The more successful you become and the more authority you acquire, the more likely it becomes that you’ll face situations requiring very quick thinking. These situations may include: Sudden events or problems that require immediate responses, Unexpected objections or demands from important
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Incremental change is great. And in many situations, that’s the best you can manage. But there comes a time when, for many of us, incremental change is not nearly enough. At times like these, the best way forward involves a makeover. I
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There’s a lot of advice online about setting goals. In fact, I’ve offered my own share of it. But while just setting some goals you care about naturally generates improvement in your level of productivity and success, goals work even better when
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You wouldn’t attempt a do-it-yourself project without the proper tools, and you wouldn’t know if you had the proper tools unless you took an inventory of some kind – just to see what tools you have and what other tools you might
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Lately I’ve been thinking about the failures in NASA’s 30-year-long Space Shuttle program (1981-2011). There were many, but of course the two biggest were the fatalities associated with Challenger and Columbia. In both cases, the problems that ultimately brought down the shuttle
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When you need something from another person and you don’ t have the power to just commandeer it, you’ll benefit from applying some basic negotiation techniques. Negotiation is particularly important when you expect to be coming back to this same person for
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As I have said before, unless you’re working in a cave somewhere, cut off from the internet and other means of communication, your productivity and success depend at least to some extent on the productivity and success of other people. But simply
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When facing an important decision, it’s a fairly common piece of advice to “sleep on it.” The operative idea is this: in many situations, you can’t quickly sort out the various factors and considerations by using only your conscious mind. However, if
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Productivity and success depend on many more factors than your solo smarts, drive, and persistence. One that’s often overlooked is the practical fit between you and the position in which you work: the better this fit, generally the better your results. To
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There are several reasons to keep your focus on delivering high-quality results. These include: High-quality work earns you a more respectable reputation, larger rewards, and greater freedom to do things your way. High-quality work rarely needs re-adjusting, revising, or reworking: once done,
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