Procrastination, a definition

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

Simple Rules for Effective Meetings

Here’s a new rule for people who wish to create a meeting: Al Pittampalli asks “What difference could you make that requires no one’s permission other than your own?”  Do that first.  Don’t call the meeting until you have done that. What do you think?  Feasible? A Vaccination for The Meeting Virus? “Lets meet to … Read more

4 Steps to Improve your Sleep

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

5 little things put a Leader in the top 10% of performance

I come more and more to the conclusion that excellent performance is not about complex innovations, but about small habits. Excellent performance is about small habits I am reading Leading with Emotional Intelligence by Redlan Nadler.  He quotes from book The Extraordinary Leader by Zenger and Folkman.  They found that doing 5 specific things really well … Read more

Chronic Partial Attention

In a recent article Tom Friedman of the New York Times ponders whether we have evolved from the Iron Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age to the Age of Interruption, in which the “malady of modernity” is that we are now all afflicted with chronic multi-tasking and chronic partial attention induced by cell phones, email, the internet, handhelds, … Read more

How to tell if you have a good idea

Greg Digneo of Cloud Marketing Lab wrote a beautifully simple explanation over at Triiibes of how to test an idea before you spend any money building.  Even “small” ideas like hosting a webinar or writing a short/free ebook to give away on your blog can be tested even before putting time into creating it. 4 Steps … Read more

6 Ways to get your Email Ignored

In 2010, 294 billion emails were sent per day for a total of 90 trillion in the full year. 1.9 billion users sent an email during 2010.  The average business user in a 1,000 user organisation receives 110 emails per day (of which 13 are spam) and sends 36 emails.  (source Radicati Group Email Statistics … Read more

Regional Culture Explained

Can we understand a region’s culture by looking at the main cereal crop of five thousands years ago?  This is a little thought experiment.  This has no basis in science or fact and is merely a little story I am telling today…  I very much welcome reflections and comments. Asia – rice Northern Europe – … Read more