This article was originally published on the FugBugz blog. With the new year just around the corner, we’re entering the season of New Year’s’ Resolutions. Prepare yourself for overcrowded gyms and inspirational Instagram quotes tagged with #bigdreams. If that’s not quite your style, I’d like to introduce you to a very different way of making…
This essay was originally posted on the Ribbonfarm blog. The organizing principle of the modern world is pain. Avoiding it, yes. But also trading in it, taking refuge in it, and using it to justify our actions. Pain has so many uses. Why would you ever give up such a versatile tool? We trade in…
I’m very proud to announce Write of Passage, a new online course on how to accelerate your career by writing online. It is my fifth course and the first one co-created with a partner, David Perell. In the spring of 2017 I appeared as a guest on David’s podcast, the North Star. We had a…
One of the clearest predecessors to the modern practice of Personal Knowledge Management are “commonplace books” – centralized, personally curated, and continuously maintained collections of information from various sources that rose to popularity during the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution in Europe. These books helped educated people cope with the “information explosion” unleashed by the printing…
MESA Co. considers their method not just a problem-solving tool, but an entirely new way of working. As their ambitions have grown, they’ve begun looking toward a future in which this way of conducting work is nothing more than common sense.
In this article, I’ll outline a vision for what the future of work might look like if MESA has its way.
The MESA Method is full of firmly held beliefs and sharp distinctions. To understand why they’re so important, you have to understand where they came from. I recently sat down with Bárbara Soalheiro, the founder and CEO of MESA Co., and Lígia Giatti, her number 2, to try and understand the origins of this new way of working.
In Part 2, I laid out what I believe are the 10 principles that MESA Co. uses to fine-tune the working environment.
But what are they fine-tuning the environment for? Unlocking people’s creative potential.
The open secret of MESA (and other Accelerated Work Experiences) is that, beyond the rules and guidelines and structures, their true purpose is to unlock people’s potential to achieve more than they imagined was possible.
Enter your email here if you’re interested in hearing more about MESA in the future. In Part 1, I described the basics of the team-based work sprint methodology known as MESA. In this article, I’ll take a closer look at the underlying principles that tie together MESA and other kinds of Accelerated Work Experiences (AWEs)….
Once upon a time, we faced the scourge of Information Overload. Too many emails with too many details producing too many open loops to keep track of. But now we have a new challenge: the Information Apocalypse. Not only is there far too much information to consume or manage, much of that information has now…
For years I’ve written on this blog about new ways of working that allow people to bend time, space, and the human mind to their advantage.
How do I have the confidence to believe that a radically new and better way of working is possible?
Writing is its own reward. – Henry Miller The Writing Habit Writing forces you to think. It’s nature’s way of telling you how sloppy your thinking is. The ultimate test of how well you understand something is how clearly you can explain it in writing — clear writers are clear thinkers. As a wise man once said:…
I first came across the idea that great strengths can emerge from great constraints in Ryan Holiday’s book The Obstacle is the Way. He takes a philosophical and historical approach, citing numerous Very Important People in history who used their unique challenges as springboards. I was annoyed by the idea, thinking something along the lines…
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