For most people, working from home is much less stressful than working in an office. But it requires a good dose of discipline.For most people, working from home is much less stressful than working in an office. But it requires a good dose of discipline.

Procrastination is the art of doing everything possible except the most important work.

“I’ll just write one more status update on Facebook and then I’ll start working.”

“First, I’ll go to the kitchen and get a glass of water.”

“Never mind. I’ll watch the news and then I’ll start working. I have to know what’s going on in the world!

Several things can sabotage your concentration. If you want to change this, the first step is to figure what really steals your attention.

If you are not sure, try a time tracker like RescueTime: it tells you how much time you spend in a given app or on each website you visit. You’ll be surprised to discover how your day goes by.

The power of comparison and contrast

In 1970, two psychologists, Tversky and Kahneman, discovered that reading numbers aloud to test subjects influenced their further numerical guesses as well as their behavior. In the experiment, the psychologists read the test subjects the number 65 and then asked them: “What percent of African countries are members of the UN?” People had to guess. The average of all responses was 45.

Time planning using a four-quadrant technique started around the 1950s, and is still one of the most useful organizational techniques in the world.

Four-quadrant time planning, or the so-called “Eisenhower Method,” teaches us one key thing: how to plan our time based on the importance and urgency of individual activities.

“I can’t work with music playing. I need complete silence.”

Yes, you’re right. Bad music distracts your mind. However, research by top psychologists shows that if you have the right “music” coming from your headphones, you can concentrate four times longer and more intensely.

Some people claim to work 14 hours a day. But do they really? Let’s consider how much work really gets done.

This statement expresses well how time management can make a difference. Thinking about how you do things is nice, but thinking about what you’re doing can ultimately result in the difference between fulfiling your goals or not.