Best Larry Tribble, Ph.D Podcasts (2024)

1
Say "No" List - DBR 056 52:40

7h ago52:40

52:40

We're looking at burnout, overwork, these kinds of things. They are a clear indication that we’re doing busy wrong and I don’t like that. I’m going to talk about one way to combat the problem. How to decline work assignments. But we talk about burnout, we talk about work life balance, we talk about all these challenges that we face around our level…

1
Interruption, office hours, and tech-driven chatter - DBR 055 47:24

6d ago47:24

47:24

We had group class yesterday. It was our second of eight group meetings to implement attention compass. Nick is in the class, and he was talking about communication and interruption. Nick's the one that has the office job with teammates and folks that that can reach out to him anytime. He has very little control over who can hit him up. So we were …

1
Where Should I Keep My Stuff? - DBR 054 50:09

16d ago50:09

50:09

I talk about the tool set for the kind of information and attention management that Attention Compass provides. I get a lot of questions about: I use tool X. What about tool Y? What tools should I use? Most of this revolves around “where should I keep my stuff?” And we'll talk about that today. When I say tool, I mean online service, system, databa…

1
Fable: Your Tasks Are Easy to List - DBR 053 59:30

24d ago59:30

59:30

Fable: It's quick and easy to figure out what I should do, or I just know what I should do. It shouldn’t take much effort. Corollary: I’m wasting time managing my stuff when I need to do things. Spoiler alert, it's not that easy, and I’ll talk about the reasons. For now, if we have this mindset it leads to poor management: I'll just get to the offi…

1
Principles, Philosophy, and Mindset - DBR 052 56:34

1M ago56:34

56:34

Do Busy Right – philosophy and some basic mindsets I'll start out with a client story. Her name's Kelly, and we were talking about attention compass. “Well”, she said, “I don't know anything about all that. But I admire the Larry Zen”. I loved it. But, I didn’t know what “Larry Zen” meant. So, I asked. And she said, “nothing seems to bother you, no…

1
What Do You Mean? I'm Not Doing Busy Wrong - DBR 051 50:27

1M ago50:27

50:27

What do you mean? I don't think I'm doing busy wrong. I don't really get this one directly, but it's a consistent subtext when I talk to folks, and it's not that I misunderstand. For years, I thought I wasn’t swinging a golf club wrong, but I think maybe people take it a little bit too personally, let’s think about why this might be so. The cultura…

1
Managing Oneself (part 2) - Identify and manage your maintenance roles - DBR 050 46:53

2M ago46:53

46:53

I've talked previously about managing oneself, and that was about Peter Drucker and Knowledge Work. That podcast is very popular, and it probably resonated with you. It’s one of my biggest downloads. There’s another aspect to Managing Oneself. I get a lot of questions like this: You might say “I’m pretty good at my Work, when I can find time to do …

1
Learning to Learn - DBR 049 57:07

2M ago57:07

57:07

Learning how to learn If we’re going to be more productive, we have to learn new skills and get better at the skills we have. Knowledge is important, but we get paid for producing results. This requires skills. I see people with limited desire to learn. And when learning does happen, it is usually more about knowledge than skill. I decided to think…

1
Build Confidence to Deliver Faster – DBR 048 52:46

2M ago52:46

52:46

Today, let’s talk about confidence. In my season of life right now, my daughter is entering the career world. She’s finished college and now has to find a job/career. She needs to enter conversations and situations that she’s never experienced before. Naturally, her confidence is not very high. This plays out in two ways: she tries to avoid certain…

1
Parkinson's Law and Quality - DBR 047 55:06

2M ago55:06

55:06

Ever feel like you didn’t get much done? Like you were kind of stuck in the mud most of the day? Ever said: “The work just wouldn’t get done”? I ran across Parkinson’s Law on a podcast from Cal Newport and Adam Grant. You may not know it by that name, but you probably heard the Law. Parkinson's Law: the work expands to fill the time available. Cal …

1
"Let Me Think About It" - Thought Tools - DBR 046 52:20

2M ago52:20

52:20

“Let me think about it” – Thought tools This episode is about the need for, nature of, and development of thought tools. I was having a conversation with my daughter. If you've listened to the podcast, you know my daughter is 23 and she's beginning her career, just having graduated college She's trying to figure some things out. She's confronted wi…

1
The Role of Paper as a Modern Productivity Tool - DBR 045 52:55

3M ago52:55

52:55

What is the role of paper as a modern productivity tool? Is our use of paper just a habit we need to get rid of is it something more? Is it still a useful tool, or should we be trying to break some sort of addiction to it. This is inspired by a LinkedIn post by Chris Mullen. He’s talking about the glories of paper with respect to it's limited abili…

