4 Destructive Personal Effectiveness Myths

I recently read the ‘Four Destructive Myths Most Companies Still Live By‘ from the Harvard Business Review. Each of them challenges how I operate in different ways. Below are the 4 myths (in bold) and their relevance for me.

  • Myth #1: Multitasking is critical in a world of infinite demand. Multitasking is stupid. It’s taken me a while to admit it. I regularly try to juggle 5 things at once.
  • Myth #2: A little bit of anxiety helps us perform better. Here’s a brief blogpost I wrote 4 years ago: ‘The Dead-Line Driven Life‘. I haven’t changed. I need to “for the sake of my family, for others who rely on me; and for godly discipline.”
  • Myth #3: Creativity is genetically inherited, and it’s impossible to teach. My application of this one is slightly different to the the article. I’m fairly creative, but often I don’t trust that others can also be creative! So I become a bottle neck, either by having to do the creative work or making sure the creative work is up to my standard.
  • Myth #4: The best way to get more work done is to work longer hours. Guilty. Longer hours doesn’t lead to more effectiveness. Repeat.

Confession over.

Read the full blog post for more detail on each one.

Any of them resonate with you? I’d be interested to hear of any strategies you have for bringing about change.

279 days to overnight success

Chris Guillebeau is offering a free PDF Manifesto: 279 DAYS TO OVERNIGHT SUCCESS. It’s for: “Bloggers, writers, online artists, and anyone otherwise interested in creating a new career or expanding their influence using social media. If you want your online presence to grow far beyond what it is now, read and apply.”

279 days to overnight success

I’ve had a quick flick through + it looks good. If you’re thinking through how to use social media for your business or church, glean some wisdom from this dude’s experience.

(h/t Seth Godin)

Getting Things Done

Do you suck at getting things done? First step is to pray, because, if you’re like me, not getting things done is often a spiritual issue – laziness. Secondly, work out a system that will help you to get things done. I started reading ‘How to Get Things Done‘ by David Allen about 3 years ago – but ironically, I lost the book and I only just found it!

you can even use paper!

Getting Things Done (GTD) is a well-known system that aims for stress-free productivity. I kinda implement some of his strategies, but would do well to implement more! Ben Bathgate has done a great service by summarising GTD into 7 readable posts:

  1. The Problem
  2. The Trusted System – Projects and Tasks
  3. The Calendar – The ‘Hard Landscape’
  4. Ubiquitous Capture – The Point of Failure
  5. Action – Getting Things Done
  6. Tools for GTD – Lo- and Hi-Tech
  7. Kicking Off – The Inbox

Check out these summaries, get the book and start getting stuff done! sxc pic