I can’t tell you how good it feels to have your own book in your hands. I’ve been meaning to write that for a while — since I got my first printed book from Book Patch. A short book costs less than ten dollars to print. From then on you’ll always have a book you wrote. You can hold it, thumb the pages, show it to friends, get more copies[…] Keep reading →
When you drive a gas-powered car you use its engine. It has a lot of power and can get the car to go hundreds of miles. But when you get into a car, you can’t just start using that engine. Internal combustion engines aren’t good at starting on their own. So gas-powered cars have electric starter motors. Electric starter motors are designed just to start the gas engine, which you[…] Keep reading →
Nearly everyone I know wishes their boss or manager led better or at least differently. They act like they are powerless to motivate or influence their boss. Motivating and influencing your boss is one of the main things I work on with clients. It’s also one of the most empowering things they experience. Yes, dealing with a hard-to-deal-with manager can be encouraging, not discouraging. I’ll give a top-level overview of[…] Keep reading →
If you don’t know the value of a mentor, you’re missing out on a major way to improve your career and life. You can find elsewhere the benefits they bring, but I’ll mention some I’ve gotten. You can learn from their mistakes They create connections for you They teach you They help you through difficult times Sometimes they do business with you, like investing in your companies You can name-drop[…] Keep reading →
Do you see your colleagues more as people or do you work and relate with them more based on their place on the organization chart? Over and over clients come to me with similar perspectives and challenges. Often they see their managers as people to please, whom they want to learn about but never do because they don’t feel it their place to get to know him or her… as[…] Keep reading →
[This post is part of a series on Cold Showers. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view that series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Years ago I tended to have unintentional habits that I did without thinking about them and they didn’t improve my life much. Now they’re mostly ones I intentionally adopted because I knew they[…] Keep reading →
Many more people believe in minimalism than practice it. They want to get rid of things but fail at it. I’ve gotten decent at it and found three things work best. First, some context to understand why people fail. The best first step for solving a challenging problem is nearly always awareness. Context: why people fail to get rid of things When people think about getting rid of things, even[…] Keep reading →