Posts filed under 'Hacks for work and life'
Books I have read: Beating the 24/7: How Business Leaders Achieve a Successful Work-life Balance
This week I’ve been reading Beating the 24/7: How Business Leaders Achieve a Successful Work-life Balance by Winston Fletcher. The book contains 16 interviews from some great businessmen and women in the UK including Sir Richard Branson, Michael Grade CBE, Nicola Horlick and Sir Christopher Bland. Each interview looks at success, sacrifice, family, hobbies and gives hope that you can create your own work/life balance. In 2002 when this book was first published these business people would have been at the pinnacle of their career – what is missing is some perspectives from those in their younger years – many of the interviewees comment on how in one sense work/life balance has become easier as companies are more understanding to HR policies but at the same time many younger people are working harder in the start of their career at the beginning of the millenium then they were in say the 1950s. Winston Fletcher writes a helpful introduction and a conclusion which pull together many of the threads for the interviews.
Add comment July 22, 2010
Books I have read: Success One Day at a Time by John Maxwell
I read Success One Day at a Time by John Maxwell last night. It’s a small, short book, sized as an A6 book, with 126 pages. I was struck how similar it is to the Chicken Soup for the … series with lots of short, interesting quotes and stories that inspire you to go futher. It’s a book you can easily read all in one sitting or just drop into when you need some inspiration.
Add comment July 16, 2010
Productivity 101
I loved this graph that Zach Nielsen linked to (and do check out the article here from Darren Rowse):
It’s certainly true for me, I can find times where an overload in my schedule means it’s actually harder to achieve things leading to an even bigger back log of tasks/meetings.
Add comment June 24, 2010
Books I have read: 3 Seconds: The Power of Thinking Twice
Jus
t finished reading 3 Seconds: The Power of Thinking Twice by Les Parrott. This book was a mish mash with some great nuggets, some usual business writing, and some bits that just seemed like additional padding. The concept is that within 3 seconds we can…
- Empower ourself
- Embrace a good challenge
- Fuel your passion
- Own your piece of the pie
- Walk the extra mile
- Quit stewing and start doing
The book focuses on inner thinking and how that can affect your actions, but it seems to lack some of the scientific background on this. Whilst it has some nice stories and some great little phrases, it doesn’t seem to flow, and instead at times seen to be a collection of random stories. For me it wasn’t one I’d rush to read again.
Add comment May 16, 2010
Jim Collins on an unexpected leadership quality
Jim Collins talks about a trait of great leaders, starting with the point:
“We should never confuse charisma with leadership”
Add comment April 5, 2010
What’s your 7
Loved this post by Nicholas Bate, What’s Your: 7
- 4 Minute Mile? The thing you thought was absolutely definitely not attainable. Maybe it is…
- Man-on-the-Moon-in-a-Decade? A longer-term goal. Step by step..
- ‘Yesterday’? Your work of art. Maybe never to be repeated but copied by many…
- Reading of Ulysses? Your investment. Sheer hard work, but somehow it does transform you and you now know language as you never knew it before…
- Double Helix? You’ve got a definite hunch, you’ve just got to prove it…
- Sydney Opera House? The project you have to fight and fight and fight for…
- London Underground Map? A simplification so marvellous, they all get it…
Add comment March 2, 2010
Books I have read: Choosing to Cheat
I finished Choosing to Cheat by Andy Stanley earlier this week. I’ve a strong desire to be more balanced, and to slow a little this year. As an expectant father (baby due mid February) I’m really keen to ensure that I form patterns and rhythms that allow me to be a great dad to my son. I’ve enjoyed Andy Stanley’s previous books so when I saw this I thought it’d be worth reading. It’s a short little book which explores the balance of work and family. The premise is that with all the damnds at work and home we end up cheating at one of the two places, and Andy suggests that we want to look for ways to cheat at work rather than constantly skipping out on family as their simply isn’t time to fit everything in. He says we need our family to not just know that we love them, but to feel like they are loved to.
The key he argues is to believe that you need to change, and then do anything you can to make it happen. He says ask your spouse: “What change would you most like me to make to my schedule?” and then act on it.
Add comment January 9, 2010
Books I have read: Developing the Leaders Around You
Finished reading Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential by John Maxwell. As with any Maxwell book a lot of it is stating the obvious, but there are an awful lot of nuggets throughout the book, which is why he’s so well regarded on the topic of leadership. My favourite chapter was The Leader’s Highest Return: forming a dream team of leaders where I was really challenged that I’m good on the leadership, I need to improve my delegation and management skills.
If you’re keen to look at how to develop the team around you then this is a book worth reading.
