Lifehacks

Virtual (and physical) leaving cards that can be signed remotely. Ideal for companies where teams are split across locations.
myNoise creates beautiful noises to mask the noises you don’t want to hear

Delete, Defer, Delegate, Do

Pause, Identify, Prioritise

Prevent, Detect, Correct







Good, Fast, Cheap.Pick any twoGood & Cheap won't be FastFast & Good won't be CheapCheap & Fast won't be Good


One day or day one. You decide.

Either you run the day or the day runs you

Do it NOW.
Sometimes LATER
becomes NEVER.

"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion."

W. Edwards Deming

"If we have data, let's look at data. If all we have are opinions, let's go with mine."

Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO
Nobody who ever gave their best regretted it.

"You can do anything, but not everything."

David Allen

Ask 4 questions before saying yes

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

Mark Twain
i.e. do your least favourite/most daunting task FIRST and the rest of the day will feel easier.Also sometimes attributed to Bill Gateshttps://todoist.com/productivity-methods/eat-the-frog

"Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else."

anon.

"Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward."

Oscar Wilde

“A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.”

attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt(but possibly an African proverb)

"It is wiser to find out than to suppose."

Mark Twain

"Any fool can know. The point is to understand"

Albert Einstein

"Discussions are always better than arguments, because an argument is to find out who is right and a discussion is to find out what is right”

Buddha.

Hanlon's Razor

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.Hanlon's razor (Robert J. Hanlon)
Misunderstandings and lethargy perhaps produce more wrong in the world than deceit and malice do. At least the latter two are certainly rarer.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)

"Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed."

Albert Einstein

The fastest way to succeed is to start now and figure it out as you go. You can't learn to drive in a parked car.

"It's not enough to do your best, you must know what to do and then do your best."

W. Edwards Deming

"The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who knows why will always be his boss."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Manage the cause, not the result."

W. Edwards Deming

"You are what you do, not what you say you will do."

Carl Jung

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)

"The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore, simplicity should be a key goal in design, and unnecessary complexity should be avoided."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
"It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away"Antoine de Saint Exupéry
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”Clare Boothe Luce, née Brokaw (from her novel "Stuffed Shirts" published in 1931)Often misattributed to Leonardo da Vinci (which seems to stem from a Campari advert from 2000), or Steve Jobs (an Apple II advert from 1977)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."Albert Einstein (as paraphrased and propagated by Roger Sessions)
"Simplicity is a pre-requisite for reliability"Edsger Wybe Dijkstra
"Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple."Charles Mingus
"What would it look like if this were easy?"Tim Ferris
“Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.” Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

Preparation

Be confident in your ability to undo what you just did before you do what you just did.

— cdenker (@cdenker) September 2, 2020

"Victory awaits the one who has everything in order"

Roald Amundsen

"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." - Wayne Dyer

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength" - Marcus Aurelius

A mental health issue is not a sign of weakness; in fact it can be just the opposite. Determined, energetic, purposeful high achievers can be the most vulnerable, because they push themselves so hard. Winston Churchill, Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens and Ludwig van Beethoven all experienced mental health issues. 

MHFA Line Managers' Resource 

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."– Rumi

Keep your desk and workspace bare

Treat every object as an imposition upon your attention, because it is. 

A workspace is not a place for storing things. It is a place for accomplishing things. 

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7hFeMWC6Y5eaSixbD/100-tips-for-a-better-life

Succeeding in IT Ops 

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/10-hard-truths-about-succeeding-in-it-operations/

How To Be a More Influential Engineer

https://developer.squareup.com/blog/how-to-be-a-more-influential-engineer

“Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

 John Wooden 

“I’m no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I’m changing the things I cannot accept.”

Angela Davis 

“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity”

Sun Tzu

Clarity comes from engagement ... it does not come from thought.

Ashley Stahl

The Four Stages of Competence

The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognize their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage. The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn.
 Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, they recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.
The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill.
 The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

“Iteration is the fundamental basis of all improvement.”

Mark Manson

A mistake repeated more than once is a decision.

Paulo Coelho

Jevons Paradox

“increases in resource use efficiency will lead to faster depletion of that resource”

William Stanley Jevons - The Coal Question (1865)

Jevons Paradox occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of use increases its demand, negating the efficiency gains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradoxhttps://simplicable.com/new/jevons-paradoxhttps://climatalk.org/2021/06/18/jevons-paradox/

The past is there to be learned from, not lived in.

“Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future.”

Deepak Chopra

"Generals always fight the last war" /  "Economists fight the last depression"

"means that military/[economic] strategy often focuses on what has happened rather than what will happen." (3)

"A talent for following the ways of yesterday is not sufficient to improve the world of today." 

King Wuling

“I’m not the kind of person who does things like that” is not an explanation, it’s a trap. It prevents nerds from working out and men from dancing. 

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7hFeMWC6Y5eaSixbD/100-tips-for-a-better-life

"The hard choices – what we most fear doing, asking, saying – are very often exactly what we most need to do."

Tim Ferriss

“The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.” 

Jim Hightower 

"If you don’t change your direction, you may end up where you are going."

Lao Tzu

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."

Leonardo Da Vinci

"Most people underestimate the possibilities you have in life. And that’s a bit sad…But don’t underestimate yourself. Also, like I said: Get up in the morning." (2)

Erling Kagge

"With little variation in life, life feels short."

Erling Kagge
"You need to make your life more difficult than necessary. Throughout the day, you have to choose between the easiest option and more difficult options. And usually, of course, you always choose the easiest option. In my experience, that's quite often a mistake. I look at my own life and the happiest I've been is when I have to chose the most difficult options. That's kind of the meaning of life: to feel your own potential. To do that, you have to get out of your comfort zone."https://www.gq.com/story/why-walking-is-the-key-to-being-more-productive

Success and Failure

If you listen to successful people talk about their methods, remember that all the people who used the same methods and failed did not make videos about it. 

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7hFeMWC6Y5eaSixbD/100-tips-for-a-better-life

"Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment."

Jeff Bezos (or, perhaps, Scott Galloway)

Create an environment where people can take risks. If everything has to be brilliant from the word go, you're never gonna get off the ground. 

Paul David Hewson, aka Bono, lead vocalist and primary lyricist of U2, venture capitalist, and philanthropist. 

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying 'I will try again tomorrow.'

Mary Anne Radmacher, American author and artist

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Thomas Edison

Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

Henry Ford

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.

William Feather

Failure is often that early morning hour of darkness which precedes the dawning of the day of success.

Leigh Mitchell Hodges

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.

George Edward Woodberry

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you … never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

Harriet Beecher Stowe 

Don’t give up while making progress – Perseverance is the key – Everything looks like a failure in the middle.

http://www.experimentswithsuccess.com/2015/08/the-15-invaluable-laws-of-growth-law-14-the-law-of-expansion/

Fall seven times and stand up eight.

Japanese Proverb

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

Albert Einstein

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

We will either find a way or make one.

Hannibal

It always seems impossible until it's done.

Nelson Mandela

Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.

Babe Ruth

If you’re not in the game, you can’t hit a home run.

David Hasselhoff

 It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.

Confucius

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.

Abraham Lincoln

Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength.

Theodore Roosevelt

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

Benjamin Disraeli

Compliment people more

Many people have trouble thinking of themselves as smart, or pretty, or kind, unless told by someone else.

Competition is for losers

Peter Thiel

When people compete, somebody loses. So go where you’re the only one. Do what only you can do. 

https://ryanholiday.net/33-things/

Compete only against yourself.

https://dailystoic.com/the-race-to-run-is-against-yourself/

Capacity is not always about “more”. It starts with better.

What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?

Self-limiting statements always work.


http://www.experimentswithsuccess.com/2015/08/the-15-invaluable-laws-of-growth-law-14-the-law-of-expansion/

If people aren't calling you crazy, you aren't thinking big enough." 

Richard Branson

Man’s mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Potential that exists within us is limitless and largely untapped, when you think of limits, you create them.

Robert J. Kriegel and Louis Patler

Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.

Honoré de Balzac

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. 

Sir Isaac Newton

Routine

Career

What do you want to do?

https://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/7-powerful-questions-find-out-what-you-want-with-your-life.html

Personality Types

Carl Jung found that personality traits are reliant on three things:

Myers-Briggs Personality Types

Use the links on the right to take a test to identify your Personality Type.
Official Test & Assessment
Free alternative

Identified by four letters...

Giving 16 Personality Types...

