I’ll be honest, I had to force myself to write this blog post today. But I already skipped writing for almost two weeks, and I told myself that I could not have another sandwich today until I wrote and posted a blog post. And I have to learn to be disciplined and keep my promises […]
I heard about a personal chef the other day, who provides a prepared meal delivery service for a clientele. They had observed that their goal was not to grow their business and branch out, but instead to stay with their passion for artisanal cooking. When I heard this, it reminded me of the story in […]
In most places I’ve worked, there’s always those two or three people that are superstars, that seem to know everything and get everything done. As a result, those people also tend to be the most overworked. And at these places, it seems like management always makes the same joke, “We need to figure out how […]
In an earlier blog post, I was talking about the importance of jobs that may not seem, at first, to be important. As I write blog posts, I am frequently fraught with paralysis at coming up with ideas and publishing. One of the root causes is that I want every post to be some groundbreaking, […]
As I was doing a Bible study group one time, a thought struck me. Bible study stories are always about these front-and-center great heroes and heroines. King David, Esther, Moses, Ruth, and so forth. It was never about “King David’s Third Spear-Carrier on the Left”. This thought stuck with me and it eventually began to […]
I’ve read in several places about the strategy of forming habits. That you have to do the same thing for 30 days in a row to start to form the habit of doing the thing all the time. And that takes discipline to do that thing consistently to form that habit. I’ve talked about this […]
Today I’m going to be “that guy”. I’m going to tell a “back in the day story”. You know, “back in the day we walked uphill in the snow both ways”, etc. Anyway, back in the day, my first couple of jobs in the tech industry were as a Unix and Linux system administrator. There […]
My first “real job”, part-time in high school, was at a pizza restaurant. I ended up working there for several years, even into college. I eventually was promoted to assistant manager! When I was working there in my early 20s I had reached a point where I could do any job in the store faster […]
In my last post, I talked briefly about measurement. I related a common management saying that goes something like this, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t tell if you are improving.” I don’t know who said it so I went trying to research and find out. Fascinatingly, I never did find the actual original […]
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a fan of Management by Walking Around. One time, when I was a manager, I was wandering around doing my management thing and I was sitting at a desk with an engineer who was working on a project. As they showed me what they were doing, I realized the solution they […]
