books
The Efficiency Trap In a recent piece, Scott Young revisited Stephen Covey’s classic concept of the Compass vs. the Clock. In our current "speed-at-all-costs" AI environment, this distinction has never been more vital. Most leaders are obsessed with the Clock: How fast can we ship? How many
productivity
I recently started using the snipd podcast app, and it offers a few compelling features (along with solid queue/backlog management, which is a must-have for me). It offers: * AI transcription of podcasts, so you can easily copy and paste quotes from podcasts * Allows you so "snip" moments
Organizational Culture
I've heard of the concept of mise en place, which is French for "putting in place" or "everything in it's place." While I'm not a culinary artist, I appreciate increasingly appreciate, as a parent of three young children, the importance
leadership
Veteran Institute for Procurement (VIP) is a great organization that teaches leadership, management, and Government Contracting best practices to Veteran-owned small business leaders. They are a great organization helping Veteran entrepeneurs, and I always enjoy supporting their great mission. I attended a VIP course way back in 2010 (on behalf
books
My kids are still young, so I have a few more years before I'll be recommending adult-level non-fiction, but I was thinking recently about what books will be at the top of my list to recommend to my kids. My current list of top recommendations for them are:
career
I teach a class to some of the Veteran entrepreneurs in the Veteran Institute for Procurement (VIP) programs, and I'm starting to review the structure I use to teach a class on scaling your business (see my How to Grow Business Value presentation slides from last year for
lessons-learned
After hearing Oliver Burkeman on a podcast last month, I listened to his Meditations for Mortals audiobook and was blown away -- it felt like he was talking directly to me through the book. As I listened to the book, I was struck with the (incredibly rare for me) desire
lessons-learned
It's incredibly powerful to get tasks, goals, priorities, and meetings out of your head and into a system you trust (which is the core tenet of David Allen's great Getting Things Done methodology). Otherwise, you spend significant energy and stress trying to manage the chaos without
management
Time Block Planning is a simple concept of using a calendar view to plan your day's priorities, including both meetings and other work you'll prioritize. Many people have written about it for a long time, and powerful in its simplicity to force prioritization, so you'
lessons-learned
It's easy to look at email as something that you have to keep up with, so you can get back to work, but so much actual work gets done in email (and so much potential working time is taken away by email wrangling). If you think about emails
leadership
Fundamental, tactical skills like email management, schedule/calendar management, and making documents and presentations are sometimes overlooked by leaders when they consider how to keep their teams aligned. If things aren't running smoothly, there's value in reflecting on these fundamentals, both for yourself (Are these tactical,
lessons-learned
Here are some random concepts/frameworks for great time management: 1. Build your own personal productivity system so that you keep track of action items/tasks/to dos/ongoing responsibilities/etc. 1. Consider investing time in reading books like David Allen's Getting Things Done, which walks through some