- Recent
- Popular
- Tags (1)
- Subscribers (25)
- How do you treat life as an experiment?Yesterday
-
The true method of knowledge is experiment. -- William Blake [1]
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
In my last post I mentioned our book project Think, Try, Learn: A Scientific Method for Discovering Happiness, and how it is central to my thinking and personal brand. The more I talk with people about this perspective (looking at everything in life as a scientific experiment), the more excited I am about it; there's something really good here. As I wrote in The Real Reasons For The Modern Productivity Movement, I think the timing is right. We need a personal modern method for making our way in the world - for sensemaking [2] - that benefits from 400 years of developing techniques that, as Richard Feynman put it [3], protects us from fooling ourselve
- A Matt UpdateNovember 20
-
Much going on here in Matt land, so a little update for you. These all focus on how I can help more people, more broadly. Suggestions and feedback welcome!
- Matt brand: I'm finally getting some clarity on my bigger vision, and how it encompasses productivity. It's still emerging, but it's around providing guidance, tools, and methods for enhancing intellectual performance and happiness. (Related: Genius, Purpose, And Cool Job Descriptions - What Are *you* Built To Do?)
- Life as an experiment: Absolutely central to my work is the idea of treating everything in life as an experiment. This is what's emerged since my big leap into consulting (see Commitment Time!). My plan is to own this idea :-) In addition to our book, our plans include discussion groups, podcasts, and more. (Related: Just for fun I've included the essential words [1] my colleague and I came up with that make up the approach.)
- Blog: I'll continue to write weekly essays, while expanding the them to match my original "IdeaMatt" direction: Tools and ideas for the terminally curious [2]. I'll be migrating some of this to my new newsletter and others to products (see below), but still giving away lots of content I hope y
- Custom workflows for knowledge workersNovember 12
-
Knowledge work tends to be unstructured. Specifying a detailed flow of work is sometimes possible, but is probably not the best way to improve a knowledge work process.
This passage comes from Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performances And Results from Knowledge Workers, a stimulating [1] read about my "peeps" (i.e., you) and what the highly overused term means. When I read it I thought: That can't be right! Heck, teaching structure (for self-management) is what I do for a living. But after a few seconds of thought I recalled exceptions from my consulting that I'd like to share.
Introduction
When I work with clients I look for opportunities to integrate the general methods I teach with their specific work. When I identify them, we jointly come up with customized systems that work for them. I love this kind of work because it requires creativity, and really streamlines their work. This allows them to think less about mechanics and more about the important stuff - getting insights into the customer's needs, hiring the best person, solving a tough engineering problem, or dreaming up the Next Big Thing for the business.
As Davenport points out, not all jobs are amenable to this kind of analysis, but there a
- Induced personality disorder, or: I tried it, but I'm not proud of itNovember 6
-
(Update: The title should more accurately read "Induced personality disorder, or: I tried it, but I'm not proud of it I didn't like it.")
As part of my continuing development of the power of treating everything in life as a personal experiment [1], I applied recently the idea to marketing my consulting business. In spite of Richard Koch's admonition in The 80/20 Principle to be "unconventional and eccentric in your use of time," I decided (with tracking [2], of course) to try conventional (and reasonable) approaches including:
- Visualizing my ideal client,
- Creating a clear value proposition,
- Focusing on a specific industry (indeed specific companies in it),
- Tapping my network to get leads,
- Making warm calls (I now prefer "cool (as in not warm) calls"), and generally
- Studying marketing workbooks
- Simple project planning for individuals: A round-upOctober 31
-
This is my one of my favorite kinds of posts:
- I've been asked for help by a client,
- I really want to know the answer, and
- I need to write a blog post!
And as you know, I love pulling these kinds of things together. (Side note: What if every action you took during the day accomplished multiple objectives like this? We need a name different from "killing two birds..." Anything pithy [1] come to mind?)
I'll do two things. First, I'll present the common elements of (i.e., my take on) the approaches I looked at. Second, I'll provide my lightly-edited notes from the sources, for those who are interested. There are some good ideas there.
Questions I'd love to hear your answers to:
- What's omitted here?
- What's superfluous?
- What approach do you use?
- How is it different from these?
- What's the largest project you've planned out?
- How much planning do most of your projects take?
- How do you guarantee learning from projects?
- How does your work integrate with others, including sophisticated project management software?
- Has anyone read Managing Mu