Admit You Have No Plan
In a one-on-one coaching call a few months ago, Roger (not his real name) reported that he was being pulled off course into doing unimportant work. I asked him if he was taking a few minutes to plan the day in the morning. We had previously discussed how to plan the...
The Real Value of Small Steps
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." The importance of taking small steps is well known. It's the most likely advice you'll get if you're bogging down on something. "Try taking a small step." And yet, I have often found this advice unhelpful. I'm...
Achieve Your Lifetime Goals by Thinking About Them Every Year
"Change your smoke detector batteries when you change the clocks to or from Daylight Savings Time. Otherwise you'll forget." This little trick suggests a way to help you achieve some of the most important goals you'll ever set: your lifetime goals. Your lifetime goals...
Making Sure Constructive Criticism Sticks
Mark Murphy has a great short article titled "Don't Make Constructive Criticism so Soft That People Miss Your Message." In it, he criticizes the feedback sandwich, which I learned long ago in Toastmasters. It's simple: when you are giving feedback, first tell...
The Dishes Won’t Wash Themselves
It is not enough to know that washing dishes is a good thing, that it helps you keep a clean kitchen. The dishes won't wash themselves. The same is true of every mental tool. No matter how long you have used a tool and no matter how convinced you are that it works,...
Don’t Settle for “Etcetera”
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve been introduced to “thinking on paper.” If not, you can read about it and get instruction on it with my Thinking Directions Starter Kit. With that as the context, a client sent me this note about "thinking on paper"...
Turning Stress into Excitement
In a recent newsletter I talked about transitioning to “neutral” when I was feeling resistance to doing chores. You can’t get yourself excited to do the chores, but if you can get to neutral, you’ll probably be willing to do it. Then I read a blog post by my friend...
Use Your Listening Skills to Help You Think
When something's on your mind, talking over the issue with a friend is a real value. A good listener can gently encourage you to untangle your thoughts, without taking over the conversation and/or enforcing his own agenda. Wouldn't it be nice if you had a good...
Deja Vu All Over Again
"How did I wind up here again?" We've all had the experience: a bad situation keeps repeating itself. Maybe it's a confrontation with a particular person that keeps coming up and going badly. Maybe it's the feeling of being overloaded by routine administrative work...
Catching What Triggers You
Here’s another blog post from Peter Bregman: Quash Your Bad Habits by Knowing What Triggers Them. He's a terrific thinker on productivity and execution issues. What I like particularly about this article is that he documents the physical warning signs that Jeff was...