If everything is important then nothing is. If everything is urgent then nothing is. Guess what, if you combine the two, that still doesn’t help. I saw a small team at work using an Eisenhower box on a whiteboard, but everything was in one quadrant. Guess which one? Is brushing your teeth important? Yes, to oral health. To get a promotion? Well, you could say yes, but is it more or less important than getting results expected by your boss? You can always make a case for the important. Who wants to admit to themselves that all their work is not even important? But is it important within the context of your goals and dreams? Instead of categorising things as important or not important you could try a small tweak. Try categorising your to-dos “more important” and “less important” within the context of a given goal. Then make sure you are allocating time appropriately to those that are less urgent. The alternative is to look up from the hamster wheel in 10 years’ time and realise you are still in the same place. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog I think people gravitate towards wanting to help others because other people’s problems are always much clearer to fix than our own. If only we had the clarity of thought and the simplicity of action that we can afford others. The consultant, the self-help guru, the armchair critic. Before you take their advice, seek what have they actually built themselves. Find those who have not just told others what to do, but are actually practitioners of their craft. These are the people to follow. Because of the internet, they are more accessible than ever. And, because of the internet, they are also harder to find than ever, in amongst a sea of charlatans and snake oil salesmen, if you start looking in the wrong place. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog There are lots of examples where school has failed entrepreneurs, who were clearly gifted to do something else. Less so, the examples of people who are doing okay, that have all the trappings of modern life. A mortgage, a car lease, living pay-day to pay-day. And for people that were disruptive at school, never did anything and ended up in prison? Well that is obviously their fault, isn’t it? The main things that school did not teach me that I will try to teach my kids:
There are so many books that I have read in my adult life that I wish someone had given me at school. Actually, that is a lie, because I would not have read them at school because school distilled in me a hatred for reading. If the only point of reading is to take a test, to see if you can remember the same things as the person who wrote the questions, is it any wonder that we have a generation of people that only read fiction to fall asleep, or worse do not read at all. What’s the best thing you learned after school that you think should be included? Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog I read three or four books at the same time. Someone asked me, “well won't you finish them faster if you focus on one book.” Yes, but the goal is not to get to the end of the book as fast as possible. It is to link as much different knowledge as possible to find the connections that others don't. If I’m enjoying a book then I want it to last as long as possible. The other day I came across the quote in the picture followed by this excerpt from the Tao Te Ching: The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail. The point of planning is not to get a plan. It is to do the act of planning. If I'm executing a task then single tasking is the way forward. If I am thinking then I want that to be as broad as possible. Split your time into thinking and doing and do not confuse the two. Plan and then ruthlessly execute. And enjoy each step. Why rush? The goal is not to get to the end. The goal is to work towards a goal. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog It is amazing to still see how many people have their email popping up, interrupting them from whatever they are doing. By not turning off the notifications, you are basically telling yourself that whatever you have chosen to do proactively is not as important as anyone else’s request for your time. Either that, or the work you are doing is so boring that you welcome any respite in the form of a reactive interruption. This is no way to work. Or live. Kill the interruptions and do some great work. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog Whilst I was working at a corporate job I searched for an app to help me run meetings more effectively and could not find one. I noticed that no one, not even senior executives, can run a meeting properly. There is never and agenda, people talk for hours, and everyone underneath them on the org chart is trapped in meeting hell! It was not until a year or two later that I put the idea into practice. I had always wanted to run my own company but always made excuses to not start. When I was on a beach holiday I read 4-hour workweek, Think and Grow Rich and The Icarus Deception all back to back. I thought, 'what I would do if I already had £100m in the bank,' and I decided that I would love to design and create iOS apps. My pet peeve was people saying they did not have time for things. I joined this to the earlier idea of a meeting timer app, and hey presto. Because I decided that I would do this even if I already were a multimillionaire, then I did not have the goal of making any money. That would (hopefully) be a nice benefit. When I got back to work my company announced that they were making my whole team and me redundant. I thought that if I do not do it now, I never will. There will never be a perfect time. And there is never a perfect time. Just start. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog Lots of advice is to hunker down, to save your nuts for the winter. Get your head down, study, get good grades, get a good job. Lately, there is lots of other advice to be a leader, entrepreneur, raise capital, raise debt, travel the world, make more money. Neither track is bad advice. But why not do both? Make more money and save more money. Work a full-time job and do one on the side. Have roots somewhere and travel too. The trouble with advice is that it comes from the worldview of the person giving it, not from the worldview of the person receiving it. If you are introverted, have a brilliant idea and are a little timid then following advice to listen more, read more, and to be cautious is tempting as it is your natural self. Similarly, if you are already overconfident, talk over people, and act before thinking, then getting advice to be brasher, to do more and to pester people might not be the best. In either case, seeking out advice that is less like your current self, whilst not losing who you are is surely the secret to the game. If you have low self-esteem then thinking that you are better than everyone around you is just an antidote to bring you back to normal. If you are already arrogant, then the same advice is an overdose likely to tip you over the edge of social norms. Whatever you are like, whatever you are doing. You can do it all. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog Is success cash on a bed? A watch on your wrist? A car in your drive? If you do not have these then you might think it is? If you have ever tasted a little piece of them, you will know that it is not. Define success and find that you might already have it. Or at least find that you do not have to chase material things to make you happy. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog The trouble with free advice is that you get what you pay for. This week we took the offer of some free legal advice. The representative had no rules of thumb, no answers to our questions and just went down a form. Guess what, form filling can be replaced by someone cheaper. When we moved house the Estate agent put house on Rightmove and that was it. Guess what, putting pictures of something on the internet is not a skill I want to pay a percentage of my house for. This can be done by someone cheaper. If you don’t care, then you can’t charge. This is the reality of business today. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog When the plane goes down and the oxygen masks release, there is a reason why they tell you to put yours on first. Get your priorities sorted. And put them in order of things that cannot look after themselves without your help. Work on yourself first. Work on your health, mental state, resilience. Then look after your wife or partner. Then your children. Don't reverse these as they cannot look after themselves. The same is true for any project or business or art. As Tim Ferriss says, what is the one thing that if done will make everything else easier or irrelevant? Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
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