1
Multitask? Why do you think you can? - DBR 044 47:22

3M ago47:22

47:22

I talk about the three big enemies of focus and productivity. They are interruption, multitasking, and distraction. They are in order from easiest to deal with to hardest. (But I’m faking that a little.) The biggest pushback I get is around multitasking – people defend their ability to do it. Let’s deal with that here. What's our drive to attempt m…

1
Your Brain on To-do List - DBR 043 56:54

3M ago56:54

56:54

What to do if our primary tool is not really helping us? I argue that this is the case with our to-do lists. I’ll talk about why and what you can do about it. To Do Busy Right, we are fighting three enemies: interruption, multitasking, and distraction. Distraction is the most difficult to defeat. To-do list is another tactic to deploy in that fight…

1
Why Do I Feel Like I Don't Get Anything Done - DBR 042 58:29

3M ago58:29

58:29

Today, I’m going to talk about a pretty common feeling around our work and productivity… Why do I feel like I didn’t get anything done? I think we’ve all experienced this feeling. We get home (or whatever we do in the WFH culture) and our significant other asks some form of “How was your day?” Sometimes we just say “Fine” and move on. But once in a…

1
Work From Home? Think About the Business Model - DBR 041 53:24

4M ago53:24

53:24

I'm going to talk about remote work, and this is a topic that continues to be a source of significant debate among folks out there. It’s fueled, in part, by people who are employees, who are arguing in favor of remote work. There are various arguments, and we'll dig into it. The point I want to make is to analyze the business model of the organizat…

1
What Does Our IT Really Do For Us - DBR 040 59:10

4M ago59:10

59:10

This episode is about the productivity paradox. The Productivity paradox has been around for a while, and it's the economist's way of saying “we don't see the productivity value from our investment in IT”. So the question is, companies and people have invested a ton of cash in, I'll say, desktop IT. Over the 40 years we've been doing this, we're no…

1
Don't Confuse Efficiency with Convenience or Hurry - DBR 039 47:45

4M ago47:45

47:45

I think we get confused about efficiency, and I think this leads us away from actually becoming efficient. There are two concepts that can confuse us. They disguise the challenge that we really actually face around efficiency. And I'll talk about what all those things are, but if we've got the wrong mindset, it leads us to wrong action. The notion …

1
Initial Coaching Call / Interview with Chris Craft - DBR 038 50:42

4M ago50:42

50:42

This is the 'set up' meeting in a typical AC coaching engagement - the first of eight weekly meetings. As a coach, I'm still motivating the work that my client will have to do. I'm also explaining mindset kinds of things. There should be a lot of knowledge you can take away. Chris's approach - Chris is an accomplished coach. He works with people on…

1
The Downside of Organizational Flexibility - DBR 037 58:34

5M ago58:34

58:34

We all try to help our organization be flexible. We hear about the benefits of flexibility, responsiveness, and flat organizational structure. In addition, we all hear about the power and benefits of teams. We feel that fast communication is good (fast information exchange). So, we avoid structure in the belief that this benefits our organization a…

1
Do We Define Productivity Correctly? - DBR 036 53:34

5M ago53:34

53:34

In this episode, I’m going to refine our definition of productivity in knowledge work. If you think you know the definition, there’s a good chance you’ll be surprised. I have my customers tell me their definition of productivity; I believe that the typical definition is broken. I’ve seen it lead people to over-think, hesitate, or even procrastinate…

1
Book Review - Cal Newport's Slow Productivity - DBR 035 58:34

5M ago58:34

58:34

This will be a review of Cal Newport's book, Slow Productivity. By the way of introduction, if you've listened to much of my podcast, you know that I pay a fair amount of attention to Cal and what he's doing, because I think he's really bright, really focused on the idea of productivity. If you don't know who he is, you should take a look. He's wri…

1
Deep Dive on Dealing with Distraction - DBR 034 55:48

5M ago55:48

55:48

When I talk about task and attention management, I usually talk about wastes of attention. And there are three primary wastes of attention that I've been able to identify with my clients. They are, in order of easiest to deal with to hardest to deal with: The first is interruption - external things in the world that attempt to catch our attention. …

1
Email - Synchronous or Asynchronous Communication? - DBR 033 53:09

5M ago53:09

53:09

Let’s talk about email, and communication metaphors. You’re not going to be shocked when I tell you that we don't handle email well. It's not that we don't know how to use the app that produces email; that's pretty straightforward. And I'm not arguing that we don't know how to deal with emails as items of information, although I believe that's ofte…

1
Are You Wasting Attention (and Time) on Goal-setting? - DBR 032 59:57

6M ago59:57

59:57

I try to help you think about how you’re using your attention and, thus, how to manage yourself. What you need to manage is your attention. So, when I see systemic waste of attention or weak self management practices, I try to call them out for you so you can begin to think “do I really need to do this?” If you’re spending a lot of attention and ti…

