Sometimes if you aren’t sure what’s important, ask yourself what makes you Fearful Frustrated Confused Worried Sad Tense Anxious Happy Relieved Fulfilled Excited Etc There’s wisdom in what you’re feeling. Feelings are materialized intuition. For example, if you’re excited about upgrading to a faster internet plan. The excitement is likely a summarization of what it will be like to not…
Category: Meaningful Management
What is acceptable disappointment?
There’s a Chipotle nearby and often I find myself there around closing at 10pm. Quite often they’re out of one or more ingredients. Tonight it was guacamole. I’m used to this by now, which is actually quite sad. I don’t understand why a company can’t lean on the side of caution and waste a tote or two of ingredients. Because…
A reliable way to manage both emails and task management in my inbox
For about twenty years now email has been a part of my daily routine. I use it primarily for two purposes: communication and task management. I’ve tried separating task management into a separate system but really that’s like having a second inbox because tasks have due dates and need reminders which all smacks of email. In fact many task management…
Your confession isn’t necessary
Any successful crook doesn’t fess up until they’re confronted with evidence and even then maybe not. The rest of us tend to confess prematurely. For example, when walking down the stairs tonight I ran across a newer neighbor in the stairwell. She had two dogs. Before I could register who she was, she apologized for apparently having a second dog.…
Did you want to do what you did?
When is the last time you realized that you didn’t decide to do what you just spent two hours doing? For example, when you want to find some numbers in an old email and instead find yourself half an hour later responding to yet another unrelated email. Or, you open Facebook while riding the subway only to miss your stop…
Means before ends?
Establishing ends before means affords creative solutions. Establishing means before ends affords creative justifications.
My email quizzes me daily…
… and I’m not taking about the latest personality quiz. A while back I found a little gmail add on that’s just fantastic. It’s called boomerang, and it does just that. You can say “send this back to me” and fill in the blank for when. I put all my reminders into it too so I have one system for alerting…
Expectations have to change too
When making changes to how we do things, sometimes the net effect feels wrong and so we implicitly assume it’s wrong, and won’t work, and we abandon change that could’ve been for the better. For example, maybe you’re used to revising emails four or five times to make them “perfect.” Nevermind it takes you twenty minutes–no joke–to compose a simple…
Pick up pal
Bad things happen, for example dropping a birthday cake that you just spent 2 hours crafting. If you’re another person in the room, step up and offer to bake the next cake, or offer to go out and buy a cake, or just clean up the mess while they get started on the next cake. It’s amazing how nice it…
Beating yourself up is a step in the right direction
Knowing that there are things that you want to change about your own behavior is the first step toward affecting change. Beating yourself up about undesirable things is a good first step. So contrary to the cliche, you should beat yourself up. Long enough to do something about it. And eventually long enough to learn to identify undesirable behavior without…