Posts filed under 'Personal Development'
After finishing Malcolm Gladwell’s amazing book, The Tipping Point
, I decided to take another stab at Michael E. Gerber’s E-Myth Mastery. I have gotten to the chapter entitled, “The Discipline of The Enterprise Leader”, and the something resonated with me this time that hadn’t before—Michael’s idea that discrimination will set a leader apart.
All too often, small business owners find themselves caught up in the minutiae and trivia of everyday work activities and spend equal amounts of energy and time on tasks that have vastly different values in relation to the goals or vision of the business. Discrimination and learning to do it actively is an important lesson to take hold of. Allowing ourselves to quickly decide whether activity is of high value or low value and focusing on the high value will, I am sure, move you more quickly to toward your end.
My exercise for the next week is to discriminate and evaluate everything in relation to my vision.
What can you do next week to move you to make your business become truly world class?
February 3rd, 2007
My favourite quote ever is one that I found in one of Jay Conrad Levinson’s books is this:
“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” - General G.S. Patton
For the longest time I had this quote pinned to the bulletin board in my office. It is now burned into my brain.
I have a history of procrastination, perfectionism and perpetual planning. I have found a number of ways to deal with these issues but it is the Patton quote that really brought me to attention (pun intended).
In Search of Solutions
In the last year have read a number of interesting articles on time-management and planning. Here are four of my favourites:
You will notice that three of the four articles are by Steve Pavlina. He is by far one of my favourite blog writers, if you can call him that. No one on the web I have found puts more effort into their articles than Steve. Some of his ideas you may find odd but they will always prove thought proving.
What are Your Favourites?
Let me know what your favourite time-management, procrastination and perpetual planning remedies, techniques and insights you have learned.
Tags: Steve Pavlina, Jay Conrad Levinson, time management, procrastination, planning, getting things done
June 29th, 2006
One of the things I have figured out over the last little while is that I have to focus on a few things at a time. I will most certainly not be able to run two blogs, build up my web development and design business, help take care of my 7 month old and keep on top of the regular day to day things that just need to get done.
It is a long time coming but focus is my new focus. I will reduce the clutter in my life. One of the first things that will happen is that this blog will be placed in hiatus until further notice.
It has been weighing on my mind and I have been reading other bloggers like Guy Kawasaki, Steve Pavlina, Yaro Starak, and others and have found that I need to get other things in order before I dedicate time to blogging on business and my experiences in it.
I look forward to coming back to this with a new lightness and understanding.
For now, all the best.
May 4th, 2006
I have had this blog up and running for a week now and have had a little traffic but no comments. For the second time, Canadian blogger, Julian Rickards has let me know that I forgot to enable subscriber registrations in the WordPress administration panel.
This is really quite a big duh as I had hoped people would post comments to enter the Name This Blog contest. The contest us still open, by the way, I just plan on awarding the prize to the name I like best — if one comes in. If it is a really cool name I might use it anyway.
Thanks Julian, hopefully the comments will begin to flow now.
March 16th, 2006
Management and sales maven Tom Peters has just released a new manifesto “111 Ridiculously Obvious Thoughts on Selling”. From the first two pages I’d say this one’s a keeper.
Don’t hesitate to check out the other manifestos at ChangeThis.com. Topics are wide ranging and make for great references.
March 9th, 2006
It’s day one and I am just getting things started for my new blog. I have been blogging on and off on the SmashingRed Blog for about a year now but I felt it was time to split hairs. In this new blog I plan on sharing my experiences, wins, failures, points of inspiration and other thoughts as I build my website development business.
I am offering a yet undetermined prize to one submitter for naming this blog. The prize value will be at least $25CAD and likely be a book or some other business reference. I am open to suggestions for the prize as well. Submit your entries as often as you want. One entry per comment. Contest closes at the end of March.
I am also trying to figure out a way to give out a prize for getting the most new links into my blog. That will be an even bigger prize. A $5USD Amazon gift certificate to anyone who can give me a solution.
March 8th, 2006