Archive for January, 2009

Didn’t catch this but Bono is now opinionating over at the New York Times. This is a killer column. Love the writing style. He starts:

I’m in a crush in a Dublin pub around New Year’s. Glasses clinking clicking, clashing crashing in Gaelic revelry: swinging doors, sweethearts falling in and out of the season’s blessings, family feuds subsumed or resumed. Malt joy and ginger despair are all in the queue to be served on this, the quarter-of-a-millennium mark since Arthur Guinness first put velvety blackness in a pint glass.

Start of a New Year so time to get a tad introspective. Loved both these posts which were as thought-provoking as they are inspiring.

First: A Users Guide to 21st Century Economics

• Tomorrow will not be like yesterday. This is no mere recession: it’s a tectonic global shift in savings, consumption, and investment. Today’s macropocalypse is a rupture in the global economic fabric – and the next half-decade will be spent reweaving it.
• 20th century business isn’t fit for 21st century economics.
• Tomorrow’s market leaders have new DNA.They are organized and managed according to new rules; and it is those new rules that make the difference between surviving – and thriving in – the macropocalypse, or being vaporized by it.

Then this one from Tim: Work On Stuff That Matters…. I especially like the idea of creating more value than you capture… “At O’Reilly, we always say “Create more value than you capture.” All successful companies do this. Once they start capturing more value than they create, their market position erodes, and someone displaces them. It may take a while but it happens eventually.”

This is a view I subscribe to unequivocally… to succeed in most instances, you must do less. Focus on the thing you aim to create and that’s it. Focus hard.

Whatever you do, don’t focus on fixing. Focus on creating. This doesn’t mean you don’t have to fix anything – it just means you focus your energy on what you are creating. Tim has some terrific tips on how to get this done, giving a big hat tip to the brilliant Zen Habits blog.

Here are Tim’s 12 tips with some of my annotations:

12 Key Habits to Start With

1. Set your 3 MITs (Most Important Tasks) each morning. I write mine on a yellow index card and carry it with me at all times.
2. Single-task. When you work on a task, don’t switch to other tasks. Multitasking is a result of defocusing. If you think you can do two things at once effectively, you can’t.
3. Process your inbox to empty. This is key – don’t leave anything in it. Touch them once – then archive, convert to task requiring more time, delegate, complete…
4. Check email just twice a day. And let everyone know it.
5. Exercise 5-10 minutes a day.
6. Work while disconnected, with no distractions. Close Outlook. Turn-off the notifier. Focus.
7. Follow a morning routine.
8. Eat more fruits and veggies every day. [Tim: Here is the “slow-carb” breakfast I use to start my morning routine]
9. Keep your desk decluttered.
10. Say no to commitments and requests that aren’t on your Short List.
11. Declutter your house for 15 minutes a day.
12. Stick to a 5-sentence limit for emails.

If you want to change something, pick one habit to change… Tim suggests no more than one habit a month. This is also supported by research done by BJ Fogg of Stanford University. Want to teach 60-year olds to use an SMS program to help them quit smoking? It won’t work. Those are two new behaviors. Choose one behavioral modification at a time.

I have no idea why IBM would put an image of three sheep in this box on their Services home page… bizarre…. made me laugh though… I mean, do the sheep help “solve the tough challenges facing your business”…

Interesting phrase inspired by the growth in electric vehicles.

Range anxiety, as described by Mr. Weber, is the nagging worry that the electric vehicle you are driving is running out of battery charge.

I wonder how many people experience the same anxiety getting on a plane with their notebook, knowing they have a project or an inbox full of email to get through (or better still, five episodes of Lost to catch-up on). Not me. I’ve got a Dell XT Tablet with the extended battery. OK, makes my notebook a little thicker and heavier but I rarely run out of juice. It’s brilliant.