Setting priorities assumes that some things will be more important than others, but important relative to what? In this context, the answer is, to your work - that is, the job you have accepted from yourself and/or from others. This is where the next two frameworks need to be brought to bear in your thinking. They're about denning your work. Keep in mind that though much of this methodology will be within the arena of your professional focus. In this article we are using the term "work" in the universal sense, to mean anything you have a commitment to making happen, personally as well as professionally.
These days, daily work activity itself presents a relatively new type of challenge to most professionals, something that it's helpful to understand as we endeavor to build the most productive systems. During the course of the workday, at any point in time, you'll be engaged in one of three types of activities: doing predefined work, doing work as it shows up, and finally, defining your work
You may be doing things on your action lists, doing things as they come up, or processing incoming inputs to determine what work that needs to be done, either then or later, from your lists. This is common sense. But many people let themselves get wrapped around the second activity - dealing with things that show up and how much too easily, and let the other two slide, to their detriment.
Let's say it's 10:26 a.m. Monday, and you're in your office. You've just ended a half-hour unexpected phone call with a prospective client. You have three pages of scribbled notes from the conversation. There's a meeting scheduled with your staff at eleven, about half an hour from now. You were out late last night with your spouse's parents and are still a little frayed around the edges (you told your father-in-law you'd get back to him about. . . what?). Your assistant just laid six telephone messages in front of you. You have a major strategic planning session coming up in two days, for which you have yet to formulate your ideas. The oil light in your car came on as you drove to work this morning. And your boss hinted as you passed her earlier in the hall that she'd like your thoughts on the memo she e-mailed you yesterday, before this afternoon's three o'clock meeting.
Are your systems set up to maximally support dealing with this reality, at 10:26 on Monday morning? If you're still keeping things in your head, and if you're still trying to capture only the "critical" stuff on your lists, I suggest that the answer is no.
I've noticed that people are actually more comfortable dealing with surprises and crises than they are taking control of processing, organizing, reviewing, and assessing that part of their work that is not as self-evident. It's easy to get sucked into "busy" and "urgent" mode, especially when you have a lot of unprocessed and relatively out-of-control work on your desk, in your e-mail, and on your mind.
In fact, much of our life and work just shows up in the moment, and it usually becomes the priority when it does. It's indeed true for most professionals that the nature of their job requires them to be instantly available to handle new work as it appears in many forms.
Energy Riches
How To Recreate Your World
Monday, 4 June 2007
Sunday, 3 June 2007
3 Ways To Turn Negative Situations Into Positive Ones
1. When you talk, listen to yourself for the "buts," "could ofs" and "gonnas" in your own conversations and those of people around you. Zap those negatively charged words and phrases from your own vocabulary.
2. Create scenarios in which you may have reacted negatively in the past and envision yourself responding in the future with a positive charge. For example: Your boss hands back a report saying it is unsatisfactory and telling you to redo it. In the past you might have made excuses and blamed co-workers or conditions. Now you respond by thanking the boss for the opportunity to improve it.
3. Consider a problem or difficult situation in your life. Is it something that you can change? Or is it something you have no control of? Positively charged people learn to attack those problems that they can change and to live with those that they cannot - thereby robbing the problem of its power over them. If you cannot change the problem, change the way you view it. Example: “My employer is going to lay me off for three weeks.” Positive response: “I can spend the time seriously looking for a better, more secure job.”
Energy Riches
How To Recreate Your World
2. Create scenarios in which you may have reacted negatively in the past and envision yourself responding in the future with a positive charge. For example: Your boss hands back a report saying it is unsatisfactory and telling you to redo it. In the past you might have made excuses and blamed co-workers or conditions. Now you respond by thanking the boss for the opportunity to improve it.
3. Consider a problem or difficult situation in your life. Is it something that you can change? Or is it something you have no control of? Positively charged people learn to attack those problems that they can change and to live with those that they cannot - thereby robbing the problem of its power over them. If you cannot change the problem, change the way you view it. Example: “My employer is going to lay me off for three weeks.” Positive response: “I can spend the time seriously looking for a better, more secure job.”
Energy Riches
How To Recreate Your World
5 Emotions That Can Stop You From Living Your Dreams
Hurtful memories can stifle your development and growth. How do we break through this insidious mental conditioning? How do we grow and develop beyond hurtful episodes that bury themselves in our subconscious and influence our lives? How do we change and grow so that we can live our dreams?
