Every once in a while, you reach a point in your work and your life when it’s time to drill down to the bedrock of who you are and what you want to be. Once there, you can begin to build up a new plan, strategy, and commitment to help you arrive at the destinations …
We’ve often heard of rising to “the 30,000 foot view” of what’s going on in a particular situation. It’s considered an excellent way to get out from under the details and pressures of immediate concerns. Elevating your perspective helps you see the overall factors and forces currently at play around you, as well as remember …
I’m wary of expectations. In my experience, expectations have a way of setting firm boundaries around situations you are about to experience, and it’s far too easy for these expectations to be limiting factors. For example, if you go into a meeting expecting it to be a waste of time, you’re likely to find it …
For many years, I’ve been feeling that the value and importance of well-directed personal efforts are significantly underappreciated. This light bulb first came on when I encountered the ideas of John Wooden, famed coach of UCLA basketball teams. His teams compiled an 80% won-lost record without him ever mentioning the concept of winning. His iconic …
When I come across an idea that strikes me as smart, I try to remember it and – at least to some extent – incorporate it into how I run my life. Here are two of them: Consistent Improvement I’d like to get better. Maybe you would, too. The problem is this: improvement necessarily involves …
Part of my journey involves steadily improving my level of productivity and success, and helping you improve yours. Along the way to such a goal, it’s important to deliver your best work, not just for the satisfaction of doing it, but because your best work is: Less likely to generate problems or require re-work, More …
There are a lot of ideas circulating about how to increase your personal productivity and success. I have quite a few, including these few: Curate Your Crew “You become the average of the people you hang out with.” “Stay away from people who bring you down; spend more time with people who lift you up.” …
If you’re anything like me, you’ve complained, lamented, even cursed the situations in which you’ve faced difficult choices. They seem like torture: you can’t figure out which of several alternatives is the best one, and you’re stuck, as they say, “on the horns of a dilemma.” It’s not that I’m indecisive. In many situations, I …
I feel like I have been harping for a good long time on the importance of working well with other people. But looking back, I find I haven’t gone into much detail about persuading others to come along with you on your journey toward completing your tasks, projects, and/or goals. Obviously, it’s beneficial to be …
For most of us, learning from our mistakes is very difficult. The biggest reason is usually that we don’t enjoy making them. In fact, they’re upsetting. So it’s natural for us to want to forget all about our mistakes and put them behind us as quickly as possible. But forgetting about your mistakes is itself …
