I don’t just mean that it is about keeping a lot of things in the air at once. There is another thing about juggling which I find it useful to think about when trying to be more productive.
Photo: Helico
It’s about throwing not catching
October 13, 2008
Productivity 2.0
Really interesting post from Leo at Zen Habits on Productivity 2.0
These are his eight headings:
1. Don’t Crank – Work With Deeper Focus.
2. Minimize Out Meetings and Planning — Just Start.
3. Paperwork is out — automate with technology.
4. Don’t multi-task — multi-project and single-task.
5. Produce less, not more.
6. Forget about organization — use technology.
7. Out with hierarchies — in with freedom.
8. Work fewer hours, not more.
These are great ideas to try to follow and I was pleased that I have already talked about a few of them in other posts:
This one is about reducing the number of tasks you have to deal with (point 1)
This one is about planning (point 2)
This one is about freedom and using technology (points 6 & 7)
October 13, 2008
Do you value the right things?
Who is the most intelligent person who ever lived?
I’m sure the most common answer to this would probably by Albert Einstein. Someone did run a poll and get this answer (see here), it is interesting that all the other choices given in this are scientists (what about Shakespeare?)
Einstein was obviously a scientist and when we are describing something that is easy we often say ‘it’s not rocket science’, thereby implying that rocket science is difficult.
This seems to show that in our culture science is considered the height of intelligence and yet scientists are far from the highest paid people in the country. The highest paid people are celebrities and bankers, does anyone really think they are worth what they get paid? (Perhaps with the threat of global warming we should start to pay scientists a bit better and focus less on celebrity?)
The point of this is to make you think whether you value the right things in your staff, colleagues or friends. Perhaps it is the loud and extrovert salesperson who gets the praise for all their good work and their quiet colleague, who they rely on, is overlooked.
Make sure you reward people for showing the behaviours and results that you really want rather than those that shout loudest.
October 10, 2008
How to run a successful company blog
Information is power – give power to the people!
I try to keep to the principle that I should tell staff everything unless it has to been kept confidential, rather than the ‘need to know’ basis that some people use.
As an example I started a blog at our company about five months ago. Except this isn’t one of those boring CEO blogs where I tell everyone what I have been doing and how important I am and after a few months everyone is bored and it stops being posted to. This blog is completely open for staff (there are about 150) to use and communicate with:
October 9, 2008
Follow through – if you bake a cake don’t forget to eat it!
Do you ever put all your effort into producing something and then forget to actually enjoy it?
Picture: Aburt
I like to think of this like spending time baking a cake and then not getting the benefit of actually eating it. Imagine the smell of a freshly baked cake, picture the fresh cream thickly layered between two soft and moist layers of sponge. Now take this cake and throw it in the bin without eating it.
What’s the point of that! (If you’re feeling healthy you might want to think of a salad rather than a piece of cake, but cake definitely works better for me!)
In the rest of your life this might be buying some new software, a book, cd, dvd etc and then not ever actually using it. How many things have you got at home that you have never used?
Try to find at least one of these things each week and use it instead of just buying more stuff.
In business this happens when people spend so much time preparing reports on performance that they forget to actually spend time working out how to improve their performance. Always follow through and get the benefit of what you have made.
Eat your cake – you deserve it!
