From the Author

In a previous post, I wrote about ways to start gaining more confidence. This time, I’d like to build on those ideas, for a simple reason: Just as lack of confidence tends to impair your performance, possessing an appropriate amount of confidence tends to improve your performance. And performance improvement is what we’re all about. […]

Improving your productivity and increasing your level of success naturally involves working at – or as close as you can get to – your level of peak performance. Obviously, you can’t expect to operate at your peak all the time. It’s just as obvious, however, that you can almost certainly learn to spend more of

Life is not a science experiment. You can’t run multiple trials and see which options and alternatives turn out best. In other words, you only go around once in life, which is why it’s important to think hard about the best choices you can make in your continuing effort to increase your productivity and success.

The advice is out there, and it’s well worth following: Avoid the jerks in both your work and your life. There are many reasons this makes sense. Chief among them, in my view and unfortunate experience, is that dealing with a jerk always ends badly. No matter how many times you are able to skirt

How often have you heard people say: “It’s better to be lucky than to be [something]…” take your choice of: smart, rich, good, or whatever. It’s a popular phrase precisely because there’s actually some truth to it. Luck plays a bigger role in productivity and success than most of us are willing to admit. Although

All else being equal, people prefer to work with, help, and follow people they like. Aside from all the other positives, that’s enough of a reason for you to try improving your likeability. Here are some relevant factors to work on: Avoid Mood Swings Among the most difficult people to like are those who blow

One of the underlying truths about productivity and success is this: they require a special effort. In most situations, it’s simply far easier to remain average rather than excel. In fact, functioning at a higher level of productivity and success not only requires you to do more than the average person, it usually requires you

We’ve built a “hurry up” culture in which a fast result is often thought to be the highest prize: “Same day delivery,” “Lose weight fast,” “Ready in five minutes,” Twitter, Tik Tok, and so forth. But favoring “hurry up” can be a mistake, because people rarely feel satisfied with a poor result just because they

No, really. I’ll show you why the conventional thinking about problems is not always correct, and how they can sometimes – although not always – be good. Granted, some problems are bad. For example, the sinking of the Titanic. But not every problem is like the fate of the Titanic.   It’s also true that

Whether you know it or not, you face two sets of constraints on your ability to be productive and successful: One comes from the external limits imposed on you by society, your job, your family and friends, your circumstances, your resources, unavailable opportunities, and all the rest. The other comes from the limits you place