Tackling Timewasters: Pleasing, Perfectionism, and Procrastination

Today, working hard means using your brain. It means creating new ideas, implementing marketing plans, writing policies, learning new skills, inventing new systems or products, making decisions even when you don’t have all of the data, taking risks, and overcoming obstacles. Hard work is anything that requires you to push. So if you were working hard every day, not frenetically busy and rushing around, but thoughtfully working through priorities, and you were using your time correctly every day, what would your day look like?

About the Author

Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, has consulted with Fortune 500 corporations for nearly 20 years in the field of personal productivity. She helps leaders create high-performance cultures in their teams and organizations and achieve Maximum Results in Minimum Time. She is the president of The Productivity Pro, Inc., a time management training firm specializing in productivity improvement in high-stress organizations. Since 1992, Laura has presented keynotes and seminars on improving output, lowering stress, and saving time in today’s workplaces. She is one of a handful of professional speakers whose business focuses solely on time management and productivity topics. Laura is a high-energy, high-content speaker, who educates, entertains, and motivates professionals to improve workplace productivity.

Laura is the bestselling author of four books, including SuperCompetent: The Six Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best (Wiley, 2010); The Exhaustion Cure (Broadway Books, 2008), Find More Time (Broadway Books, 2006), and the bestselling Leave the Office Earlier (Broadway Books, 2004), which was hailed as “the best of the bunch” by the New York Times. Her books have been published in seven countries and translated into five foreign languages, including Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Italian. She is also a contributor to two of the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Laura’s popular monthly electronic newsletter has subscribers in 38 countries. She is a Microsoft Certified Application Specialist in Outlook.

Widely regarded as one of the leading experts in the field of employee productivity and workplace issues, she has been featured nationally on the CBS Early Show, CNN, NPR, Bloomberg, NBC TV, WB News, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the WashingtonPost.com, the Chicago Tribune, O Magazine, Entrepreneur, Readers Digest, and Forbes magazine. Laura has been a spokesperson for Microsoft, 3M, Skillsoft, Office Depot, and Xerox, and she is the creator of The Productivity Pro planner by Day-Timer. Her client list includes top Fortune 500 companies, including Starbucks, Wal-Mart, IBM, GM, MillerCoors, Lockheed Martin, Wells Fargo, and Time Warner, plus a multitude of associations and governmental agencies.

Laura holds an MBA in Organizational Management (University of Colorado, 1991), integrating the importance of productivity in business with employee retention and satisfaction. She is the 2011-2012 President of the National Speakers Association (NSA) and is the recipient of the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, NSA’s highest earned designation.