Archive for the ‘insights’ Category

Whenever possible, your preferred communication method should be email, chat, or social media. No phone calls, no meetings. In other words, use “passive” communication methods.

You see, when you’re on a phone call or meet with people, everyone involved is “stuck”. You can’t take your time to reply, think about what you want to say properly, do some research, or prioritize.

A phone call or meeting interrupts your work flow, disturbs your focus, and puts you in a position where you have less control over your time and resources.

You can choose to get off your email while you’re working, ignore chat windows, etc… When using passive communication methods you can prioritize and decide what requires your attention more urgently and what doesn’t matter as much.

Passive communication methods are more respectful of people’s time and priorities. They’re also usually much more efficient – people tend to be more concise, precise, and effective when they have to write things down.

You can also keep track of your conversations and exchanges and refer back to them down the road.

Of course don’t apply this to your personal life .

Some related posts in this Productivity Tips series:

• Focus on the next step
• Work when you’re productive

I talked in the past about how ideas are worthless (it’s the execution that matters).

I also shared how at the time Noam Design was a web design company we got so many inquires from people with “great ideas” who never do anything with them (not to mention the guys who want to sign an NDA).

More recently I’ve talked about how “innovative” ideas are usually just more of the same.

Don’t talk it to death. Just do it.

Now do yourself a favor – if you have an idea or a project or something you want to do in life, please – don’t talk it to death. Just do it. (more…)

It’s easy to forget what our true ambitions are. Especially when we’re hard at work either focused on the daily tasks or rushing to get to that “next step”.

Sometimes we’re so deep into whatever it is we’re doing that we forget we even had ambitions. You know, the “when I grow up” type of ambitions. The “this is how I want to live my life” type of ambitions. (more…)

It’s funny how after you start thinking about something you often start seeing it and hearing about it everywhere. Like an art you’ve never heard of until one day you discover it and from that day on it seems like you never stop hearing about it and seeing it almost every where you go.

For a while you simply pay more attention to something you were before overlooking or ignoring.

Over the last few years, I spent a lot of energy thinking about my business strategy and direction. But the last couple of months have been particularly intense for me, not giving me time to sit back and reflect much. A few days ago I realized I haven’t been paying enough attention to where I was going.

And now it seems that everything I do, read, or hear is related to “where I’m going with my business”! This morning I stumbled upon this: (more…)

I think we achieve very little alone so it’s imperative to join forces and energy with other people. You need to involve co-workers, teammates, people in your field (collaboration), friends & family (sharing), and the world (publishing).

In sports, collaboration is usually in-person. Professional tennis players or runners have an entire team of people training with them. They “collaborate” with training partners, share their efforts with friends and family, and they eventually “publish” their results when they go out to compete. (more…)

How is it that everybody drop their new year resolution by February? Because our resolutions are usually too vague and abstract to remain sustainable. If you want to reach the top of the mountain – you’ve got to forget about the top of the mountain and focus on the next step you need to take. Every journey, long or short, starts with one small step – and the entire journey is made of a continuity of small steps. (more…)

“Goal” is a broad term. But it’s something you want to achieve – a specific state or a result or whatever. Anything in life that’s valuable to you can be defined as a goal. For example it can be “quit smoking” or “be fit” or “make my business reach $1 million per year” – etc…

The very first step towards achieving anything in life is realizing you want to get there. You don’t go on a hike if you don’t want to climb the mountain and get to the top. Once you’ve discovered you have a goal – you need to commit to it in some way or another. Writing it down somewhere is one way.

So committing to a goal is the very first step – with the prerequisite that you realize you have a goal of course . (more…)

One of the main things I’ve come to realize about getting things done and optimizing my creativity is that organization doesn’t help. To the contrary – it kinda gets in the way. You get so focused on keeping track of everything and being on top of your projects that you lose the flexibility and “looseness” that’s necessary for creativity to flow. You’ve got to let go of the illusion that you’re in control and embrace the uncertainty that’s part of any project in life.

Same with planning. Planning really is guessing and it’s totally useless. Like organization, planning kills creativity, motivation, and productivity. (more…)

Before you start spending time on something, ask yourself if that’s going to make a difference for your business. Are you sure you really need to worry about this right now? (more…)

Wanting to start a business that will provide everything you can possibly imagine in a given field is bound to failure. Don’t try to be everything to everybody. That won’t work. But if you can just offer one thing relevant to a small group of people – then you have the base to succeed.

One of the most common mistakes I hear all the time is wanting to build an “all inclusive” type of business.

What’s really interesting to me is to see the exact same misconceptions and mistakes so widely spread. Literally anyone who ever talked to me about starting a new business has had a similar approach. No wonder most businesses fail within the first year!

I also always hear the same examples: Amazon, Google, or some other giant! You can’t start a business trying to mimic companies that have matured over 10 years and became huge because of a myriad of reasons. (more…)