The first step is to break the hold of these inhibiting influences from the past. Recognize them and then either get rid of them or turn them into a positive force that pushes you ahead rather than holds you back. Identify these inhibiting memories in your life so that you control them rather than allowing them to control you. Did someone hurt your feelings? Forgive them and forget it. Move on. Did someone punish you unfairly? It's over. It's done. Go on.
Here are a few of the most common emotions that burrow into the subconscious and impede our growth as individuals:
Anger: This is a natural response to a perceived attack or injury. It makes energy flow. But when allowed to simmer, it depletes energy that could be used to improve your life. If you hold your anger for more than a week, it is only hurting you. Make yourself let go. Envision yourself throwing it out. Ease your mind. Transform your anger into positive motivation. Don't get mad, get motivated.
Revenge: The first cousin of anger. It also robs you of strength in the long run. The person who has injured you has probably gone on with life; so should you. Don't let the injury hurt you further by inhibiting your growth. Lose it or use it. Instead of saying, "I'll get them," say, "I'll show them. I'LL BE SOMEBODY!"
Sadness: This is more crippling than anger because it drains you from the start, sapping your will to go on. You probably will have to let this drain away slowly at its own pace. Time heals, but if the sadness seems to linger, consciously force it out. Seek out things that make you laugh and feel positive about life. Realize that feeling sad will not change anything. Seek peace of mind as your right.
Resentment: Life is not always fair. It is unrealistic to feel any other way, and holding on to resentment is no way to fight back. Drop it and get back into the battle.
Guilt: Guilt is another emotion that stands between you and your dreams. All of us have done things we feel bad about and regret. Things we would do differently. Many of us carry that guilt around and it keeps us from moving forward. Don't let people put you on a guilt trip. Say to yourself when someone is putting you on the defensive, "No matter what you do or say to me, I am still a worthwhile person."
To rid yourself of these past emotions, put them in a perspective that is positive rather than negative and thereby cut off their painful roots in your subconscious. Reinterpret the past with these methods: Get better, not bitter. Find a quiet, comfortable place. Sit back and relax. Think about something or someone who caused you pain or disappointment. Now take a mental step back from that feeling and the situation. Assess it. Did the emotions that resulted make you stronger? Did they give you determination? Can you use those memories to empower you rather than drain you? Why let them hurt you further?
Energy Riches
How To Recreate Your World
The first step is to break the hold of these inhibiting influences from the past. Recognize them and then either get rid of them or turn them into a positive force that pushes you ahead rather than holds you back. Identify these inhibiting memories in your life so that you control them rather than allowing them to control you. Did someone hurt your feelings? Forgive them and forget it. Move on. Did someone punish you unfairly? It's over. It's done. Go on.
Here are a few of the most common emotions that burrow into the subconscious and impede our growth as individuals:
Anger: This is a natural response to a perceived attack or injury. It makes energy flow. But when allowed to simmer, it depletes energy that could be used to improve your life. If you hold your anger for more than a week, it is only hurting you. Make yourself let go. Envision yourself throwing it out. Ease your mind. Transform your anger into positive motivation. Don't get mad, get motivated.
Revenge: The first cousin of anger. It also robs you of strength in the long run. The person who has injured you has probably gone on with life; so should you. Don't let the injury hurt you further by inhibiting your growth. Lose it or use it. Instead of saying, "I'll get them," say, "I'll show them. I'LL BE SOMEBODY!"
Sadness: This is more crippling than anger because it drains you from the start, sapping your will to go on. You probably will have to let this drain away slowly at its own pace. Time heals, but if the sadness seems to linger, consciously force it out. Seek out things that make you laugh and feel positive about life. Realize that feeling sad will not change anything. Seek peace of mind as your right.
Resentment: Life is not always fair. It is unrealistic to feel any other way, and holding on to resentment is no way to fight back. Drop it and get back into the battle.
Guilt: Guilt is another emotion that stands between you and your dreams. All of us have done things we feel bad about and regret. Things we would do differently. Many of us carry that guilt around and it keeps us from moving forward. Don't let people put you on a guilt trip. Say to yourself when someone is putting you on the defensive, "No matter what you do or say to me, I am still a worthwhile person."
