How to succeed without being overwhelmed. This involves improving your focus, emotional intelligence and physical sustainability.
Four-minute read
I think this moment will make people think creatively and think ahead
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet (owner of Google and YouTube),
quoted in this week’s Time magazine double issue (April 27-May 4, 2020).
COVID-19 has demolished the hopes, livelihoods and health of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Among the rays of hope are that this crisis would spur innovation. That’s why Sundar Pichai’s words inspired me.
To be honest, these words also depressed me.
Street food vendor in Nanjing, digitally enabled. Photo credit: Mesoy
For this week’s blog, I point you in the direction of my friend Tor Mesoy, who shares his global perspective on the interplay between business, technology and personal productivity improvement. Notice Tor’s inspiring reference to Coachify in the full blog! He is a leadership coach and consultant for Agnus Consulting, of which he is also founder and chairman.
I am always curious about how society is changing. I am interested in understanding change from many examples: what enables it, what catalyzes uptake, what the ramifications are and why it is happening now.
I was recently in Nanjing, China, and was thrilled to observe a keen adopter of FinTech. The street food vendor in the photo above was selling steamed yams and corn. The revenue stream was modest and could not fund much infrastructure of any kind. The stall was homemade and dirt cheap. The vendor had no flyers or other marketing collateral.
Image credit: shutterstock.com | Syda Productions
Even a casual glance at the news will inform us that all is not well with the world. It’s tempting to join the ranks of those who bemoan the woes of our day without lifting a finger to contribute to redeeming the culture around us. But I know that you have a greater sense of purpose and it’s my desire to help you rise to the challenge – and it begins with the man (or woman) in the mirror.
Image credit: shutterstock.com | Max Griboedov
Are you feeling refreshed from the digital detox and now have a clearer sense that your diary reflects your priorities in life? As a follow up to having undertaken the aforementioned exercises, I would like to point you towards one of my most popular posts that focussed on time management.
Sort out your bucket; enjoy the journey!
For this week’s blog, I invited Roger Eaton, Coachify’s Project Manager to write on how his recent experience in reordering his priorities has improved his productivity and reduced his stress levels.
Do you ever get the feeling that you have overcommitted yourself? As a result of your enthusiasm, or perhaps weakness for people-pleasing, you agree to take on more and more responsibility at work, or in your social scene, not to mention maintaining family life.
At the beginning of September, the summer holidays already a distant memory, everything was picking up speed. Working two different jobs, leading a new church in a foreign culture and language, married with two young children and trying to maintain a social life, I was feeling overcommitted! Something had to budge.
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.
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.
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…)
Image credit: shutterstock.com | MaDedee
Last August, I found myself becoming slightly obsessed with my daily food intake. Being the geek that I am, I made the decision to start tracking not just what I was eating, but also other areas of my life to see where I could improve my all-round general health and well being. I decided to track my food intake using MyFitnessPal, my weight and blood pressure using Withings Wifi devices, and my exercise and other metrics using an Apple Watch (see my review here), as well as IFTTT. As a result, I came up with some interesting strategies to improve mental, emotional, physical and spiritual intelligence. What was surprising was that many of these metrics became vastly improved simply just by me measuring them, even before I had implemented any conscious changes.
Image credit: shutterstock.com | macgyverhh
Data analytics is the new secret-weapon for the workplace. Businesses want to create, market and track their products and services accurately and effectively.
Practically, anyone who makes, grows and sells anything can use big data analytics to make their manufacturing and production processes more efficient and their marketing more targeted and cost-effective.
So if companies can use big data to transform their performance, why shouldn’t you and I make better use of our personal data?
(more…)