Here it is, tested, effective and worthwhile: Stop chasing shortcuts. Personal finance, weight loss, marketing, careers, beating traffic, relationships, education, everything that matters to someone often comes with heavily promoted shortcuts as an alternative. Fast, risk-free, effortless secrets that magically work, often at someone elses expense. But if the shortcuts worked as promised, they wouldnt […]
Success is a state of mind = integrity +...
Life is what you make it but it only occurs in the present: NOW. No one forces us to do anything, but every decision that we make has an impact on the quality of our present moment. Success is a state of mind! and not only of mind but also of body and soul Successful […]
Top 10: Ways To Show Confidence With You...
They say a picture is worth a thousand words; now picture yourself, a prospective client, walking into a board meeting or a party. How do you look? What message do you communicate the moment you walk into a room? What are your eyes, hands and shoulders saying? What information can people gather about you […]
Why Its Important To Keep a Daily To-Do ...
One simple way to improve your productivity is to keep an agenda, whether by hand or via a day by day to-do list app. It may not sound like brilliant advice, but this small change can have effect that cannot be overstated. This guide indicates some reasons you should consider keeping to-do lists. Today we […]
The Importance of Advanced Excel Skills ...
The Importance of Advanced Excel Skills for Working Professionals Are you proficient in Microsoft Excel? If so, how proficient are you really? In todays job market, this term is commonly tossed around by administrative professionals in order to highlight their technical skills within Excel, but far too often, candidates are realizing that they arent as […]
The Ten Commandments of Great Customer S...
Customer service is an integral part of our job and should not be seen as an extension of it. A companys most vital asset is its customers. Without them, we would not and could not exist in business. When you satisfy our customers, they not only help us grow by continuing to do business with […]
7 Ways To Captivate A Corporate Audience...
We’re all presenting virtually all the time. Interviewing for a new job? That’s a presentation, and you’re the brand. Giving a PowerPoint demonstration to your supervisor or board? That’s a presentation, quite possibly one that could catapult your career or set you back a few notches. Don’t let those opportunities go by without maximizing […]
Innovation is guts plus generosity
Guts, because it might not work. And generosity, because guts without seeking to make things better is merely hustle. The innovator shows up with something she knows might not work (pause for a second, and contrast that with everyone else, who has been trained to show up with a proven, verified, approved, deniable answer that […]
Quality or effort,which one is for you.....
It seems as though the opposite of careless ought to be careful. That the best way to avoid avoidable errors is to try harder, to put more care into the work. This means that if surgeons were more careful, there would be fewer errors. And that so many of the mistakes that mess things up […]
Choosing your fuel…
The work is difficult. Overcoming obstacles, facing rejection, exploring the unknown – many of us need a narrative to fuel our forward motion, something to keep us insisting on the next cycle, on better results, on doing work that matters even more. The fuel you choose, though, determines how you will spend your days. You […]
True professionals dont fear amateurs…
Professional farmers dont begrudge the backyard gardener his tomato harvest. Thats silly. And talented mechanics certainly dont mind the antics of the Car Talk guys (or their listeners). Sooner or later, if you need a real mechanic, youll find one, and if you dont, well, thats fine too. A few years ago, typesetting, wedding photography, […]
People dont change
(Unless they want to) Humans are unique in their ability to willingly change. We can change our attitude, our appearance and our skillset. But only when we want to. The hard part, then, isnt the changing it. Its the wanting it.
The solo marathon…
The usual marathons, the popular ones, are done in a group. They have a start time. A finish line. A way to qualify. A route. A crowd. And a date announced a year in advance. Mostly, they have excitement, energy and peer pressure. The other kind of marathon is one that anyone can run, any […]
Trapped by the incoming
The incoming is coming to you because a while ago, you did something brave and generous and risky. Incoming is great. Its a reward for your impact. Its a chance to serve and to make a difference. And it enables you to go to work every day. If you spend all your time dealing with […]
Think Consumption Is The ‘Engine’ Of Our
There is a fundamental illogic to the notion that an economy can be grown by encouraging consumption. When a person consumes, by definition, they use things up. The very process leaves us with less than before. Growing the availability of valuable goods and services for society by using them up is not just an […]
Caring is free…
In the short run, of course, not caring can save you some money. Don’t bother making the facilities quite so clean. Save time and hassle and let the display get a little messy. Don’t worry so much about one particular customer, because you’re busy and hiring more people takes time and money. But in the […]
You cant outtrain a bad diet
Its way easier to eat lousy food than it is to exercise it off. Your effort is undermined by your inputs. And the same thing is true for corporate culture. You can work as hard as you like to create expectations and policies. But the people you begin with their dreams, their narratives and their […]
Getting the word out…
For some, this is the holy grail of marketing. If only more people knew what you know. If only they were aware of what you have to offer, of the work you can share. Perhaps you can get more people to click on your video, read your tweet or see your Instagram. Alas, awareness is […]
How to Improve Your PowerPoint Slides wi...
