Undivided Attention: 6 Ways To Focus That Will Make You Happier
ve me your undivided attention for a second. (It'll make you happier, I promise.) You create your world with what you pay attention to. There are a million things happening right now: some good, some bad. Pay attention to the good, you'll feel better. Pay attention to the bad, and, well... you get it. Via Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life: ...the things that you don’t attend to in a sense don’t exist, at least for you. All day long,…
6 minutes
Culture Change: How To Improve Your Workplace Culture
en a bunch of people get together, everything changes. Different rules apply. I've posted about navigating office politics. Now what is all this talk about company culture? Does it mean anything? And how can you create culture change? A Good Culture = Success For those who think "culture change" is just some buzzword, research shows culture actually affects profits. A lot. As much as half of operating profit can be attributed to a company's culture: In his new book, The…
7 minutes
Finding Your Calling: Here’s How To Find Your Purpose In Life
at's your five-year plan? Your ten-year plan? If you're anything like me, your answer is probably something along the lines of "I have no idea." And just being asked that question makes you feel inadequate. Like you're always supposed to know what the future will hold. In his powerful book, How Will You Measure Your Life?, Clayton Christensen reflects that so many of his students at Harvard Business School feel they should always be able to answer "What is life all…
4 minutes
Effective Leaders: The 12 Elements Of Effective Leadership Style
erybody has an opinion on what leaders should do. (Even me: here, here and here.) So what do effective leaders really do? How do they actually spend their time? Harvard professor John Kotter decided to find out. He shadowed 15 high performing executives, interviewed them, and talked to their subordinates. This took months. What he got was an accurate look at how effective leaders spend their day, the patterns behind what they do and how they do it. Via John…
4 minutes
Fearlessness: 3 Things You Can Learn From Special Ops And Navy SEALS
ne-man army." It's a phrase that gets thrown around lightly. But for 7 hours, Hector Cafferata was exactly that. On November 28, 1950 during the Korean war, the then 21-year-old took on an entire regiment of Chinese soldiers, defending his group of badly wounded friends. He did it in 30 degrees-below-zero-weather while in his socks. He had only his eight shot M1 Garand and when grenades were thrown at him he batted them away with a shovel. I'm going to…
7 minutes
Keys To Success: 6 Traits The Most Successful People Have In Common
anford MBA school professor Jeffrey Pfeffer looked at the research on success and power along with studying the lives of such high achievers as LBJ and Robert Moses. He identified six traits that were keys to success. Pfeffer was thorough in that he did not just note the qualities all successful people had, but specifically sought out the elements that were present in the powerful and lacking in those who had accomplished less. Pfeffer pulls no punches. These are not all…
5 minutes
Genius And Insanity: Do You Need To Be Crazy To Be The Best?
search says experts practice for 10,000 hours. That's a lot of hours. A crazy amount of hours, one might say. I've posted a lot about "deliberate practice" and the work habits of geniuses. They're relentless. Via Daily Rituals: How Artists Work “Sooner or later,” Pritchett writes, “the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.” Here's the question: Is that just something that obsessed, crazy people do? Does this prove the often-theorized…
7 minutes
Qualities Of A Leader: How To Go from “Good Manager” To “Great Leader”
metimes management and leadership are used interchangeably. Other times "management" is derided as unnecessary bureaucracy and "leadership" is an elusive ideal, always in short supply. What's really the difference? John Kotter, a leadership expert who teaches at Harvard, does a good job of distinguishing the two. Via John P. Kotter on What Leaders Really Do Management controls people by pushing them in the right direction; leadership motivates them by satisfying basic human needs. And this offers insight as to how you can go…
3 minutes
