Today I’m happy to share an exclusive interview with David Brooks, an award-winning professional speaker and trainer who has taught more than 10,000 business professionals to speak and write clearly, concisely, and confidently.
Recently David came to Las Vegas to give a presentation for Toastmasters, and I was so impressed with his content that I immediately approached him about doing an [...]
If you want to absorb written material at a faster rate, you can learn to speedread or PhotoRead. But what if you have a lot of audio material to listen to, such as audio books or podcasts?
Did you know that if you have 60 minutes of audio material to listen to, you can very easily [...]
A scaffold is a temporary structure that supports tools, materials, and people while erecting or repairing a building. A similar construct can be used to improve your personal productivity. Much like wearing braces to reposition crooked teeth, a personal productivity scaffold is something you temporarily insert into your daily routine to help create and establish new habits. Once those habits are conditioned, [...]
Sometimes we procrastinate on projects because we don’t know where to begin. A goal like “write a book” might seem straightforward enough when first set, but when it’s time to act, the goal becomes this huge, amorphous blob. Procrastination soon follows.
A popular suggestion is to define the immediate next action that must be taken, and then focus on that. [...]
Journaling is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to accelerate your personal development. By getting your thoughts out of your head and putting them down in writing, you gain insights you’d otherwise never see.
Beyond sequential thinking
While your brain is technically capable of processing a great deal of input simultaneously, your conscious thoughts play out [...]
Sometimes we face tough decisions that involve one or more unknowns. We can’t know in advance what the consequences of each alternative will be. This is especially true of big decisions like quitting a job, entering or exiting a relationship, or moving to a new city.
When faced with such a decision, what do you do? If you can’t [...]
Too often our important-but-not-urgent tasks get put on the back burner… and never make it to the front burner. When you get busy with urgent tasks, you may feel pressured to finish those first before you can justify doing anything less urgent. But then when you finally catch a break, you may decide you need [...]
Virtually every time management system teaches that you must prioritize your projects to make sure you’re working on what’s truly important instead of getting caught up in minor things. However, few systems explain precisely how to do this. How do you decide which task is really the most important at any given time? Is it the one that’s most urgent, [...]
Since I receive many questions about this topic, I thought it would be fun to share a candid insider’s look at the reality of being an A-list blogger. These are my personal observations, so I’m not saying they’re true of other high-traffic bloggers, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these patterns held up. While I normally [...]
Testing ideas through direct experience is among the best ways to learn and grow. If you want to know if an idea really has merit, test it under real-world conditions. Then you’ll have your answer.
For example, suppose you want to ask someone out for a date. One simple test would be to go right up to the person and [...]
