Category: Productivity

• February 1, 2022

  The Courage to be Rubbish

  I get requests for advice from people starting youtube channels. My first piece of advice is “make bad videos”. When you are starting out, don’t aim for good… aim for done. If you make 1 “bad” video a week for 52 weeks… you will make many bad videos, but you will accidentally create a few…
• September 19, 2021

  Improving your Strengths or Improving your Weaknesses

  You cannot win the marathon by sprinting. The winner of the 100m in the Olympics might also win the 200m, but will never be competitive in the 10K… or marathon …or rowing, or judo… Gold medal athletes focus on their strengths and work to amplify their strengths. Usain Bolt doesn’t spend training time trying to…
• September 18, 2021

  Deleting Instagram, Facebook and Twitter from my phone

  On returning from the summer holidays, iPhone Screen Time showed that I had used my phone for over 4 hours a day. I hated this idea. That 4 full hours each day in some way were glued to a small screen. There is plenty of facetime calls and zoom calls… but a large portion has…
• April 1, 2019

  What Makes Some People More Productive Than Others

  One of my most read & shared posts ever is 11 Differences between Busy People and Productive People. Productivity is clearly a theme which resonates with you, my favorite reader. Robert Pozen and Kevin Downey write about 3 keys to productivity over at Harvard Business Review. They share a summary of their work on personal…
• April 10, 2018

  Learning Patience – Becoming Mindful of My Daily Activities

  I share a tool that I have used to become mindful of my daily activities. This video is from the IESE EMBA Intensive week and I share an exercise that I have been doing for the last few months – that has shown me that “feeling in a rush” is one of the big detractors…
• March 5, 2018

  The 11 Differences Between Busy and Productive People

  One of my posts over at LinkedIn “11 Differences between Busy People and Productive People” was turned into a cool infographic by an author at Inc Magazines blog.  Given that it has horses and unicorns on it, I wanted to share it here. Thanks Inc 😉 The Differences Between Busy vs. Productive People https://t.co/U2OhPq8O64 —…
• January 24, 2018

  The World’s Most Productive People

  The 3 most Productive per Hour countries are: Luxembourg Switzerland Norway The graph below gives one particular view of the level of productivity per hour for the world’s countries.  Mexico works lots of hours with little output, whilst Luxembourg work little hours with very high productivity. The horizontal axis represents annual hours worked and the…
• January 31, 2017

  I Can’t Focus. How to Learn to Focus.

  

  First understand the do-or-die importance of focus. “If you don’t learn to focus, you will have a shallow and unrewarding life without any meaningful achievements.” Derek Sivers  That is worth repeating. “A shallow and unrewarding life.” That’s bad. You Need to Learn to Focus So make it a priority. Yes it’s hard.  The world is…
• December 23, 2016

  How the US President Plans his Days

  Do you plan your days, or do your days run as a reaction to what pops up?  In Washington DC, one of our EO leaders at the EO Leadership Academy was Christoph Magnussen – here in this he shares a tip we learnt about how to take control of your day. This is a lesson…
• December 12, 2016

  Leadership: First, Control your Time

  

  Yesterday I shared an interview with Christoph Magnussen reviewing lessons from #EOLA16. Here’s another smidgin of wisdom from Entrepreneurs’ Organisation Leadership Academy 2016.  In this video, Rich Mulholland, an entrepreneur from South Africa shares his reflections on two key moments during the leadership academy:  A re-enactment of the Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” speech,…