To rid yourself of these past emotions, put them in a perspective that is positive rather than negative and thereby cut off their painful roots in your subconscious. Reinterpret the past with these methods: Get better, not bitter. Find a quiet, comfortable place. Sit back and relax. Think about something or someone who caused you pain or disappointment. Now take a mental step back from that feeling and the situation. Assess it. Did the emotions that resulted make you stronger? Did they give you determination? Can you use those memories to empower you rather than drain you? Why let them hurt you further?
Energy Riches
How To Recreate Your World
Saturday, 2 June 2007
4 Ways In Which Memory Occurs
1. Registration: The type of information you're receiving determines which region of your brain is active. For example, words are initially processed in the language regions of the brain, pictures initially in the visual regions. This is where your memories are “registered.”
2. Immediate memory: When information comes into a region, it comes in as a pattern of nerve cell activity. This nerve cell activity normally persists for just a short period of time - seconds or less. This is of course what we deem “Immediate” memory
3. Permanent (long-term) memory: If the information in this temporary pattern of activity is to be permanently stored (and most is not) it will be saved within the same regions of the brain. Saving the patterns of activity consists of changing nerve cell connections so that the pattern of activity can be called forth again, at some later time. To do this, some nerve cell connections are strengthened, while others may be weakened. These changes are relatively permanent, although the changes may take weeks or months to completely solidify.
Even though the solidification occurs in the regions of the brain that contained the original activity, the signal to make the solidification occur came from other regions. The best known of these regions with such signaling functions are the hippocampus and the thalamus. The hippocampus is on the inner side of the temporal lobe; the thalamus is located deep within the center of the brain.
4. Memory access: Remembering what you've learned may be a simple matter of just reactivating a latent memory - for example, by seeing a picture again and recognizing it as familiar. In this case, the memories get reactivated in the region of the brain where they were first stored. The measurement of familiarity - the sense of how familiar something is, or how recently you learned it - seems to be done in parts of the temporal lobe, particularly in or near a structure called the amygdala, which sits just in front of the hippocampus.
This simple memory retrieval operates very quickly. You can decide that a picture is familiar to you or not in less than one-half a second, measuring from the very start of the time you see the picture to the start of when you say "yes" or "no." Once the picture has been registered in your brain (which takes about two-tenths of a second), it takes you about two-tenths of a second to actually make the decision, and about another two-tenths of a second to say your answer. The total time it actually takes you is a little less than the time you spend on each stage, because some of these stages can overlap. You start deciding a picture is familiar or not while the image of the picture is still developing within your mind.
Energy Riches
How To Recreate Your World
2. Immediate memory: When information comes into a region, it comes in as a pattern of nerve cell activity. This nerve cell activity normally persists for just a short period of time - seconds or less. This is of course what we deem “Immediate” memory
3. Permanent (long-term) memory: If the information in this temporary pattern of activity is to be permanently stored (and most is not) it will be saved within the same regions of the brain. Saving the patterns of activity consists of changing nerve cell connections so that the pattern of activity can be called forth again, at some later time. To do this, some nerve cell connections are strengthened, while others may be weakened. These changes are relatively permanent, although the changes may take weeks or months to completely solidify.
Even though the solidification occurs in the regions of the brain that contained the original activity, the signal to make the solidification occur came from other regions. The best known of these regions with such signaling functions are the hippocampus and the thalamus. The hippocampus is on the inner side of the temporal lobe; the thalamus is located deep within the center of the brain.
4. Memory access: Remembering what you've learned may be a simple matter of just reactivating a latent memory - for example, by seeing a picture again and recognizing it as familiar. In this case, the memories get reactivated in the region of the brain where they were first stored. The measurement of familiarity - the sense of how familiar something is, or how recently you learned it - seems to be done in parts of the temporal lobe, particularly in or near a structure called the amygdala, which sits just in front of the hippocampus.
This simple memory retrieval operates very quickly. You can decide that a picture is familiar to you or not in less than one-half a second, measuring from the very start of the time you see the picture to the start of when you say "yes" or "no." Once the picture has been registered in your brain (which takes about two-tenths of a second), it takes you about two-tenths of a second to actually make the decision, and about another two-tenths of a second to say your answer. The total time it actually takes you is a little less than the time you spend on each stage, because some of these stages can overlap. You start deciding a picture is familiar or not while the image of the picture is still developing within your mind.
