Many years ago I listened to an audio program by Brian Tracy where he said that everyone is essentially self-employed and that even if you’re an employee, you should think of yourself as the President of your own personal services corporation.  Call it Your Name, Inc. This mindset makes a lot of sense.  Even if [...]

In order to develop a career that really suits you, it’s important to have a basic knowledge of your key strengths.  Unlike skills or knowledge you can acquire through education, your strengths are more basic talents.  For the most part you were born with them.  You can certainly continue to develop new talents, but in the area of [...]

How committed are you to having a career you absolutely love? Your level of commitment plays a key role in the process of creating a fulfilling career.  When people are undercommitted to their careers, they tend to get lousy results.  When they get clear about what they want and commit themselves to creating it, however [...]

Your alarm goes off at 5am, and you immediately get out of bed without a second thought.  As you orient yourself to the waking world, you can barely detect any lingering grogginess, even if you look for it.  You stand up and stretch, feeling totally alert, fully conscious, and eager to start your day.  The thought [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]