5 Quick Tips to Time Management

1. Clean Off Your Desk

Clean off your damn desk. While you are at it, clean the whole office of the stuff you are collecting there. Return stuff where it belongs. Do this every week!

2. Learn Something Every Quarter

Once a quarter, take a webinar, class, or learn something. If you are a tool, when was the last time you were sharpened?

3. Master Your Everyday Tools

Spend 30 minutes a week and learn how to really use your phone, CMMS, Excel, and the other tools in your everyday life.

4. Make a To-Do List

Make a to-do list. If you do this (and you better be doing this), list the few things that will make a difference and the many things that you have to do but will not make a difference. Make sure you do some of the important things every day, whether you like it or not.

5. Use Waiting Time Wisely

When you find yourself waiting (like for meetings where you are the only one on time), do something useful! Do your email, read, or listen to your voicemail. Don’t just sit there and cruise Facebook or Reddit (my favorite is dad jokes).

Latets Blogs

Elements of Great Maintenance

This series is guaranteed to be different from any books you’ve ever seen about maintenance

Why?

  • Fun to Read
  • Great Pictures
  • Snarky
  • Important Concepts Covered
  • Might Make you Laugh While you run

Book series dedicated to training the fundamentals of the art of maintenance

by Joel Levitt

Books in the series (as of April 1, 2026)

CMMS-Friend or Foe?

Is your CMMS a powerful ally—or just a pig you keep feeding? CMMS: Friend or Foe? is a bold, funny, and eye-opening journey into the real-world struggles, misconceptions, and victories behind maintenance management systems. Whether you’re a tech, planner, or plant manager, this book will challenge what you think you know—and make you want to do CMMS right. Don’t just survive your system. Master it

Maintenance Planning Cuts Waste and Frustration

What if most maintenance frustration isn’t about the work—but about the barriersthat get in the way? Maintenance Planning: Cuts Waste and Frustration is a bold, funny, and convenient guide that exposes the hidden time traps, chaos, and inefficiencies sabotaging wrench time. If you’re tired of wasting time looking for tools, parts, or tools, this book will change the way you work—and think—forever.

Stories of PM

What if keeping your machines running wasn’t just about tools, but about how you think? In Stories of Preventive Maintenance, Joel Levitt turns a complex topic into a gripping and hilarious graphic journey through the world of maintenance. PM is the primary way to ensure the reliability of machines, buildings, or other physical assets. Ultimately, even the most rigorousreliability techniques, RCM and PMO, rely on effective PM.

Lubrication: The Key to Machine Immortality

How do we get our people to take lubrication seriously? Lubrication is the simplest and most effective way to ensure the smooth running of your equipment. Yet, many people don't understand what they are doing, how to lubricate correctly, and why they are doing it. They will after reading this!

Quality is No Accident- Quality

Quality of work depends on everything going right. For years we've tended to blame the maintainers when quality suffered. Now we realize there are barriers to quality, independent of the person.

The Quest for Defect Elimination

What if the root cause of most failures isn’t bad luck—but defects we’ve learned to live with? The Quest for Defect Elimination is a bold, graphic journey into the heart of reliability. With humor, insight, and vivid storytelling, Joel Levitt explores how small, overlooked flaws can snowball into major breakdowns—and how addressing them can change everything

Small Improvement Projects Playbook

What if the biggest gains in maintenance don’t come from massive projects—but from small, smart changes that anyone can start today? The Small Improvement Project Manual for Practitioners is your hands-on guide to unlocking hidden value, reducing frustration, and building a culture of continuousimprovement—one fix at a time.

The Mystery of Breakdowns

Machines don’t fail by magic—they fail for reasons. In The Mystery of Breakdowns, maintenance expert Joel Levitt takes you inside the hidden world of dirt, heat, friction, looseness, corrosion, and defects—the real enemies of reliability. With humor, vivid illustrations, and clear engineering insights, Levitt shows how tiny particles, small mistakes, and unnoticed stresses trigger massive failures. . You’ll discover how TLC (Tighten, Lubricate, Clean) can stop failure cascades before they start, and how worldclass troubleshooting turns chao clarity.

New books are being published all the time.

This series is available at: www.MaintenancePublishing.com

A free copy of the E-book of Lubrication-The Key to Machine Immortality is available from the website.

What other people say about

Elements of Great Maintenance Management

Sanya Mathura, Author & Managing Director at Strategic Reliability Solutions Ltd

"A captivating novel of the battle reliability faces within most industrial plants! Joel expertly maneuvers the challenges that teams struggle with daily and provides quick and cost-effective methods of implementing changes that can positively affect your equipment's reliability. Overall, a great way to foster camaraderie amongst peers and get everyone on board with reliability."

