From the Author

Life gets complicated pretty quickly, particularly when you’re striving to maximize your productivity and success. One way to gain control over the complications is to craft them all into a “Priority Action Plan.” Done properly, a Priority Action Plan creates a centralized repository where you can keep track of all the balls you’re juggling, and […]

In a rapidly changing world, innovation is more commonplace than ever. If you can participate in – or even drive – some of that innovation, you automatically increase your value, as well as your productivity and level of success. There are a great many factors that contribute to a person’s ability to innovate, ranging from

In a previous post, I offered some suggestions on how to coach yourself and others toward higher levels of productivity and success. Reaction to that post has proved to be very positive, and I’ve received numerous requests for more on the same topic. After a little more thinking, it turns out I can offer some

A while ago I wrote a post detailing three easy ways to recover from burnout. Ever since, people have been asking for more ideas on the same topic. Here are a few additional ideas that may help you: Hang Out More Often with Friends OK, call me “Captain Obvious.” But this is a good idea

“Talking,” says the bad guy, Casper Guttman in the classic film “The Maltese Falcon, “is something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice.” But practice alone is not enough. Your practice must center around effective approaches that will help you navigate the many minefields of human interaction and get more of what you

As I’ve written previously, “the mindset to prepare for dire circumstances pays off in many ways, because adequate preparation allows you to acquire helpful resources, practice important skills, develop useful plans, and feel more comfortable responding to the upcoming situation.” A lot of people wrote in to ask me to expand on the “mindset to

Your journey through your work and your life is much like a roller-coaster ride, with surprising and vertiginous ups and downs that are often beyond your control. One thing you can control, however, is your reaction to them. That’s why it’s important you cultivate and strengthen your mental toughness, which is the personality characteristic that

There’s a tongue-in-cheek but possibly true idea called The Peter Principle, which argues that people who do good work get promoted to their level of incompetence, at which point they plateau out and stop getting promoted. This idea is supposed to explain why we find so much incompetence in so many organizations. Whether or not

One of my problems with the whole “Hollywood Syndrome” is the celebrities’ blatant promotion of the “follow your passion” concept. “Follow your passion” sounds inspiring, but it’s likely to lead you along a path that’s overcrowded with others following the same passion. Obviously, you can expect intense competition to make progress along this path, and

Most of my entries in this space are all about how to be more productive and successful in your work and your life. And I’m a strong proponent of the notion that productivity and success come more readily when nobody much cares who gets the credit. But there are times when it’s appropriate to make