3 criteria for a behavior to be classified as procrastination: counterproductive, needless, and delaying. Pro = forward Crastinus = of tomorrow By the way… blogging a definition of procrastination is clearly an act of procrastination. This week has been highly unproductive for me. I hope you have a great weekend. Maybe a past post on … Read more
How should you listen to a speech? What is the most valuable attitude to develop as an audience member? Decide you are going to ask the first question at the end of the talk. Listen to the speaker and look for your question. There are three important benefits of asking the first question at … Read more
This is a guest post by Raul Cristian Aguirre. Raul is founder and CEO of Tango/04, poet in the Argentine tradition and Goalkeeper for the Valvidrera Senglars. He blogs at The Visibility Blog and you should follow him at @RaulCristian04. Breaking the Glass Ceiling Almost 20 years ago, towards the end of the summer, I … Read more
Freedom is dangerous without self discipline. Few people will get anything important done in life without a boss, a parent, a teacher. It is the removal of freedom that allows creation. Completion requires constraints: deadlines, scope, format… We chaff at the chains, but they serve us. My boss is an idiot, but without her insistance … Read more
You don’t need more time management. You need to say “No” more. I watched an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert recently. She said “When I was young I used to think that if I said No to people, they would feel rejected, get angry and feel let down. Now that I am older I realise that … Read more
I just spent the last 60 minutes wasting time. I sat down at the computer with a clear intention to write an article. I opened Scrivener, my writing software. I looked at the blank page… and allowed myself to open email… check facebook… Google+, and have just now surfaced from a 60 minute black hole … Read more
At IESE this week, Steven MacGregor ran 3 sessions on “Sustaining Executive Performance”. Keeping healthy is one aspect of successful executives. The human being functions best under conditions of stress followed by recovery. Too much stress leads to breakdown. Too much recovery leads to atrophy. The best form of recovery is sleep. How can you … Read more
There are two types of ignorance: Deliberate Ignorance and Understandable Ignorance. Understandable Ignorance A non-financial expert is not expected to know how to calculate discounted cash flow valuations for publicly listed firms. A European is not expected to know how baseball scoring works. A non-programmer is not expected to understand the syntax of C++ or php … Read more
I read an interview with Kathy Button Bell in the NY Times yesterday. She is Chief Marketing Officer at Emerson. She talks about being coached by the U.S. Olympic Lacrosse coach during her time at Princeton: Kind and Tough, How a Boss should be“She just knew how to inspire you to do more. The thing … Read more
“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.” Lao Tzu Soft Power is part of Leadership Soft Power is necessary … Read more