Can you focus for half an hour on one thing? If research by Gloria Mark is correct, there’s a good chance the answer is “no.”

There is a substantial group of elite achievers who wake up at ungodly hours: Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used to get up at 4:30 am. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson at 5 am.

I’m working on a report while keeping an eye on my Twitter stream. I send out a few messages while having dinner with my girlfriend. I’m reading an article on my phone while queuing at Starbucks.

Earlier this month we did something we’ve never done before at Saent: we met in person. Saent is a fully remote team, operating from half a dozen countries and even more time zones.

We have some exciting news: almost the entire core Saent team will be descending on New York in a couple of weeks for The Next Web: Momentum conference!

While it was a tall feat, President Kennedy’s moonshot challenge was potentially achievable. As we’ll see later, this is one of the hallmarks of sound goal-setting.

Your day starts. A blank sheet, full of opportunity. What will it bring? What wonderful work will you get done? Then, on the way to work, you check your email on your mobile and, before you’ve started, your blank sheet of a day crumples.

The holy grail of productivity usually involves getting to the bottom of things; your inbox should be empty. All your tasks completed. No more paperwork to file. All red badge alerts on your mobile gone.

It’s that time of the year again: summer has officially started, so hopefully you’re one of the lucky ones who gets to enjoy a few weeks of vacation! But… I can already feel your dread for that inbox upon return.

When Michael Phelps woke up at 6:30 am on August 13th of 2008, he wasn’t in his own home. In fact, he was far from it, as he was rising to a new day in the Olympic Village in Beijing.

In August of 2014, as I was walking from my home in Beijing to the gym, I can clearly remember a thought firing off in my head. My creative thinking was in overdrive and several dots connected to form the basis for a software tool called SANE.

In the Bimonthly Productivity Top 5, I look back at the most important productivity hacks I’ve implemented in the past two months. This one covers May and June of 2015.

When I was running an online marketing company in Beijing in 2009, my coach introduced me to this classic time-management question: “How do you handle each type of task in the below table?” This model is also known as the Eisenhower Method.

In the Bimonthly Productivity Top 5, I look back at the most important productivity hacks I’ve implemented in the past two months. This one covers March and April of 2015.

For most of us, the challenge is to get more productive. But there are some folks out there wondering how to be less productive.

In a normal office situation, you usually know whom to go to for which information. Perhaps you have a short chat at the water cooler, or you plan a face-to-face meeting to have a more difficult question answered.

What is the most important thing you’ve ever learned? Walking? Reading? Counting? Or perhaps how to take care of yourself? Managing money? Do your job? Recognize emotions? Human psychology? Loving someone else? Loving yourself? It’s a simple question, yet not an easy one.

Creativity and productivity usually don’t go hand in hand. Designers tend to procrastinate. Musicians like to party like rockstars. Flashes of genius don’t happen between 9 am and 5 pm.

What do meetings have in common with the following conversation topics? Banks. The weather. Pollution in Beijing (for those living in China). Facebook. Taxes. Politicians. Your football team’s coach after a lost match.

Let’s not waste your time with a fluffy intro about why you should improve productivity. I’m sure the title of this article caught your eye for a reason, else you wouldn’t be here.

Reading. A skill we all possess, yet not all readers are created equal. Most of us struggle to read a 3,000+ word article, let alone a book. We’re too busy and too distracted.

In the Bimonthly Productivity Top 5, I look back at the most important productivity hacks I’ve implemented in the past two months. This one covers January and February of 2015.

You’ve probably heard this time-management advice before: don’t just use your calendar for meetings with other people. Also schedule appointments with yourself and treat them as holy. If you’re like me, that trick somehow never seems to work.

A blacksmith is useless without his hammer. The factory is nothing without a conveyor belt. A jockey gets nowhere without his horse. Jimi Hendrix is lost without a guitar. What is thunder without lightning… OK, that last one was a joke.

Saying yes is easy: We want to please others. We don’t want to disappoint. We want to be able to do everything. We don’t want to miss any opportunities. Saying no, on the other hand, is hard.