Monday, September 13, 2010
Quotes from the Book Stack
If you have paid any attention to the 'On the Book Stack' widget on this blog, you probably realize that I am normally reading anywhere from 3-5 books at a time.
As I have decided in recent days to become more intentional and focused in my reading, I am going to attempt to do two things -- one, read only 1-2 books at a time, and two, begin to share the best quotes from the books I am reading here on the blog. I am going to call these posts "Quotes from the Book Stack." My goal is to complete a book every 7-10 days, and as I read share the best quotes and perhaps even some of my thoughts with you.
I don't know how this will work, but I hope it will be a blessing to you. Look for the first installment later tonight.
As I have decided in recent days to become more intentional and focused in my reading, I am going to attempt to do two things -- one, read only 1-2 books at a time, and two, begin to share the best quotes from the books I am reading here on the blog. I am going to call these posts "Quotes from the Book Stack." My goal is to complete a book every 7-10 days, and as I read share the best quotes and perhaps even some of my thoughts with you.
I don't know how this will work, but I hope it will be a blessing to you. Look for the first installment later tonight.
JC Ryle
I found this quote on Tim Challies blog this morning, and it is too good not to pass along:
When an eagle is happy in an iron cage, when a sheep is happy in water, when an owl is happy in the blaze of the noonday sun, when a fish is happy on dry land then, and not till then, will I admit that the unsanctified man could be happy in heaven. —J.C. Ryle
When an eagle is happy in an iron cage, when a sheep is happy in water, when an owl is happy in the blaze of the noonday sun, when a fish is happy on dry land then, and not till then, will I admit that the unsanctified man could be happy in heaven. —J.C. Ryle
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Six Ways to Supercharge Your Productivity
This is really good, especially his first four points:
Tony Schwartz of Fast Company:
It's Labor Day in the U.S. as I write this post. To my own amazement, I've spent most of the past month truly relaxing--reading lots of books, playing tennis, running, hanging out with my family, and eating food I mostly shouldn't--scones and donuts for breakfast, BLTs and burgers for lunch. I enjoyed every minute of it.
Now it's time to return to work. I feel lucky to have a job, and especially one I love, but the fall ahead is intense, daunting, and demanding, as I suspect it is for you. I'm anxious about the economy. I'm wondering when the next shoe is going to drop. I'm concerned about how my company will hold up if things do get worse.
Add to all that the digital demands of the world we now inhabit. Armed with ever more ways to connect with each other, and to stay current in every moment, we often aren't sure where to put our focus. We find it harder to give all of our attention to anything--or anyone--for very long.
The consequence is that we're undertaking more and more tasks every day, but they often add up to less and less real value.
Just think about how many emails you now receive and respond to each day? There are 1307 sitting in my inbox right now. I suspect that two dozen at most genuinely merit my attention. But how to focus on those, and invest minimal time on the rest?
What, in short, does it take to be productive and efficient in a world of infinitely rising demand, and endless potential distractions? By productive, I mean generating goods and services with lasting value. By efficient, I mean doing so with the least amount of unnecessary expenditure of time and energy.
Here are six behaviors that we regularly teach to our clients (for more, please click here):
1. Make sufficient sleep a top priority. Schedule your bedtime, and start winding down at least 45 minutes earlier. Ninety-eight percent of all human beings need at least 7-8 hours a night to feel fully rested. Only a fraction of us get that much regularly, in part because we buy into the myth that sacrificing an hour or two of sleep a night give us an hour more of productivity. In reality, even small amounts of sleep deprivation take a dramatic toll on our cognitive capacity, our ability to think creatively, our emotional resilience, the quality of our work, and even the speed at which we do it.
2. Create one to-do list that includes everything you want or need to do, on and off the job--and I mean everything, including any unresolved issues that merit further reflection. That's the essence of David Allen's simple but profound work (see Getting Things Done). Writing everything down helps get it off your mind, leaving you free to fully focus on what's most important at any given moment.
3.Do the most important thing first when you get to work each morning, when you're likely to be have the highest energy and the fewest distractions. Decide the night before what activity most deserves your attention. Then focus on it single-mindedly for no more than 90 minutes. Productivity isn't about how many tasks you complete or the number of hours you work. It's about the enduring value you create.
4. Live like a sprinter, not a marathoner. When you work continuously, you're actually progressively depleting your energy reservoir as the day wears on. By making intermittent renewal and refueling important, you're regularly replenishing your reservoir, so you're not only able to fully engage at intervals along the way, but also to maintain high energy much further into the day.
5. Monitor your mood. When demand begins to exceed your capacity, one of the most common signs is an increase in negative emotions. The more we move into "fight or flight," the more reactive and impulsive we become, and the less reflective and responsive. The first question to ask yourself is "Why am I feeling this way, and what can I do to make myself feel better?" It may be that you're hungry, tired, overwhelmed, or feeling threatened in some way. Awareness is the first step. You can't change what you don't notice.
6. Schedule specific times for activities in your life that you deem important but not urgent. With so much coming at you all the time, it's easy to focus all day on whatever feels most pressing in the moment. What you sacrifice is the opportunity to take on work such as writing, strategizing, thinking creatively, or cultivating relationships, which may require more time and energy, but often yield greater long-term rewards.
