Forcast your Future
Jim McGee writes about a speech by Paul Saffo. In the speech, Saffo shared his rules for forcasting the future. Though I won’t pretend to understand the meat of Jim’s post — or Saffo’s speach, for that matter — these rules are worth remembering the next time you need to predict the future in your business or your life:
Rule 1. Know when not to make a forecast.
Rule 2. Overnight successes come out of twenty years of failure.
Rule 3. Look back twice as far as forward.
Rule 4. Hunt for prodromes.
Rule 5. Be indifferent.
Rule 6. Tell a story or, better, draw a map.
Rule 7. Prove yourself wrong.
Technorati Tags: forcasting, predictions, paul+saffo, jim+mcgee
If you want a serious meeting, hand out toys.
Kirsten Osolind, back to blogging at Re:Invention, offers several guidelines for team meetings. Some good stuff, and my favorite is the title of this post. Welcome back to blogging, Kirsten!
Technorati Tags: facilitation, meetings, fun
Count the Days by Counting Cards
Here are a few great planning and productivity tips from Eric Maisel, via this post on Worthwhile:
Get seven decks of cards with similar backs. Lay out all seven decks on your living room rug, backs showing. This is a year of days (give or take). Let the magnitude of a year sink in. Experience this wonderful availability of time. (This is a powerful exercise.)
Carefully count the number of days between two widely-separated holidays, for instance New Year's Day and the Fourth of July. Envision starting a large project on that first holiday (today!) and completing it by the second.
I wish I’d heard about the decks of cards exercise when I was mediating family law cases. It seems like a great way to convey the healing power of time, or to help couples work out their division of custody (he gets red cards, she gets black, or vice versa).
Technorati Tags: productivity, mediation
Wanna Love a Lawyer?
I know, as a married guy, I’m a bit out of touch with the dating scene, but is there an audience for this? From the website:
Lawyers in Love is the best place to meet successful, brainy lawyers, law students, and other legal professionals for friendship, dating, fun, romance and companionship. If your schedule makes it difficult for you to meet people, if you are still working during happy hours and other social events, if weekends are devoted to writing briefs, you will love this unique opportunity to find romance on the Web.
Lisa's Daily Practice
Lisa Haneberg is starting up her 2 Weeks 2 a Breakthrough coaching program again. She requires her students to do this “Daily Practice” everyday:
Each day:
- Tell two people about your goal.
- Take two actions that support your goal.
- Make two requests that support your goal.
It is a bit late to include this in my resolution series, but think about how it could help you get off to a great 2006.
And the second correct answer is ...
Interesting advice: Look for the second right answer.
Holiday Gift Tips
OK, I know it may be a bit late for this year, but before your Aunt Hilda starts crocheting next year’s Christmas gift, discretely pass her a link to this site.
Keep the Change for Charity
I love this idea from Bank of America. According to the website:
Every time you buy something with a Bank of America Visa® debit card, we'll round up your purchase to the nearest dollar amount and transfer the difference from your checking to your savings account free of charge. Because every bag of groceries, every coffee and every tank of gas adds up to more savings for you.
Now, all that’s missing is an option to donate the balance to charity.
Business Book Reading the Five by Five way.
Though nobody ever accused me of not having enough ideas (I’ll write a post on Idea Surplus Disorder soon), I’ve found a way to have even more:
Every day, I grab five business books off of my bookshelf and set aside 45 minutes or so. Then I read a chapter (chosen at random) from each. Though I’ve never been able to re-read books once I’ve completed them, I find that the short burst of cool ideas from five different authors really gets my creative juices flowing.
I’d love to know if works for you.
BaseCamp for Lawyers?
One of the things I want to talk about at BlawgThink is using new technologies, particularly the cool Web 2.0 applications (including blogs), in law firms. I’ve been a big user of BaseCamp for quite some time, using it to manage LexThink personal projects. Here’s a neat tutorial about how to use it for time tracking. I don’t expect law firms to trust their time keeping to the folks at 37 signals just yet, but the idea is certainly interesting.
