Category Archives: Being soulful

The antidote if you fear falling out of favour. How to build and maintain a strong positive mindset to power your work and your life, and how to maintain a high level of focus on the things that matter most to you

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Do a Digital Detox

Image credit: Ariel Dovas

Image credit: Ariel Dovas

Just after Dana Hanna took a solemn vow to love and cherish his new wife for the rest of his life, he took out his phone, updated his relationship status on Facebook and tweeted a wedding announcement.

These are unprecedented times. As a society, we are hurtling headlong towards ever greater digital dependence, and there’s no road map. The embedding of technology in our bodies is not far off, but for the time being, we can keep our smartphones and other devices constantly at hand, and be online at any time of day or night.

The advantages to this are clear and multiple – we’re connected, informed, challenged and entertained like never before. Our voices can have a reach unimaginable to our forebears. Accessing the thoughts of the world’s most original thinkers, starting innovative new businesses and finding the answer to almost any question in seconds is now commonplace.

But, as we know, this comes at a cost.

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How to improve productivity with design thinking

Your new approach to greater productivity (part 5/5)

Image credit: shutterstock.com | T.Dallas

Image credit: shutterstock.com | T.Dallas

Design thinking is all the rage.  From IBM to AirBnB, to reaching the cover of Harvard Business Review last year, companies are embracing a design-based way of thinking. Design thinking is here to stay and it can improve your productivity. This 5-part series will help you understand and apply design thinking personally and in your organisation.

So how can you implement design thinking into your context?

To become a design thinking leader, you must develop the right stance, tools, experiences and team.

This will not be a seamless journey. I failed several times before starting Coachify and I have failed several times since. I am reminded of Michael Jordan, who said: “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Here are the four elements of success.

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How to improve productivity with design thinking

Coachify case study - (part 4/5)

Image credit: shutterstock.com | macgyverhh

Image credit: shutterstock.com | macgyverhh

Design thinking is all the rage.  From IBM to AirBnB, to reaching the cover of Harvard Business Review last year, companies are embracing a design-based way of thinking. Design thinking is here to stay and it can improve your productivity. This 5-part series will help you understand and apply design thinking personally and in your organisation.

Whilst design thinking may seem like a new approach, in reality, it has always been there. It turns out that Coachify is a design thinking firm too. In this post I show how we used Design Thinking to give birth to and nurture Coachify. (more…)

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8 ways to stop being an email responder and resume being human

You don’t understand the pressure I’m under to respond to people right away. It never stops. I have to answer 150 e-mails every day. I feel like my job title should be something like ‘email responder’ rather than vice president for strategy. I just have to react and work my way through the list; I don’t have time to think. In fact, all the e-mails are an excuse not to think
– (The Empathic Enterprise, Mark Brown, p78)

Merchant Trask Press (June 2016)

I found this quotation hugely inspirational when I read it in Mark Brown’s book, reviewed here. I sometimes find myself in ’email responder’ mode and I have recently booked onto a training programme called “Time To Think”, that relates to the quotation. The book “Time To Think” by Nancy Kline, is an excellent book I have read in the last year, and has transformed the way I coach others.

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Prayer, meditation and wearable tech

Image credit: shutterstock.com | Milles Studio

In May this year, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks delivered an excellent reflection on BBC Radio 4’s Thought For The Day, entitled ‘Prayer, meditation and ritual are fitness trackers for the soul’. His message was timely, pointing out how new technology can remind us of ancient wisdom of enduring importance.
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Align what you do with what you value

Image credit: shutterstock.com | Billion Photos

It is so easy for what we do to become disconnected from what we value. Whether for financial, family, or other reasons, we can often make decisions that take us away from the things that are most fundamental to who we are – our purpose and values.

Here’s an exercise I use with my clients to help them examine their values and look at what they’re currently doing against them. Perhaps you might find it useful too.

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4 tips to sleep soundly

Image source: shutterstock.com | www.BillionPhotos.com

There’s a lot of advice out there about sleep. So much, in fact, that it would be easy to be kept awake at night worrying about whether we’re doing all of the right things!

Seeing as you’re busy and you don’t have time to compile all of this different advice, I’ve done the hard work for you. Here are my four tips to help you get a great night’s sleep.

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What’s my purpose?

Image credit: shutterstock.com | David Carillet

Do you ever wonder what your purpose in life is? Countless people don’t, and may well consider it something unimportant (what difference does it make?) or unattainable (can I really ever know?). I want to tell you it is important, and it is attainable! Here’s an exercise I use with my clients to help them discover what their purpose in life is.

Go for a walk for an hour, preferably somewhere beautiful like a park. Reflect on the following three questions in order:

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5 tips to tame technology

Image credit: shutterstock.com | wavebreakmedia

Personal technology has the potential to make us more productive than ever before. I’m convinced that wearables can supercharge your personal performance, and we’re only at the beginning of figuring out what these new devices and apps are going to mean for us.

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Blue light spells danger

man awake on phone blue light disturbing his sleep

Image source: shutterstock.com | Marcos Mesa Sam Wordley

These days we’re surrounded by screens. Whether it’s our laptops, our tablets, or our phones, we’re looking at screens for huge proportions of our day. And they’re no longer exclusively used at work, having come to dominate our leisure time as well.

None of that will come as a surprise. However, did you know that these screens are usually tinted blue? And that research has shown time and time again that blue light stops us from getting a good night’s sleep?

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