I’ve decided to post my list of life goals here, after years of being cagey and secretive about them. My fear has been that people will somehow take advantage of me if these are known. But I’ve found that the more people know about what I’m trying to accomplish, the more ways they find to…
The most important practice that I recommend everyone adopt for their personal productivity is a Weekly Review – a regular reflection on their priorities and goals designed to give them a sense of clarity for the upcoming week. Whether you adopt the Getting Things Done method or something else isn’t important. It doesn’t matter whether you…
In my previous article on how I perform my Annual Review, I briefly discussed the Personal Narrative Vision (PNV) exercise. I’ve developed the PNV by drawing on many other visualization exercises I’ve encountered over the years, synthesizing them into a simple yet profound writing exercise. The PNV is one of the most important but also…
I recently read and took notes on You Need a Budget (YNAB-Affiliate Link), a popular book on personal finance and budgeting (with accompanying software for managing budgets) by Jesse Mecham. My interest in this book is three-fold: I’m terrible at budgeting and need help I want to borrow principles and methods for managing money to help people…
My partner Lauren and I are moving to Mexico City later this year. This post explains why, both to clarify for myself, and to be able to share with others. We’ve been able to identify 5 reasons for why we’re moving. I’ll elaborate on them below, from most to least important. 1. It’s time for…
By Ryan McCarthy of the Global Kindness Initiative You’re a fast runner. You’ve trained for years, worked with great coaches, studied the best techniques and workouts, and you’ve got all the best equipment. You’ve mastered your skill. The field you’re currently running through, however, is extremely foggy. You can barely see more than a few…
There are many practices that have emerged in recent years to accelerate progress at work: daily stand-ups, weekly review meetings, and my favorite – sprints. In this context, a sprint is a set period of time that is dedicated to achieving a goal. Many tech companies have adopted this method in some form based on…
I previously described how the weekly review is an operating system, funneling each bit of information you captured during the week to its proper place. I also described the monthly review as a systems check, periodically making sure your systems are in good working order. Now we’re ready to dive into the annual review, which…
In The Weekly Review is an Operating System, I detailed the process I go through each week to capture any new open loops, clear my workspaces, and nail down the events and commitments for the week. In this article, I’d like to do the same for my Monthly Review (MR). Because the MR touches on…
I’ve become obsessed with coaching. It started in February, when I started the 4-month Self-Expression & Leadership Program at Landmark. I was assigned an accountability group and a coach, who guided me through the process of planning and executing a community service project. That process included learning how to communicate a vision, how to recruit…
It’s not just that I look like Elon Musk— life is just more fun when you have a secret master plan, isn’t it? You may be wondering, what in the world do manufacturing methodologies from the 1970s (which I’ve been writing about here the last few months) have to do with the future of productivity…
Nearly every science-fiction novel seems to agree on one thing: in the future, work will be indistinguishable from art. Such wide agreement suggests that work is far more than a means of income generation. Even in a robot servant utopia, with all our practical needs taken care of, human work will still have a purpose….