When you have tons of things to do, you have three choices on how you execute:
– Get cracking and attack one at a time and see where you end up
– Throw the towel
– Execute effectively.
The last option is the best one. How do you execute effectively?
Plan execution in order of priority and delegate effectively where appropriate. Procrastinate or eliminate inconsequential items!
Having taken this approach you are working with fewer items on your plate which have the highest impact. Also, you have been able to use your team effectively by delegating and empowering them. Finally, you have eliminated or procrastinated things that have minimum consequences. This approach to execution is efficient and effective!
I am not a relationship expert. However, I do run into relationship issues while I coach business executives.
What I have noticed is that the biggest lament for women in a relationship (marriage, common law) is the lack of expression, appreciation, and priority from the man in her life.
Women find men to be misers in expressing their love and appreciation and give priority to other things (business, sports) compared to the relationship.
Men, on the other hand, are confused. No matter what they do, women can find fault with them.
If men started to take every opportunity to express their love and appreciation and assign priority to their relationship things would get much better.
If women, on the other hand, picked their battles instead of making every battle a big one, things are bound to improve.
It would be good to do a weekly checkpoint of how this is working as follows:
– what worked well last week?
– what could have been done better?
– what are the goals for the coming week?
I believe when an important relationship is rock solid in terms of communication, respect and understanding the rest of the challenges are far easier to handle. When the foundation of an important relationship is shaky, the rest of your life gets impacted!
You hear an inspirational song or a powerful message and you feel like conquering the world.
Next, you go to the office or home and a call comes in or someone interrupts you and in no time you are distracted.
Suddenly from the energy that wanted to conquer the world you have now been brought down to being the same again. You got the spark but unfortunately, you allowed the spark to disappear.
The magic happens when you optimize the feeling and avoid doing anything that disrupts the spark created in you.
There is no doubt that you will get a spark in your life. However, what you do with the spark will depend entirely on you!
Once you find your life mission, the one thing you need to do, then fuse it with all of your activities—personal and corporate. By so doing, you unleash your potential and find fulfillment on your journey.
*Embracing a Principle-Centered Approach*
Listen and trust the voice of your conscience and work with integrity, principles, and respect.
You have a social conscience, and you ensure that your corporate work creates a better society all round. You do not engage in any activity that is detrimental to the overall well-being of society or the environment.
*Making a Difference*
It is not just what you have that matters; rather, the value of your life is determined by who you are and what you give. You treat life as a precious gift and use this gift to give and to make a difference.
*Embracing Life-Long Learning*
You learn from cradle to grave. You learn from all, including nature which offers immense wisdom. You know that, in order to succeed in life, competence is the key which comes from life-long learning.
*Having Faith in the Unknown*
You do not fear the unknown. You are willing to take risks and to persevere in realizing your dreams.
*Persevering*
You never give up. You persist until you succeed in achieving what you believe in.
Perseverance and patience go hand in hand.
*Being Effective*
You are a role model inspiring your team through your example.
You eliminate insecurities by trusting and believing in the inherent abilities and gifts of team members.
You are results-oriented, not task-focused.
You empower your team—you do not overpower them.
*Having a Positive Attitude*
You keep confident expectations. What you expect is what you invite into your life.
You are solution-oriented, not problem-focused.
You are non-judgmental, giving people the benefit of the doubt.
You do not worry about criticism. You believe in doing your best and leaving the rest.
*Balancing your Life*
Real success is holistic and caters to your body, mind, and soul. You allocate your time wisely and do not compromise on a tight set of priorities, which brings you balance and synergy.
*Savouring the Path*
You know that destiny lies in the path. You love the challenges and hurdles because they enhance your strength and tenacity.
You regard each day as the most important day of your life. Thus, every day—every moment—is a gift that you cherish and savor. You go with the flow without taking your eye off your goals.
*Taming Our Ego*
You strive for positive pride and shun egotism.
You let the subject disappear in the object by letting the self disappear in the higher purpose of your work.
You accept your shortcomings. You do not have a need to become defensive or take things personally.
*Igniting your Spirituality*
You make spirituality the centerpiece of your life, including your corporate life, so that 24 hours of your day are grounded in spirituality.
You know the corporate soul—the real reason for the corporation’s existence.
*Understanding Life and Death*
You realize that there is a beginning and an end to everything in life. Every beginning is an end of the old, and every end a beginning of the new.
When you die, you know that you do not take what you have but, rather, what you gave.
*Experiencing the Divine in Corporate Life*
You know that all success happens by the Divine’s work. Hard work and struggle pay dividends, but without grace you cannot go too far. You invite the Divine into your corporate life and make the Divine your partner in everything you do.
You become co-creators with the Divine by creating something beautiful in this world through your work.
You see divinity in all. You understand that everything and everybody is a signpost to the Oneness of creation.
These principles are universal and practical. They are founded on love and act as a bridge between your personal and corporate life. If these principles are implemented by you and other leaders in your team, your corporation would be a more happy, peaceful, and loving place where each person is given the space and the opportunity to flower to his or her potential and to contribute to society and to the world. Your corporate life will, thus, be materially rewarding, as well as spiritually enriching.
