Sally McGhee has a piece on the things we tell ourselves about productivity at the Microsoft at Work blog. 5 beliefs that limit productivity - and how to overcome them. The five items are (read the full article for her discussion):
- There's too much information coming at me too fast
- I have to keep everything
- Organization cramps my freedom and creativity
- There's not enough time in the day!
- It takes too much time to get productive
A number of these "beliefs" are very familiar to anyone who pays attention to this area. And McGhee's counter-arguments to these beliefs should come as no surprise.
I love the comments about time (#1, #3, #5). And I see #4 (and the others) in project management: "It takes too long to plan, let's just do it."