From the Author

There’s a financial system called Zero-Based Budgeting, once extremely fashionable and still used in some companies, that requires every recurring expenditure to be fully reconsidered each time it comes up. In other words, just because a company spent a certain amount on an item last year doesn’t mean it should spend that same amount – […]

As I’ve previously admitted, I have been harping on the importance of working well with other people, but I’ve said only a little about effective ways of persuading them to join your team. So I’ll take another crack at that right now: It’s a New Dawn Having someone tell us we’re flat-out wrong is one

It’s a fairly simple chain of causation: Success comes from Productivity. Productivity comes from Motivation. Motivation comes from Meaning. But where does Meaning come from? It comes from a variety of factors that make you feel good about meeting your responsibilities and giving them your best effort. The more Meaning you get from your work

You’re never going to be perfect. It’s very unlikely you’ll ever deliver a perfect piece of work. You won’t have a perfect life. We don’t live in a perfect world. For these and other reasons, there’s a lot of advice out there – my own included – telling you to give up on perfectionism in

We live our lives forwards from the present moment. But – if we wish – we can go the other way, and plan our lives backwards from the future we would like to experience. I’ve discussed this idea before, in regard to specific tasks, projects, and goals. Now I’m offering it for use in a

Far too many people of every description feel far less confident in their skills, knowledge, experience, and abilities than actually, objectively warranted. This is a problem. Why? A shortfall in your level of confidence tends to create a serious drag on your level of productivity and success because it: While insufficient confidence is often a

If you’re like most people, your work and your life are made up of many different tasks, projects, and goals. Some of them are big, some are medium-size, but the vast majority are relatively little. This presents a practical problem, because – while we generally feel highly motivated to accomplish our biggest tasks, projects, and

Decision-making can get complicated and messy, particularly when you face lots of options, lots of parameters, and lots of interplay between them all. So it’s helpful to have in mind a sequence of steps to help you wade through this complexity and keep your thoughts on track as you strive toward a satisfactory solution. Here’s

I often think of it as my one and only “superpower:” my ability to say “no” to what I don’t want. I can’t always get paid to do the work I want to do. I’ve crushed on many people who haven’t returned my romantic wishes. I’ve fallen short of large numbers of creative, personal, and

Everything you do is built on a triple foundation of: 1) human development, 2) culture, and 3) your personal environment. Human development includes and reflects all the years that mankind has been learning, evolving, and developing all our current knowledge and capabilities. Culture reflects all the values and experiences to which we’ve been exposed, including