Why You Shouldn’t Do New Year’s Resolutions
It’s something of a tradition at this time of year that everyone writes advice about new year’s resolutions. Whether it be on TV, in magazines or on blogs (ahem…), they all seem happy to dish out ill thought advice left, right and center. However I am going to buck this trend and provide a damning indictment of the new year’s resolution. Much of the tips offered are generalized and recycled junk that end up offering nothing practical for the readers. Instead they build up the clean sheet nature of a new year and leave people with a naive optimism about what they can achieve. The result? Badly thought out and totally unrealistic resolutions that are destined to fail. Remember the rule of starting small.
Inspirational Quotes: Norman Vincent Peale, Lin Yutang
Inspirational quotes for 15th December 2007.
Lin Yutang: “A good traveler is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.”
Norman Vincent Peale: “The positive thinker is a hard-headed, tough-minded, and factual realist. He sees all the difficulties clearly… which is more than can be said for the average negative thinker. But he sees more than difficulties, he tries to see the solutions of those difficulties.”
St. Francis de Sales: “How are we to be patient with our partner’s, our children’s, our friends’, and our neighbors’ faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own? They who are fretted by their own failings will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm and peaceful mind.”
Organize IT Recap: Interview With Disney’s CEO, Bad Habits
Organize IT recap for 14th December 2007.
- What better way to learn about productivity in the higher echelons of business than to hear the inside story of Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger? While the article doesn’t go into great detail, it does raise some interesting points, especially about putting history to work.
- In what sounds like quite a refreshing, alternative way of thinking about your work, Steve Pavlina suggests you view yourself as self employed even if you an employee of a company. If you view your work and home lives as separate entities and need a different perspective to revive your career ambitions, this could be it.
- In preparation for a revised look at tracking roles and responsibilities in your life, I posed an open question to all my readers, asking how you go about implementing the approach into your productivity systems. I’m still keen to hear your thoughts so if you haven’t left a comment yet please do!
- Lifehack.org has taken a look at how to quit a bad habit by asking four questions. It poses some very good points including whether you really want to change and if now is the right time to do it. Combined with my post covering how to lay the foundations of habit building, you have a pretty definitive guide on the topic.
How To Regularly Rate Your Performance
Recently I read a great article by Steve Pavlina about moving from a 7 to a 10. This struck a chord with me because if you don’t already know I use a ratings system in my weekly planner to track my performance. I consider using some form of ratings system a key component of any approach, so in this post I thought I would describe the best way for implementing one into your system. If you use a similar system share your experiences in the comments!
Video Of The Week: Office Pirate
What be this voodoo?