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AC #192: Planning For Doomsday

AC #192: Planning For Doomsday

We are brilliant at developing permanent solutions to temporary problems. And we waste a lot of productive organizational energy making contingency plans and preparing for the worst rather than aggressively pursuing our work. Do you waste time in your life and creating “planning for doomsday”? If so, how, and what are you going to do about it?

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signal-noise-wide

How Much Noise Is In Your Life?

In sound recording there is something known as the “noise floor”. This is the amount of constant ambient noise in the recording environment or that results as a function of the method of recording. The goal for any recording engineer is to maximize the amount of signal recorded in comparison to the amount of noise. The more noise is present, the more difficult it is to discern the signal, or the subject of the recording [...]

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maze-post

Permanent Solutions To Temporary Problems

It can be very uncomfortable for us when there are open loops, or problems inhibiting productivity. We grow so uncomfortable, in fact, that we often will do nearly anything to resolve the dissonance these problems introduce, which usually means inventing some new system or developing a process to deal with them. But not all problems are equal. Some problems are temporary in nature, and we’re ultimately left with the permanent systems even after the problem is long gone.

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Gaining Traction

My family just returned from a week-long vacation on Lake Erie. It was good to rest and get away from the fray, though anyone with small children will agree that vacations often feel more like packing up your life and moving it to a less convenient place. Still, the break from things like e-mail, the [...]

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AC#191: Chris Guillebeau of The Art Of Nonconformity

AC#191: Chris Guillebeau of The Art Of Nonconformity

In this interview, Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Nonconformity shares insights on community, goals and living life on purpose rather than by default.

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Obligation vs. Opportunity

Think about how you’ve spent your last 24 hours. How much time did you spend on building something rather than on maintaining something that already existed? Most of us spend the majority of our lives in maintenance mode, whether it’s professionally or personally. We are hired to maintain a system that someone else invented, we [...]

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waywereworking

AC #190: Tony Schwartz Interview on “The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working”

In this interview Tony Schwartz, author and CEO of The Energy Project, discusses his new WSJ and NYT best-selling book “The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working” and shares why energy management trumps time management in terms of doing more and better work.

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