You can design attractive visuals by following simple guidelines. One of these simple guidelines is the Rule of Thirds a composition technique borrowed from photography and other visual arts that works wonderfully in PowerPoint.In this article, you will learn: What is the Rule of Thirds? How do photographers use the Rule of Thirds? How can […]
We are not the enemy (if we try)…..
Fewer than 1% of our population works hard to divide us. To pit people against one another for their selfish aims. These are the pundits, divisive politicians, media companies and short-term trolls who have decided that schisms and fights are a good way to achieve their aims. But if everyone is demonizing the other, then […]
Why even bother to think about strategy?
Theres confusion between tactics and strategy. Its easy to get tied up in semantic knots as you work to figure out the distinction. Its worth it, though, because strategy can save you when tactics fail. If a tactic fails, you should consider abandoning it. But that doesnt mean that theres something wrong with your strategy. […]
The moment of maximum leverage…
It’s the moment before it tips, that split second where a little effort can make a big difference. We wait for this. For the day when participating will truly pay off, for the mechanical advantage that gives us the most impact for our effort. It’s a myth. Maximum leverage is the result of commitment, of […]
Marketing Defined…
I think that any time reality doesn’t match your expectations, it means that marketing was involved. Perhaps it was advertising, or perhaps deliberate story telling by an industry. Or perhaps it was just the stories we tell one another in our daily lives. It’s sort of amazing, even to me, how much marketing colors the […]
Bigger may feel safer but is it ?
Creative institutions get bigger so that they can avoid doing things that feel risky. They may rationalize this as leverage, as creating more impact. But it’s a coin with two sides, and the other side is that they do proportionally more things that are reliable and fewer things that feel like they might fail. In […]
Maybe this year…
Your knowledge will reach critical mass.. Your boss will give you the go ahead.. Your family situation will be stable.. The competition will stop innovating.. The traffic jam will cease.. There won’t be any computer viruses to deal with, and Then… You can act, you can launch your project, you can make the […]
But are you doing your work?
Here is a hint: your work might not be what you think it is. A doctor might think her job is to cure diseases. But in fact, thats not what gets and keeps patients. The cure is a goal, and its important, but its not sufficient. The technical tasks are important, but the work involves […]
The great untold story of our time…
The decline of our personal momentum. The motor, Heres a simple hierarchy: The self-driving car, Cruise control, Manual driving, Hitchhiking, Bicycling, Walking The arc? As you move down the list, it gets harder and harder to coast. It moves from set it once and forget it to one step at at time. The growth of […]
Price and satisfaction
You dont need to read many reviews to realize that the correlation between price and satisfaction isnt what you might have guessed. Its super rare for someone to write, 5 stars. The product wasnt perfect, it wasnt exactly what I needed, but it was really cheap, so, good job! In fact, things that are free […]
How do you do it ?? Bad sorts (and the ...
Bad sorts (and the useful ones) We sort people all the time. Society prefers easy, useless ones. Sorts like: Skin color. Gender. Disability status. Nationality. Religious background. Height. While these are easy to do and the result of long, long traditions, they’re useless. The alternatives? Kindness. Expertise. Attitude. Skill. Emotional intelligence. Honesty. Generous persistence. […]
Don’t go to the supermarket when you’re
Looking for seekers (who are looking for you) “Don’t go to the supermarket when you’re hungry.” The reason is obvious–when you’re hungry, you’re likely to buy things. The risk is that you’ll buy something you don’t need, because, of course, all that buying isn’t actually making you less hungry. The same thing is true […]
Do not take industry conditions as given...
As Steve Jobs put it, You tend to get told that the world is the way it is.. But thats a very limited {View}. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is everything around you that we call life was made up by people that were no smarter than […]
Two kinds of practice
The first is quite common. Learn to play the notes as written. Move asymptotically toward perfection. Practice your technique and your process to get yourself ever more skilled at doing it (whatever ‘it’ is) to spec. This is the practice of grand slalom, of arithmetic, of learning your lines or c++. The other kind of […]
Your soft skills inventory
The annual review is a waste. It’s not particularly useful for employee or boss, it’s stressful and it doesn’t happen often enough to make much of an impact. If you choose to, though, you can do your own review. Weekly or monthly, you can sit down with yourself (or, more powerfully, with a small circle […]
Are you hiding from the mission ?
We do this in two ways: The first is refusing to be clear and precise about what the mission is. Avoiding specifics about what we hope to accomplish and for whom. Being vague about success and (thus about failure). After all, if no one knows exactly what the mission is, it’s hard feel like a […]
Start small, start now…..
This is much better than, “start big, start later.” One advantage is that you don’t have to start perfect. You can merely start.
How to have your Better instincts….
“Go with your gut,” is occasionally good advice. More often, though, it’s an invitation to indulge in your fear or to avoid the hard work of understanding the nuance around us. Better advice is, “invest in making your gut smarter.” The world is a lot more complex than our gut is likely to comprehend, at […]