Tony Schwartz of Fast Company:
It's Labor Day in the U.S. as I write this post. To my own amazement, I've spent most of the past month truly relaxing--reading lots of books, playing tennis, running, hanging out with my family, and eating food I mostly shouldn't--scones and donuts for breakfast, BLTs and burgers for lunch. I enjoyed every minute of it.
Now it's time to return to work. I feel lucky to have a job, and especially one I love, but the fall ahead is intense, daunting, and demanding, as I suspect it is for you. I'm anxious about the economy. I'm wondering when the next shoe is going to drop. I'm concerned about how my company will hold up if things do get worse.
Add to all that the digital demands of the world we now inhabit. Armed with ever more ways to connect with each other, and to stay current in every moment, we often aren't sure where to put our focus. We find it harder to give all of our attention to anything--or anyone--for very long.
The consequence is that we're undertaking more and more tasks every day, but they often add up to less and less real value.
Just think about how many emails you now receive and respond to each day? There are 1307 sitting in my inbox right now. I suspect that two dozen at most genuinely merit my attention. But how to focus on those, and invest minimal time on the rest?
What, in short, does it take to be productive and efficient in a world of infinitely rising demand, and endless potential distractions? By productive, I mean generating goods and services with lasting value. By efficient, I mean doing so with the least amount of unnecessary expenditure of time and energy.
Here are six behaviors that we regularly teach to our clients (for more, please click here):
1. Make sufficient sleep a top priority. Schedule your bedtime, and start winding down at least 45 minutes earlier. Ninety-eight percent of all human beings need at least 7-8 hours a night to feel fully rested. Only a fraction of us get that much regularly, in part because we buy into the myth that sacrificing an hour or two of sleep a night give us an hour more of productivity. In reality, even small amounts of sleep deprivation take a dramatic toll on our cognitive capacity, our ability to think creatively, our emotional resilience, the quality of our work, and even the speed at which we do it.
2. Create one to-do list that includes everything you want or need to do, on and off the job--and I mean everything, including any unresolved issues that merit further reflection. That's the essence of David Allen's simple but profound work (see Getting Things Done). Writing everything down helps get it off your mind, leaving you free to fully focus on what's most important at any given moment.
3.Do the most important thing first when you get to work each morning, when you're likely to be have the highest energy and the fewest distractions. Decide the night before what activity most deserves your attention. Then focus on it single-mindedly for no more than 90 minutes. Productivity isn't about how many tasks you complete or the number of hours you work. It's about the enduring value you create.
4. Live like a sprinter, not a marathoner. When you work continuously, you're actually progressively depleting your energy reservoir as the day wears on. By making intermittent renewal and refueling important, you're regularly replenishing your reservoir, so you're not only able to fully engage at intervals along the way, but also to maintain high energy much further into the day.
5. Monitor your mood. When demand begins to exceed your capacity, one of the most common signs is an increase in negative emotions. The more we move into "fight or flight," the more reactive and impulsive we become, and the less reflective and responsive. The first question to ask yourself is "Why am I feeling this way, and what can I do to make myself feel better?" It may be that you're hungry, tired, overwhelmed, or feeling threatened in some way. Awareness is the first step. You can't change what you don't notice.
6. Schedule specific times for activities in your life that you deem important but not urgent. With so much coming at you all the time, it's easy to focus all day on whatever feels most pressing in the moment. What you sacrifice is the opportunity to take on work such as writing, strategizing, thinking creatively, or cultivating relationships, which may require more time and energy, but often yield greater long-term rewards.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
How to Make Ideas Happen
I don't agree with all of this, but there is some really good stuff here.
Tony Morgan:
I recently finished reading Making Ideas Happen, the new book from Scott Belsky, founder and CEO of Behance. Here are the highlights from my reading:
•“It turns out that ‘having the idea’ is just a small part of the process, perhaps only 1 percent of the journey.”
•“Most ideas are born and lost in isolation.”
•“Organization is the guiding force of productivity; if you want to make an idea happen, you need to have a process for doing so.”
•“Without some structure, you can become an addict of the brain-spinning indulgence of idea generation.”
•“The process of excessive note taking actually interferes with the bias toward action that is necessary for a productive creative environment.”
•“You must be willing to kill ideas liberally–for the sake of fully pursuing others.”
•“Leaving a meeting without anything actionable signifies that the meeting was just an information exchange and should have taken place over e-mail.”
•“It turns out that constraints–whether they are deadlines, budgets, or highly specific creative briefs–help us manage our energy and execute ideas… our productivity desperately requires restrictions.”
•“While we all have different insecurities, most of us share a common approach to dealing with them: we seek information to make our anxiety go away.”
•“Any project that’s run by a single person is basically destined to fail. It’s going to fail because it doesn’t scale. If one of my projects can’t attract a team, I pretty much figure that there’s something wrong with it.” –Chris Anderson, Wired magazine’s editor in chief
•“You need to work with people who ask the difficult, practical questions that are frustrating but important when pushing ideas forward.”
