Thoughts

Fresh Insights on Unhurried Productivity

  As I write this, I’m entering the third week of my Unhurried Productivity experiment. In case you missed it, here’s what I’m doing and what I hope to learn from it.  I’ve also been posting daily updates on Youtube. If you’ve been following those daily clips, you’ll know that I’ve been angsting about not being as […]

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Take the time it takes

Do you feel like you’re cramming too much in? Yep, me too. Last Friday I had a client coaching session. We booked out a couple of hours, and we used 90 minutes. Then we felt that we were done. We’d done good work. We didn’t rush it. I think what helped was a feeling that […]

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What Type of Tractor Is This?

OK. So the other night I had a very strange dream. It was my birthday, and I was in the middle of hosting a big party. In the middle of it all, I got a message saying I had to go and see my new GP. So I dutifully left my own party and tootled […]

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Overcoming Fear

  Fear does not stop death. It stops life. Anon.   Fear. It’s part of who we are, yet it can stop us from becoming who we want to be. It keeps us safe, yet merely staying safe is no way to live.  Fear can shrink us. And it can liberate us. Fear lies behind […]

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Arrow or Snowplough?

There’s a woman I know who has brilliant ideas for how to transform the New Zealand economy so it leads the world in societal and environmental wellbeing. She’s smart. She’s visionary. Yet she’s not getting traction. Why not? She’s a lone voice. Her industry has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Her ideas […]

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How Will You Use It?

I’ve just polled the Change Makers community about how they feel about the latest Covid lockdown in New Zealand. Here are the preliminary results: This picture shows a fairly strong leaning towards ‘amazing opportunity’. In people’s comments below the poll, most people reported that they had somewhat mixed feelings. That’s how I’m feeling too. I’m […]

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Your Five People

There’s a saying: “you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” I really like that as an idea. Yet I think it can go further. What if those five people were all of the same type? Wouldn’t that just be just one person multiplied by five? How useful would that […]

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Master the Nuance

  “Learn how to see” – Leonardo Da Vinci   The other day I was checking out guitars online. I’m a bit of a guitar freak, and I was with a friend who doesn’t know much about them. As I was geeking out, explaining the different body shapes and configurations, she said “I just see […]

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How Mental Models Determine Your Success (or Not)

  “Don’t change your behaviour. Change what shapes your behaviour, and watch your behaviour change.”   Got a gnarly problem? Most of the time, we try to solve problems by changing what we do. Faced with a challenge, we ask what can we do differently? For simple problems, that’s usually sufficient. Light bulb blown? Replace […]

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Leaving vs. Leading

Lately, I’ve been writing about creating space. I’ve realised that there are two forms of this practice that we need to master: ME space: Getting away. Taking time out. Retreating. Escaping. WE space: Creating space for others to pause, reflect, make sense and decide. Here’s another way of thinking about it: ME space = ‘leaving’, […]

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