Personal Development for Smart People^TM

One of my most popular productivity articles was “Overcoming Procrastination,” which I originally wrote in 2001. Since then it’s been republished many times and translated into other languages. I decided to give it a fresh editing pass to update it, and I’ve posted the updated version of “Overcoming Procrastination” in the free articles […]

If you ever find yourself feeling demotivated because of too many setbacks in a short period of time, here’s a simple way to rebuild your confidence and restore motivation: Switch to smaller tasks you’re certain to achieve, and just do those for a day or two. Put the big projects off for a […]

In his famous book Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman points out how our present use of language can be a fairly accurate predictor of future success. Seligman explains how he was able to predict outcomes of sporting events with reasonable accuracy by comparing the language used by the coaches and players in interviews before the […]

If you drink a lot of water during your workday like I do, you probably find yourself getting up from your desk several times during the day to get more water. I hate it when I’m working in a productive flow, getting thirstier and thirstier as I periodically glance at my empty cup […]

I posted a new article called Living Your Values, Part II. This completes the two-part series.
Part I guides you through a step-by-step process to discover your personal values hierachy. Part II explains how to use your personal value system to make conscious decisions and ultimately bring your values into alignment with universal principles.

Balancing thought and action is a challenge for many people, especially those who are self-employed. How much time should you spend thinking vs. doing? We hear things like, “failing to plan is planning to fail,” implying that careful thought must govern all action. But then there are also the cries of, “Do […]

Do you tend to compartmentalize all the different areas of your life? Career goes there, relationship goes here, spirituality fits there, and health … well, that’s neither here nor there.
Or maybe your compartmentalizing is temporal instead of spatial in your thinking. During the workday you do what you must, this evening you’ll do […]

Today I sorted all previous blog entries (about 75 of them) into categories related to personal development. You can now see a list of categories on the right sidebar. Clicking on any category will allow you to see all the posts in that category, so you can conveniently review previous posts on topics that interest […]

I worked as an employee only once in my life. In 1992 I had a part-time job at a small independent retail store, earning $6/hour. It didn’t take me long to realize that I didn’t want to have another job — ever. It wasn’t that it was a bad experience per se… […]

Last week I read Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. I felt the book was filled with too many long-winded stories and could have been reduced in size by at least half, but I liked the overall message, which is that execution is a key part of strategy. Let me ’splain…. […]