The wind up is the movement you make to get ready before you swing to hit a ball/nail/object/target. A good wind up puts you in position, primed and ready to release your energy in the right place, at the right time, in the right direction and with the right amount of power – and then to recover so that you…
Tag: work
These things are prizes: Large amounts of money; Prestige; Medals and awards of all shapes and sizes; Universal recognition and adoration. It’s easy to focus on them, but they’re not the point, and in fact we feel like imposters if they’re given to us unearned and undeserved. As Adam Smith pointed out, we want “not only to be loved, but…
On any given day, it’s quite possible that you’ll wonder if this is the thing you should be doing. You might be bored, or aimless. You might be stressed and struggling. Something else might look easier or more attractive: more lucrative, more fun, more popular. Any and all of these feelings are quite possible on any given day – which…
…aren’t supposed to be easy. The person you need to have the conversation with might be a peer, a friend, a long-term colleague. The conversations are uncomfortable in the planning, in the preparation and in the aftermath – often because they highlight your own weaknesses or lay you open to charges of hypocrisy or favouritism, however hard you’ve tried. But…
Are you dealing with a difficult maths problem or with difficult feelings about a maths problem? Is the struggle with the work itself, or with your feelings – apathy, disillusionment, fury – about doing it? It might help to shift your attention to those feelings instead of the problem in front of you. So your focus is no longer “write…
Here’s a short video with Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic*. He talks a bit about lessons he’s learned in running a distributed company, and why he calls his workforce distributed rather than remote. These are his tips for physical companies interested in transitioning to distributed work: Document everything – so that key information like the reasons for decisions…
Have fun, learn lots, work hard, be kind. Of course you should work smart. Automate what you can. Delegate and outsource to people who can do things better than you. Shamelessly avoid, or ruthlessly eliminate, the unnecessary. Then identify your real work – the things that only you can do, probably things for which there are no instructions or maps.…
Here’s a DC-related hitlist for the first part of 2019… images link to Amazon UK. The Invisible Killer: The Rising Global Threat of Air Pollution – and How We can Fight Back – Garry Fuller A gift from Sharky. Necessary reading for someone living in Jakarta. Or anywhere. The Inevitable – Kevin Kelly See also WtF? Technology and You. KK is…
We all know about compound interest in the world of money. Save £100 a month for thirty years at one percent interest** and you’ll have a little under £42,000 by the end of that time (compared to £36,000 at zero-percent). Make that investment at 5% and suddenly you’ll hit £83,000. 10%*** makes almost £228,000. It takes time, and the commitment…
With types of work (work: generative; work: decisive) the virtue is in the mean.** One plants, births, grows, opens. The other prevents, kills, prunes, closes. And we have these gardens, between the wilderness and the desert. ** Aristotle