Prioritizing Your Life
In our previous blogs, we discussed how Logic Speak can help your company improve its productivity and profitability. This blog focuses on your own contribution to productivity. How can you become more personally productive, get your work done efficiently, and prioritize the things in your life that are most meaningful? Following is a list of tips we’ve compiled to help you become more productive.
Time Chunking
With ever-present distractions and long to-do lists, many of us often jump from project to project in our daily work, making us less productive. The strategy of time chunking means concentrating on a single and scheduled task for a sustained period of time and then taking a short break. First, you choose the amount of time that you can concentrate fully, for example, 50 minutes (this will differ from person to person). Next, you schedule that amount of time in your calendar to work on a single project. You also schedule the break (for example, 10 minutes) after each time chunk to do something you enjoy such as walking outside, checking in with a family member, or grabbing a quick coffee or water with a friend. The result is better concentration and higher productivity.
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Shut Down Your Programs
To help you focus on that single task, rather than the ten projects bogging down your mind, we recommend shutting down all of your processes on your PC that are not involved in completing the work that you are doing. This keeps you from getting distracted by the spreadsheet due next week, that email you began writing yesterday, or the shopping cart you started at your favorite e-tailer. It also helps you stay focused on the work you prioritized as important.
Prioritize and Utilize Productivity Tools
To keep track of your own responsibilities, utilize a tool such as Microsoft Tasks. Tasks shows all of your assigned tasks from Planner, To Do, and flagged Outlook emails, and can be sorted into buckets. When you log on in the morning, you can look at your tasks, including those carried over from previous days, choose the three or four most important ones, and add them to your day in the time chunks mentioned above. These will show up in My Day. You can also filter tasks to see them sorted in different ways. Tasks helps users view and manage all of their personal and team tasks and prioritize their work.
Don’t Let email Control Your Day
We’ve said this in previous blogs, but it bears repeating. Continually checking email throughout the day and responding to the latest fire drill or never-ending email chain can take over your day and keep you from being productive. In addition, if you receive notifications on your phone or smart watch for email, turn them off. You don’t need to know when every email arrives. The distraction of every incoming ‘ding’ of a new message will quickly derail your day. Instead, intentionally schedule one or two times per day to answer email and shut down email at all other times.
Schedule Limited Social Media Time
Like email, social media can wreck the day of even the most disciplined people. Plan your day in a way that allows a limited time for engaging with social media so you can avoid the rabbit holes that suck away your time. And like email, turn off the notifications that can distract you.
Move Your Phone Out of Sight
We all understand the habit of mindlessly picking up our phones and scrolling while sitting on calls or even when working. Hiding your phone out of sight and checking it intentionally during scheduled times or only periodically for important calls can help you use your time more wisely and get work done more efficiently. You’ll be more productive and have more time for what is really important to you.
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At Logic Speak, our core values shape how we lead, how we work, and how we serve our clients. They’re not words on a wall, they’re filters for decisions and expectations for how we show up every day.
But here’s something we’ve learned the hard way: even good values have a shadow side.
Values, when taken too far or applied without self‑awareness, can create unintended consequences. What starts as a strength can quietly become a blind spot. And if we’re not careful, the very things we pride ourselves on can work against us.
So today, we want to talk honestly about our values, not just the best of them, but the risks of overusing them.
We Care for You
The strength:
Caring for others is foundational to who we are. It means treating people with dignity, empathy, and kindness. It means remembering that coworkers, clients, and partners are humans first, not just roles or tickets or invoices.
The shadow side:
When care goes unchecked, it can turn into avoidance. We may hesitate to give hard feedback because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. We may tolerate behaviors longer than we should because we empathize deeply with circumstances. Over time, clarity suffers, and ironically, so does trust.
Care without courage isn’t actually care.
We Lean In
The strength:
We lean in when there’s a need. We take ownership. We step up when things are unclear or uncomfortable. This value fuels responsibility, initiative, and teamwork.
The shadow side:
Leaning in too much can become overfunctioning. We jump in to fix things that aren’t ours to fix. We take on too much instead of letting others wrestle and grow. Eventually, this can lead to burnout, resentment, or invisible bottlenecks where “that person always handles it.”
Sometimes the most responsible thing to do is not lean in, but step back.
We Love Our Craft
The strength:
We take pride in doing things well. We pay attention to details. We care about quality, process, and doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.
The shadow side:
At its extreme, loving our craft can turn into perfectionism. We may over‑engineer solutions, delay decisions, or become critical when others don’t meet our internal standards. What was meant to produce excellence can unintentionally slow momentum or make collaboration harder.
Excellence should serve the outcome, not replace it.
We Keep Improving
The strength:
Growth matters here. We believe learning never stops and that feedback, when handled well, is a gift. This value keeps us curious, hungry, and moving forward.
The shadow side:
Constant improvement can quietly create the feeling that “where we are is never enough.” Wins may go uncelebrated because we’re already focused on what’s next. People may feel like they’re always being evaluated instead of occasionally being affirmed.
Improvement without appreciation can feel exhausting.
Why This Matters: Blind Spots Are Part of Being Human
None of these shadow sides mean our values are flawed. They mean we’re human.
Every person, every team, and every organization has blind spots. Often, they’re not found in our weaknesses, but in our strengths, overused or unexamined. The danger isn’t having blind spots, it’s assuming we don’t.
That’s why self‑awareness matters so deeply to us. It’s why feedback matters. It’s why we believe asking questions like “How is this landing?” and “What might I be missing?” is a leadership responsibility, not a sign of insecurity.
Living Our Values With Humility
Our goal isn’t to live our values perfectly. It’s to live them thoughtfully.
That means holding our values firmly, but ourselves humbly. It means inviting perspective, welcoming challenge, and remembering that good intentions don’t eliminate unintended impact.
When we name the shadow side, we don’t weaken our culture, we strengthen it.
Because the best teams aren’t made of people without blind spots.
They’re made of people willing to look for them.
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