Archive for the ‘Reads & Feeds’ Category

NYTimes on innovation and so much more…

“This so-called curse of knowledge, a phrase used in a 1989 paper in The Journal of Political Economy, means that once you’ve become an expert in a particular subject, it’s hard to imagine not knowing what you do. Your conversations with others in the field are peppered with catch phrases and jargon that are foreign to the uninitiated. When it’s time to accomplish a task — open a store, build a house, buy new cash registers, sell insurance — those in the know get it done the way it has always been done, stifling innovation as they barrel along the well-worn path.”

Every social media protagonist should read this.  We get so caught-up in our ways and words we create an impenetrable barrier for everyone else.  The more we innovate, the more we distance ourselves from those we look to enlist and embrace.

Andrew S. Grove, the co-founder of Intel, put it well in 2005 when he told an interviewer from Fortune, “When everybody knows that something is so, it means that nobody knows nothin’.” In other words, it becomes nearly impossible to look beyond what you know and think outside the box you’ve built around yourself. 

Well worth a read. A do most of these things and find they work great.

1. Dump all tasks in to Outlook – three categories
1. Must Do Now
2. Do Later
3. Watch & Tickle Later
2. At the end of each day list on an index card the key priorities for the day ahead – do everything to get that list done
3. Don’t answer the phone – everything goes to Voicemail
4. Do email three times a day – early AM, mid-day and end of the day. Leave the inbox empty. File email in the same way as you file tasks
5. Unlike Mark I keep a schedule – but I manage it myself.
6. Commit. Don’t Commit. Move on. In other words, make decisions about what you are going to do and communicate the decision. Create standard “no commit” templates in Outlook – it’ll help. As Mark says, “Only agree to new commitments when both your head and your heart say yes”.
7. Structured Procrastination is a good thing.