In support of o
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey:
- Be proactive
- Begin with the end in mind
- Put first things first
- Think win-win
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood
- Synergize
- Sharpen the saw
And the follow-up The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness
- Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs
On managing our brain and delegating what it is not good at:
- A quick introduction to GTD by David Allen, speaking to Google employees
- The GTD website
- The basis of the implementation I started from: GTD and Outlook 2007. I supplemented my implementation with macros from Lean GTD 2007
- There are lots of macros available to improve the performance of Outlook further. Just Google "GTD Outlook"
- There might be even more stuff available if you are into gmail.
More practical advice on workflow management from HBR
- How to start the day: : A 90-Minute Plan for Personal Effectiveness
- How to end the day: The Best Way to Use the Last Five Minutes of Your Day
Do more great work by Michael Bungay Stanier:
- The short movies are at the bottom of this page.
- The interviews of
"inspiring leaders & thinkers about how they find, start and sustain
great work" are usually instructive. For example,
- Marc Mathieu, former senior VP of Global Brands at Coca-Cola explains how he revived the Coca-Cola brand by building a team of believers to stand behind the mission of putting a smile on the face of a billion people every day, one colleague at a time.
- Neil Crofts talks about his work, including a simple method to articulate your life's purpose in 15mn. His trick? Don't just ask yourself about your passions and your talents. Ask as well what makes you angry in the world around you.
Some of my favorite RSA animations:
- The secret powers of time, by Philip Zimbardo
- Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, by Daniel H. Pink
- Where good ideas come from, by Steve Johnson (possibly the most beautiful drawing)
- Changing education paradigms, by Ken Robinson
Some of my favorite TED talks:
- Bring on the learning revolution! by Ken Robinson, the follow-up to the RSA animation above
- How great leaders inspire action, by Simon Sinek
- Lead like the great conductors, by Itay Talgam
- Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce (It's about a lot more than that!)
And a neat presentation with dynamic graphs: Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes
Clifton's Strengthfinder: the test takes 25mn. You need to buy one of their books to get an access code. You can find the book for less than $15. The test gives you 5 strengths out of a possible 34, and a plan of action. I found it instructive. I had only guessed 3 of the 5 they came up with for me. (They use the test at P&G, that's why my P&G sister got me a book!).