Productive Flourishing

12/05/2024

2024 Winter Holiday Sale Extended!

Due to some technical issues during our Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales that prevented people from ordering what they wanted, we've extended the discounts until December 31st, 2024.

Take advantage of the following deals:

🔥 28% off site-wide at the Productive Flourishing shop. Use code GRATEFUL4U at checkout for a 28% discount on your entire order (except Momentum Planners; please order these separately; see below).*

🔥 BOGO (Buy One, Get One) physical Momentum Planners. Use code MP-TWOFER at checkout to get buy-one-get-one-free Momentum Planners (does not combine with the 28% order discount; please order these separate from any other items, including digital products).

Head to the PF Shop!
https://productive-flourishing.myshopify.com/

04/25/2023

This Friday, April 28, on Fishbowl Live at 2:00 pm EST, Charlie will be joining Jonathan Fields to discuss Team Habits — and how to effectively use Sparketypes to build belonging.

Belonging in the workplace is one of the central team habits that affects our life at work. It’s formed in microinteractions, and the ways we connect (or don’t) with our colleagues at work. Critical to that connection? Knowing something about the passions, strengths, and talents of our teammates.

That’s where Sparketypes come in. Your Sparketype is your unique imprint for understanding the work that makes you come alive. If your team and colleagues are Sparked, you’ll experience more organic, intrinsic motivation, high-performance, and more effective and inspiring leadership.

Curious how to use Sparketypes to create a more inclusive and diverse team culture?

Join us next Friday, April 28, 2023 at 2:00 PM EST (11:00 AM PST) on Fishbowl Live. https://bit.ly/3VamM9M

*To attend the Live event you will have to download the Fishbowl App, available in the App Store.

03/30/2023

Most daily stand-up meetings make whatever they're trying to solve worse as a result of eating up team time and focus.
If your team's habits around decision-making, prioritization, and collaboration aren’t working, you’ll end up having a lot of crutch meetings to address those issues.

But crutch meetings cost your team's most precious resources: their time and their attention. This means that often, the best way to fix bad meeting culture isn't just to work on improving meetings, and adding new ones. It's by starting with the root issue with your team habits, that is, working on decision-making, planning, communication, so that the endless unproductive meetings won’t need to keep happening.

What practices do you have in place that garnish more productive meetings? Let us know in the comments.

https://www.productiveflourishing.com/do-you-need-a-daily-stand-up-meeting/

03/28/2023

How much time do you spend on the important, deep, and future-building work?

Take a minute to look back at your schedule over the last few weeks if you really want to get a clear picture.

Chances are you’ve been caught up in a strategic-routine-urgent logjam.

If you’re seeing this play out on your schedule, consider the compound effect of this playing out across your team – those four to eight people you spend 80% of your working time with.

Most managers and leaders don’t have a firm grasp of how the routine tasks and the urgent stuff dominates the team structure. If the routine tasks and urgent work items are taking up 110% of people’s time, we have to do something different.

Understanding your capacity for change starts with understanding how much room in your (your team’s) schedule there is to take on strategic work.

Read the full post here 👇to find out more ways you can get past the strategic-routine-urgent logjam.

https://www.productiveflourishing.com/change-work-is-strategic-work/

03/20/2023

As an entrepreneur, turning ideas into action is what counts.

Charlie Gilkey, our founder, made an appearance on The Startup Sessions with Michael Knouse giving some insights on self-mastery and personal effectiveness. He shared on ways to best manage and channel your time, energy, and attention into finishing the stuff that matters most.

“We all have the same amount of time, some people just make different choices with the time they have available.”

Some other highlights from the episode:
🪖How being an Army logistics officer, business strategist and philosopher can work together cohesively.

💼A business can be a powerful vehicle for someone to reach their goals.

💵But if money is the thing that drives you, being an entrepreneur may not be the best fit.

📈Productivity is fundamentally doing the things that matter to you.

⛹“Effectiveness” means doing fewer things rather than doing more things, better.

🧭Charlie discusses the biggest lies that most entrepreneurs tell themselves.

🧠The importance of understanding the core vs. the extremities of your business.

💡Being bored is never a good reason to change or disrupt your business.

🧑The down-side of “Founders Mojo.”

