I think it's appropriate to start my thoughts on When with a proverb on planting trees: "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now." Not only because When is all about how to choose the best times to do things, but because this half-written article has been sitting around waiting for me to have some extra when in my schedule to finish it. Yes, it would have been better to finish it up when I first read the book. But the second-best time is today. And in When, Dan takes his magnifying lens and explores what we know about how timing affects our success personally and professionally. Big Thought Dan … [Read more...]
Getting Things Done – David Allen
This article was originally published a few years ago at the RockStar Success Library. I had two opposing thoughts when I first came upon Getting Things Done. Thought one: “Cool, another book on productivity.” Thought two: “Oh great, another book on productivity.” There are a lot of books on productivity and time management out there, enough to make you wonder about the value of each new one that comes out. Since I work with a lot of my coaching clients about work balance, and time management, I try to give most of them at the least a quick run through. Getting Things Done lays out a pretty comprehensive system to increase … [Read more...]
The Right Questions Can Help Fix the Environment (and Your Life)
“The quality of a person’s life is determined by the quality of the questions they ask.” – Anthony Robbins Have you read William Kamkwamba’s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind? It's a fantastic story about perseverance, and how he used ingenuity to build an electricity-generating windmill for his family’s home despite being surrounded by poverty and doubt in Africa. There are a many reasons why the book engaged me, but one of them is because I’ve also been thinking about how to build windmills. One of the topics I daydream about is how to make every house in the U.S. a zero-sum electricity user by using solar and wind power right at the … [Read more...]
Act Like You Control Your Time
This article isn't going to solve all of your time-management agonies. It's not full of lists on how to maximize your time, minimize your email inbox, or how to set your priorities the right way. There are other blogs, books, and online courses that will make you a time-management wizard. I am going to ask you a question that will put you on the right path. It's the first step to making the most of the time you have. Most people think that the reason they don't get everything done is because they haven't stumbled upon that right tip, tool, or lifehack. (Oh, I can separate an egg yolk with an empty plastic bottle, now my life is going … [Read more...]
The 30 Minutes Between You and Your Dreams
I sent my latest draft of Networking in the 21st Century: Why Your Network Sucks and What to Do About It to the editor last week. I have to admit that I'm pretty excited about it. And a little surprised. If you had asked me at the beginning of the year if I could write a nearly 200-page book, I would have demurred and said that I didn't have the time or the patience to do it. Writing a book was a pipedream. So how did I do it? And why should you care, even if you don't plan on writing a book anytime soon? One Step at a Time Like many of us in this information-soaked age, my attention span is not the greatest. In addition I run my … [Read more...]
One of the Best Time Management Tools I’ve Found
I recently visited the Zen Garden at the Chicago Botanic Gardens, and found it a profoundly calming experience. Like many of us, I find myself bouncing around from activity to activity during the day. My mind is usually even more frantic as it works on what I need to do in the future and what I've done in the past. And, oh yeah, tries to pay attention to what I'm doing right now. For a few moments I was surrounded by the quiet in the Zen Garden. I could almost feel the cogs in my mind slowing down. My breathing became deeper and more relaxed. I was peaceful and felt a sense of clarity that is often elusive. When You Are Busy... … [Read more...]