I’ve recently had the privilege of speaking at the national conference of TravelManagers Australia, a subsidiary of New Zealand’s House of Travel. Kim Mason, one of their top agents, is a young mum in Sydney and yet she runs her travel business in about 20 hours a week. Given that travel is usually a very [...]
Continue reading about Overloaded? Educate the people around you how to treat you. »
My son Chris and his family were posted for 2 years to one of the largest military bases in Australia. Writing from there my daughter-in-law, Hayley, shares the following story of bureaucratic time wasting. On getting a licence The other day I went into Seymour (their nearest town) to get my Victorian drivers’ licence. I was armed [...]
Continue reading about A Cautionary Tale Of Wasted Time – Bureaucracy Gone Crazy »
Does it ever feel like your organisation pays a mere lipservice to work/life balance? On a trip to Sydney to speak at a conference, I got into conversation with the chap in the next seat – John is a senior account manager for a very large multi-national firm and sells very high value products. We’d already done [...]
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Want to beat procrastination? Here’s some easy tips you can apply right now! Have deadlines for your goals. Beware, however, of being unrealistic. Working towards impossible deadlines is very de- motivating and won’t help you break the procrastination habit. Break a task down to smaller, bite-sized pieces with realistic achievable time-lines. This can often help [...]
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How many times do we hear people say ‘I haven’t got time to .. ‘? Many times that is true, but if you notice yourself repeatedly using this phrase, step back a bit and analyse what it is you’re referring to. What are you really saying? You haven’t got time to teach someone else? You haven’t [...]
Continue reading about In Order To Go Faster, First You Must Go Slower »
A key question for the problem of space and information storage and management is ‘do I really need it?’ And following that, ‘what can I prevent coming into my space?’ Faxes: Get off fax lists of unwanted information. First port of call is to contact the offending company and politely request removal. If they choose [...]
Who opens the mail? Who does the filing? Do you find yourself constantly getting bogged down with tasks somebody else could do? Over lunch some time David Eddy, Project Director of a great First Time Principals programme via Auckland University, shared the following tip. It was given to him by a colleague early in [...]
In my farming childhood the principle of fallowing a paddock was common (leaving ground uncultivated for a season, in order to rest the land, restore its fertility, and prepare it for a new crop.). These days, however, it’s not a word you often see or hear, except in cropping country. It was therefore with [...]
Continue reading about You Don’t Have To Work This Hard! – Positive Slow-Time »
One day I took most of the day off – went beachcombing with four of my grandchildren, aged 3 – 8. Three things combined to create a weekday that felt like a delicious holiday, despite the pile of work waiting: It was school holidays in New Zealand It was wedding anniversary time-out for their hard-working parents [...]
Continue reading about A Lesson In Stress Management From The Kids’ »
Is it kind to make things easy for people? I put it to you that when we smooth the path too much we run the risk of short-term kindness becoming long-term cruelty, not only to the person we’re assisting, but often to ourselves. (I’m not talking about customer service here.) The consequences can be very [...]
Continue reading about Sometimes You Have To Be Cruel To Be Kind »