Add comment December 26, 2009
Books I have read: Addicted to Hurry
I finished Addicted to Hurry: Spiritual Strategies for Slowing Down by Kirk Byron Jones. It’s a thought provoking book which fits with where I am at the moment. The last few months have been manic, I’ve been working many more hours than I should and I feel like I’ve had very little time for Hannah, friends or some me time.
My frustration is that although it has a very clear message, it doesn’t seem to have any great solutions. The book encourages greater looking, listening and sitting to name a few things, which I guess make you feel less hurried, but I’m not sure how I’d forget about the long list of things I’ve still got to achieve.
Maybe I’m not confident in it because …
If you don’t change the way you think, old thinking will ultimately sabotage any effort at change, no matter how sincere your desire to change. (p. 64).
It’s certainly got me thinking but I don’t think I’ve got any clear resolution as to how I change.
Add comment December 26, 2009
Books I have read: Next Generation Leader
One of the benefits of a day off is a chance to read. I’ve just finished Next Generation Leader by Andy Stanley. I loved this book for the constant nuggets that you find in it. Here’s a few to get your started:
The two best secrets of leadership are these: the less you do the more you accomplish, the less you do the more you enable others to accomplish.
What are the two or three things that you and only you are responsible for?
I once heard John Maxwell say, “You are most valuable where you add the most value.”
Leaders provide a mental picture of a preferred future and then ask people to follow them there.
Max De Pree made this observation: “An unwillingness to accept risk has swamped more leaders than anything I can think of.”
Uncertainty is a permanent part of the leadership landscape.
People will follow you in spite of a few bad decisions. People will not follow you if you are unclear in your instruction, and you cannot hold them accountable to respond to muddled directives.
The best thing to do sometimes is to open up the cage and face the 500 pound gorilla. He’s going to come after you anyway, so you might as well let him out.
Character is the will to d what’s right even when it’s hard.
A set of great quotes that I’m going to be grappling with over the next few weeks.
1 comment December 3, 2009
Books I have read: Death by Meeting
I finished Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business by Patrick Lencioni yesterday, and I think it could be a defining book for my ministry.
Lencioni writes through a fable rather than a theoretical model. At first this concerned me, it didn’t seem normal, and I wondered if I was going to get bored. Instead the opposite happened, I found the story gripping. In this book he tackles the issue of meetings – their great potential and yet the great waste of resource that they often can be.
The publishers describe the story as:
Casey McDaniel, the founder and CEO of Yip Software, is in the midst of a problem he created, but one he doesn’t know how to solve. And he doesn’t know where or who to turn to for advice. His staff can’t help him; they’re as dumbfounded as he is by their tortuous meetings.
Then an unlikely advisor, Will Peterson, enters Casey’s world. When he proposes an unconventional, even radical, approach to solving the meeting problem, Casey is just desperate enough to listen.
Lencioni highlights the issue of having different kinds meetings (e.g. daily check-in, weekly tactical, monthly or as-needed ad hoc strategic, and quarterly off-site), each of which has a different context, purpose, structure, and timeframe. As I read this I was reminded of David Allen’s Getting Things Done which also focuses on context. His other main concept is that meetings need conflict, they need to have a difference of opinion for their to be discussion and then agreement.
Following the fable he also includes a “Model” section, attempting to highlight and explain the theory that was demonstrated in the fable.
As I read the book I was struck by the inconcsistency of both the meetings I attend, but also those I chair. It’s challenged me to look at how we strcuture those, and how often are we trying to blend a number of contexts and purposes together. My hope is that as we continue to plan for next academic year I can build in some of his suggestions as to the different types of meetings that need to exist within the team.
Add comment July 23, 2009
10 commandments of public speaking
Ministry Best Practices posted about how much they love TED, and included their version of the 10 Commandments to speaking at their event. Really helpful:
- Thou shalt not simply trot out thy usual shtick.
- Thou shalt dream a great dream, or show forth a wondrous new thing, or share something thou hast never shared before.
- Thou shalt reveal thy curiosity and thy passion.
- Thou shalt tell a story.
- Thou shalt freely comment on the utterances of other speakers for the sake of blessed connection and exquisite controversy.
- Thou shalt not flaunt thine ego. Be thou vulnerable. Speak of thy failure as well as thy success.
- Thou shalt not sell from the stage: neither thy company, thy goods, thy writings, nor thy desperate need for funding; lest thou be cast aside into outer darkness.
- Thou shalt remember all the while: laughter is good.
- Thou shalt not read thy speech.
- Thou shalt not steal the time of them that follow thee.
1 comment June 23, 2009
Deadlines
Bang-Yao Liu created this stop-motion animation for his senior project at Savannah College of Art and Design. It’s simple, clever, and one the best stop-motions of recent times, and it’s on a theme that many of us can relate to: the pressure of working on deadline and dealing with distractions.
