Several weeks ago, I had a realization: I was spending a lot of time deleting email. Every day, I seemed to get dozens of unwanted emails that I deleted unread. This wasn't pure spam. It was announcements from groups I was no longer part of, emails from companies I'd bought something from years ago, newsletters...

According to a spate of recent headlines, the dangerous epidemic of workplace boredom is stalking the cubicles of developed nations. According to one Gallup poll, some 71 percent of workers are not engaged, or are actively disengaged from their jobs. Sandi Mann, a British psychologist, has deemed boredom "the...

Summer is nearly upon us again. Though this season is a little less of a break when you're a grown-up than when you're a kid, it still feels different. You can be outside more. You can use the longer evenings to squeeze more life out of each day. Routines change, opening up an opportunity for rethinking how...

Going email free on weekends is a time management best practice. Every guru seems to agree that you should misplace the iPhone or Blackberry on Friday night, and check it only once or twice for emergencies before Sunday evening. That way you can feel relaxed without feeling tethered to work.

One of my favorite time management tips is to block various activities into my schedule, knowing exactly how long they will take. Almost all recurring events in life can be estimated fairly well. Traffic seems like a force of nature, yet long distance bus lines still manage to estimate their arrivals, based on...

Every year in time for Mother's Day, Salary.com produces a figure showing how much you'd have to pay for the job of "mom." The answer is always in the six-figures for stay-at-home moms. It is based on mothers' estimates of how much time they spend doing various tasks, which -- like all time-use estimates -- tend...

Crazy as it sounds to American mothers, in Great Britain women can take up to a year off work, partially paid, after having a baby. Such generous benefits are designed to give moms and babies time to bond, but according to a new magazine survey (highlighted in the Daily Mail), they're having a side effect:...

The markets have been rallying since October. That sounds like good news for baby boomers approaching retirement age. But here's a different question: why are we so into the idea of retirement in the first place?

People spend vast amounts of time on the Internet. They watch the latest cat videos, check Facebook, etc. It's not exactly productive, per se. But I want to make the case that the things you think are big time sucks -- like reading the Fail blog -- are not the real causes of wasted time at work. A few years...