Tausi Insider

Instead of a to-do list, Toronto-based productivity consultant Ann Gomez says you need a MAP – a Master Action Plan to guide your day. It helps, in particular, to overcome a prime barrier to effectiveness: Too many priorities. We need to identify our core priorities and effectively manage all the other demands on our time that keep us from those priorities. Individually and collectively, we are struggling because, as she bluntly puts it, “prioritization is broken.” She says you can effectively manage as many as three core priorities in your professional life and up to three in your personal life. Try for more, and you will trip yourself up. When something new and important comes up, if you want to make it a core priority – even a project from your boss requiring a week’s effort – swap it with one existing priority until you have completed the new item. But you can’t concentrate solely on core priorities. Other things intrude. You also have, for example, supporting tasks that you can’...

Oil prices rose over 1 per cent on Monday after China’s move to reopen its borders boosted the outlook for fuel demand and overshadowed global recession concerns. The rally was part of a wider boost for risk sentiment supported by both the reopening of the world’s biggest crude importer and hopes for less-aggressive increases to U.S. interest rates, with equities rising and the dollar weakening. Brent crude was up $1.29, or 1.6 per cent, at $79.80 a barrel by 1:29 p.m. EST (1829 GMT). U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude rose $1.32, or 1.8 per cent, to $75.09. “The gradual reopening of the Chinese economy will provide an additional and immeasurable layer of price support,” said Tamas Varga of oil broker PVM. The rally followed a drop last week of more than 8 per cent for both oil benchmarks, their biggest weekly declines at the start of a year since 2016. As part of a “new phase” in the fight against COVID-19, China opened its borders over the weekend for the first time in three years....