The men in the blogosphere have been quite brilliant lately. Here’s some really great stuff I’ve read in the past week.
Tim Ferriss outlines seven ways to deal with hateration in your career. I like this one the best:
“Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.” (Colin Powell)
“If you treat everyone the same and respond to everyone by apologizing or agreeing, you’re not going to be recognizing the best performers, and you’re not going to be improving the worst performers,” Ferriss says. “That guarantees you’ll get more behavior you don’t want and less you do.” That doesn’t mean never respond, Ferriss goes on to say, but be “tactical and strategic” when you do.
Jonathan Fields describes what can happen when you get to the point where you’ve established a really good reputation: personal branding hell. Yeah, that’s about where I’m at right now. Good thing Jonathan gives some great insight on how to deal with it.
Building a strong personal brand—being known as the go-to person in a specific niche—has it’s ups. Everyone turns to you for information, for ideas, for thought leadership, for advice, for strategy, for connections, for presentations, for favors, for opportunities, for jobs, for partnerships, for salvation.
But, if the way to choose to leverage your personal brand is to trade time for money…
You may well have just built a personal brand that feels more like a cage than a stage.
Because, there are only so many hours you can bill for, so many planes you can get on, so many individual conversations you can have before you…and your life…implode. Especially if you’ve also got a family you actually want to see, friends you love to be around, other activities, passions and hobbies you love to engage in and a commitment to taking care of your body and your mind.
David Turnbull tells us how to design your perfect day. One tip? Be insanely specific.
You can’t be too specific when designing your perfect average day. It’s impossible. Once you’ve rushed through the exercise go back and add details to each element.
For example, say you’ve written that you want to “wake up at 6am” and then “have breakfast” ask yourself these questions, and then write the answers down:
- Is anyone beside you when you wake up? What is your bed like? Are you doused with sunlight?
- What do you want for breakfast? Who do you eat it with? Or do you eat it by yourself?
Reverse engineer all the elements of your day in the same way. With this extreme specificity you’re able to clearly visualize what it is you exactly what, and in turn you’re motivated by this burning desire to transform this possibility into a reality.
