Productivity

Productivity

It's only early January, so I'm still hearing a lot of people talk about their fresh starts and resolutions. Even if you're not one for those kinds of traditions, January tends to be a relatively sleepy month without many large obligations (plus, it's cold out!). One way to put that downtime to good use is by getting a bit more organized. What better place to start than your desk?

Meg's bank charges a $15 monthly fee unless she makes 5 debit card transactions a month. She prefers to use her credit card for rewards, not her debit card. Once a month, when her local supermarket isn't busy, she buys 5 bananas in 5 individual transactions at self-checkout. She doesn't make the rules but she makes the rules work for her.

Since the launch of Power Hours - which takes readers inside the daily routines of highly successful CEOs, founders, investors, and public figures - earlier this year, Business Insider has been asking high achievers a deceptively simple question: How do you actually spend your day? The answers we got were as fascinating as they were varied. To determine which habits were the most prevalent among these leaders, we fed months of Power Hours interviews into ChatGPT and asked it to find the common themes.

In a recent post, I wrote about how creativity requires just enough confusion to actually work. We need to be a little surprised to find something new. Vibe coding for PMs is exactly that. It isn't about becoming an engineer; it's about making your thinking much stronger earlier in the process. It's about "rubber ducking" your decisions, externalizing your thinking so you can look at it in a more objective way, with a machine before you bring it to your team.

The former lawyer turned time management coach Kelly Nolan suggests starting with a commute audit to assess its true impact. Begin by blocking it out on a calendar. Creating a visual representation of how much commuting takes out of your day gives an accurate picture. It's not just about how much free time you have left, it's about seeing how commuting affects other activities in your life.

If you want to block distractions across all of your devices at once, Freedom is a good option. You can choose which websites and apps to block for a specific period of time. So if you're working on your laptop and then try to open TikTok on your phone, you won't be able to - you'll instead see a green screen indicating the app is blocked.

It's easy to tell who the top slacker is in your office. Slack, the ubiquitous workplace messaging app that has been changing workplaces since 2014, makes it easy to see who sent the most messages this past year. Unfortunately, there is no glitzy presentation like Spotify Wrapped, but if you want to know who is blowing up your notifications the most, here is how to do it.

You quit the 9-to-5 to have more control over your time. You wanted flexibility, autonomy, and the freedom to structure your days around your life instead of someone else's schedule. Yet here you are, apologizing to a client for not responding to a message immediately. Feeling guilty on a Tuesday afternoon when you've only worked for four hours that day. Checking Slack at 9:00 PM because that's been your routine for most of your working career.

We'll cross that bridge when we get there. I have often seen teams shoot themselves in the foot by planning to use 100% capacity in their regular planning cycles, only to scramble when they need some triage bandwidth. This leaves no runway for immediate triage when external randomizations land mid-cycle. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Another common pitfall is that the loudest voice wins by default.

Sandra doesn't like any dishes left in the sink. She'll wash and put away her breakfast dishes before she leaves for work. Even if it's one or two dirty items, she won't dump them in the sink and walk out the door. She's like this in all areas of her life. She prefers to do tasks steadily, as they come in. She doesn't like anything to build up or feel cluttered.

Google Docs has been part of my life for nearly two decades. I remember when it first launched back in 2006 -- I was still in high school, and I haven't stopped using it since. Being able to access a full-featured word processor from any computer in the world felt revolutionary then, and its usefulness is still relevant today. Also: I've been testing AI content detectors for years - these are your

About five years ago, I ran into a problem many people face as they get older: The people I holiday shop for typically just buy everything they want throughout the year. That, of course, left me hanging during the holidays, not knowing what to get anyone and relying on gift cards to allow them to buy the things they love. (The people in my life are notoriously hard to shop for.)

Imagine this scenario: Amber stumbled on a podcast interview with someone who flew themselves to and around the Bahamas in a rented plane. She expected it to be about beaches and sunsets but when she listened, it wasn't focused on those things at all. The episode had all the thrill, chase, and dramatic tension of any good story, but in a completely unexpected way. Those elements came from the rule-finding and rule-following parts of the logistics.

Humans spontaneously synchronize to a broad range of stimuli: synchronized walking, turn-taking in conversation, marching, dancing, and the in-unison singing of "Happy Birthday." Synchronization is shown especially in dance, where planned coordination is the goal. Dancers' sophisticated timing skills are particularly important for coordinating with other dancers in duet or group choreography/improvisation. The term entrainment is usually paired with the notion of coordinated rhythmic movement. It describes a phenomenon in which two or more independent rhythmic processes synchronize with each other.

