Meetings are a necessity. Meetings also often stink. Typically, they are a waste of time. There are too many meetings—and most of them are often poorly-organized, lack coherent agendas, serve to do little more than reaffirm hierarchies than achieve results. As a result, poorly-run meetings cost companies $37 billion a year in lost productivity. Employees […]
Productivity
Don’t Bet the Farm on Brainstorming
I can tell you with some precision the moment I first doubted group brainstorming. This was many moons ago. A medium sized media firm that wanted to grow much larger had engaged my consulting services. They held a company-wide powwow, flying most of the managers and yours truly to corporate headquarters in Darkest Peru. The […]
4 of Today’s Best Content Management Apps
Calendars are the lifeblood of business operations. They always have been and always will be. One of the most common observations of successful businesses (and individuals) is they are very highly organized and have a consistent procedure. A 2017 study by PMI found that only 60% of projects actually meet their goals. The primary cause […]
Thank God It’s… Thursday?
The best and most creative thinking and problem-solving can only take place during uninterrupted periods of time. You know it and so do your colleagues. Which is why your company wants to give everyone time one day a week—let’s say Thursday—to work alone. Easier said than done. It is difficult to control the array of […]
The Power of Productive Thinking
Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Workweek is an enormously popular book, selling more than 1.35 million copies since its 2007 release. But that doesn’t mean its message on how to “escape the 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich” sinks in right away. While Daniel Ndukwu, founder and CEO of software company Kyleads, was an early […]
Journaling for Self-Awareness
Charley Kempthorne has been keeping a journal for more than 50 years. Every morning before the sun is in the sky, the professor-turned-painter carefully types out at least 1,000 words reflecting on his past, his beliefs, his family, even his shortcomings. The prolific fruits of his labor reside in an impressive storage facility in Manhattan, […]
Cornering the Paper Tiger
Studying the history of paper, as I did while writing the book Paper: Paging Through History, exposes a number of misconceptions. The most important of which is this technological fallacy: the idea that technology changes society. It is exactly the reverse. Society develops technology to address the changes that are taking place within it. To […]
Moleskine Mania
If you ever attend Milan’s Design Week—a sweeping furniture fair, art festival, and Prosecco-soaked party that takes over Italy’s financial capital each April—you will need several essentials to fit in with the global trendsetters in attendance. First, your glasses. This is a design crowd, so the options are polarized into two camps: ultraminimal frameless spheres […]
The Science of Putting Pen to Paper
One of my earliest memories involves a handwriting struggle. My class had been tasked with writing stories. I love stories. My masterpiece, about accidentally catching a great white shark and putting him into my bedroom aquarium, was the longest in the class. It was pages and pages long. It had chapters. I was in child-heaven […]
Your Own Personal Time Machine
I spend most of my work-life in meetings. Note-taking is a survival skill. Yet, I am surprised at how few people bother to take notes in meetings. Those who do sometimes express frustration at how ineffective the exercise seems to be. In this post, I’d like to expound on why I think you should take notes in meetings and then offer a few suggestions on how to do it better.
Automation for the People
If you want to understand how hard it can be to automate, consider the many attempts to replace cashiers with self-checkout systems. To wit, CVS pharmacies were once lousy with self-checkout systems, which I personally tried to use, many times, to get out the door faster. Almost every time, some loud error sent me to […]
End Your Fear of Power Sharing
It started with my first day on the job. I’d just been named senior leader at a growing organization with a generously-sized staff. Yet there were problems, as there are in any institution, and I was determined to solve them. All of them. Right away. Communications was a weak point, so I decided to personally […]
Go Viral, and Stay That Way
The question prodding us to increased productivity is almost never, “How do I fit more work into my day?” That question leads to productivity “hacks,” an exhausting pace of work, and endless to-do lists that never completely get done because there are only so many hours in the day. A better question to ask, instead, […]
Why You—Yes, You!—Should Be an Entrepreneur
Back in early 2007, I faced an interesting choice. By just about all accounts, I was doing great as an international sales director for a stable infomercial company. I had a family, a house, a car, and all the boxes that we check. But something felt off. I had the energy for something I couldn’t […]
The Science of Meditation
Three years ago I boarded a crowded, somewhat dirty bus and set off for Wat Suan Mokkh, a Thai forest monastery. The grounds featured giant monitor lizards and bats that would fly low at dusk, almost touching you with their wings. Though the bat-filled evenings were a highlight of my trip, they were not my […]
I Love Energy!
“Are you tired, run down, listless? Do you poop out at parties? Are you unpopular? The answer to all of your problems are in this little bottle!” This quote, from Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy, is both hilarious and timeless. Her Vitameatavegamin bottle made some pretty large promises that only required an alcohol content of […]
A Recipe for Self-Renewal
Time management is about scarcity, because time is fixed. You only have 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week, 8,760 hours in a year (tack on an extra 24 for leap years). Until someone invents a time-stretching machine, that’s all we’ve got. The thing that you can actually manage is your energy. […]
6 Ways to Meditate to Great
In corporate training, I use meditation to help teams to be mindful or present. It can really transform the workplace. Not only does it improve productivity and efficiency, but studies show that companies who have implemented meditation training and encouraged employees to take time out for meditation each day have happier and better-rounded employees. This […]
How the F2F Assessment Changed My Life
In life and in business, there are a lot of distractions. It can be fun to run down those rabbit trails, but it’s easy to lose track, and hard to get back to doing the most important things for the time that we have. I am a husband and father of 12 children. I am […]
Our Soured Romance with Overwork
The idea that working ever harder and longer leads to better results is as American as apple pie, despite all evidence to the contrary. Chronic overwork is unproductive, unhealthy, and destructive of a balanced life. Yet against the evidence—and against the advice of incredibly successful people such as Henry David Thoreau and Henry Ford—overwork remains […]
The Science of Overwork
In the 2007 film “Music and Lyrics,” an absent-minded lyricist played by Drew Barrymore drives her high-strung musical partner a little crazy by insisting that they take breaks throughout the day. Each time they take a walk or run out for food, however, the lyrics come to her as if by magic. Sometimes, as an […]
The Do’s and Don’ts of Goal Sharing
I’ve always done my best to keep up with the latest research in goal achievement. I not only want to learn from it myself, I also want to distill the lessons for fellow leaders. But the tricky thing about science is that it often causes us to reevaluate our assumptions. That reevaluation can be uncomfortable, […]
Goal-Winning Strategies of 3 Top Athletes
Few of us run races at the Olympics or score touchdowns in the NFL. But we all play a metaphorical sport in our professional and personal lives. Simply put: we want to succeed and thrive. To win, we must set big goals and work toward effective and influential results. Problems seldom arise from our goal-setting […]
3 Lessons from a Monthlong Sabbatical
I began my career as a proud workaholic. I measured my contribution by the hours I clocked and the coffee I consumed. So the Michael Hyatt &Co. culture came as a bit of a shock. It was the best kind of shock, though. With a core value of radical margin and an unlimited PTO policy, […]