There are lots of great note-taking apps out there, but sometimes you just want to scribble with a pen and paper. In this short demo, I’ll show how the Rocketbook gives you the best of analogue and digital.
We all have tasks we avoid doing. For some, it’s writing blog posts, while others struggle with keeping on top of email. Nearly everyone, though, will do anything to avoid accounts. In this short video, I’ll introduce you to the Pomodoro Technique, an effective way of conquering those boring jobs.
We spend a lot of our day typing the same stuff over and over again, sometimes getting it wrong in the process. Although it might only be 10 minutes of repetitive keystrokes, this really adds up. That’s an hour a week or more than 50 hours each year. You could do a lot more exciting stuff with those 50 hours. In this video, I’ll give you a quick demo of TextExpander, a great app for saving time and improving accuracy. ...
Once you get into audio and video recording, background noise will drive you absolutely mad. Although there are lots of solutions out there, most of them are very complicated and often expensive, too. In this short video, I’ll show you a simple method for removing background noise in a free tool called Audacity.
I started the year feeling tired. I was running an awful lot of workshops around the south east, many of them weekend events. Thanks to the vagaries of our rail system, I spent countless hours stuck on uncomfortable trains. I dreamed of running virtual events from the comfort of my pope cave. Indeed, I’d tried to convince clients that webinars and online courses were a good idea, but everyone wanted in-person events. Ha. ...
One of my favourite cartoons shows a despondent chicken telling his violin teacher, “I don’t want to practice! I want to skip to the part where I’m awesome.” I feel like this every time I try to learn something new. Although I’m certainly not becoming more patient with age, I do now have a reasonably realistic idea of what it takes to actually get good at something. This is mainly due to the work of Professor Anders Ericsson, who sadly died last week. ...
One of my many resolutions for 2019 was to read more books. Although some of the other resolutions were quietly abandoned, I’m pleased to report that I read 120 books. Yes, that’s a lot. This is partly because did a great deal of train travel last year, and also because my idea of a holiday is to solidly read books and eat crisps for a week. Some of those books really changed my thinking, or at least clarified it significantly. Here are my top three in the categories of self-improvement (one of my obsessions), business, marketing, and money. ...
Who knows how much you earn? One person? Two? Maybe nobody apart from Human Resources. Research shows that nearly 50% of couples have no idea of each other’s salary. As Alex Holder explains in Open Up,1 we often believe our salary and assets define us. These are the true indicators of our success, status, and power. Revealing that magic figure gives someone an easy way to judge our worth. And this secrecy extends beyond our salaries. In a survey by the Money Advice Service, 45% of people admitted to lying to their partners about money, especially debt. ...
When we want to quit a destructive habit, it’s common to be hard on ourselves. We don’t just start with a gentle 20-minute canter around the block, it has to be a 5k run before breakfast. Every day. There’s nobility in suffering and, of course, we crave fast results. This punishing schedule proves unsustainable and we’re confronted with yet more evidence of our flakiness. Nevertheless, many self-help books urge us to pursue dramatic change. ...
If you’re at all familiar with academic publishing, you’ll know it moves at the pace of a creaky snail. Imagine, then, a team of researchers gathering to plan, write, edit and publish a book in just 4 days. Yes, that’s right – 4 days. I was sceptical, too. Devised by Adam Hyde, the Book Sprint is a process that promotes collaboration and rapid decision-making, helping teams to achieve a lot in a short space of time. Typically, the Sprint is arranged over 5 stages: ...