Blogs and Discussions Best Picks for November/ December

The 10,000 hour rule, one of the cases made in Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book “Outliers: The Story of Success,” is a new perspective on a familiar idea: Expertise requires an extraordinary amount of time and effort, even for the talented and the geniuses among us. In short, the old adage is true: practice indeed makes perfect. The blogs at Harvard Business Publishing and Careerealism used this 10,000 hour rule to make sense of the poor decisions made in rightsizing efforts as well as why college can be insufficient to prepare their graduates for jobs.

Pick the Brain’s post on decision-making in the 21st century makes an interesting point on intuitive decisions and how such decisions are more personally satifying than decisions made by logic alone. In “Here We Go Again,” Lee J. Colan tells us how effective leaders use involvement and focus rather than control and panic to steer their organisations.

One of the pet topics of bloggers in personal effectiveness is learning from one’s failures. In writing about his imperfections, ZenHabits blogger Leo Babauta highlights how his failures have taught him important things about himself. Popular blogger Merlin Mann commented on how many people make the mistake in using “tips and tricks” to get things done – however, unsurprisingly, getting things done is what gets things done.

In a similar vein, Stephen Covey addresses a popular question on which of his habits is the most important of the 7 Habits listed in his timeless classic. His answer: Being proactive, which he states is “the foundation to other habits.”

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My Most Recent Failures And What I’ve Learned

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Most Important Habit?

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Our Top Five Online Discussions Picks

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Productivity Is Dead… Long Live Productivity!

Following a blog post by one of the forum moderators, members contributed their insights to the current state of productivity on the web. What began as a fascination – and perhaps obsession – with David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system, soon turned out to be an unexpectedly challenging journey of self-improvement and at some points, defeat. While some have moved on to other productivity systems that are more suited to them (like Mark Forster’s Do It Tomorrow system), some still use many facets of the GTD system to get things done. However, even those who felt that GTD did not turn out to be effective for them agreed that David Allen did tremendous work to get workers everywhere some form of control and get them moving.

Steve Pavlina’s Forums

Flaws In My Goal To Stop Fighting Myself

Many people would identify with the feeling that the greatest obstacle to success is one’s own self. In this instance, one of the members highlighted an issue that took this to another level: She was struggling with the fact that she had to fight herself to finish anything she wanted to do. Some pointed out that she may have mistakenly believed that nothing was worth fighting for, and some suggested that there was a story and internal dialogue that was tainting her attitude to getting work done. Popular personal development blogger Nick Pagan suggested that the reason she felt that way was due to previously unfulfilled desires and that overcoming this issue required her to deal with the negative emotions that stemmed from those unfulfilled desires.

Getting Everything Done Forums

Converting From GTD To DIT

There has been much discussions about how DIT can replace GTD as the productivity system of choice, the former being claimed by many to be simpler and more elegant than the latter. In response to queries about mixing GTD with DIT, Mark Forster talks to formers about using DIT as an organisational tool and not just as a task management tool. For example, projects can be handled using the “little-and-often” principle over the number of days required to complete the project. The DIT system also facilitates users to be non-selective on the tasks that come from breaking the project down into its respective tasks. Members who have switched from David Allen’s system commented that DIT offered many advantages over GTD, however, some still held on to some good ideas from GTD.

Stephen Covey’s Community

Be Proactive

Covey’s recent blog post on the most important habit echoed many of the ideas that came from a discussion from the community forums. Often, the first and most important step is the hardest to take and many people have stumbled and struggled with it for years. Still, as a precursor to the rest of the 7 habits, people shared about how important it was in their careers and even in something as simple as participating in the discussions.

On another note, many forum members mentioned how inspirational and important the “8th Habit,” Covey’s more recent book on “finding one’s voice and helping others find theirs,” has been in their lives. For them, it incorporates all the previous 7 habits in a new habit that will take them even further

David Allen’s Forums

Fuzzy Edges And Not Untils

What if your next action has a long span of time between the previous action, or worse, if the next action does not have a clear starting time and is affected by many variables? In agricultural situations where your next action is dependent on the unpredictable weather, e.g. waiting for spring to plant seeds, many members suggested using an “agenda” instead of situational contexts to handle the fuzzy tasks. Also, to not miss these long-time horizon tasks, a few members suggested using an application like “Remember The Milk” for tagging and easily locating these tasks for the weekly review.

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