The next big meeting on your calendar might not have any other attendees-it might just be you. A growing number of high-performing leaders, including managers at Google and other Fortune 100 companies, are carving out protected "focus blocks" and treating them like mission-critical meetings. With constant pings, shallow tasks, and back-to-back calls, this might be the only way to produce strategic, high-value work. Google and Microsoft have even rolled out Focus Time features that automatically block off calendars to protect deep work.

Younger people definitely laugh (even lightheartedly!) at the things older people tend to do, like napping, playing bingo, or eating dinner early. But recently, the BuzzFeed Community wrote in to share the "old person" habits that actually make life way better - and it got such a great response that even more people shared habits of their own! So, from young and old alike, here are some "old person" habits that you might consider adopting for yourself:

That cycle is breaking down. Not through top-down mandates, but because of AI. New research shows that the workweek is changing for AI-enabled teams in measurable and sustainable ways. Employees are executing high-value work on Mondays and Fridays, meetings are consolidating towards the middle of the week, and engagement levels are climbing. The implications reach far beyond scheduling: AI is beginning to influence pacing, workflows, and even how leaders think about organizational design.

For years, packing was my biggest travel stressor. I'm the type of person who always wants to have the right outfit for every moment, and I love having options-both of which don't exactly translate to lightness and efficiency. There were countless trips where I either hated all the outfits I brought with me or I'd find myself lugging around more (and heavier) bags than was necessary.

Hey everyone I am trying to sort out a cleaner way to manage timelines across different kinds of projects. Some of my work is client facing, some is internal dev work, and some is ongoing content work. Each one has its own deadlines and a different level of priority, and my current setup is starting to fall apart. Excel Gantt charts get messy when predecessors start overlapping. Kanban tools feel great for dev tasks but not so great for long term scheduling.

In my opinion, slide decks come with a lot of problems for your product team. Some of the most significant of these include: Hindered collaboration I've never seen a group of people brainstorming and figuring out solutions while working on a slide deck. Most people associate slide decks with a "presentation," and these expectations guide their behavior, causing them to act like "I'm here to listen." It's really hard to get people out of "listener" mode when presenting.

This training teaches learners how to prepare a meeting effectively by defining a clear objective, building a structured agenda, and selecting the right participants.

Productivity isn't about doing more-it's about doing better. The right tools transform cluttered surfaces into composed workspaces, turning everyday rituals into moments of intention. For the professional who treats their desk like a cockpit, who believes every object should earn its place, these gifts speak a language of precision, craft, and quiet efficiency. They're designed for people who notice details, who value form that serves function, and who find satisfaction in tools that simply work.

Most people recognize that when you're answering email while walking your dog and listening in on a meeting, you're bound to lose effectiveness. Whether it's that awkward silence when your boss asks for your input and you didn't hear it-or you stepping in something not so pleasant because you didn't realize your dog had done his business right in front of you.

All I had really secured was a safety net. My family would be fine whether I worked or not, but we wouldn't necessarily thrive

On TikTok, creator @olivia.unplugged called everyone out with a single post shared on Sept. 3, in which she discussed the downsides of multitasking. As an alternative to the chaos, she offered the 90-minute rule, which aims to boost your focus and productivity. "We've talked about the Pomodoro method," she said in the clip, which has over 155,000 likes. "But I raise you one: The 90-minute rule."

ClickUp has redesigned its productivity platform and released new AI assistant features as it aims to create a one-stop shop for customers. The company said core parts of this release were possible because of its acquisition of Qatalog, the enterprise search startup that had raised more than $29.5 million from backers like Salesforce Ventures, Atomico, Prototype Capital, Mosaic Ventures, Tiny VC, and Possible Ventures.

It is now accepted wisdom that taking regular breaks during the workday makes one more productive. How long those breaks should be, however, depends on which productivity method you are subscribed to. Recently, a University of Cambridge mental health researcher has suggested that longer breaks could, in fact, be more effective at tackling those afternoon slumps. "The most productive people work for about 52 minutes at a time and then take 17-minute breaks," Olivia Remes shared on Instagram.

Creative Ops Masterclass is part documentary, part playbook,

Google Workspace is the modern business world's de facto productivity suite, and it's only gotten better over the years. There's the centralization of Google Docs, Drive, and Gmail, of course, but Google has bolstered its productivity suite with an AI infusion via Gemini, as well as simplified its offerings to work for massive corporations all the way down to individual users.

I have no idea how to make myself do things in the consistent, reliable way that others seem to: work out, get dressed, cook a veg bowl, book appointments. On rare days, I miraculously do them all. Most others, I thumb screens, nap relentlessly and eat neon-colored snacks covered in sugar and salt. After seven years of freelance life, it's gotten dire.