Sources of Insight

The best way to become the best at something is to choose that "something" wisely. For example, Scott Adams, creator of one of the most successful cartoons: > Recapping my skill set: I have poor art skills, mediocre business skills, good but not great writing talent, and an early knowledge of the Internet. And I have a good but not great sense of humor. I’m like one big mediocre soup. None of my skills are world-class, but when my mediocre skills are combined, they become a powerful market force. More info here (and in Scott Adams' book): [1] It's like Google AdWords: very difficult to rank highly for one keyword, but possible for a set of three or more related keywords. Adams alludes to the fact you don't have to be the best to succeed; there are alternate roads to success. Another take on this is "relative expertise." You don't have to be the foremost expert on a subject before you can help others; you just need to know more than the person you're helping. [1]: http://sourcesofinsight.com/scott-adams-success-formula/

Very interesting. Here is a nice synopsis of a case studied in the Influencer book about the Carter Center helping to rid Guinea worm infections in several African countries: http://www.joshhunt.com/mail215.htm I have problem accepting your conclusion from your blog:To make the long-term consequences of failing at your goal immediate, you need a bright and painful line. I think it more complex than that, which you alluded to earlier. I am constantly trying to be a better me. Losing money would not be an incentive to me if milestones were not met as you recommended. The book, "Change or Die", talks about Dick Cheney needing a yearly heart bypass and then finally getting $6M/invested in chefs/fitness trainers/doctors/retrofitted planes to change himself (basically to exercise 1 hour a day). This is even before his recent massive weight loss. It also talks about, people with fatal diseases that refuse to take their daily meds as required. Why? I mean it is fatal. They will die. Taking the pill every day made them realize they were dying. Forgetting to do so, made them have a happier less depressing day. I guess quality versus quantity. In this case if the pill was somehow better integrated, so they would not notice it much and reflect so much, they might consistently take it. I also liked this synopsis of take aways from this MS project manager about the Influencer. the Power to Change…

You should clarify what you mean by PM; product and project management are different things. I assume its one of those rather than Programme Management or Prime Minister... ps. a cheatsheet for a famous general management-onboarding book The First 90 Days; while it doesn't specifically address your question a lot of it will apply: https://sourcesofinsight.com/doing-the-first-90-days/

Describing the technique in text would've been helpful https://sourcesofinsight.com/image-streaming/

I remember watching a video about learning a skill in 20 hours. The topic boils down to 4 points that seems fairly straight forward. I can't do it good justice myself so here is a link to those 4 points: https://sourcesofinsight.com/learn-anything-20-hours/ And here is the video itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY

http://sourcesofinsight.com/synthetic-happiness/ Apparently even the seeking isn't necessary

This reminds me of a blog post by Scott Hanselman where he mentioned the Rule of Three [2], which seems like a similar approach to todo lists in that it helps you narrow your focus onto the most important things you need to get done. [1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ProductivityVsGuiltAndSelfLoathing.aspx [2] http://sourcesofinsight.com/the-rule-of-3/

This seems like a useful synopsis of the seminar: http://sourcesofinsight.com/2009/01/14/precision-questions-and-precisi…

The Daily Activity Schedule by psychiatrist Dr. David Burns in his book Feeling Good is the main technique I use, and the current software I use to type it out is OneNote. The main idea is to create a three-column table with the time of day in the left-most column; an hourly schedule as the middle “Prospective” column; and an hourly log of what you actually did in the right-hand “Retrospective” column with a score of 1-5 of how you rate your feelings of “Mastery” or “Pleasure” with the task. The main benefits I’ve found are that I know when my meetings are; I can visualize the time requirements of certain activities on the rest of the schedule (so it’s harder to put a hard task vaguely off until the evening, as it requires a fixed number of blocks); and I can improve motivation of doing challenging tasks (associating the mastery score with enjoyment of completing challenging tasks). The original technique is described in Burns’s book “Feeling Good,” and a summary found via Google search is here (visualization of the table is at the bottom of the article) [0]. I found OneNote better than Excel for implementing this, as the application feels easier to use for quick reference and edits (the table opens up in large font, without needing to Zoom in for Excel as not too many cells are used). I keep copies of past schedules in Excel though, in case I want to analyze it in the future. For capturing tasks, I use Things 3 for to-dos and Google Calendar for events. I actually did…

The ultimate "hack" is to hack your own brain. It's how the metaphorical man riding the elephant [1] gets the most mileage out of his efforts, figuring out how to manipulate the elephant any way necessary. The intelligent, rational part of the brain sneers derisively at the invisible mask. It's obviously not there. It obviously can't do anything. It is, in its own way, entirely correct. Yet the elephant does not think that way, and to it, the mask is there and effective, and in its own way, it too is entirely correct. This is how you break bad habits, make good habits, deal with procrastination, and any number of other life goals the rider may find desirable. You don't just sit there futilely trying to kick the elephant harder directly in the direction you want to go; you figure out how to lead it to want what you want it to want. The rider has an immense amount of control, once the rider embraces how little control the rider has. (At least for a while, one of the YCombinator entrance questions was to describe a time you hacked a system or something. I think if I were ever to apply, I'd pull my answer from this. One of my biggest personal ones is just telling myself "Look, literally millions of other people have done this (in some cases billions), surely I can manage too?" Is, for example, the first day of college scary in some ways? Sure. But how hard can it really be? An awful lot of people make it through the first day.) [1]:…