Posts By: Thom Quinn

Audio University

For years, many motivational speakers have encouraged their audiences to join ‘Automobile University’ to grow mentally during long commutes in their car. Over the years, inventions like the cassette Walkman, CD players, MP3 players, and today’s smart phones have opened up new avenues with the same end-goal. Personal Audio Players are wonderful devices. I brought […]

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How to Read Magazines

Cull the Herd Over the years, I’ve subscribed to a wide variety of periodicals, including the literary periodical The Atlantic, the scientific journal Nature, and the luxury lifestyle magazine DuPont Registry Autos. One day in 2002, I realized I had 11 different magazines coming to my house, on a weekly or monthly schedule. I could not […]

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Is It Important?

I love email. It is a great way to send quick messages to family, friends, clients, and colleagues…even at 3:00 AM. It is a non-intrusive, asynchronous form of communication. Yet, we all know that the sweetest roses have thorns. Email is so easy that in the past few years, many people now receive 100, 200, […]

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Schedule Time Cushions

During my very first management job in my 20s, I often allowed my schedule to become jam-packed, with no breaks. The end-result was that I often let my daily calendar look like a multi-layer cake with 8 or 9 hours of meetings without break. Sounds productive, right? It appear that I did not waste any […]

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Smile More

Today’s advice might sound squishy, like something you might find in a new age or self-help book; however, I think your own experience will jive with the scientific research on the topic. Food for Thought 1.  If all other things are equal (ability, integrity, ambition) between two individuals, one who smiles and one who frowns, […]

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How to Improve Your Life in Three Steps

An argument can be made that a good life is one that maximizes the number of meaningful moments; yet, our life span is finite. This cannot be achieved by simply adding more. Just as a glass of water has a certain capacity, the same is true with your schedule. The only way to fill a […]

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Happy Birthday, Smiley!

Thirty-five years ago today marks the origin of emoticons and emoji. Since tone is subtle and not always easily transmitted through pure text, Carnegie Mellon University Professor Scott E. Fahlman posted the smiley as a solution to signify humor within messages. On September 19, 1982 at 11:44 AM, he suggested the following on an electronic […]

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Life Management Myth

Myth: Life Management is about Getting Everything Done in Less Time. Life management is not about a frenzied existence. A human life is finite and ‘everything’ cannot fit within it. Selection is of critical importance for Life Management. At one time in my life, I believed the secret to ‘time’ management in this hectic world was simply ‘do more, […]

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Age or Effectiveness?

Today’s entry is about ‘old wine in new bottles’ in a manner of speaking. Myth: None of the Productivity Techniques from the 20th Century Work any Longer. Any body of knowledge is progressive; new ideas build on older concepts. In this respect, Life Management is no different than the fields of Biology or Economics. However, the widely […]

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Focus on Systems, not Technology

Life Management should be system focused, not technology focused. Let me explain. I had a friend in high school who could never accept his limitations. In fact, anytime we played a game, and he failed to score, he’d make the claim that ‘he was the perfect athlete, just his equipment was bad.’ Of course, no […]

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