Laura Stack

Biography

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 newest book, What to Do When There`s Too Much to Do: Reduce Tasks, Increase Results, and Save 90 Minutes a Day (Berrett-Koehler 2012), will be released in May 2012. Her books have been published in nine countries and translated into six foreign languages, including Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Italian, and Romanian. 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.

Laura lives with her husband and three children in Denver, Colorado.

Publications

What To Do When There`s Too Much To Do: Reduce Tasks, Increase Results, and Save 90 a Minutes Day

These days, everyone is busy. Advances in technology mean there is more information to sort through than ever. Work hours have increased, but to-do lists are endless - schedules get blown in the first five minutes of the day. You could spend more time "planning" and "prioritizing" your list than actually doing the work! At work and in life, we all just have too much to do! And when you have too much to do, it`s hard to feel productive.

If you can`t do everything, you need to put your time and energy into what will yield the more important results. Laura Stack shows how to hone in on the high-value tasks, protect the time to do them, focus on their execution, and organize your life around the stuff that really matters. Her innovative, step-by-step Productivity Workflow Formula (PWF) allows you to spend less time and achieve greater results than you ever thought possible. We can no longer do more with less -- we can`t put in more hours or work harder than we are now -- we have to work differently and do less to achieve more.

Titles

Leave the Office Earlier
Based on Laura`s bestselling book of the same title (Broadway Books, 2004), this is her flagship time management keynote on how to be more productive at work, so you can achieve the same results in less time and leave the office earlier. In this high-energy, hysterical presentation, Laura shows you how to keep technology from controlling your time; stay focused and concentrate; communicate with your team and boss to improve personal productivity; plug productivity leaks in your day; build consistent personal routines; eliminate annoying time wasters; and improve your personal efficiency. Attendees leave the program laughing and saying, "Oh my goodness, she was looking over my shoulder! Everything she modeled I`m doing!" The ideas in this innovative and thought-provoking program will allow you to reduce the number of hours you work each week without compromising output.

Find More Time
Based on Laura`s book of the same title (Broadway Books, 2006), this is her work/life balance keynote that adds in the element of your personal life. Perfect for groups that want to take a more holistic approach to productivity in life, not simply work. Successful people don`t want to trade personal satisfaction for professional achievement; they know high performance depends on both. Professionals must be able to balance work and family without sacrificing either. This encouraging, lively, results-oriented keynote offers key principles and techniques to help professionals eliminate obstacles to success; work smarter at work; and balance time across their lives. Perfect for audiences of busy men and women who work hard all day and go home to-the second shift-the job they don`t get paid for. Learn to match time to values while juggling work, kids, chores, volunteering, errands, and household projects. Laura`s ideas will help you improve your productivity at home, get more done than ever before, and have more time to enjoy your life.

The Exhaustion Cure
Based on Laura`s book of the same title (Broadway Books, 2008), this is her energy speech on how to be productive when you can`t pick yourself up off the couch. Lack of energy is a common complaint at work and home, and many people sleepwalk through the day, fuzzyheaded and lethargic. Nothing sounds more attractive than putting your head down on your desk for a quick nap. How can you possibly begin that big project requiring high levels of creativity and concentration? If the mere thought of having more energy leaves you totally exhausted, you need this program! Perfect for the pooped. You can know all the productivity tips in the world, but nothing will work if you don`t have the energy to give 100 percent. Laura boosts your energy with physiological strategies (such as diet, exercise, and sleep), behavioral strategies (such as tolerations, relaxation, and pacing), and environmental strategies (such as lighting, noise, and clutter). Discover the Energy Bandits that sap your energy every day and learn to fight back with Energy Boosters.

Get More Work From Fewer People
This is Laura`s leadership keynote, suited for professionals who are responsible for improving the productivity of direct reports or teams and have to get more done with fewer people. Perfect for leadership development programs and executive retreats. Good leaders understand that time management is not about squeezing more into the day; it`s about you and your people spending time productively toward the accomplishment of organizational goals. Managing the clock isn`t the answer-teaching employees to manage themselves is. If a mountain of deadlines and a staff that surfs the Internet for pleasure is keeping you awake at night, bring Laura in for guidance. This program teaches you how to coach employees to peak performance; manage meetings; use your admin more effectively; improve process efficiencies; delegate instead of do; maintain an "open door" policy while guarding against "drop in" visitors; create tracking and reminder systems; use Outlook to delegate and track assigned tasks; craft communication protocols governing the use of technology; avoid "speed bumps" in employees` paths; eliminate activities that waste time; and model effective personal productivity behavior.

SUPERCOMPETENT
Based on Laura`s fourth business book of the same title (Wiley, 2010), this is her program on how high potentials can achieve peak performance in the workplace. The new mantra is "buckle down!" These times are about a return to quality rather than quantity; all of us must learn to be competent -- and not just plain, old-fashioned competent, but SuperCompetent.In this competitive economy, just being able to do your job is no longer enough. Competence is expected; you`ve got to be SuperCompetent to get an edge. Whether you`re an employee, an entrepreneur, a team leader, or all of the above, SuperCompetent will give you proven methods to reach your and your team`s maximum potential and achieve breakthrough results. in Minimum Time.

YOU Can Be a Productivity Pro!
This is Laura`s flagship keynote that combines key concepts from her multiple books and 18 years of experience into a comprehensive 45 to 75-minute presentation. Time management, prioritization, scheduling, concentration, organization, email, workflow, processing, and systems are all covered to help your attendees achieve Maximum Results in Minimum Time. Your participants will gain scores of new ideas from "The Productivity Pro" on increasing output without increasing effort and performing at their matchless best! This interactive, entertaining, high-energy program involves multiple segments customized to your group, multi-media, singing, and an audience-participation game show!