1
Drucker's Six Ideas about Knowledge Work Environments - DBR 031 58:35

6M ago58:35

58:35

In the podcast, we study knowledge work and how to get better at it. This touches on a lot of different disciplines, notably management. Typically, I discuss management as how we should manage ourselves. So, when I talk about managing knowledge work, I usually mean how do we manage ourselves as knowledge workers. I believe that we are increasingly …

1
Information Channels and Filters: Tools to Protect Our Attention - DBR 030 54:38

6M ago54:38

54:38

David Allen on Information Overload - if it were real, then when you walked into a library, your head would explode. Let's consider that idea in the context of Attention Overload. When we feel overloaded and overwhelmed, we can't just blame that on the increasing amount of information. It's true that the amount of information has been increasing fo…

1
Organizing Principles in a Media-less World; Why and How - DBR 029 58:53

6M ago58:53

58:53

I talk about how information storage and access is changing. Note that it is changing in ways that mean our old metaphors (and their associated 'affordances') are now inaccurate in a couple of meaningful ways. We don't want our metaphors to constrain our organizational thinking, particularly if they're inaccurate or push us toward the wrong afforda…

1
Two ideas of Work Management Systems - DBR 028 54:14

7M ago54:14

54:14

I was talking to a prospect about Attention Compass. Her primary objection seemed to be a misunderstanding of the role of formal planning in our work management system needs. She had tried to implement bits and pieces of legend and lore. Nothing had worked. She felt that work wasted and had given up to some degree. I think that we’ve seen and heard…

1
Managing the Operational Aspects of Your Life - DBR 027 56:47

7M ago56:47

56:47

Systems and creativity – managing the Operational Aspects of your life I talk about Attention Compass as a system and a set of workflows. A lot of people say, hey, look, I want to be creative, I want to be spontaneous. I don't want to be rigorously structured. I don't want to, you know, feel regimented, right, all these kinds of ideas come up. So w…

1
What is 'Calm Productivity'? - DBR 026 54:56

7M ago54:56

54:56

What is "Calm Productivity"? I’ve spent a few episodes letting you know how to implement Attention Compass, but why would you WANT TO do that? I'm constantly talking to people about this idea of calm productivity, because that's the payoff for Attention Compass. But, in lots of episodes I find myself getting into the technical details of how Attent…

1
Don't overuse Alarms, do this instead - DBR 025 58:11

7M ago58:11

58:11

Today I'm going to talk about our need for more reminders and fewer alarms in our lives. This is critical for two reasons: one – we use the wrong tool for the wrong job, with predictable results; two – once you understand, you’ll see the value of the tool that I’ll offer to you. I’ll start by talking about two types of tasks. Then we’ll look at rem…

1
What is Attention Compass - Workflows 3 & 4 - DBR 024 1:00:03

8M ago1:00:03

1:00:03

This finishes the series on Attention Compass nuts and bolts. This is my coaching in a three-part, three-hour presentation. I want you to have this so you can start implementing. Why should you implement Attention Compass? I think the modern work-style, the modern technology, and modern communications all work together to make us anxious/stressed a…

1
What is Attention Compass - Workflows 1 & 2 - DBR 023 57:28

8M ago57:28

57:28

What is Attention Compass - Workflows 1 & 2 I want you to have information that will allow you to implement your own Attention Compass, if you want to do that. Attention compass needs some support and some explanation. Episode 22 discusses the big picture and how the tool works. I want you to have some guidance towards doing an implementation so yo…

1
What is Attention Compass and How will it help me? - DBR 022 57:41

8M ago57:41

57:41

What is Attention Compass and How will it help me? This is one of a series of posts that are going to discuss Attention Compass in detail. Attention Compass is my proprietary tool and workflow to put you in control of your information and attention - making you a better more confident knowledge worker and reducing your stress over your productivity…

1
Formal Education and Getting Better, what are some options? - DBR 021 59:24

9M ago59:24

59:24

Is more education the only way to get better? The thing I want to get to is this notion of getting better and improving what you do and, and really drill down on that because I think most of my listeners are interested in that right. I mean, it's not just a question of being able to handle your stuff. It's a question of getting better at work. It's…

1
Procrastination vs. Postponement and Tracking Our To-Dos - DBR 020 56:36

9M ago56:36

56:36

I wanted to talk about procrastination... I think that we have a fair amount of confusion about procrastination. One of the clear points I want to make is that procrastination is not some moral failing. It's not some example of 'lack of discipline'. I believe, in almost all cases, it's actually a problem with our systems and I'll talk about what I …

1
How Do We Avoid Perfectionism and Still Manage Quality? - DBR 019 54:10

9M ago54:10

54:10

How Do We Avoid Perfectionism and still Manage Quality? I did an episode on perfectionism recently. I argued that it is wasteful and thus should be eliminated. But, in some cases, it seems to be our only way to control quality. That is, our only quality target is perfection. If we eliminate it as a goal, then are we simply left with accepting slopp…

