From the Editor
Productivity is all about three things:
- good habits;
- focus management;
and - a real determination or need for change.
How do we ignite and foster these three factors?
Firstly, productivity is about good habits. We develop these from the very beginning. Our parents, teachers, football team coaches or scout leaders try to instill good habits and drill into us certain rules and habits. With a little determination or better techniques, these early educators can make a child’s future life much easier. Later in our life we need to constantly struggle between getting rid of the bad habits and replacing them with the good ones.
Secondly, productivity is about focus management. Psychologists and experienced parents know that it is good to remove all possible distractions from child’s sight during the meals or other activities that are not necessarily pleasant or exciting. Unfortunately the world in general won’t support this attitude. There are distractions and stimuli coming from literally everywhere: TV, phone, computer, interactive toys, etc.
You will read about techniques adults can pass along to kids in Mike St. Pierre’s great article.
Grace Marshal shows us the other side of the coin writing about what having kids has taught her about productivity.
Lastly, productivity is about determination. It actually is conditio sine qua non and means that if you want to find obstacles and hinder any improvement you’ll always find a way. Self-handicapping shouldn’t be though confused with simply having a bad day or a bad week. Michael Hyatt describes his tremendously unproductive week and proves there is nothing wrong about it from time to time :)
If you read on, you’ll find lots of useful techniques that will help you fight procrastination and develop good habits. Laura Stack provides a good amount of tips to maximize productivity while you travel. Timo Kiander presents the second part of his list of methods you can use to find some extra time for running an online business. Gonçalo Gil Mata addresses the important issue of the costs related to using cc’s when e-mailing at work. To build you up, Augusto Pinaud prepared an article about not letting life distract you from your plans and dreams.
Brian Tracy is amazing
I had an honor of meeting Brian Tracy on a conference in Finland and I was totally blown away by him. I heard good things about Mr Tracy before but I didn’t expect to be that much impressed with him. I had a privilege to talk to this amazing man personally. I’m sure you’ll enjoy our interview as much as we did chatting there together. Brian talks about productivity, passion, sales and most of all, what keeps him going at his very senior age.
Productive! Magazine news
I’d like to share some exciting news with you. Firstly, you can now read Productive! Magazine on most mobile devices, including Android phones and tablets. Our nonpareil programmer, Radzio, and fantastic designer, Radek, prepared the Android app for those of you who, like iOS users, wanted to read monthly, while on the go. Now you can, and I hope you like it.
Another achievement is that we are kicking off the Polish and Japanese editions of Productive! Magazine in February. We are now starting to work on other two versions: Spanish (with my friend Augusto Pinaud) and Dutch (with my friend Frank Meeuwsen).
If you are Polish, Japanese, Dutch or a Hispanophone and would like to give it a try and write an article, do not hesitate and drop us a line. E-mail Magda at magda@productivemagazine.com and say what topic you’d like to tackle.
Meet the team
I couldn’t have done this all alone. Here is the amazing team behind Productive! Magazine.
Vision: Michael Sliwinski
Execution: Magda Błaszczyk
Design: Radek Kozieł
Technology: Radek Pietruszewski and Tomasz Kapelak
Editing: Lori Anderson, Emily Derr, James Tonn