“Your reason and passion are the rudder and the sails of the seafaring soul,” wrote Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese-born philosopher, poet, and painter who wrote magnificently in both English and Arabic. “If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.”
An equilibrium between reason and passion – between head and heart – is one of the essentials of Life Balance. It has been said that when the mind and the heart go to war, the body becomes the battlefield.
The mind allows us to think, to reason, and to apply our wisdom to make a difference. The heart is where we feel. Through it, we love and use our creativity without inhibition. When we merge education of the mind with education of the heart, we strike a dynamic balance. We look with “both eyes” – the eye of the heart and the eye of the mind. We look at life as a whole, realizing that one element affects the other.
Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel peace prize laureate and first black Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, stresses the importance of a balance in our relationships with others.
“In our African language,” he notes, “we say, ‘a person is a person through other persons.’ I would not know how to be a human being at all, except I learned this from other human beings. We are made for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence. We are meant to complement each other…. not even the most powerful nation can be completely self-sufficient.”
Reason without passion is lame, and passion without reason is blind. Reason alone is dull, whereas passion alone can lead to destruction. When we marry the two, we have a wonderful synergy. Our reasoning protects us from doing silly things. Our passion gives us the drive to excel and go the distance.
Reason draws from the mind, passion from the heart.
In fact most popular leaders are able to use a good mix of the heart and head to drive successful results. While they are able to skillfully (head) assess and leverage the distinguishing qualities of each of their team members, they are also able to develop strong bonds with them by being transparent, collaborative, and empowering (heart).
To conclude, like Martin Luther King, Jr. puts it, “One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart-intelligence and goodness-shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.”
Quality remains one of the key differentiators whenever we want to evaluate something or make a choice. We often explore and discuss quality at our workplace, in our processes or in the products or services we consume. But this idea of quality always begins with the individual.
How do you define your quality of work? How do you rate your own quality? How do you make quality your calling card, and the essential ingredient in creating a successful personal brand.
Here are seven tips to improve your quality quotient:
1. Clarify your purpose – You are at your best when your actions are aligned with your purpose. Hence defining your purpose is crucial to starting your pursuit of quality.
2. Prepare a “quality” plan: Spend a day and document all your daily tasks or activities to identify the best practices to enhance the quality of your output? Also, test your ideas and processes regularly to determine the required improvements or interventions. This might include deleting or letting go of certain practices or ideas that have ceased to serve you.
3. Create your quality circle – Surround yourself with positive, proactive people who challenge and inspire you to be your best. If you don’t have a choice of the physical company you keep, there is a whole virtual world at your fingertips. Read good books, watch TED videos, subscribe to quality content and follow best practices.
4. Get feedback – Just as you need a rear view and side view mirror to maneuver around your blind spots while driving, you need feedback to get the complete picture of any situation. Hence, always invite and welcome feedback from your stakeholders and view all complaints as an opportunity to improve.
5. Spend some quiet time alone – Time for introspection, reflection, and deliberation is essential in developing a conscious awareness of the self and how you choose to express it. Meditation is one of the best methods to develop this awareness and guide your actions.
6. Invest in learning – Quality is a continually evolving and ongoing process. Set aside time to continuously learn the latest ways of thinking and doing things. When you stop growing, your business stops growing.
In this age of information overload, our brains are busier than ever before. We receive tons of information each day on our mobile devices alone. And this is excluding the data we are exposed to from other media sources.
Deciding what information is essential and what can be ignored is a herculean task. The result is that we end up feeling overwhelmed and confused.
Here are seven simple ways to make better sense of the world around us.
1. Work in 90-minute intervals – Generally our brains cannot focus for more than 90 minutes at a stretch. So take a short break after every burst to refresh your mind. Sip water or take a stroll, anything to break the monotony. This way, you will enhance both your focus and efficiency.
2. Set limits – Our attention is a limited resource and gets depleted over the course of activities, leading us to lose focus and make mistakes. Hence, instead of wading through all the information that comes your way, filter it. Schedule time slots and focus only on the task at hand.
3. De-clutter your mind and physical space – A clean space leads to a clear mind.
4. Find new ways to relax – Minimize your consumption of television and the Internet. Read an interesting book instead. Or explore a new form of music. Trying out unusual things forces our brain to grow new neural pathways, to expand the power of grasping and understanding knowledge.
5. Exercise Daily – A Cambridge University study found out that jogging just a couple of times a week can lead to the growth of new brain cells in the region linked to the formation and recollection of memories. Meanwhile, scientists have also recently found that particularly vigorous exercise helps release a protein called ‘noggin’, which helps to keep the brain nimble and active as we get older.
6. Sleep and wake up early – Sleep deprivation is a big productivity killer. It not only affects our mental capacity in the short term but also leads to quicker mental or cognitive decline over time. Yet almost all of us are guilty of losing out on sleep. In order to make the best use of the earth’s rhythms, sleep by 10 pm and rise by 6 am. Waking up early not only helps you to make use of the early uninterrupted hours but also enhances your mental clarity.
7. Meditate daily – If you want to understand the world better, you have to understand yourself better. Meditation is the quickest route to self-awareness and understanding. Meditate at least 20 minutes daily, followed by 10 minutes of quiet self-reflection. This alone time is critical for organizing your thoughts and life.
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