Be a better entrepreneur.
Entrepreneur.com offers these 100 Ways to be a Better Entrepreneur. Great read.
BubbleMapping your To-Do List
I really like this idea for using a “Bubble Map” for a To-Do list. Now, if I could combine the bubble list with some bubble wrap so I’d get a satisfying “pop” everytime I finished a task.
Law Schools, Meet Art Schools. Art Schools, Meet Law Schools
J.D. Jordan writes a great piece in Newsweek titled, I’m an Artist, but not the Starving Kind. In it, he takes on the lack of practical business education in America’s law art schools. Some excerpts:
In my small, windowless classroom, in front of a baker's dozen of powerful G5 computers that line the walls, sit tomorrow's crop of great graphic designers, illustrators, filmmakers and animators. But despite their skills, their burgeoning individual styles and their unlimited creativity, they are crippled by the narrow focus of their education.
…
What about creative business and copyright law? What about intellectual rights and business ethics? For that matter, what about basic history or civics? In a field largely defined by individual inspiration and accomplishment, where is the foundation for personal and financial success? Perhaps in an attempt to compensate for public schools which have stripped their curricula of arts education, art schools have left their graduates unprepared for the real world.
…
But what can one professor do? These kids should have to take business education as a freshman requirement to learn how to manage their artistic enterprises before their enthusiasm sweeps them into a depreciated marketplace.
How prevalent is this problem in “professional” schools?
The Printable Partner - For Solos?
David Seah introduces his Printable CEO (remixed here), that he developed to help him in his solo business:
What I need is executive focus from a leader that understands how to grow my business, a manager that knows how to motivate me. I once read that the most effective executives ask themselves a simple question: What can I do to add value to the company? If the task at hand doesn’t add value, then screw it! Do something else that does!
Hiring my own personal CEO would be great, but who has the time and money to do an executive search? I’ve got MP3s to sort! So I did the next best thing: I designed a printable form to motivate my business development activities.
I really like this idea. Keeping track of billable time is one thing, but David’s idea forces you to keep track of business-building time as well — all with an easy scoring system. Simply brilliant.
Can You Bill that Power Nap to a File?
I’ve been playing around with Pzizz, a piece of napping software that “combines several different proven techniques to give you the most refreshing and revitalizing ‘nap’ possible.” You download the software (it comes with a free trial) to your Mac or PC, select the type and length of nap you want to take, and then Pzizz:
delivers literally billions of different combinations of suggestions through the structured language patterns and the sounds that encourage the subconscious not only to relax but also to focus and energize both the body and the mind. unique combination of music and suggestions.
It sounds crazy, but if you want a short nap to kickstart your afternoon, it really seems to work. I’ve noticed a difference in my energy after a 20 minute Pzizz nap vs. a normal one. Though I can’t tell if my desire to purchase the program stems from how much I like to nap, or subliminal suggestions from the program, I give Pzizz strong five Z’s.
Because you can download the naps onto an iPod, I can’t wait to try it with my Etymotic 6i headphones on my next plane ride.
Worker Blind for Big Law Associates
A few years ago, I visited one of my law school classmates at his BigLaw job in Chicago. When we ducked out for happy hour, he threw his coat over his chair, turned on his desk lamp, and opened a book on his desk so anyone who stopped by would think he was still working, but had just stepped out for a few minutes. If he’d only had this. Thanks to B2Day for the link.
What if I want to get to 11?
Steve Pavlina has another thought-provoking personal improvement post titled How to Get From a 7 to a 10. Steve opines on what it takes to make meaningful changes in your life and overcome personal or career stagnation. I liked this quote the best:
In physics terms I’m saying that what matters is not your position but your velocity. Velocity is a vector which has both a direction and a speed. Where you’re headed and how quickly is more important than where you are.