Browsing Posts in Self improvement

Finished two good books this week. The 360 Degree Leader by John C. Maxwell and It’s Time to Move On! by Ralph Bruksos. Both are listed on my 50 book challenge (2010) reading list. The 360 Degree Leader I first heard John Maxwell speak of the 360 degree leader on an audio CD and was [...]

Defend yourself against the Click…whirr response engendered by your built in need to reciprocate, keep consistency with what you have said you’ll do, be part of the crowd, like people who take advantage of you, follow authority without question and your desire to own something scarce. In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert B Cialdini [...]

April has come around again and my challenge to read 50 books a year cycles again. In 2008 I read 51 books but in 2009 only managed a considerable, but smaller 25. What will my 2010 list show?

Yesterday the song Somewhere from Robbie William’s Reality Killed the Video Star started playing on my iPod. I asked my wife if she’d bought it and forgotten to tell me. She hadn’t. It was me and I’d completely forgotten. If that’s not a definition of “enough is enough”, then I don’t know what is. You [...]

My wife and I have just attended a prep grade information session which explained how reading, writing and maths are being taught to our youngest daughter. The teachers suggested we help by pointing out shapes in the home and asking what they are then follow up with, “How do you know?”. For a triangle we [...]

Ever since I was young I’ve been fascinated by the idea that people could learn from books or spend all their life as scholars studying. Now I find I’ve become the very same. My personal mission statement of ten years ago stated, “I am a scholar of life”. What was an inkling then has become [...]

On Monday night my wife and I were attending parent-teacher interviews. We had two appointments booked and we were both on time for the 5.00 pm appointment which left us plenty of time for the second at 5.20 pm. It transpired that we missed the 5.20 pm appointment. Who was to blame? Was it the [...]

Michael Carter and I were chatting this morning about conversations in the workplace and we came around to the topic of performance review as a series of conversations. This is how I prefer to conduct performance reviews. For managers and supervisors Pre-interview questionnaires? Bin them. Competency models? Bin them too. Forms to fill out during [...]

Over the recent Christmas break my attention was taken by the simple and powerful idea that what we do today sets us up for the success of tomorrow. John C. Maxwell writes about the concept and his experience applying it to life in the book Today Matters. My experience of self improvement books is that [...]

There are some interesting ideas in The Next Trillion by Paul Zane Pilzer. I read the Australia and New Zealand Tour Edition which is an abridged version. Let me declare that I own a business which sells products in the wellness industry but have no interest in sales of this book. Here I’m relaying Pilzer’s [...]