From the Author

In a previous post, I wrote about the importance of building trust, and I mentioned various ways to do this, including cultivating such traits as: honesty, closeness, and exhibiting trustworthy words and deeds. On thinking more about building trust, I’ve realized since then that other factors are equally important. They include: Expertise The more expert […]

As I’ve suggested more than once, your level of productivity and success is intimately tied up with the people around you, and with the ways you’re able to interact with them. Their preferences and characteristics help to shape your experiences and opportunities. Their strengths contribute to your successes. Their weaknesses make what you do more

It’s interesting that one of the most complex things we ever do – at least within the world of productivity and success – can be done in a tenth of a second without any conscious thought. I’m talking about decision-making. We’ve all known someone, perhaps it is you, who is a decision-making genius – either

When was the last time you had an interesting idea? Note that I’m not asking about a “good” idea, just an interesting one. The reason for the distinction is that a “good” idea is one that fits well with the needs, wants, and available resources within a particular situation. In other words, it can be

It’s really all about people. Your ability to relate to people is not only instrumental in determining the scope and quality of your connections, but it’s also critical to feeling good about yourself and maintaining a high level of success in your work and your life. And that ability, in turn, depends largely on your

There was a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry’s dad was working at a job Jerry opposed. To get him fired, the plan was to schedule lots of late afternoon meetings, because the old man would naturally be tired by that time of day and look bad in front of the boss. It was funny, but

There’s a lot written about goal setting, and about exhorting you to set more of them. But there’s not enough said about evaluating how much benefit you’re getting from the goals you actually do set. That’s a problem, because setting goals – and even achieving those goals – may or may not pay off in

High levels of achievement are the highway to productivity and success. The more often you can attain HLA (high levels of achievement), and the longer you can sustain them, the faster you will arrive at the goals you have set for your work and your life. But you can’t cruise the HLA highway without the

Except for a few adrenaline junkies and chaos creators who are disinclined to solve their problems, most of us don’t like stress. At a minimum, it comes with unpleasant feelings and can easily contribute to health problems. But it’s pretty much impossible to avoid all stress in our work and our lives. Fortunately, there are

We like to think that our cognitive processes and rational thinking guide our everyday actions. That may be true. But it’s a mistake to discount the emotional components that also drive our actions, choices, and decisions. That’s why it’s important not only to recognize and credit our emotions – and those of other people, of