Most of us live our lives in Push systems. Push systems – People push work towards you. You do it. Pull systems – You pull work as you have the capacity to do it. In IT and Project Management, there is a trend towards “Pull” systems – at least in theory. Agile techniques are based […]
Accounting for Energy
I’ve been thinking about personal energy and our plans recently. Often, we tend to make our plans based on our best case scenario. We’re feeling healthy, energetic, our best selves. We then make our plans and set our timelines accordingly. Then we beat ourselves up when the average to bad days kick in and we […]
Looking at the Time Dimension
“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” Bill Gates We can only act in the present moment. We only have certainty right now. We can only decide what to do next from where we currently stand. We can base our decisions on where […]
Environment by Dimensions
When I look at myself and my relationship to the environment, I look in 3 dimensions: Time – The now > today > this week > this month > this quarter > this year > this life phase > long-term Altitude – What is right in front of me/the next step/the details to the very-high […]
Why a Stable Center is Important
Complex transformations— societal, technological and work-related—are having a profound impact on people’s lived experiences. A common theme is psychological stress related to a feeling of lack of control in the face of uncertainty. These issues deserve more attention: declining psychological and emotional wellbeing is a risk in itself—and one that also affects the wider global […]
Relating Your Life to Your Environment
One of the many distinctions between the celebrity and the hero … is that one lives only for self while the other acts to redeem society Bill Moyer, paraphrasing Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth How does your life influence your environment? How does your life influence you? How we view and engage the world […]
Principles vs Decisions
The best leaders in dual-purpose organizations consider their high-level principles sacrosanct but their ground-level decisions provisional. Harvard Business Review, “How Companies Can Balance Social Impact and Financial Goals,” January 2019 The benefit of Agile and agility is the flexibility to maneuver based on what is in front of you. What typically gets lost is the […]
Evolution Happens – How You Can Work With It
How is your life different from last year? How is your life different from 5 years ago? 10 years ago? 20 years ago? Since you left college (or high school)? How has your life evolved over time? Is it an orderly progression of steps towards mastery? Is it a series of plateaus punctuated by periods […]
Combining Goals with Your Why and Your North Star
When I was 14, I wanted to be a roadie for Led Zeppelin. Nevermind that John Bonham had died in 1980 and Jimmy Page and Robert Plant had stopped speaking to each other. This dream wasn’t about meeting rock stars (I wound up meeting plenty – just not Page and Plant), or about travel (good […]
How to Recover from a Poor Start
Heather, my dog Cally, and I stood in the woods. We were 30 minutes into our first Orienteering event and still hadn’t found the first checkpoint. We made the faulty assumption that the trails would be well marked and that we could just follow the trail to the first checkpoint. Because of that assumption, we […]
