What have you done with your connection skills that has been worthy of criticism, that moved the dial and that changed the world?
Go, do that.
Why you can’t work at work
Jason Fried (from 37signals) on why you can’t work at work.
15 Ways to Be More Productive
This slideshow from Inc.com features some useful productivity tips from a number of company founders/CEOs.
I like Caterina Fake’s strategy for meetings:
There would be an agenda distributed before the meeting. Everybody would stand. At the beginning of the meeting, everyone would drink 16 ounces of water. We would discuss everything on the agenda, make all the decisions that needed to be made, and the meeting would be over when the first person had to go to the bathroom.
And Krissi Barr’s tips on focus:
If I think something is going to take me an hour, I give myself 40 minutes. By shrinking your mental deadlines, you work faster and with greater focus. I also schedule time every week on my calendar for quiet, concentrated PowerTime where I only work on my most important activities.
Not so sure about Jordan Zimmerman’s strategy though:
Also, cut down on sleep. Why would you sleep when it’s time to live? Sleeping isn’t living. You sleep when you die.
Work is love made visible
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
If you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
~ Kahlil Gibran (quoted in Charles Waterstreet’s SMH column)
A new job market
“To make it today you have to be able to do work that’s hard to outsource, hard to automate, and that delivers significance along with utility.” – Daniel Pink (Pop!Tech)
The suprising science of motivation
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y[/youtube]
Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation (via @dalesimpson)
Career Crossroad
Good advice from Jonathan Fields’ Firefly Manifesto: Remixed (on ChangeThis.com)…
Try this career choice standard on for size.
Will this choice allow me to: spend the greatest amount of time; absorbed in activities and relationships that fill me up; while surrounding myself with people I cannot get enough of; and earning enough to live comfortably in the world?
I like the simplicity and clarity of this ‘standard’. Definitely prompts some reflection about what’s important and how often our career choices (or any life choices for that matter) can be skewed by over-emphasising one aspect (eg. money, prestige etc) over others.
I first heard about Jonathan when I listened to a podcast of his 2009 SXSW presentation, ‘Career Renegade: How To Make A Great Living Doing What You Love’. Worth a listen…