It’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae of our daily work.
Particularly, when you’re growing something - from a project to a business - there are any number of things that need to be taken care of, and every single one of them seems important.
All tagged Focus
It’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae of our daily work.
Particularly, when you’re growing something - from a project to a business - there are any number of things that need to be taken care of, and every single one of them seems important.
Smartphones are everywhere and the natural temptation is to use it to record all of our important experiences for posterity.
However, as I discuss in today's episode, there's something to be said to, perhaps, put them away and to simply be in the moment.
Seth Godin recently wrote about The Journal of Universal Rejection.
It’s a “journal” that allows you to submit any form of content (“…any and all types of manuscript: poetry, prose, visual art, and research articles”) which it then, without question (and, often, without any review) reject.
Having our “fingers in multiple pies” seems like a good idea when we’re starting out.
Business environments are competitive, clients are demanding and surviving means doing whatever’s needed to make money.
I don’t know how much is actually within our control.
I know many of us like to think everything is, even as there are others who think nothing is, that we’re all simply subjects (victims?) of fate.
If I had to choose, I’d put myself more in the former camp - that we can indeed make of ourselves and our situations what we will.
In the list of priorities of any organization, and specifically the management team, keeping everyone happy cannot be high up there. Any mission and its related strategy will - if done with concerted intent, structured focus and ability to execute in mind - polarize. That is, it will have its proponents and its detractors.
And if you, as a leader, have done your homework and have determined that that strategy is fit for purpose and the best path forward, then bringing everyone along cannot be a priority.
I was in the car with my family the other day and we were heading to lunch. We were having a conversation, and in the midst of it, we noticed that my daughter’s answers were short, to the point, not really like her normal, jovial self.
My son actually noticed it first, and he asked her what was wrong.
I’ve written before of my distaste for meetings (here, here and here) and specifically, meaningless meetings that should actually have been emails or a phone chat - or none of the above!
I’ve seen companies where meetings are the norm and the work of actually getting things done (time for deep thinking or focused work) becomes the exception, something that gets done after-hours (or worse, not at all). In fact, I’ve often wondered if there’s a correlation between the percentage of time that executives spend in meetings and the performance of the company.