A Strategy For Making Your Life More Productive
“Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.” – Joseph Conrad There is a happy development in the otherwise gloomy world of self-help. Gurus are getting tough. Although this well-intentioned terrain is still cluttered with self-empowerment mongers who use lazy, unfocused thinking, gimmicky ideas, and…
Making “Quickness” Your Business – And Personal – Goal
“Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.” – La Bruyere (1688) Last week, we talked about some of the things Jack Walsh did to supercharge GEs lagging performance. Of those I mentioned, the one I like best (perhaps because it…
Asking For Help
“A fool can ask more questions in a minute than a wise man can answer in an hour.” – American proverbThey are driving in a strange city. He misses the exit. A half-hour later, they are wandering unfamiliar streets. She wants to roll down a window and ask directions. He…
Strengthen Your Writing Skills By Building Your Vocabulary
“When ideas fail, words come in very handy.” – Goethe Whatever you do, wherever you go, you will always be judged on your speech. How you articulate your thoughts indicates your intelligence, your disposition, and your breeding. Even in the U.S. where informal diction and a colloquial prose style…
How To Be Successful Without Turning Into A Bastard
”You cant achieve anything without getting in someones way.” – Abba Eban, diplomat As you climb the ladder of success, you are going to bump into some slow-moving, not-moving, and backward-moving fellow climbers. How you get around them will determine both how high you climb and how good you feel…
Breaking Through The Pain
Yesterday, my older boys and I had a breath-holding contest. It was my idea. I had just been trounced by the two of them in an underwater-propulsion contest. (Imagine human torpedoes bouncing off pool walls. Holding our breath? You just want to do something you can win at, No.2 son…
The Secret Of Inertia
When we talk about selling, we speak of greed and fear, but never of laziness. Yet laziness and its many emotional cousins (lethargy, indolence, inertia, and procrastination) can make a big difference to your companys bottom line. I was reminded of this yesterday morning. My colleagues and…
Make That First, Small Incremental Change – Today
“If you build it, he will come.” -W.P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe Yesterday, I talked about incremental degradation how you can wreck your business by gradually decreasing the quality of what you do (to save money and make more short-term profits). And I speculated that you can improve your business…
How To Get More Of Your Ideas Into Action
“I have learned never to ridicule any mans opinion, however strange it may seem.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) Malcolm Gladwell, a clever guy whose essays I often come across in the New Yorker, has just published a book called The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a…
Introduction To Writing Space Ads That Boost Your Business
“We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.” – La Rouchefoucault, MaximsSpace ads are the advertisements you see in newspapers and magazines. For professional copywriters, space ads are great because they are limited in scope and still demand high fees (and sometimes royalties). For the entrepreneur…
Getting Yourself Addicted To Success, Step 1
“Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life A few weeks ago, I talked about what I call the junkies secret power. I said Ive always marveled at the ingenuity and assertiveness of the…
Whose Idea Is This Anyway?
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” – American Proverb Last night during dinner with several business partners, BK said, We all know that in business, ideas are the most important thing. I knew what he meant and it was mostly true . . . but in one important way very…