Achieve better results by doing the opposite
Getting home It was a rainy Thursday evening in October. As I approached the westbound Docklands Light Railway platform, I realised it was stacked 6 layers of commuters thick -…
Make your work more visible
I am an example of the self-deprecating type, having bought into Confucius's view that "Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues". As a result, I tend to play down…
The best solutions manifest when the problem is clearly defined!
I work in technology. My role, along with the entire technology organisation that I am part of, is to provide optimal solutions for the problems we have been asked to address.…
Yin and yang and metrics
If you are striving for high performance – be it for your business or a personal competency, you should be interested in tracking metrics that indicate if changes need to…
The illusion of reality
I sometimes look up at a blue sky with white puffy (cumulus) clouds and see whether I can spot a shape. I might see that the cloud has taken the form…
How to waste a colleague’s time with email
Email is still a useful way to communicate, but it's also one of the easiest ways to be take out a small chunk of someone's day. Most people, including me, have…
Consumption or Creation
Much of our waking time can be divided into two categories of activity: consumption and creation. Consumption includes most of the time we spend on social media, watching sport, listening to music or shopping. Consumption is passive entertainment and it’s easy.
Perfectionism vs. productivity
I often attempt to carry out tasks ‘perfectly’: making a cup of coffee, the elocution of a phrase in a foreign language, selecting a new laptop (or pretty much any…