•“We fall short of fully empowering others because we don’t want to compromise the quality (or control) of our ideas.”
•“You are the steward of the chemistry in every project you lead, starting with who and how you hire.”
•“Cynics cling to their doubts and are often unwilling to move away from their convictions. By contrast, skeptics are willing to embrace something new–they are just wary and critical at first. Thought they are often undervalued, skeptics are an essential component of a healthy team, and leaders should cultivate their respect and influence.”
•“The leaders of great creative teams value the friction that results when opinions vary among a passionate group of creative minds.”
•“Teams should not strive for complete consensus at the outset of a project. After all, consensus-driven teams run the risk of settling on what offends no one and satisfies no one.”
•“Leadership is not about making people do things. Leadership is about instilling a genuine desire in the hearts and minds of others to take ownership of their work on a project.”
•“As long as the desired outcome is achieved, controlling how it is achieved shouldn’t be that important to you.”
•“We should be wary that ‘best practices’–the tried and true ways of doing thing–often become conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is often wrong.”
•“Most entrepreneurs will admit that the value of having a masterful business plan is overrated. What matters most is your ability to keep moving and pushing your ideas forward, yard by yard.”
•“The uncharted path is the only road to something new.”
I think you’ll be challenged by Scott’s writing. Here’s my Amazon link if you’d like to pick up your own copy of Making Ideas Happen.
Tony Morgan:
I recently finished reading Making Ideas Happen, the new book from Scott Belsky, founder and CEO of Behance. Here are the highlights from my reading:
•“It turns out that ‘having the idea’ is just a small part of the process, perhaps only 1 percent of the journey.”
•“Most ideas are born and lost in isolation.”
•“Organization is the guiding force of productivity; if you want to make an idea happen, you need to have a process for doing so.”
•“Without some structure, you can become an addict of the brain-spinning indulgence of idea generation.”
•“The process of excessive note taking actually interferes with the bias toward action that is necessary for a productive creative environment.”
•“You must be willing to kill ideas liberally–for the sake of fully pursuing others.”
•“Leaving a meeting without anything actionable signifies that the meeting was just an information exchange and should have taken place over e-mail.”
•“It turns out that constraints–whether they are deadlines, budgets, or highly specific creative briefs–help us manage our energy and execute ideas… our productivity desperately requires restrictions.”
•“While we all have different insecurities, most of us share a common approach to dealing with them: we seek information to make our anxiety go away.”
•“Any project that’s run by a single person is basically destined to fail. It’s going to fail because it doesn’t scale. If one of my projects can’t attract a team, I pretty much figure that there’s something wrong with it.” –Chris Anderson, Wired magazine’s editor in chief
•“You need to work with people who ask the difficult, practical questions that are frustrating but important when pushing ideas forward.”
•“We fall short of fully empowering others because we don’t want to compromise the quality (or control) of our ideas.”
•“You are the steward of the chemistry in every project you lead, starting with who and how you hire.”
•“Cynics cling to their doubts and are often unwilling to move away from their convictions. By contrast, skeptics are willing to embrace something new–they are just wary and critical at first. Thought they are often undervalued, skeptics are an essential component of a healthy team, and leaders should cultivate their respect and influence.”
•“The leaders of great creative teams value the friction that results when opinions vary among a passionate group of creative minds.”
•“Teams should not strive for complete consensus at the outset of a project. After all, consensus-driven teams run the risk of settling on what offends no one and satisfies no one.”
•“Leadership is not about making people do things. Leadership is about instilling a genuine desire in the hearts and minds of others to take ownership of their work on a project.”
•“As long as the desired outcome is achieved, controlling how it is achieved shouldn’t be that important to you.”
•“We should be wary that ‘best practices’–the tried and true ways of doing thing–often become conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is often wrong.”
•“Most entrepreneurs will admit that the value of having a masterful business plan is overrated. What matters most is your ability to keep moving and pushing your ideas forward, yard by yard.”
•“The uncharted path is the only road to something new.”
I think you’ll be challenged by Scott’s writing. Here’s my Amazon link if you’d like to pick up your own copy of Making Ideas Happen.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Dirty and Happy
If you have five minutes to spare I recommend listening to this short interview with Mike Rowe of the show Dirty Jobs. Recently I've become hooked on Dirty Jobs, a program where Mike travels the U.S. looking for dirty jobs and the people who get them done. The interview was insightful in that he explains a bit more of his philosophy and the reasons for creating the show as well as its continued popularity. For example, he has this little intro on his website (www.mikeroweworks.com) titled "Work is Not the Enemy":
Doesn’t it seem strange that we can have a shortage of skilled labor, a crumbling infrastructure, and rising unemployment? How did we get into this fix? Are we lazy? Our society has slowly redefined what it means to have a “good job.” The portrayals in Hollywood and the messages from Madison Avenue have been unmistakable. “Work less and be happy!” For the last thirty years we’ve been celebrating a different kind of work. We’ve aspired to other opportunities. We’ve stopped making things. We’ve convinced ourselves that “good jobs” are the result of a four year degree. That’s bunk. Not all knowledge comes from college. Skill is back in demand. Steel toed boots are back in fashion. And Work Is Not The Enemy.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
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