This is the third part of the fifth post in a series – start here. Definition of Strategy (as a skill or activity): Strategy is the practice of making, implementing and reviewing big-picture plans (strategies) with the intention of increasing the chances or speed at which you’ll achieve your major goals. The second creation Planning may seem humdrum but it’s…
Category: tools and techniques
This is the second part of the fifth post in a series* – start here. Definition of Strategy (as a skill or activity): Strategy is the practice of making, implementing and reviewing big-picture plans (strategies) with the intention of increasing the chances or speed at which you’ll achieve your major goals. Strategic plans provide structure Planning is also about structuring…
These are great writing tips, applicable – with a bit of adaptation- to any medium. Future Shocks are self-contained, four page science-fiction short stories with a twist ending. That means you only have four pages to establish your situation and protagonist, develop the situation through dramatic conflict, and then resolve it with an unexpected twist ending. “Dramatic conflict” doesn’t just mean…
I have still never found a to-do list format and medium that works consistently for me. I’ve been a Filofax user, tried GTD, experimented with various flavours of Kanban and tried Asana and a few other apps, but nothing’s quite stuck. I’m hoping to fix this in the coming weeks, so I’ve been thinking about what makes a good to…
This is the fifth post in a series – start here. Definition of Strategy (as a skill or activity): Strategy is the practice of making, implementing and reviewing big-picture plans (strategies) with the intention of increasing the chances or speed at which you’ll achieve your major goals. The most important things The main purpose of strategy is to help you…
This looks like a fantastic set of tips from McKinley Valentine of The Whippet.* I say “looks like” because I haven’t tried the tips yet, but I’ll use them soon and write a followup about how it goes. Main takeaways: Problem: “Twitter hates links to external content.” (E.g. links you share to your blog) Solution 1/?: A non-linky way to…
Great! Was it any good? What are you going to do to make your best get better? This might be about: Improving concrete skills Working on your attitude Or the way you made others feel while you did your best Or working on the wrapper – the systems around the work you do – so that you can do more…
Ambiguity makes simple tasks hard. It often occurs when: You don’t know what’s required (at all), and don’t know how to find out You know who could tell you but can’t contact them The information you have is incomplete The information you have is unclear The information appears complete but you have reasons (experience, competing information, rumour) not to trust…
Delegating well (speccing the task, sharing your overall intent, context and resources) is a vital skill. But the hardest most elusive, and most important part* is finding out what will make a person care enough to do something consistently well – or even to do it at all. Things like: They think it’s important too (because they already did) They…
A draft template of things to include when delegating something: The job in a sentence: (So that the delegatee immediately knows what’s going on) When it must be done by: (Good to know now, likely that they’ll refer back for this so it’s nice to have it at the top) Relevant background: As much context as is helpful – it…