“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
Good word. And a concept worth pondering: “intelligent fool.”
Obscurity is not a Mark of Profundity
From If Aristotle Ran General Motors:
Some of the greatest wisdom in life is simple, but it is both profound and practical. Obscurity is not a mark of profundity, however many confused writers have hoped to bully us into believing otherwise. The medieval philosopher William of Ockham was right in his belief that we should never trust an answer less simple than one that will do the job perfectly well.
Knowledge Workers are Paid to be Effective, Not Work 9-5
A good quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt:
Knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5.
The quote is from Andy Crouch’s culture making blog. The post itself contains an interesting comparison between Saddleback Church’s campus and Google’s headquarters as an expression of the overarching role of culture in shaping architecture.
The Proverbs 16 Planner
The Resurgence has a helpful post on the importance of planning. There are three types of people when it comes to planning: the non-planner, the solo planner who leaves God out of the picture, and the Proverbs 16 planner who makes plans in dependence on God.
You Don’t Have to be Busy
Productivity is not first about getting a lot of things done, but about getting the right things done.
If you are getting the right things done, you don’t necessarily have to be doing a large number of things.
In other words, you don’t have to be busy in order to be effective.
So don’t measure your effectiveness by how much you are able to do, but rather by what you do.
And, ironically, if you focus on the quantity of things you do, you will most likely fail to identify and execute on the things that are most important — that is, on the right things.
The First Step Toward Effectiveness
Peter Drucker:
The first step toward effectiveness is to decide what are the right things to do. Efficiency, which is doing things right, is irrelevant until you work on the right things. Decide your priorities, where to concentrate.
Work within your strengths. The road to effectiveness is not to mimic the behavior of the successful boss you so admire, or to follow the program of a book (even mine). You can only be effective by working with your own set of strengths, a set of strengths that are as distinctive as your fingerprints. Your job is to make effective what you have — not what you don’t have. (From Managing the Nonprofit Organization, 198.)
The Essence of Time Management in One Paragraph
Stephen Covey pulls together the essence of time management into four sentences:
The essence of time management is to set priorities and then to organize and execute around them. Setting priorities requires us to think carefully and clearly about values, about ultimate concerns. These then have to be translated into long- and short- term goals and plans translated once more into schedules or time slots. Then, unless something more important — not something more urgent — comes along, we must discipline ourselves to do as we planned. (From Principle Centered Leadership, p 138.)
9 Productivity Practices in one Paragraph
This is an excellent, dense summary of some key productivity practices from Stephen Covey’s Principle Centered Leadership. I count 9 practices here:
Highly effective people carry their agenda with them. Their schedule is their servant, not their master. They organize weekly, adapt daily. However, they are not capricious in changing their plan. They exercise discipline and concentration and do not submit to moods and circumstances. They schedule blocks of prime time for important planning, projects, and creative work. They work on less important and less demanding activities when their fatigue level is higher. They avoid handling paper [and email!] more than once and avoid touching paperwork [and email!] unless they plan on taking action on it.
Why Being Organized Matters
Being organized matters because it reduces the friction in getting things done.
In other words:
Most people act when it’s easy to do so. The better organized you are, the easier it is to act and the greater the tendency for you to do those things that should be done when they should be done, whether you like to or not. (The Personal Efficiency Program: How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed and Win Back Control of Your Work, p 4.)
The Secret of those Who Do So Many Things
From The Effective Executive:
This is the “secret” of those people who “do so many things” and apparently so many difficult things. They do only one at a time. As a result, they need much less time in the end than the rest of us.
That last sentence is critical: “as a result, they need much less time in the end than the rest of us.”