Posts by Mike Sturm

Learning to be more productive can seem complicated. If you’re looking to get more productive, chances are you’re already overwhelmed by a lot things that need to be done, and not enough time to do them. It can seem like there’s no rhyme or reason to help you decide the next thing to do. But there is a rhyme, and…

What gets measured gets managed.Peter Drucker Like it or not, you’re managing your personal growth. And you’re either doing it well or doing it poorly. Only you can say which. But if you don’t have a way to measure your growth, how do you know how well you’re managing it? Goals, Tasks, Etc. Writing down and monitoring goals is one…

There’s a very important lesson about productivity that it took me nearly a decade to learn. It came after multiple rounds of getting a lot of stuff done, but still feeling like I wasn't any better off. It seemed like I had done what needed doing. I had checked so many boxes, and crossed off so many items. I had…

On November 30, 2020—exactly one year and one day ago— I pushed aside the complicated system of task lists and projects that I had been using and took the first step toward a simpler, more reliable system. I took out a simple 3 x 5 index card and wrote down six things that were important for me to do that…

A key part of being productive is understanding and leveraging the distinction between importance and urgency. It’s a distinction that gets overlooked or misunderstood quite often. And when that happens, it’s part of what drives us to do a lot of stuff, but feel like we’re not getting anywhere. In the simplest of terms, importance means that something is weighty—it…

The famous management writer Peter Drucker once said "what gets measured, gets managed". I've found that to be true, for the most part. There is a reliable relationship between the measured and the managed. But what about another category of stuff that begins with "m"? I'm talking about the stuff that matters. I have a theory about how those 3 "m" things…