My alarm was set for 4:30 am yesterday.
Trust me, it was tough to get up early.
My entire family is on vacation and is sleeping in.
Most people in general get up later on Sundays.
But, after listening to James Clear and Atomic Habits, I was again reminded of the importance of daily rituals, daily disciplines, and consistency.
Read MoreTheir presence triggered mixed emotions
Recently, at Sabbath prayer services, a group of young men were in attendance
Turns out that they attended a NYC yeshiva that I had interviewed at when I was in process of leaving Atlanta eight years ago
That job search, like a few others, had come up empty, and again I was feeling low
You’ll often hear productivity experts (this author included) preach the need to “work smarter, not harder.” But what does that mean, in practical terms?
Computer programmers have an answer with a concept they use to write more efficient code: Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY). In software engineering, DRY is the principle of reducing repetition in the code, referring to a single source—or "snippet"—of reusable code whenever you need it.
While the Don’t Repeat Yourself technique (or DRY Principle) was made famous by coders, it is easily applicable to non-programmers alike.
Read MoreWhen I was growing up, there was one advertisement that would consistently grab your attention. In it, U.S. Army personnel were up super early, engaged in all sorts of high-energy training and action tasks. The tagline was, “we do more by 9 AM than most people do all day.”
While I never joined the Armed Forces, intuitively my little brain knew that they were on to something.
That’s because if you want to get more done, you need to start your day early.
Read MoreI recently attended an entrepreneurship gathering sponsored by a local university. The program allowed each attendee to speak for a few minutes about their company and services. The last speaker was a videographer and web marketer. He spoke with great passion about finding a voice and telling a great story, important components in today’s evolving marketplace. But the line that resonated most with me was his comment about why we are all doing what we’re doing.
Most people in that room had left an established, more guaranteed position in order to venture off into entrepreneurship and follow their dreams. This speaker spoke to a common chord within each of us when he said, “You all love what you do so much that you would do it for free.” That is, of course, if not for the fact that we must put food on the table.
Read MoreI grew up in a home that was poor
Not materially poor (we were “middle class,” but on the lower end,) as much as mentally poor
While we never went hungry, we also never had the luxuries many others enjoyed
But that wasn’t what made us “poor”
For three years, I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into being the best head of school I could be.
And then, one day, it all ended.
Eight years and one month ago, I was out of work and needed to start again.
Thousands of miles away from where I grew up and where all of my family and friends lived.
Entering a field that I knew little about and had no reputation to speak of.
Relocating my family to a small, grungy house that had "potential," because that was all that we could afford in our new, more expensive community.
It was a dark time in my life.
But, I had promised myself then that I would never again be beholden to others for my income.
So, I hung a shingle and got to work.
When people transition their attention away from an unfinished task to attend to a distraction, they lose time, and their subsequent task performance suffers. For example, if you interrupt writing an email to reply to a text message, you will need to refocus when you turn your attention back to finishing your email. That little bit of time of adjusting your focus compounds throughout the day. As we fragment our attention, fatigue and stress increases, which negatively affects performance.
So, not surprisingly, the first component of this “do it” step is to remove distractors.
Read MoreDid you ever look around in amazement at people around you that don’t appear to be all that extraordinary yet have achieved extraordinary things? These are people who have greatly succeeded in business, in politics, in the arts, in sports, or in some other space, but in many respects seem pretty much on par with you (or even inferior to you) in terms of their core abilities and talents. How is it, you wonder, that they “made it” in such a robust manner while you continue to middle along in relative obscurity, earning a pedestrian income and feeling somewhat unfulfilled?
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