Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

If you're like most people, there's lots of stress in your life around your level of "busy". Funny thing: we're never taught how to manage the 'stuff' that delivers that stress. The key is to set up tools and workflows that allow you to better manage your tasks and your attention. That's what Do Busy Right means - manage your tasks and attention in such a way that you get things done with less stress. We are learning that here. Happy to have you.

Episodes

Work-life Balance Is Nothing (... but an Attention Management Problem) - DBR 079

May 10, 2025 • 50 mins
This episode is about the outcomes you can achieve with the information and coaching I am able to give.
 
This is important, because it's gonna be work. It's not hard work but it is work. You'll need to change a couple of thought patterns and build a new habit or two.
 
And in order for you to d...
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Watch Out For The Three 'Micro' Wastes of Productivity - DBR 078

May 3, 2025 • 51 mins
I want to describe calm productivity. And I want to contrast the results of attention management to the results of efforts to do time management. 
 
I’m going to take you over to a recording of a public talk I did at a conference at UA. It’s titled: "The T...
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Over-allocated Attention and the Associated Stress - DBR 077

April 26, 2025 • 54 mins
Our attention is over-allocated by a nexus of events. This episode is what to do about that.
 
I'm gonna acknowledge something that I'm not a big fan of. Apparently April is stress awareness month. So, if you weren't aware of stress, stress is a thing. I think most of us are aware of it.
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Yes! You CAN Be Happy At Work - DBR 076

April 19, 2025 • 41 mins
The happiness at work episode. Yay. I’m happy to be at work.
 
Last time we talked about pessimism versus optimism. A closely related subject is happiness versus misery. I do think that optimism is critical. I've heard it said that your number one goal as ...
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    Pessimism Cloaked as Realism Considered Harmful - DBR 075

    April 12, 2025 • 53 mins
    This one's about optimism and pessimism, and what that has to do with productivity. I and the whole thing is a productivity concern for me. We talk about confidence around these parts. That’s because I think confidence ties to productivity. The tie there is imposter syndrome. We struggle to understand what confidence is. But confidence is fundamental to what we...
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    How We Got Here and Where We're Going - History of Knowledge Work Productivity - DBR 074

    April 5, 2025 • 50 mins
    I want to talk about the history of knowledge work productivity. And it's going to involve a lot of different names. It's going to involve the triumvirate, well, the quadrumvirate (that’s the real word), the Mount Rushmore.
     
    Only through understanding wha...
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    Fable: Productivity Rain Dances - Watch Out - DBR 073

    March 29, 2025 • 47 mins
    I started out talking about the lies of productivity, but I’m going to change to fables because it's just things we collectively believe without much evidence. Plus, I don't think anybody's intentionally trying to mislead us.
    We just move without much actual data.
     
    A couple ...
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    The Modern Productivity Paradox, What Should Knowledge Workers Do? - DBR 072

    March 22, 2025 • 49 mins
    Most everybody involved in knowledge work is involved with technology. It's what we do. We deal in information, so we deal with information technology. We believe that it makes us more productive – “better” at our jobs.
     
    But what is the evidence that info...
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    "Attention Crisis"? What is the Argument and the Evidence - DBR 071

    March 15, 2025 • 45 mins
    There's an article in The New Yorker "What If The Attention Crisis Is All A Distraction" by Daniel Immerwahr. I think the attention problem (if there is one) is important for us to understand and resolve and, frankly, to have a debate about.
     
    I thought I'...
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    The Wrong Mindset May Be Causing Bad Results - DBR 070

    March 7, 2025 • 51 mins
    It's time to update on philosophy of work; I've got some more info for you. A lot of this is going to be review, but I think it's absolutely critical that we put ourselves in the right mindset towards work. It's important because work is what actually produces the things that we then associate with productivity. Unfortunately, there's a lot of a lot of weird st...
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    Why you need commonplace books and how to create them - DBR 069

    March 1, 2025 • 51 mins
    One of the primary uses of information is to help us learn. When we are explicitly learning, we work to collect information. It works the other way, as well. As we are exposed to new information, we have the opportunity to learn.
     
    The relationship between...
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    The History of Paper as a History of Personal Information Management - DBR 068

    February 22, 2025 • 52 mins
    This episode is about the history of personal information management as viewed through a now ancient technology, PAPER
     
    We’ll have a couple of takeaways:
     
    One is human beings have been trying to m...
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    Operating system for attention, tasks, information (and time) - DBR 067

    February 15, 2025 • 54 mins
    We need a new operating system.
     
    We need one that is specifically dedicated to knowledge work. So I'm going to point you to one that already exists. When we start talking about ways to manage our informatio...
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    Top 10 Productivity Tips? NOT - DBR 066

    February 7, 2025 • 41 mins
    This episode is about what it is I'm trying to do with attention compass. And why I hate current productivity “help”.
     
    I developed this AC stuff. I didn't discover it. I didn't invent it. These are the principles, and they produce specific results. I make...
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    Knowledge Work Careers via Resistance and Linchpin - DBR 065

    January 31, 2025 • 48 mins
    I rarely talk about what we need to do to have a meaningful, successful career.
     
    So I gathered some sources...
     
    The first I'll bring up is Seth Godin, the author. The book that we'll look at today is called Linchpin. He’s got some things to say about being successful in the modern era.
     
    On this podcast, we're lo...
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    Invest in Technique to Get Better at Knowledge work - DBR 064

    January 24, 2025 • 55 mins
    If you've listened to this podcast for very long, you know that I'm fascinated with human performance.
     
    Particularly when it comes down to work, how do we do work? How do we get better at work? I don't think there's a ton of knowledge out there, so I'm trying to move the needle a little bit here, and get us so...
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    What does proactive have to do with busy and productive - DBR 063

    January 19, 2025 • 46 mins
    I'm interested in this difference between busy and productive, if there is one. It’s hard to tell the difference, even from the inside. I think this has something to do with the relationship between the terms.
     
    Busy is a state that we are in intermittently, occasionally, as circumstances drive us. We mean that...
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    Don't Like Work? Why? - DBR 062

    January 10, 2025 • 50 mins
    I want to explore what we mean when we say we don't like to work, or we don't like our work, or we don't like a task.
     
    A buddy of mine, Justin Janowski, captured this recently saying about a task, “It didn’t feel like work, it felt like hanging out with friends and having discussions.” Punchline: I think he was referring to recording marketing videos in an ...
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    Humans Monotask; Computers Task-switch; Nothing Multitasks - DBR 061

    December 21, 2024 • 57 mins
    I was having a sales conversation, discussing several ideas around managing tasks and attention.
    I happened to mention the background of the term multitasking and his eyes got really big and he started asking questions.
     
    I realized that he was not familiar with the story of how we arrived at the term “multitasking” and so I told it to him. He was fascinated and realized that there is really ve...
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    Do I Have a Context Problem? - DBR 060

    December 13, 2024 • 48 mins
    Anytime you talk about task management, you talk about actually doing things. It's one thing to know you have something to do. It's another thing to prioritize well and what I have to say will have something to do with prioritization. But actually doing things has a lot to do with the third thing which is, given a prioritized task, will you do it?
     
    The challenge here: What do we know about context, and h...
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