I'm amazed at how much time people are willing to spend driving around a parking lot looking for a space to park. I'm not talking about places where it is snowing and there are only limited slots in covered parking. I'm talking about the people who will drive around the lot for 15 minutes trying to avoid a 2 minute walk from the empty spaces just beyond the spots everyone is fighting for. In this post, I want to talk about optimal parking strategies, because people seem to waste so much time on the activity. But first a story: I knew someone who would occasionally go to the mall around Christmas. He would walk toward a car in the prime parking spot and invariably be followed by a … [Read more...] about Parking Strategies
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Powerful Presentations
I recently gave a presentation at a business. After the presentation, I was waiting for my plane at the airport when I ran into the president of the company and his teenage daughter. We talked briefly about what their company was wanting to do. Then he said, "You have a very engaging presentation style." He then turned to his daughter and said, "You would have really enjoyed hearing Mark talk." Now that is a pretty significant compliment, in my opinion. It is often hard enough to get businesspeople to sit through a presentation. If the president actually thought a high school student would have enjoyed it, I must be doing something right. Here are some of the principles I try to … [Read more...] about Powerful Presentations
9 Tips for Effective Meetings
Meetings can be one of the biggest time drains for you as an individual and for a business. A meeting with 7 people all making $20 per hour costs a business $140 per hour. If it is a once-per-week meeting and there are 15 minutes wasted at each meeting, the total yearly waste comes to over $1,800. I don't know about you, but a one hour meeting with only 15 minutes wasted is actually a pretty good meeting, in my experience. Half of a meeting being wasted is more par for the course, and entire meetings that are unproductive is fairly common. Here are some ways you can facilitate more effective meetings and hopefully get more done in less time. 1. Make people show up on time If people … [Read more...] about 9 Tips for Effective Meetings
Business Leadership Article
Glen Stansberry wrote a nice article on 10 Examples of Tremendous Business Leadership on Open Forum. It is well worth a read if you are in any type of leadership position. … [Read more...] about Business Leadership Article
The Happiness Project Book
The Happiness Project : Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun chronicles Gretchen Rubin's year long project to see if she could increase the amount of happiness in her life. The book blends her personal narrative with facts from her research into a wonderfully fulfilling read. The book is truly brilliant and I highly recommend it. At the beginning of the book, Gretchen formulates her "Secrets of Adulthood" that she uses to help ground her project. Here are a few: People don't notice your mistakes as much as you think. It's important to be nice to everyone. If you're not failing, you're not … [Read more...] about The Happiness Project Book
Removing Distracting Sounds
A single interruption of only a few seconds can cost you 15 minutes of your day. When you get distracted from concentrating, it takes up to 15 minutes to get back to where you were before the distraction. Our ambient sounds help reduce the amount of noise distractions in your workplace. Don't forget, they are still on sale at a greatly reduced rate. … [Read more...] about Removing Distracting Sounds
10 Timesavers for Office Workers
If you work in a traditional office, you need specific strategies to help you make the most of your time. This post looks at a number of simple things you can do to save time at work. Most people can easily free up another 15 minutes per day, simply by following a few of these strategies. In the ideal world, your boss would let you cut out early with those 15 minutes you saved, but unfortunately, our society seems to be more focused on how much time you put in rather than value. Even if it doesn't translate into more time away from work, these tips can help you use your time more effectively so you can get more done and out-perform your peers as you advance your career. If you … [Read more...] about 10 Timesavers for Office Workers
Are You Interesting?
What is so special about you? Why would someone want to talk to you? More importantly (as Keith Ferrazzi points out in Never Eat Alone), why would someone want to talk about you? It is easy to get stuck in a rut of focusing on the things that make us successful in our work, but our skills are only one part of the equation. Our relationships with others are at least as important as our skills. Building relationships is much easier when you aren't a one-dimensional person. If all you do is work, you may be very good at your job, but you are drastically limiting your circle of friends. Worse still, you are limiting them to people who are very similar to yourself. Making the effort … [Read more...] about Are You Interesting?
The Difficult Things
When I'm working on something very, very difficult, I often find myself bumping up against an invisible wall. It is as if my mind just isn't clear enough to break through. For example, when trying to learn a new, complex mathematical concept, I seem to spend a lot of time teetering just on the verge of a full understanding with no real idea of what is holding me back. It is like looking through a fog. The feeling is similar to running at your top speed and trying to go just a little bit faster. Obviously, this is very frustrating. You can almost taste success, but it just isn't happening. When I find myself in this situation, I can sometimes get past it by focusing more. This … [Read more...] about The Difficult Things
A Culture of Obesity
I hadn't heard of Kevin Smith until reading in the news that he had been asked to deplane a Southwest flight because he was too big. Evidently, he directed and acted in some movies I haven't seen. For those of you who missed all the "excitement," here is what happened. Due to his ample girth, Mr. Smith buys two Southwest tickets when he flies. (Correction: Kevin says this is the first week he bought two tickets and he does it because he is shy. Southwest says he routinely buys two tickets. Doesn't matter for the point of this article, but I thought I'd be clear.) That way, it guarantees him an open adjacent seat. If the flight sells out, Southwest keeps the price of the empty seat … [Read more...] about A Culture of Obesity