Rodger Dean Duncan's Blog, page 18
July 29, 2018
No Time for Balance? Think Again
Most people who feel the crush of busyness have heard the clichéd advice about time management: “Either run the day or the day runs you.” And my favorite, “The bad news is that time flies. The good news is that you’re the pilot.”
The interesting thing about clichéd advice is that sometimes it’s spot-on correct.
In 1974 my wife and I had been married seven years. We had two small children. My job and daily commute were stressful. After fighting rush hour traffic, I arrived home one evening and...
July 27, 2018
Your Brain Has a Mind of Its Own
At one time or another, most of us have claimed that our emotions—our feelings—are imposed on us, that we have no control. Admit it, you’ve probably said something like “He makes me so mad!”
The reality, tough though it may be to swallow, is that nobody can make us be mad, or glad, or sad, or anything else. We choose our feelings based on the stories we tell ourselves.
Then our feelings lead to actions that produce results. If we don’t like our results we can challenge our own thinking, becau...
Take A Break: Save Your Job, Marriage, Life
It was Warren Buffett who said “the chains of habit are too light to be felt until they’re too heavy to be broken.”
The sentiment perfectly describes the creep in both the amount of time people work and the locations where work is done. It’s an insidious pattern that fools people into believing that more hours worked automatically translates into more productivity.
Aaron Edelhelt refuses to buy that myth. In The Hard Break: The Case for the 24/6 Lifestyle he makes a strong case for taking a w...
July 21, 2018
The Speed of Trust: It’s A Learnable Skill
Trust is the operating system of every relationship.
Think about that metaphor: operating system. You can have great software programs installed on your computer. But if the computer’s operating system has a glitch, nothing seems to work right.
In your work environment you can have world-class processes in place, backed up by well-conceived procedures. But if trust is fragile, you can never achieve consistently good results.
In personal relationships, trust is always the key. It’s possible to...
July 10, 2018
Chaos at Work? You Can Learn to Manage It
We seem to be surrounded by rah rah on the virtues of “smart” work and how to manage that finite resource called time. Yet there’s dangerous irony involved. While technology is supposed to make our lives simpler, billions of hours are wasted every day by people staring at their “smart” phones.
But that’s a subject for another day. A challenge that seems to be universal involves how to deal with workplace chaos. Regardless of good intentions, many people struggle with workday overload: too man...
July 6, 2018
Why Etiquette Is So Much More Than Saying Please
It’s been said that the test of good manners is the ability to put up pleasantly with bad ones. But in a world where in-your-face behavior is sometimes mistaken as a strength, it’s often hard to understand the rules of etiquette.
Etiquette. It’s a fussy word that almost defies definition. I grew up at a time when I’d get extra homework if I dared say “Yeah” to a teacher rather than “Yes, sir.” Men stood when a lady entered the room. I never referred to my parents’ friends by their first names...