There are several useful sites providing guidance for dealing with the various personality types. For example...


https://www.atlassian.com/blog/leadership/every-myers-briggs-personality-type

Specialisation

Emotional Intelligence

"Time has not been good to “Emotional Intelligence,” and it is now almost too easy a target for criticism. But it is also criticism-proof: the ideas that animate it are everywhere, and their appeal is hard to deny. After all, what could be objectionable in asking people to care for one another and be aware of how their actions affect others?"

Merve Emre (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/19/the-repressive-politics-of-emotional-intelligence)

Climate

Bibliography


https://ryanholiday.net/33-things/https://www.techrepublic.com/article/10-hard-truths-about-succeeding-in-it-operations/https://www.techrepublic.com/article/top-5-reasons-its-hard-to-think-rationallyhttps://thankyoumachine.zendesk.com/https://www.ovalkwiki.com/index.php/The_Seventy_Maxims_of_Maximally_Effective_Mercenarieshttps://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7hFeMWC6Y5eaSixbD/100-tips-for-a-better-lifehttps://dailystoic.com/https://dailystoic.com/the-race-to-run-is-against-yourself/https://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/54-inspirational-quotes-that-will-give-you-an-edgehttps://www.atlassian.com/blog/inside-atlassian/good-teamwork-quotes-youll-likehttps://sketchplanations.com/the-generalised-peter-principlehttps://www.inc.com/jayson-demers/35-quotes-about-perseverance-and-never-giving-up.htmlhttp://www.experimentswithsuccess.com/2015/08/the-15-invaluable-laws-of-growth-law-14-the-law-of-expansion/https://blog.felicedellagatta.com/p/the-opposite-of-accuracy
https://carymillsap.hashnode.dev/and-two-more-thingshttps://carymillsap.blogspot.com/2023/08/how-slow-programs-are-like-christmas.html
WFHhttps://www.zdnet.com/article/remote-working-how-the-biggest-change-to-office-life-will-happen-in-our-homes 
Stresshttps://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/how-to-beat-summer-slump-ultimate-staycationhttps://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/time-management-tips/ https://www.ihasco.co.uk/blog/entry/1791/10-ways-to-boost-morale-and-de-stress-in-the-workplace http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/https://www.techrepublic.com/article/burned-out-by-your-job-in-tech-here-are-the-likely-reasons-why  https://getpocket.com/explore/item/dreading-a-dark-winter-lockdown-think-like-a-norwegian
Careerhttps://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/benefits-of-lattice-career-path-modelhttps://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/know-thyself-how-self-awareness-helps-you-at-workhttps://www.atlassian.com/blog/leadership/every-myers-briggs-personality-typehttps://www.mbtionline.com/https://www.16personalities.com/
Staff EngagementForbes - Work-Life Balance: How Employers Can Step Up https://insights.hpe.com/articles/5-ways-to-make-your-it-staff-unpoachable-1703.html
Mind Mappinghttps://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/mind-mappinghttps://www.freeplane.org/wiki/index.php/Home
UXhttps://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/ux-designhttps://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/how-to-change-your-career-from-graphic-design-to-ux-designhttps://www.nngroup.com/articles/author/don-norman/https://medium.com/tag/uxhttp://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
Emotional Intelligencehttps://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_59.htmhttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/19/the-repressive-politics-of-emotional-intelligencehttps://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/decline-of-emotional-intelligence
Clutterhttps://getpocket.com/explore/item/got-too-much-stuff-try-these-7-tips-to-help-pare-down
Attention/Focushttps://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/10/mary-cappello-lecture-jenny-odell-how-to-do-nothing-distraction-learning/616649/https://mynoise.net/
Creative Processhttps://www.behance.net/gallery/9112935/Wonderful-Creative-Process-Chart
KISShttps://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2891-simplicity-is-the-ultimate-sophisticationhttps://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/04/02/simple/
Specialisationhttps://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-does-the-most-monotonous-job-in-the-world-pay-1-million-update/

Japanese Wisdom

https://sketchplanations.com/kintsugihttps://sketchplanations.com/wabi-sabi
Routinehttps://medium.com/@komalkamble/you-are-wasting-70-of-your-life-by-doing-this-f110b27c58d6

References


(1) What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters - Daniel Goleman (Leadership that gets results - Originally published in the Harvard Business Review, March 2000)(2) https://www.gq.com/story/why-walking-is-the-key-to-being-more-productive(3) https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/generals_always_fight_the_last_war