I love the idea of a meritocracy! It's a glorious myth that makes a wonderful story. But if you look at how resources, wealth, prestige, etc. get distributed, it's very hard to make a case for meritocracy. It's no surprise we believe in meritocracy. We spend our...
focus
Here are articles on focus
Learning to learn: How to get better at what you do
I've been reading the book Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. In it, he describes the kind of deliberate practice you have to do to get good at something. This is extremely important! If you're doing anything new with a learning curve, you can vastly accelerate that...
Why I Like Paper
A reader wrote in: I read your suggestion about the 3×5 pad and it sucks! That's because I hate paper and pen note-taking. I want something that I can carry with me anywhere on my handheld and which will also prompt me, just like a personal assistant, not something...
The Power of Visceral Relationships
I'm having a conversation on Google+ about social media, and it connected up with an exercise I did today to produce a rather puzzling realization. Social media has certainly broadened who I know and how we connect. It's because of social media that I have met some of...
Email Overload – Where the CEO of Xerox and I Disagree
As you probably know, I've launched my You Are Not Your Inbox, so I'm revisiting some of my old thoughts about Email Overload. Tim Sanders wrote a blog entry that references a Business Week article ("What's So Bad about Information Overload?") on information overload...
Give Yourself Some Slack Time
One of the most important things that I've learned is that you can only be up to 100% efficient - you can't get 25 hours of work done in a day. How do you know when you're at the point of diminishing returns? We all want to believe we can add one more thing to our...
Google destroys productivity
Productivity is reduced by ads, and the Google tools we use to be productive are the very same ones that distract us with ads.
Ignore that software upgrade notice … for now
A software upgrade notice is more than a convenience; it changes what you’re doing. Don’t treat an upgrade notice as urgent; treat it as a task instead.
Subscribing isn’t a favor, it’s an invite to information overload.
Someone just subscribed to my YouTube channel. Yay! Now I feel more pressure to get more videos prepared and posted. YouTube helped out by sending a notice telling me someone has subscribed. It went on to suggest that I "return the favor and subscribe to person?" The...