Energy Riches
How To Recreate Your World
Friday, 1 June 2007
Building Leadership Credibility
Credibility means believability. Leaders become credible when followers believe in the leader and the leader's course of action. Credibility creates commitment to the leader and the leader's direction. Some people develop instant credibility.
Consider a meeting in which a new team member offers an insight or idea that rings true to all members of the group. Credibility comes immediately because the group instantly believes the idea makes sense. Imagine a group discussion about how to approach a new client. One participant suggests calling a particular person to join the meeting because that individual used to work for the client, knows all the client's top managers, and has years of successful experience attracting new clients. The person called in has immediate credibility based on his or her background and experience.
Typically credibility comes more slowly. People build their base of believability over time. They repeatedly demonstrate they can be counted on to follow through. They provide leadership direction that supports important concerns such that others say, "She's a person we can depend on."
Credibility can also erode slowly or be lost quickly. Consider the gradual undoing of Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War. Recall Richard Nixon's decline from his impressive victory in the 1972 presidential election to his resignation over Watergate. Recall the almost instant fall from grace of Gary Hart over his marital infidelities in the 1988 presidential campaign. Think about Jeff Bezos, who catapulted to Time magazine's "1999 Man of the Year" because he took Amazon.corn to amazing heights. By October 2000, the stock value of Amazon.com had tumbled 75 percent, raising questions about Bezos's effectiveness.
To build credibility requires knowing its secret. Credibility is subjective. Credibility comes from how others perceive you. To illustrate, think of the following people: Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, Jim Jones (the preacher and cult leader in Guyana), Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, David Koresh, Michael Milken, Alan Greenspan, Donna Karan, and Carl Icahn. Which of these individuals would you willingly follow? Your answer indicates your subjective perception of each person's credibility. Think about the list again. Every one of these people had a core of completely committed followers. In other words, each of them was perceived as credible by their followers.
You turn the key to build your credibility by first identifying the credibility markers that others use. That means you have to determine what followers believe makes a person or a course of action believable. Make a list of those you need to willingly follow your lead. Your list probably includes your boss, some key coworkers, a few important subordinates, a couple of essential customers, and other critical stakeholders. Find out what each person thinks are key credibility indicators.
Energy Riches
How To Recreate Your World
Consider a meeting in which a new team member offers an insight or idea that rings true to all members of the group. Credibility comes immediately because the group instantly believes the idea makes sense. Imagine a group discussion about how to approach a new client. One participant suggests calling a particular person to join the meeting because that individual used to work for the client, knows all the client's top managers, and has years of successful experience attracting new clients. The person called in has immediate credibility based on his or her background and experience.
Typically credibility comes more slowly. People build their base of believability over time. They repeatedly demonstrate they can be counted on to follow through. They provide leadership direction that supports important concerns such that others say, "She's a person we can depend on."
Credibility can also erode slowly or be lost quickly. Consider the gradual undoing of Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War. Recall Richard Nixon's decline from his impressive victory in the 1972 presidential election to his resignation over Watergate. Recall the almost instant fall from grace of Gary Hart over his marital infidelities in the 1988 presidential campaign. Think about Jeff Bezos, who catapulted to Time magazine's "1999 Man of the Year" because he took Amazon.corn to amazing heights. By October 2000, the stock value of Amazon.com had tumbled 75 percent, raising questions about Bezos's effectiveness.
To build credibility requires knowing its secret. Credibility is subjective. Credibility comes from how others perceive you. To illustrate, think of the following people: Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, Jim Jones (the preacher and cult leader in Guyana), Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, David Koresh, Michael Milken, Alan Greenspan, Donna Karan, and Carl Icahn. Which of these individuals would you willingly follow? Your answer indicates your subjective perception of each person's credibility. Think about the list again. Every one of these people had a core of completely committed followers. In other words, each of them was perceived as credible by their followers.
You turn the key to build your credibility by first identifying the credibility markers that others use. That means you have to determine what followers believe makes a person or a course of action believable. Make a list of those you need to willingly follow your lead. Your list probably includes your boss, some key coworkers, a few important subordinates, a couple of essential customers, and other critical stakeholders. Find out what each person thinks are key credibility indicators.
Energy Riches
How To Recreate Your World
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