Career Planning, Learning and Performance

I don't like using cliches like 'think outside of the box'. I'm shuddering as I write. But I've braved my way through writing it because what I'm about to tell you is such high value. I want to share with you one of the best but most under-used ways of thinking outside the box that [...]

Learn Smarter As a kid, I stumbled across memory skills and accelerated learning. It didn't take me long to learn how to improve my memory, and the time savings for any future learning were impressive and obvious. Most people can easily learn much smarter, more easily and more enjoyably, if they take the time to [...]

Position yourself to add value to people you want to add value to using your strengths. Determine what rewards you'd like to earn yourself through your work. What would you have to do or deliver to earn those rewards? What do your customers want (and need) and how do they want it delivered? What does [...]

I've written about Forced Efficiency before. It's a great way to shave minutes or even hours off a job. So here's a reminder for you to do it again. 1. What is the most important job for you to get done by the end of today (or tomorrow)? 2. If you had only half the [...]

Working in an open-plan office all the time is totally unproductive. There are other places and environments you could go to get your work done much more effectively. Is that true? What do you think about that? What does it depend on? This article about one study is interesting. It mentions, "All the studies we [...]

What's your next career move? Like playing chess, you need to think a few steps ahead. Because change is coming your way! Your role may not exist in a few years, and between now and then it's likely to change. That's why you must keep up and make changes yourself (and to yourself), on your [...]

It's quite handy that the word 'learn' is like the word 'earn' with it's 'L' plates on. There's no better clue on how to earn more of whatever you want (mental, emotional and in some cases physical rewards) than that. Learning lays down the path for you to walk or run down, and also has [...]

In the book Good to Great, Jim Collins writes that the key to a great company is to get ‘the right people on the bus, get the wrong people off the bus, and then get the right people in the right seats on the bus’. The problem with that these days, is if you think [...]

(Or 'How to Become More Productive and Learn More Effectively') 90% of everything is crud! Oh come on Mark, that's a bit negative isn't it? Especially for a Friday. Hang on, don't shoot the messenger – they're not my words, they're the words of The thing is, and positive thinking obsessives will be positively annoyed [...]

(Aka Creating an Immediate Win when Things Don't Quite Go Your Way) I got this excellent idea from someone in sales once. They taught me it as a way to maintain motivation when you get rejected or knocked back. This post is directly useful to sales people and business owners who by nature will face [...]