1
Lies - perfection should be the target of your work - DBR 018 56:07

9M ago56:07

56:07

The lie: Perfection should be the underlying goal of your work Or (rephrased) you should pursue ‘excellence’ in everything you do. The truth is that technical perfection is both unrealistic and unnecessary. Excellent is an undefined word. Intro to perfectionism: I've seen a lot lately on perfectionism. Kevin Miller, on his Self Helpful podcast, did…

1
Managing Oneself - Peter Drucker and the second quarter of the 21st century - DBR 017 51:55

9M ago51:55

51:55

Managing Oneself - Peter Drucker and the second quarter of the 21st century This episode covers the "smartest person you've probably never read". Drucker foresaw the rise of Knowledge Work 60+ years ago. Not only did he define it for us, but he let us know that it would be the primary challenge of the 21st Century manager. He also told us how and w…

1
Origin Story: How Attention Compass Came About - DBR 016 1:01:12

10M ago1:01:12

1:01:12

How did the Attention Compass come about? Why is it a thing now? Larry's background through 2006 My career has been in IT management, so I understand something about tools, software, next generation technology. Throughout my career, I was always a productivity geek – Stephen Covey, David Allen, new tech, phone, etc During this time we noticed that …

1
Core Four: The Four Disciplines of Attention Management - DBR 015 55:48

10M ago55:48

55:48

Think about attention management. About how we deal with our own ability to focus. That attention is primarily directed at the work we have to do. We need our full attention on our work, at least to the degree that our work is difficult and challenging. One of my clients asked me to organize from the big picture perspective, what we’re trying to do…

1
Listener Question: How do I Tame the Squirrel Brain? - DBR 014 56:48

10M ago56:48

56:48

In this episode, I answer a question from my buddy and listener, Joel. He feels like he has "Squirrel Brain" and wonders how to get rid of it. So, I define "Squirrel Brain" and talk about tactics for Taming the Squirrel. I love your questions. Reach me at larry@dobusyright.com or connect on LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/larrytribble. I'll try to answer …

1
Lies - Hard Work is the Key - DBR 013 1:06:13

10M ago1:06:13

1:06:13

This is one of a set of posts on common misconceptions about productivity and work. I call them Lies About Productivity. I'll address some 'lie' and suggest a new mindset that is helpful toward being effective, not exhausted - Do Busy Right. The Lie: You should equate working hard to being productive. Or that work should be hard in order to be valu…

1
Lies - Productivity is Output Divided By Input - DBR 012 1:04:03

11M ago1:04:03

1:04:03

The lie here is that outputs divided by inputs is the right way to measure our productivity. I believe that we're thinking about productivity in the wrong ways. Particularly when it comes to knowledge workers, we use similar thoughts and equations for knowledge worker productivity that we use for factory productivity or efficiency. I want to dive i…

1
Listener question: Do I need to manage mySELF!? - DBR 011 56:04

11M ago56:04

56:04

In this episode, I answer a question from a listener named Adrian. She’s got a great new job with a somewhat smaller company and feeling some symptoms of a less-structured position. So, I'll be talking primarily to folks that are in the same position as Adrienne or folks who want to be in that position. What do we do about promotions? What do we do…

1
Lies - Busier Means More Hours - DBR 010 57:35

11M ago57:35

57:35

The lie: if you get busier, you have to work more hours There are options when more work suddenly hits your desk, overtime is just one of them. Sometimes, it's the best response. But maybe not as often as we think. In this episode, I define the problem clearly and suggests strategies for clarifying priority and tactics for those times when 'it just…

1
What? I have four areas of work? - DBR 009 54:58

11M ago54:58

54:58

What? I have four areas of work? Four areas of work knowledge. There's two that everybody knows about. There's the one Cal Newport talks about. And then there's the one I talk about. That makes four areas in which you want to be as good as you can. This will put you in a position to have a better career, have better workdays, have better work weeks…

1
Is "Monk Mode" Good for Productivity? - DBR 008 46:49

12M ago46:49

46:49

I discuss the concept of 'Monk Mode' and whether it is useful for enhancing productivity, especially for knowledge workers. Monk Mode: Increasing Productivity "Monk Mode" sets the stage for a period of intense focus on work by shutting down incoming communications and interruptions. Understanding and implementing Monk Mode could increase individual…

1
Question-Why Does My To-do List Keep Growing? - DBR 007 33:11

12M ago33:11

33:11

My task list just keeps getting longer and longer; what do I do? There are a couple of things. #1 If you're constantly having to ask yourself "what do I need to do now or today", you can count on your brain to come up with some things. Whether or not they're the right things is pretty questionable. More on this in other episodes. #2 recognize that …

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Larry Tribble, Ph.D Podcasts

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