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

PIM is Critical for Knowledge Creation - DBR 089

July 19, 2025 • 48 mins
I want to delve deeper into a concept that listeners found interesting in a previous discussion: Commonplace Books. My goal here is to show you how a modern toolset, specifically Attention Compass, transforms the idea of a commonplace book from an overwhelming task into a practical and incredibly powerful exercise for the modern world. This is especially valuab...
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Episode 88 - Meetings and Death By Them - Is It Inevitable?

July 12, 2025 • 52 mins
Hi there. I want to talk about a common source of pain among people on teams: meetings. You simply can’t discuss productivity without addressing meetings, and my goal is to equip you with actionable ways to make meetings more productive. I’ll share tactics, discuss the realities of meeting culture, and provide desk-level actions you can implement to improve how...
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Be Your Own Executive: Mastering Productivity Through Executive Function - DBR 087

July 7, 2025 • 49 mins
My goal today is to help you understand a few things that are true about knowledge work, specifically focusing on a concept called executive function. This term may be new to you, but I believe it perfectly describes what we're all dealing with in our daily lives and work. Ultimately, I want to describe an "operating system" that we can put in place to help us ...
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Not As Busy As We Think (Maybe) - DBR 086

June 28, 2025 • 49 mins
Productivity is hard to measure. I’ve talked about it before. The measurement problems can lead us to confusion about our productivity. I’ll talk about what this looks like in the workplace in a minute.
 
If we think we’re more productive than we are (and ...
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From Guild Secrets to Modern Work: Process Thinking is the Key to your Productivity - DBR 085

June 20, 2025 • 44 mins
Today, I'm going to outline the current progress in the pursuit of increasing knowledge work productivity. I'll have some suggestions about how you can improve your productivity. Mostly, this is encouragement and motivation to do the work required to get on top of your game and stay there.
  • Purpose: unders...
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Digital Moderation and How To Decline a Technology - DBR 084

June 13, 2025 • 48 mins
I’m going to dive into the logic of the debate around technology.
 
Purpose: To earn a stronger hearing for honest critiques of technology: We’ll discuss a common pattern where critics are dismissed as "anti-technology" or "Luddites".
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How to Process Incoming Information - DBR 083

June 6, 2025 • 54 mins
Most people don't know how to process incoming information.
 
This is a core part of personal information management, which (particularly for knowledge workers) is absolutely critical for modern economic life.
 
The ways in which we receive inform...
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Don't 'manage time'; time is the constraint - DBR 082

May 31, 2025 • 49 mins
I was answering a question: “how do I manage my time?” and I was thinking of it in terms of scheduling. Then it occurred to me that we don't manage time. (I've said that a lot.) But, what is it then that we do with time? And it occurred to me to think: time is the constraint.
Now, this is hardcore knowledge worker stuff here. Time i...
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WFH: Don't Fall For The Hidden Challenge - DBR 081

May 23, 2025 • 48 mins
WFH: Don't Fall For the Hidden Challenge
 
Most everybody I hear wants to work from home. I’ve posted previously that most employees see WFH as a convenience and a perk. Is it possible that WFH is not all upside? What if WFH presents challenges to our thriving. I’m all about thriving, so I think you shou...
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Information Overload Is Simpler Than You Think - DBR 080

May 17, 2025 • 52 mins
Eradicating information overload.
 
The goal of personal information management is to put processes and tools around our information so we can “manage” it – that means control it, tame it, have fewer emergencies around it. Our fear that we don’t have it well-managed causes us stress and anxiety – we call...
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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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