Add comment June 15, 2009
Youth workers need to say no
Loved the post from Seth Godin on Saying ‘no’. I’ve spent some of this afternoon spending time with Hannah, my wife, trying to work out what our youth ministry will be doing, and what ministry opportunities I’ll be saying yes to and which I’ll be saying no to. We’ve got a lot more thinking to do, but Seth’s post fitted right in:
If you’ve got talent, people want more of you. They ask you for this or that or the other thing. They ask nicely. They will benefit from the insight you can give them.
The choice: You can dissipate your gift by making the people with the loudest requests temporarily happy, or you can change the world by saying ‘no’ often.
You can say no with respect, you can say no promptly and you can say no with a lead to someone who might say yes. But just saying yes because you can’t bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work.
Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities.
Add comment May 26, 2009
PDA Query
Quick question about PDA syncing: I have a HP PDA which I sync with two different computers – for calendar and notes it works fine, but it seems to struggle to sync and merge adjustments to tasks made from two different computers. Do I have to make one computer the slave or is there another way around this?
3 comments May 11, 2009
Namechk finds out if your name is taken
Spotted namechk around the web. It basically checks the urls on more than 80 web sites—so you can own your online presence. Just type the name into the box and click the chk button and the available usernames will be shown almost immediately.
Add comment April 7, 2009
Books I have read: 7 Practices of Effective Ministry
The more I listen and read of Andy Stanley the more I love his heart for the church. In many ways he is the person to succeed and develop Bill Hybel’s mantle of application of business and management techniques to the church.
This book was straightforward to read. The first half uses a narrative to look at the seven principles that are behind the seven practices. I enjoyed the story, and it gave me a chance to get my head more fully around the seven practices, which are:
- Clarify the Win | Define what is important at every level of the organization
- Think Steps, Not Programs | Before you start anything, make sure it takes you where you need to go
- Narrow the Focus | Do fewer things in order to make a greater impact
- Teach Less For More | Say only what you need to say to the people who need to hear it
- Listen to Outsiders | Focus on who you’re trying to reach, not who you’re trying to keep
- Replace Yourself | Learn to hand off what you do
- Work On It | Take time to evaluate your work – and to celebrate your wins
The second half digs through the seven practices and how they are applied in to a church setting, with wonderful examples from Granger Community Church’s history itself.
As I read this book I found several really helpful questions or suggestions, here’s just a few:
When is the last time you won at church? (p. 32)
A good step has to be easy, obvious, and strategic. (p. 37)
If you really want to make a lasting impact, then you need to eliminate what you do well for the sake of what you can potentially do best. (p. 100)
In one sense this book says nothing new, especially if you’ve ever read any business books. But, and this is the key point, it very clearly applies them into the church setting, something very few others do.
1 comment January 6, 2009
Your right hand person
I have been challenged by this article and how we structure the youth team here at TBC. Here is a clip:
Serving alongside the leader, you’ll probably want two to four team members that cover these roles:
- An administrative player. You’ll want to ensure someone is capable of building systems, structures, and accountability.
- A relational player. Hopefully you’ll have someone who is very good with people. This person could be an expert in recruiting, team building, pastoring, relational problem solving, or some combination of the above.
- An innovative player. In the best environment, you’ll have someone who is an idea-person. This team member is often young (but not necessarily). You’ll want to make sure this innovative mind isn’t rebellious and is a team player. When you find a person like this, she’ll be a great asset to your team.
- A stabilizing player. Most good teams have a person who can rise above the details and see the big picture. This person may not be the most visible, but is often one of the most important. He is someone who can bring objectivity and stability in the middle of challenges.
Add comment November 7, 2008
Convert PDFs into Word documents
Lifehacker has a great post on how to convert PDFs to Word Online with Three Clicks
It’s free, all you do is, find the file on your computer, click to convert it into a Microsoft Word document, then click to download the converted file. It really is that simple, I’ve tested it for a PDFs I had and it worked straight off. A great simple hack.
Go check it out here: Free Online PDF to Word Conversions [pdfundo.net]
Add comment October 23, 2008
Tool for scheduling meetings easily
Diarised is a new tool to help schedule meetings. There are others like it, but this is extremely simple to use. If you have multiple team members to coordinate for your meetings, this is the tool for you. It’s free! Here’s how it works as quoted from their website:
- Enter the details of your proposed meeting into Diarised, including the meeting invitees and the possible times and dates for the meeting.
- Diarised sends out emails to all invitees.
- The invitees choose the times that suit them best.
- Once the invitees have chosen their preferred meeting dates, Diarised will give you a summary of the best dates for you to choose from.
- All meeting invitees will be sent an email confirming the chosen date and time
(via Lifehacker)
Add comment August 14, 2008
