Use Plans to Focus Yourself, Not Test Yourself
Planning out your week can help you navigate life gracefully — but overplanning your day-to-day tasks can make you neurotic and stressed. The best way to reap the benefits of …
Yes, There Are Stupid Questions
Students are always told that there are no stupid questions. The idea is to encourage people to ask questions and learn more. There are stupid questions, though. You probably hear …
Go Slow To Go Fast
It sounds like a paradox. You must go slow to go fast. It comes up in many disciplines. Race car drivers know that when entering a turn, they go faster …
How Important Are Little Things? Ask Amazon.
Recently Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered a massive outage. For those of you not familiar with AWS, it is the server farm that keeps not just Amazon running, but Netflix …
Draw a Picture of Your Business Model
Growing companies face a predictable problem: Over time, the business becomes too complex for its own good. To untangle this complexity, forget over-engineered PowerPoint presentations or lengthy reports. Turn to …
5 Tips For Setting And Achieving Goals
A mjor part of focus is having goals you can focus on. Having a set of goals provides something to focus on as well as something to measure your progress …
Narrow Your Focus
What drives some companies to succeed while others languish? Why does Kmart struggle while Wal-Mart and Target thrive? What the former lacks — that the latter have nailed — is …
3 Tips for Staying Focused at Work
If you don’t know this by now, our constant access to data is killing our productivity. Too many of us begin the day by picking up our phones and getting …
Your Mission Doesn’t Matter. What Your Customer Wants Does.
As I write this, I have just watched an interview with the CEO of Panera Bread announcing their new “kids meals.” He talked at length about their mission to provide …
Identify Your Ideal Work Rhythm
To get the most out of your work day you need to think about how you manage your time. most time management systems are one size fits all systems. They …