A Better Way of Working Blog

Thoughts and ideas about transforming the way the world works

Battling Your Online Addiction
Focus, Mental Needs | 6 COMMENTS | September 26, 2012
How much time do you spend each day responding to email, checking Facebook, sending and reading Tweets, aimlessly surfing your favorite websites and buying things you don't need? How much time, in other words, do you spend doing stuff online that doesn't add much value in your life, or in anyone else's?Too much, I'm going to guess.
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Tony Schwartz
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Take Back Your Life in 7 Simple Steps
Focus, Mental Needs | 1 COMMENTS | May 29, 2012
In my most recent blog, I wrote about how we've allowed technology to take a pernicious toll on our attention, and in turn, on our creativity, our resilience, our relationships and, ultimately, our productivity.This week I'm turning my focus to how to wrest back control of your attention, so you can make conscious choices that provide long term satisfaction rather than instant but fleeting gratification.
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Tony Schwartz
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You Are Not A Computer (Try As You May)
Focus, Mental Needs | 1 COMMENTS | May 17, 2012
Technology is meant to serve us. Instead it increasingly runs us — and runs us down.Where we put our focus shapes our agenda and defines our experience in every moment. More and more, we're turning over this precious resource to our digital technology, allowing it to define the depth and span of our attention, and to seduce us into operating at such high speeds that we don't notice the insidious toll that's taking.
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Tony Schwartz
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A 90-Minute Plan for Personal Effectiveness
Focus, Mental Needs, Renewal | 6 COMMENTS | September 20, 2011
For nearly a decade now, I've begun my workdays by focusing for 90 minutes, uninterrupted, on the task I decide the night before is the most important one I'll face the following day. After 90 minutes, I take a break. To make this possible, I turn off my email while I'm working, close all windows on my computer, and let the phone go to voicemail if it rings.
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Tony Schwartz
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Take Back Control of Your Work (and Your Life)
Creativity, Focus, Mental Needs | 5 COMMENTS | March 16, 2011
I just got back from the SXSW interactive conference in Austin. I went there to give a talk about fueling sustainable productivity by balancing periods of fully absorbed attention with intermittent renewal. Peering out into that vast hall, I fear I saw the future: a sea of the digital elite hunched over blinking technologies, tweeting and texting as I talked. Here's what I later learned some of them were saying, all in 140 characters or less:
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Tony Schwartz
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