Category Archives: Real Simple

In a classic psychological experiment from the 1970s, called the marshmallow test. Standford researchers found that a child’s ability to delay gratification (i.e., to not eat the marshamallow in front of them in order to get two marshmallows later) correlated with higher achievement later in life. Good to power through the pain now to seeContinue reading “Eat the marshmallow today!”

Holmes is a big fan of “committment devices”-various ways to lock yourself into following thr;ough on a goal if you’re a workaholic who struggles to schedule personal time, you could pay for a nonrefundable vacation or sign up for a cooking class so you have to step away from work. For me, if I dreamContinue reading “Schedule around your worse impulses.”

To achieve what’s known as a “flow state” –when you’re so engaged, you lose track of the hours–you need uninterrupted time. Three hours in a row is not the same as three hours broken up by phone calls and school pickups, because constantly checking the time and coming in adn out will make a flowContinue reading “Break your focus tiem ito larger blocks.”

Physically rearranging your work space can help you avoid the temtation of smaller tasks, the ones that, bundled, leave no room for the bigger projects that would fulfill you. Visual distractions could be as seemingly harmeless as plants on your desk, if you’re the type who tends to prune dead leaves. Working from home canContinue reading “Clear away visual distractions.”

“Will you serve on this committee?” “Can I pick your brain over a cup of coffee?” “Can all my friends come over for inner after soccer?” So often, we say yes and then regret it when it’s time to make good. (Who among us has not said, “Yes, I’ll join your book club,” and thenContinue reading “Say no more often”

While the word “craft” may recall ceramists sculpting overpriced bowls, Holmes uses it to convey the idea of active participation: Make more time for what you really want. One way to do that (again, it’s not by zipping through more work faster!) is to identify the insidious “sand traps” in your day, those chunks ofContinue reading “Craft our time.”

“Never,” Holmes says. We may feel good about ourselves when we get the gold star, but “checking off a series of small, routine stuff is rarely the path to life satisfaction,” she says. Stop trying to do everything on your list before you have any time for what you genuinely want to do. (Nope, “optimizing”Continue reading “Accept that your to-do list will never be done.”

When you were growing up, did your relationship with your parents feel transactional, with their love, attention, or rewards doled out based on your performance rather than your inherent worth? Deep down, do you ever feel like breaks are for wimps, whiners, and entitled people who aren’t as tough or hardworking as you? Do youContinue reading “Examine the root of your devotion to productivity.”

Sure, you have the same number of hours in the day as, say, Beyonce. But as Catherine Hong discovers, happiness doesn’t always come from a finished to-do list. As a kid, I must have read The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster a dozen times, always lingering on Jules Feiffer’s illustration of the Terrible Trivium, anContinue reading “How to be less busy”