50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work
50 ideas for writers on how to get started & keep on going until that book or article is done.
What are your strengths?
Prof. Martin Seligman (Director of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center) offers a couple of questionnaires to assess your strengths, work/life balance & general happiness.
Positive Psychology is a new branch of psychology which focuses on the empirical study of such things as positive emotions, strengths-based character, and healthy institutions.
The one thing you need to know
“Discover what you don’t like doing and stop doing it.”
“Whenever you become aware of some aspect you dislike, do not try to work through it. Do not chalk it up to the realities of life. Do not put up with it. Instead, cut it out of your life as fast as you can. Eradicate it.”
“The one thing you need to know about sustained individual success: Discover what you don’t like doing and stop doing it.”
all from Marcus Buckingham's latest book "The One Thing you need to Know".
Buy at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.de
How Bill Gates works
Quite interesting to read how people get their work done. Here's an article on how Bill Gates organizes himself & some tips on how to use the Microsoft tools from Fortune.
Related post: "How do you work".
Another view on how to organize your week
Organize your activities around 4 different types of days.
1. Rest & Relaxation Days - 24 hours of no business related activities, reading or problem solving. Total downtime to rejuvenate and recharge your batteries. ALWAYS schedule your R&R Days© first.
2. Money Making Activities Days© - Scheduled business time with no interruptions where you focus only on activities that produce income.
3. Grunt Days - These are the days that you do all the "stuff." Because you have focused days for producing income and rejuvenating, you can devote time to tie up loose-ends, finish projects etc. totally guilt free.
4. Elimination Days - Life is messy and messes happen in both your personal and professional life. Messes clutter your life and cause distractions, interruptions and get you bogged down. Elimination days you permission to clean up the mess so you can back on track.
Pasted from <http://www.just15minutes.com/articles/a00140.htm>
Related post: "Organizing your work week"
Do you love what you do?
Leading Ideas: Do What You Love by Doug Sundheim
I recently read Steve Jobs's 2005 Stanford University commencement address -- which John commented on. In it, Jobs describes a simple question he uses to measure how inspired he feels each day. Since the age of 17, he has been asking himself the same question every morning. "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" "Whenever the answer has been 'no' for too many days in a row," he goes on to say, "I know I need to change something."
Something to consider:
When you do what you love, you come to life. You wake up parts of you that are dormant. You give off positive energy which everyone sees. Take the time to find and follow your passion. Passion breathes life into you and everything around you.
Something to try:
1. Ask yourself the same question as Steve Jobs above.
2. If you'd rather be doing something else, articulate it as clearly as possible.
3. Move in that direction - start doing small things if you have to.
4. Realize that you're most valuable to yourself and the world when you're doing whatever makes you come alive.
Pasted from: http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2005/08/02/leading_ideas_do_what_you_love.html
Outside the box thinking
Kicking But by Mark Goulston
I credit Dave Hibbard, founder of Dave Hibbard International at: http://www.davehibbard.com/, with a neat way to push you to think outside the box and innovatively. It's called "The Impossibility Question." Answer the question: "What would be impossible for you to do, but if you could do it, would greatly increase your productivity, results and/or success?" After you answer it with: "It would be impossible for me to _______________, but if I could, it would increase my success by doing _________________." Follow this with: "Some of the ways I could make this possible are ______________." Try this. It will help you by pass your own, "Yes, but" tendencies.
Pasted from: http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2005/08/07/kicking_but.html
Organizing your work week
- Monday is meeting day. I’ve got a standing meeting in the early afternoon and if I can, I like to have other meetings on Monday to get them out of the way. I’m not a big meeting person and my whole week goes much better if I can get past them early on.
- Tuesday is my wild card day. I usually try and leave it pretty open for whatever I have going on at the moment. That can mean meetings on hellish weeks or heads-down work on productive weeks. Or anything else, Tuesday needs to be flexible.
- Wednesday is my hard work day. I usually plan out my whole day, turn off distractions and getting to work, work, work. It’s also my writing day. I spend a good chunk of time in the evening working on my various columns and features, doing my best to finish them off.
- Thursday is planning day. I like to kick off projects and have status-type meetings on Thursday as I feel it’s the best day to plan for the next week.
- Friday is wrapping-things-up day. My Fridays are kind of like a less intense version of my Wednesdays. I tend to get as much done as possible, as early as possible and I usually focus on those projects that are nearing completion. I really don’t like meetings on Fridays or kicking things off in any formal fashion. I like to clear the decks for my weekend.
Pasted from: http://www.to-done.com/2005/11/my-work-week/#more-90
What does your week look like? Post your comments here!
Not in the mood for work?
Get back to it...Interesting article on procastination: "Getting Back To Work: A Personal Productivity Toolkit"
Palm LifeDrive
Finally a new, innovative tool! Frankly, since the invention of the iPod, we haven't seen much new in this area. Palm's LifeDrive mobile manager promises a lot & I think this might be the product they needed to bounce back into customer's minds. They grabbed my attention at least.
Files, email, documents, web, photos, music, videos, contacts, appointments, etc. Everything in one small box. 4 GB of storage is probably enough for most users, but a 10 GB version would render the LifeDrive a real alternative to the iPod. File transfer is still a bit slow, but the 2nd generation will surely improve on this.
