Ambitious teams always have more ideas than time. Which is why most growing companies aren’t suffering from a lack of opportunity – they’re drowning in good intentions. There are initiatives in flight, decisions on hold, backlogs full of projects, and an endless stream of “urgent-but-not-important” requests. The Cost of Too Much in Motion When …
Deadlines vs ‘Dreadlines’
A deadline comes from planning. A ‘dreadline’ comes from panic. Jason Fried and David Hansson, co-founders of 37signals, coined the term in their book “It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work,” and it’s a useful lens for understanding why projects often feel chaotic even when teams are working hard. What ‘Dreadlines’ Look Like Dreadlines …
Reducing the Noise
Leadership Minute: Calm the Noise and Help the Team Refocus The constant stream of notifications, pings, emails, and last-minute requests is draining team productivity. And it’s not just hitting goals taking the hit — focus and decision quality suffer too. The study In Search of Lost Focus by The Economist points out how digital overload …
The Crisis of Distraction – A Pathway Out
Author and Georgetown computer science professor Cal Newport’s recent New Yorker article “The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done” got me thinking. How can individuals, teams and organizations find relief from the tyranny of bombardment that’s killing our productivity. As Newport’s article states, with the spread of email in the nineties, “with all friction …
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