Christmas is usually such a mix of people, different styles, generations and needs that it can be really hard for everyone to have a good time. It is possible with a bit of planning and forethought. Consider these three needs:

I’ll let you into a little secret - no one’s Christmas actually looks like their Facebook post would have you believe. Most of us are just grateful we’ve managed to serve something resembling a dinner and not poisoned anyone in the process.

It’s tough when you feel pulled in different directions, unable to spend time doing the things you want to. Being more balanced is a very personal thing because we are all different - to some people sitting on a beach is relaxing - to some it is the very definition of boredom!...

It’s a sad fact that eating our lunches at our desk has become an accepted norm. Apart from being unhealthy - just think of all those germs and rotting bits of food that fall onto your desk or trapped in your keyboard...

Tis the season to be merry - and also stressed if you are organising Christmas this year. At such a special time, you want to get it right, but many people race up to the big day and are then too exhausted or stress to enjoy it. There’s a reason why Christmas Eve is a peak day for people getting colds. Here are our top tips for making Christmas a breeze...

It’s simple right? Follow some time management rules; make a list, work out what’s important and work your way through it. Not so simple. Even people who really focus on managing time well are being secretly sabotaged by their own brain. Why?...

Can you get things done better and faster by actually slowing down? Speed has many benefits but also some drawbacks in that speedy decisions can be less thought through and have unintended consequences that can take you by surprise, wasting time, money and energy later. Instead, consider trying out some of these strategies:

Remember that when you are communicating to other people about your time you are basically training them in how to treat you. We all have natural habits in how we respond to requests for our time. Let’s look at ways in which you can increase your choices of response to requests for your time adapted from our new book Time Management; Banish Time Management Forever.

Your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. What is called multi-tasking is actually your brain flicking from one thing to another so that each task gets a bit of your attention and the processing power of your brain. You will divide your focus over a number of things and none of them will get your full attention. When someone thinks they are multi-tasking their brain is actually trying to track a number of different thoughts and activities in their mind at the same time. This drains your energy and reduces your thinking capacity. People multi task because it ‘feels’ productive, rather than an objective analysis of results and output.

“Busy” has become a word so packed with meaning in social circumstances, it has become has common a response as ‘fine’ to the question ‘How are you?’. Habitual it might be but are you telling people what you really want to when you use this in conversation? Busy can be a positive thing, if you are busy doing the things you want to do with your life. If your business has been quiet and now it’s ‘busy’ that’s good. Be careful though of using it as a standard response because when you describe yourself as busy, you are potentially communicating to yourself and other people one or more of the following:

Time is a finite resource. We all have the same amount of time each day, each week and each month. How we use that time is dependent on what each of us believes is important and how we think about time.

We often see the new year as an opportunity for a fresh start or to try something new. Our new year gift to you for 2020, is to consider how you use the word ‘busy’.

How do you maintain pace and quality of work, without burning out your staff? It’s a concern expressed by many people we work with in innovative, creative, and high pressured environments.

As organisations return to work and take stock of the past few weeks, the conversation is shifting from ‘how to work at home during lockdown’ to ‘what remote working will mean to the future remote based organisation’. It’s a far reaching strategic issue.

Many of the stressful situations we get ourselves into happen because we don’t have as good a grasp of our time boundaries as we thought - if we’d even considered them at all. As a consequence, interactions with others can end up being frustrating and unfulfilling, and what we really want to achieve doesn’t get done. Sound familiar?