Miles

The dynamics of one's workplace is determines how the company values their people's well-being and how they forge strong relationships. Where a workplace is influence by these two, represents them to a degree of their interplay.

Though the company puts emphasis on qualities such as excellence, innovation, or industry leadership, it wouldn't be there if it weren't for the people who showed results from having good relationships and a healthy well-being.

• Getting good at starting a difficult task is a powerful skill to acquire, and if we can just start the task, half the battle is won already.
• Fear, stress, uncertainty and a feeling of inadequacy make it hard to start a big task.

We need to shift our thinking and take the task as an opportunity, an adventure, a playground to do something useful and fun.

We mostly use our smartphone’s alarm to wake up in the morning and rising up to a startling ‘beep beep’ sound can actually hinder our work performance and alertness.

Harsh alarms can disrupt our brain activity when awake, while the melodic alarm sounds like old pop songs can help the brain transition softly and effectively to a waking state.

Systems are the best way to progress since they reward effort and we control all the variables. However, we need to have a sense of direction in those efforts, to know what we are trying to accomplish.

Writing daily with no objective is just practice. If you want to achieve something, you need to commit to a certain output, like publishing a post on your blog weekly. At the end of the day, a system is a way to control how to achieve an output.

Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.

Being constantly interrupted by many different tasks isn't going to make you successful, only distracted. So clear away the distractions and put most of your energy on the essentials and create something worthwhile.

Not every meeting can be done in 15 minutes, but for general day-to-day things, 15 minutes is ideal.

• Work expands to the time you schedule for it. If you plan a 2-hour meeting, it will likely fill two hours and waste valuable work time.
• If a meeting has a purpose, 15 minutes is sufficient and tasks can be made and assigned.
• Our brain and attention spans have limits. The act of listening is equally draining as thinking hard about a subject. The more information we are asked to take in, the more difficult it becomes to stay focused.

• Capture. Write down everything you need to do.
• Clarify. Break down each task into an actionable next step. 
• Organize. Move each of those actionable tasks onto a specific list: E.g: Action: Things to do next, Waiting For: Tasks or projects you’ve delegated or are waiting on other people for, etc.
• Reflect. Set time aside to re-assess your priorities and update your lists weekly or daily.
• Engage. Start working through your Action list in order.

We know that we're not supposed to have devices in the bedroom and that a good posture is easier at a desk. Yet, up to 40% of people who work from home during lockdown have worked from their bed at some point.

The practice may spark creativity and productivity. Samual Johnson, Florence Nightingale and William Wordsworth all worked from bed. Contemporary writers do too. And if you want to work from bed, there are some things to note.

• Write down the end goal.
• Divide the goal into specific actions you need to take to get there. Think in terms of systems: focussed, routine actions that you can do daily.
• List all your tasks and rank them according to effort and impact. This makes prioritizing tasks easier.
• Do the highest priority task using focused, distraction-free blocks of time.
• Keep repeating this until you achieve your goal

Many of us would prefer to have a life filled with freedom and choice, rather than a fixed, imposed or structured routine. The structure feels good but after a while, there is an urge to rebel against it, as it feels like a chain tied to the leg.

The mess that is created when one rebels against a self-created structure is actually crucial for our growth. Whatever we are doing in our lives, managing, leading or creating, cannot be fruitful without structure.