Ramesh Gulati Author, Speaker, Reliability Sherpa, ReliabilityX

"Very interesting, very easy to read, with much wisdom. Overall, a lot of good information was presented in straightforward language. So, the challenge is how can you make professionals read this?"

Ramesh Gulati Author, Speaker, Reliability Sherpa, ReliabilityX

"Very interesting, very easy to read, with much wisdom. Overall, a lot of good information was presented in straightforward language. So, the challenge is how can you make professionals read this?"

Don Fitchett, President - Maintenance, Engineering Training Co., Nevada

"Although we had heard many of those perspectives in Joel's book from the stakeholders before, it is nice to have them in one presentation to understand the big picture better. The 3D analysis lab was super cool! The real-world examples and learning process I watched (read?) play out were of great value to the story. Your book, Joel, is a real piece of art. You wrote it in such a way that it is relatable to everyone. It didn't hurt that I have a soft spot for superhero comics. :) Thanks for sharing."

Rolly Angeles, Consultant at RSA Reliability and Maintenance Consultancy Firm (Philippines)

Joel Levitt is one of the maintenance gurus I admire and respect. I have purchased some of his books, which I used for reference. It is difficult to digest many author's book's contents. Joel has found a way to overcome this by writing a book in an animated format that is straightforward to understand. If you are looking for a smart way to improve your plant, I highly recommend this book by Joel Levitt, which you can finish reading in one sitting. I give this book two thumbs up.

Doc Palmer MBA, Author, trainer, Managing Partner Richard Palmer & Associates, Inc.

Hey Joel, Thanks for letting me read this. You are one of my early career inspirations for helping people in maintenance. You sent me a cassette tape long ago that included, "We remember Noah's flood because we just think about disasters, not the work of keeping them from happening." Many, many thanks

Alain Le Bon National Engineering and Maintenance Manager at Cheetham Salt

I am finding the books quite useful. I think they are good baseline educators for the shop floor. They are simple and easy-to-understand messaging, and I like the light read, comic book approach which seems to work for the audience. We have a battle for reliability on our hands! I want to engage the shop floor, and these books are helpful for that. One key initiative this year is the TLC aspect, which I am combining with six senses (5 senses plus intuition) to utilize while engaging with TLC, one small pilot area at a time across a couple of our plants. I will let you know how it goes!

What other people say

Ed Gagnon

This book is another excellent publication, Joel. What a great novel. We are pushing fewer people to do more because of our challenges with getting new people into the trades and current trades retiring. Maintenance education publications that you create have great graphics that engage a variety of teaching methods that work for a broad spectrum of readers.

Bill Closser, BS, MBA, President of NSG, Board of Directors Greater East Tennessee SMRP

Joel has a great way of making what seems mundane into fun. His latest illustrated guide "graphic novella" Lubrication: The Key to Machine Immortality" is a quick, fun read that teaches many of the basics with easy-to-understand explanations of the principles of lubrication and its application practices. The "dad jokes" (as my kids would call them) made me chuckle but also made me remember some of the critical points Joel was trying to make. This is a great tool to explain the importance of good lubrication practices to your maintenance staff (and some of your managers, too). I highly recommend it.

Hasan Avdić, Ph.D., associate professor, Deputy Chairman Regional Sustainable Energy Transition Center

A lot of literature deals with the study of lubrication and determining the condition of equipment based on testing lubricants in the phase of equipment exploitation. However, books such as this one, which deal with the issue of reliability in this way, are almost non-existent in practice. The book - "Lubrication - The Key to Machine Immortality," authored by Joel Levitt, represents a huge contribution to the research of equipment lubrication in the exploitation phase. This graphic novel is intended for experts in practice, with the possibility of using it in supplementary literature classes at faculties where the subject of tribology and the basics of maintenance are studied in undergraduate and master studies. Only authors such as Joel Levitt, who possesses superior knowledge and vast experience in studying the subject matter, can write a work this way.

Visit us at: www.MaintenancePublishing.com for details

Joel Levitt

Joel Levitt, CMRP, CRL, CPMM

As a Maintenance Management trainer, he has trained over 20,000 people in 43 countries in 600+ sessions. 98% of participants rated the training very good or excellent. Mr. Levitt has been a speaker at National meetings of AFE, IMC, SMRP, ISA, etc.

As a university-based trainer, At University of Alabama, he designed a Certification for Maintenance Management and taught at the University for 29 years. He was also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Kansas (since 2008) designed and produced a comprehensive Certification program in Maintenance Management.

As an author, he has written 21 books on maintenance topics and over 200 articles for the trade press.’

There are tons of interesting articles available for download at no cost. Visit MaintenanceTraining.com (select articles) to search.

Good luck, be well, stay safe! Thanks for reading. Cheers, Joel

Clever sales message follows. No, really clever, you’ll enjoy it!