.” And there are some...
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ProdPod: Episode 81 -- Productivity and Your Two Minds
Thanks to the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and father of behavioral economics, Daniel Kahneman, the scientific community has a deeper understanding of well-being. To wit, Kahneman revealed that humans live with two minds--our experiencing and remembering selves. In this episode I'd like to...
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ProdPod: Episode 80 -- Setting Up Your Workspace for Success
Having just finished the ProdPod series on Hoarding, I've got workspaces on the mind. And, when it comes to personal productivity, there's nothing like showing up to your home or work office workspace and seeing it set up just for you. So, in this episode, I'm going to discuss a method for making...
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ProdPod: Episode 79 - Hoarding, Part III - How is hoarding treated and managed? with Professional Organizer Sally Reinholdt
Ray: In this final episode of this ProdPod series on hoarding, I asked Professional Organizer Sally Reinholdt to detail how hoarding is treated and managed. Sally, take it away. Sally: The treatment and management of severe hoarding is very complex and needs to be addressed by a comprehensive…
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ProdPod: Episode 78 - Hoarding, Part II - How is compulsive hoarding defined and classified? with Professional Organizer Sally Reinholdt
Ray: We're discussing hoarding in the ProdPod series…and I have Professional Organizer Sally Reinholdt here to define hoarding and how it's classified. Sally: Hoarding is considered compulsive if it meets three criteria. First there is accumulation accompanied by great difficulty in discarding...
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ProdPod: Episode 77 -- Hoarding, Part I: Who Hoards? with Professional Organizer Sally Reinholdt
These next three episodes will be on hoarding and I have with me to help explain hoarding, Sally Reinholdt, owner of Commonwealth Organizing Solutions [ http://cosolva.com ]. Sally is a Registered Nurse and professional organizer who uses many of the skills she learned as a nurse to help her...
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ProdPod: Episode 76 -- Be Thankful, and Be Productive
“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.” ~Anthony Robbins Tony Robbins should know a thing about being thankful. When he speaks to audiences, he tells frequently of his humble beginnings, the gratitude he had in those who helped him survive then thrive, and the...
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ProdPod: Episode 75 — How to Run your Personal Advisory Board, Part Two
Steps for Setting Up Your Personal Advisory Board:1. Perform a strategic analysis of your situation, including a business and personal SWOT Analysis.2. Set clear, written goals and objectives for your PAB: Vision and 6-month missionstatements.3. Make a list of potential board advisers. Be broad…
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ProdPod: Episode 74 -- How to Run your Personal Advisory Board, Part One
Decide on a communication platform with which everyone can be comfortable and explain how you will communicate to them en masse (via email, text, Google Drive sharing, or otherwise). Try to keep your communications effective by being consistently substantive, positive and as few as needed (but no...
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ProdPod: Episode 73 -- Advantages of and Member Criteria for a Personal Advisory Board
A Personal Advisory Board is a group of persons who know you, your personality, your strengths and weaknesses, and who you feel comfortable sharing your goals and unique vision, and individuals who are committed to your success. There are several advantages that people (as well as companies) with...
About this show
The mission of ProdPod is to produce approximately two-minute, fast-paced and thought-provoking episodes covering instructional tutorials on productivity techniques, author & expert interviews, books, software & other tool reviews, and informational topics that are interesting to productivity enthusiasts new and advancing.
Hosted by
Ray Sidney-Smith