Robert Story – Productivity

Leadership is a choice | The Practice of Leadership

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand

As people we are designed to choose. Like many other things in life, leadership too is a choice we make. . We do not become great leaders because of our title or position. Leadership is about making the decision and taking the responsibility to bring our future into the present. This first step to becoming an effective leader… it is the choice to be proactive.

The question is “have we make the choice to lead?” Although you may think of yourself as a leader, until you choose leadership you will find yourself drifting around aimlessly. Lacking passion, commitment, courage and direction.

Read the full article at The Practice of Leadership

It’s hard to force yourself to sit down and write down your goals. Doing this means you actually have to THINK about them and face the hard facts about your current efforts (or lack thereof) to reach them. It also means that you have to carve-out the time to do this in a schedule that seems way too busy for this type of exercise. But the only thing harder than writing down your goals is trying to achieve them without writing them down.

You need a plan to build a house. To build a life, it is even more important to have a plan or goal.
-Zig Ziglar

The following post at Lifehacker discusses this, centering around the following points:

• Goals mean you’re trying to be better
• Writing things down makes them happen
• Written goals make time for big thinking upfront
• Written goals give you hyper-focus and clarity
• Written goals make it easy to cut the crap
• Written goals prepare you for the best and the worst

Read the details on the above points at Lifehacker.com

The Ultimate Productivity Habit | PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement

Writing focuses your thinking. When you write something down, you aren’t just creating a paper record, you’re changing the way you think about it. Writing down a goal changes a whim into a conviction. Writing down your expenses changes excessive spending from a bad habit to a conscious choice. Writing down your idea turns a vague suggestion into a clear concept.

Writing is like an upgrade to your thinking. In the normal flow of thought, you can’t edit typos and make adjustments. If you get distracted, it can be hard to return to your place. And since your short term memory is only about 5-9 items long, you can’t think over more complex ideas.

When you start writing things down, you have an upgraded level of thinking about them. Writing things down makes you more aware of opportunities and problems, like a temporary boost to your IQ.

…The daydream goes like this:

“I am incredibly busy right now. In fact, I feel as busy as I have ever felt in my life. Sometimes my life feels a little out of control. But I am dealing with some very unique and special challenges right now. I think the worst of this will be over in a few months. Then I am going to take a couple of weeks to get organized, spend some time with my family, start my ‘healthy life’ program, and work on personal development.”

…

If you want to make real change, ask yourself this tough question:

What am I willing to change now?
Not ‘in a few months.’
Not ‘when I get caught up.’
Now.

Marshall Goldsmith poses an interesting question and makes a tough recommendation.
Read more on this at:

Become a More Effective Leader by Asking One Tough Question – Marshall Goldsmith

If you are on Windows, you can now try out the Google Chrome browser.

So far, it appears to be pretty speedy and handles all of my normal sites well.

http://www.google.com/chrome/

The real limiting factor for productivity is your energy levels and ability to pay attention.

Energy levels limit your productivity because when you’re tired, you can have ample time and still not get everything done. Your attention span is even more limited, because even if there are a million things that need to be done, you can only focus on one or two at a time.

You might not be able to insert another 4-5 hours into your schedule without making some sacrifices. But even extremely busy people can add an hour or two into their schedule without eliminating something. The reason it’s hard to “find time” isn’t a lack of time. It’s because you don’t have the attention span left to focus on something else that needs to fit into your day.

Read more on this topic at PickTheBrain: New Habits

You Can Never Get Enough of What You Don’t Need

When people try to keep or manage their commitments in their heads, instead of on paper or some other external medium, they usually have an exaggerated sense of everything they have to do. They’ll often respond reflexively to even simple requests with something like, “But I have so much to do,” or “I just don’t have time right now.”

In emergencies, even people who manage their time in a healthy fashion will lack time. But if lacking time is a daily, systemic pattern, that scarcity probably reflects a deeper issue. Even recognizing an overcommitted schedule, in itself, won’t fix the problem.

Why Lack of Clarity Matters More Than Lack of Time

ChangeThis Newsletter: The World Is Flat… Now It’s Free

Beginning tomorrow, and running through August 4th, Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Macmillan Audio will be offering the audio edition of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat for free. Listeners will receive the audiobook in three easy-to-download sections, and soon after that, as an added bonus, will also receive an exclusive prepublication audio excerpt of Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America. The book itself will be released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on September 8th.

The is the end of an article that is worth a full read. Click on the link at the bottom to check out the whole thing.

Talent issues are not small issues. They are big ones because they cut across all aspects of an organization’s life. If you want to attract talent, it isn’t simply the compensation package. It is the culture that they find which will make it possible for them to fulfill their potential.

The keys? Freedom, Openness, Diversity and high levels of interpersonal interaction. The reality is that this is not just about how individual employees are managed. It is about the whole structure of the business is design to function. Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, makes the point that “structure influences behavior.” In other words, it is not enough to say you are free to create. You must create the structures that produce creative behavior. This is quite difficult in organizations where entrepreneurial practices have been weeded out in favor of top-down leadership. If you want talent to thrive in your business, you have to create a bottom-up environment of creative leadership. The truly talented ones, like those Christine Kane compares to Neil Young, will find that not only can they create, but the corporate stucture can actually be a benefit in extending the reach of their talent beyond what they might be possibly do on their own. Of course, it will only happen if you intend for it to do so, and you work to sustain an environment of freedom, openness and diversity.

Leading Questions: Developing a Talent Culture

Oscar Peterson: A model of Engaged Performance.

Have you ever engaged this fully in your work – so much so that the work is transformed by you and you are transformed by the work?