The Art Of Conversation
This guest post was written by Chrissy of Office Arrow.
I’ve noticed recently that a lot people, even those I would consider successful professionals, don’t have very good people skills. This is something I have personally worked on quite a bit in my life. Mostly, I’ve done this because I have a natural tendency to be very introverted. I’ve had to push myself to get out there and socialize. Conversation is a necessary evil when it comes to exchanging ideas in a social setting. And it takes work. I believe it is truly an art. What I’m referring to is different than ‘small talk’. I’m talking about dialogue, a true discussion where ideas are traded; not just the idle chit chat we all use to be polite, or put someone at ease, or fill the silence. Conversation is honest verbal communication and a lot of people are simply awful at it! I wanted to share a few tips I’ve picked up along the way. Hopefully, some of you will find this helpful – or perhaps you can pass it on to someone who needs it.
Organize IT Recap: Paper Based Tools, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Organize IT recap for 18th January 2008
- For some reason the number of comments over the last month has dwindled dramatically. I always enjoy the exchange of thoughts/ideas and while I don’t want this to come across as a plea for everyone to start commenting again, I’m curious to know why people have shied away recently. Let me know what I’m doing wrong and hopefully I can take measures to get you all commentating again!
- I’ve always preferred paper based solutions for organizing my life. I don’t like to spend more time on my computer than necessary. How To Be An Original has done a brilliant analysis of different paper based solutions, including Filofax and the ever popular Moleskine. Very interesting read if you are into those sorts of tools.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger with self improvement advice? Considering he won numerous bodybuilding awards, was one of the highest paid actors in his prime and is now the governor of California, maybe he can teach us a few things. The Positivity Blog details his top five tips.
An Introduction To The Circle Of Life
No, I’m not going to talk about The Lion King! Instead I am going to introduce a common self help tool, called the circle (or wheel) of life. I’ve always found it to be a very clear-cut, visual approach to analyzing how satisfied you are with different areas of your life, something that is not particularly common. Oddly, it’s not a technique that seems to have much explanation on the internet. Hopefully this post (and potentially the mini-series that will follow it) can go some way to clearing that up. Let me know if you try it out out and whether it was useful.
Inspirational Quotes: Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley
Inspirational quotes for 12th January 2008.
False Gods: “We all make mistakes, lad. We need to appreciate them for what they are – lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it’s a fatal mistake of course, but at least someone else can learn from that.”
Rainer Maria Rilke: “There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.“
Aldous Huxley: “Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right.”
Alan Watts: “Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.”
Organize IT Recap: CEO’s Don’t Read GTD
Organize IT recap for 11th January 2008
- I received an email recently about a new email reminding service called 3MindMe. If you are a regular reader, you will probably know that I tend to shy away from hi-fi solutions for organizing myself. However, one thing people can rarely get away from is email so why not incorporate your system into it? If anyone has tried 3MindMe share your thouughts in the comments; the author, David Barrett, is looking for feedback.
- Here are some funny little pictures for all you GTD fans I came across recently. Firstly we have Getting Things Done for the Nintendo DS. Next we have the follow up to the cult book, covering the art of productivity free stress. I’ve already made my order for both.
- Interestingly, despite being written for CEO’s, few of them actually read books like Getting Things Done. In fact, according to research a lot of them instead read fiction, poetry and biographies. You can read more at the Frugal Law Student.