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Reading List: Eat at Frog

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Eat That Frog

by Brian Tracy

Why read this book? Written by the international best-selling author and leader in professional development, Eat at Frog will help you jump- start your professional development (or any other task in your work) with twenty-one proven methods and techniques. These methods are integral to accelerating your career: #7 Focus on Key Result Areas, #10 Take It One Oil Barrel at a Time, #11 Upgrade Your Skills, #13 Identify Your Key Constraints, #21 Single Hand Every Task.

Reading List: Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment

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Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment

by George Leonard

Why read this book? This book is a bit esoteric, but I’ve included it here because “practice” and “mastery” are at the core of accelerating your career experience. I first learned of Leonard’s book through my own Aikido practice and really admire his Yoda-like lessons. These lessons transcend career and include all aspects of life.

Developing Your Professional Relationships: The Key to Your Professional Success
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Developing your own professional network will lead to more success than almost anything else you do in your career.

Developing relationships with people who want to and are able to help you is a worthwhile investment of your time and resources. These are the people who will help when you need it most. is is a long-term investment of your time in building relationships with other people. Your professional network will be developed and maintained over your entire career.

Your professional network will be developed and maintained over your entire career. Actively participate in your network and help others, as you would like others to help you. Maintain these business relationships in good times and bad—while you are fully employed, unemployed, or in between. A strong professional network is as valuable to a  first-year employee as it is to the CEO. It is as important to someone working in a tech start-up in Silicon Valley as it is to the person teaching elementary school. Developing your own professional network will lead to more success than almost anything else you do in your career. It is the key to your professional success.

How I Emptied My Email Inbox?

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In the first part of the this blog post, I discussed the very real and growing problems that are a result of the increasing volume of email.  In this post, I will tell outline the simple process that I use to empty my email box each week.

The important thing to remember is that there is not one method that will work for everyone.  The way you use email for your work is a function of many things including your job function, your colleagues, your managers and customers or clients, therefore, the solution for emptying your email box on a regular basis will vary.

This is how I approach the task. Read more

One thing at a Time

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This is a natural follow up to my post last week, Focus on Focus.  Tony Schwartz‘s post on the Harvard Business Review blog challenges the common practice of multitasking and claims that we are more effective and efficient when we focus. Schwartz estimates we a task takes an average of 25% more time when we divide our attention and the drain on our energy levels are even more costly.  Schwartz offers suggestions for both managers and individual contributors:

For managers:

  1. Maintain meeting discipline.
  2. Stop demanding or expecting instant responsiveness at every moment of the day.
  3. Encourage renewal.

For individual contributors:

  1. Do the most important thing first in the morning.
  2. Establish regular, scheduled times to think more long term, creatively, or strategically.
  3. Take real and regular vacations.

Focus on Focus

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Harvard Business Review wordmark

Harvard Business Review wordmark (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Peter Bregman, author of 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done, has written two outstanding articles for Harvard Business Review | HBR.org which focus on, well. . . focus.  New professionals and CEOs will benefit alike.  After implementing these habits, you will gain laser-like focus in as little as 10 minutes per day.

In Two Lists You Should Look At Every Morning, Bregman recommends creating two lists: 1) Your Focus List; and 2) Your Ignore List and reviewing them every morning.  These are not to do lists, but rather major areas of focus for your life and serve as a guide when deciding how you spend your time each day– “because time is your one limited resource and no matter how hard you try you can’t work 25/8” as Bregman notes.

In The Best Way to Use the Last Five Minutes of Your Day, Bregman recommends reserving Read more