Give to Yourself, Start Afresh, Be Honest
Blogs and Discussions Best Picks for December
As 2008 draws to a festive close, many will be using the time to catch up with friends and family. Personal development bloggers tell readers to avoid the stress of decreased budgets and festive gift shopping. More importantly, they ask readers to slow down and see the real meaning of the holiday season: Heartfelt giving and loving.
Don’t Forget to Give to Yourself
The holidays are a rare chance to reflect and think back on the past year. The blogs All Things Workplace and Slow Leadership suggest we think about improving personal and organisational leadership, as well as adding value to our job and relationships. The Dumb Little Man blog tells us that the holidays are the best time to ask pertinent questions about what matters in your life, and what you will want to dedicate yourself to doing in the upcoming year. Perhaps it means starting your life afresh by doing something you have never done before and taking the steps to making it reality.
Merlin Mann suggests an important lesson while moving into the new year: As input from work and responsibilities threaten to overwhelm you, be honest about your ability to deal with them. Be it email, instant messaging, or social networking websites, it is crucial to your personal credibility and integrity to be upfront about how much attention people can expect from you.
Similarly, in the Get Everything Done blog, Mark Forster mentioned how a lady taught him a particularly important lesson on how to never say yes unless one could do so wholeheartedly. This could be one of the more important pieces of advice you will need to heed while preparing for 2009.
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Our Top Five Online Discussions Picks
Get Organized Now!
The Supreme Importance Of Being Organized
Members remarked how US president Barack Obama ran one of the most organised campaigns ever. Planning, clear goals, and diligent follow-throughs ensured that every aspect of the campaign was thoroughly and excellently executed. In the words of one of the members, good organisation “reduces the amount of frustration enormously without limiting the goals you set for yourself.” If your goals are worth doing, then it is worth getting organised to make them a reality.
Stephen Covey’s Community
In his book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” Covey mentions forming a personal mission statement. A relevant discussion was started by a member listing the many values that feature in his life, asking others to comment if these values feel more like principles. Reiterating an important point from Stephen Covey, respondents highlighted that values (defined by Covey) are internal and subjective, while principles are universal, timeless and self-evident. This does not mean values are any less important, because they constitute what means the most to a person. Principles serve more as a rule set for being successful and effective no matter where you are and what you want to do.
ZenHabits Forums
Getting a master’s degree appears to be the epitome of a high-priority medium term personal project. It requires immense self-discipline, organisation and planning over several years. This, as many members in the forum would testify, can be draining and dreadful toward the end, especially when faced with a thesis that won’t move forward. A big tip shared by contributors to the thread highlight the importance of breaking the work down into manageable tasks, as well as scheduling daily time slots to work on the thesis.
Facebook GTD Forums
It is an interesting question: Does David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system – or any productivity system for that matter – get a better response from men than ladies? The consensus is that it probably has more to do with one’s career and lifestyle than gender. However, people pointed out a certain “geek” factor to GTD (it is favoured by many IT professionals and people who use computers for work), and males tend to geek out more easily than females, which might explain the better initial reactions toward GTD from men.
Get Everything Done Forums
Important, Urgent Unexpected Tasks In DIT System
Questions on tasks that are important, urgent and unexpected are some of the more frequently asked questions about Do It Tomorrow, a time management system by Mark Forster. The simplicity of the closed-list system of task management does not highlight or clearly manage tasks that need to be urgently completed. Mark Forster’s reply was to put tasks through an urgency “triage” categorising tasks that can either be “immediate,” “same day,” or “everything else.” Mark Forster also announced that he is working on a new task management system that could render these issues obsolete.
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