Sorting Your Inbox Into Priority Files: Why It Doesn’t Work
MA, a new ETR reader, responded to my advice re organizing daily tasks according to Steve Covey’s four-quadrant principle. (The idea, in a nutshell, is that you should organize your life so that you give priority to Important but Not Urgent goals since they will make the biggest difference in…
No More Excuses
“One unable to dance blames the unevenness of the floor.” – Malay proverb At any given time, I am individually mentoring a dozen or more individuals. It’s not something I seek to do. It seems to be the natural result of (a) knowing a lot of ambitious people and (b)…
If You Want That Better Job, Go After It Like You Mean It
“There is one quality more important than ‘know-how’ … This is ‘know-what’ by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes, but what our purposes are to be.” – Norbert Wiener (The Human Use of Human Beings, 1954) Yesterday (in Message #487), we talked about your career. I…
Word Play
“Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.” – Mark Twain (Notebook, 1935) Not too long ago, CW told me about a contest the Washington Post ran for its readers in which they were asked to come up with playful…
A Thanksgiving Day Task — And Another Resolution
“When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, It concentrates his mind wonderfully.” – Samuel Johnson On New Year’s Day, most people make resolutions. But how many people are thankful on Thanksgiving Day? If you ask the typical American what Thanksgiving is about, he’ll mention family,…
Alistair’s Newsletter
There is nothing that will make you feel richer than luxurious vacations. If you want to enjoy the best the world has to offer, to experience travel and adventure at its very best, you don’t need a multi-million dollar bank account. What you need are discriminating friends in great places…
The Incredible Heaviness Of Being Successful
“Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.” – Jean Kerr A curious thing sometimes happens on the road to success. Things are moving along brilliantly (as my British friends like to put it). Your first success has led to others. Your career is…
Multitasking: One of the Most Odious Words Coined in the Last Decade
Let’s spend a few moments today talking about something you should NOT be doing and its opposite — which is the core habit of all successful enterprises. Of all the hot air that inflated the New Economy bubble (new myths about how businesses grow, what they should be about, the…
Using Task Lists To Change Your Life
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” – Daniel H. Burnham A client and I met this morning. She said she was frustrated — that she had begun using a daily task list, as I had suggested, but wasn’t getting some important things done. “‘To-do’…
How Pioneers Can (Eventually) Fit In And Prosper
“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature’s inexorable imperative.” – H.G. Wells, (Mind at the End of Its Tether, 1946) As I said yesterday (in Message #475), your growing business needs both “governors” and “pioneers” — some leaders who can handle existing operations and others who can create new…
Promise #10 For The New Year: To Be A Better Person
I’m truly impressed. It’s Friday, and you’ve been with me for 10 straight workdays. You have read and reread your resolutions countless times. Most importantly, you’ve had a chance to think about them in new and I hope deeper ways – and to add to them. You are in the…
Albert Einstein’s Three Rules of Work
“So many worlds, so much to do, / So little done, such things to be.” – Lord Tennyson (In Memoriam A.H.H., 1850) 1. Out of clutter, find simplicity. 2. From discord, find harmony. 3. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity. 1. What to Do About the Clutter Start with…