🧑‍🤝‍🧑Why you should consider smart-sourcing, not out-sourcing.
📋Doing all those 15-minute tasks is what steals away your ability to get the most important projects completed.

Listen or download the full episode here 👇
https://www.michaelknouse.com/episodes/episode-137-finishing-the-stuff-that-matters-with-charlie-gilkey/

03/07/2023

We are looking forward to Charlie Gilkey our founder, once again making an appearance on Fishbowl this Thursday, March 9th, at 11:00AM PST / 2:00PM EST, this time on “How to Improve Your Team's Meeting Habits”.
You can register here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gDFwPH8x

Learn how meetings can be either a powerful force multiplier or a powerful force diminisher, and why meetings are a great place to start when addressing and improving team habits. If your team struggles to communicate, collaborate, prioritize, make decisions, or is simply not moving the most important work forward, the first step is to discover what’s broken for your team in particular.

What practices do you have that make your meetings more effective? Let us know in the comments.

03/06/2023

Charlie Gilkey our founder is once again making an appearance on Fishbowl LIVE this Thursday, March 9th, at 11:00AM PST / 2:00PM EST, this time on “How to Improve Your Team's Meeting Habits”.

Learn how meetings can be either a powerful force multiplier or a powerful force diminisher, and why meetings are a great place to start when addressing and improving team habits. If your team struggles to communicate, collaborate, prioritize, make decisions, or is simply not moving the most important work forward, the first step is to discover what’s broken for your team in particular.

You don’t need to wait until Team Habits by Charlie Gilkey launches in August 2023. Before the Fishbowl Live on Thursday, try the FREE Team Habits Quiz to see where your team is at, and how the Live event can offer you the most helpful level of insight. https://www.productiveflourishing.com/team-habits-quiz/

What things help make your meetings more effective? Let us know in the comments.

02/24/2023

We’re thrilled Erik Fisher included Charlie and Start Finishing on his list of top productivity books for 2023… in a great conversation he hosted on his podcast recently with Jeff Sieh.

See the mention here https://www.linkedin.com/posts/erikjfisher_my-favorite-productivity-books-for-2023-featuring-activity-7031626575720697856-r8j1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

In the meantime, make sure you have your own copy of Start Finishing, in order to keep moving the projects that matter the most forward. Find it here on our site:

https://www.productiveflourishing.com/start-finishing/

What practices help you stay productive? Share with us in the comments.

Charlie Gilkey's new book, Start Finishing, presents his powerful seven-step method for overcoming pitfalls to productivity and turning your ideas into finished projects.

02/23/2023

We likely all know the feeling of saying yes to a project and then halfway through, running out of time, energy, money, ideas, or motivation.

Remember something you’ve left behind that could’ve been amazing, but instead remains unfinished. Do you still think it’s possible to dive into what’s most important to you — without it also taking over your life? Wouldn’t it be incredible if there were strategies and tools that could help you with figuring out how to do that…

Charlie Gilkey dived into valuable takes on exactly these questions, and easily applicable answers with Jenny Blake in the most recent episode of the Good Life Project Jonathan Fields Jonathan Fields

This episode asks how we can reimagine how we work, in order to focus on what lights us up. Listen to the full thing for ALL the insights here👇

https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/how-to-finish-what-matters-get-more-free-time-spotlight-convo/

02/22/2023

How well does your team work together?

You don’t need expensive consultants, an executive champion, or budget to improve your team habits. Since you’re already going to be doing the work, why not make the work better?

If your team struggles to communicate, collaborate, prioritize, make decisions, or is simply not moving the most important work forward — first of all, it’s not just you. But you can be the start of changing broken team habits.

There’s no need to stay stuck. Every individual on a team plays an integral part in that team’s overall chances for success — don't be fooled into thinking change management is just up to leadership!

The first step is to discover what’s broken, so it can be fixed. Team Habits by Charlie Gilkey is coming in August 2023, but you don’t have to wait that long to shift your team habits. You can start today with the FREE Team Habits Quiz! https://www.productiveflourishing.com/team-habits-quiz/

Take advantage of the opportunity to see how far-reaching more sound teamwork practices can truly be. We will provide you with an individualized report of your team's strengths and areas for growth, plus additional resources, so that you can have all the tools needed to create powerful habits. 😁