School

I hope I don't learn any of these bad habits you learn in school. There has a been a lot of great things I have learned though.

Busyness

Is busyness bad for business

Business is a social activity to achieve results. Is busyness good for for athletics, is it good for combat? I prefer to get things done and I (like most others), like progress.

p.s. Teresa Amabile did a longitudinal study in which she found that people were most motivated by the discernible progress (even small steps).  The article above is based on this study.

I'm glad I watched

Watching the end of the womens' triathlon, with NZ out of the race, I didn't care who won, as long as they deserved it. People like to see achievement (from a sample of one).

Triathalon

I'm listening to the commentary for the triathlon and athe things they need to think about. It's quite complex and there are a lot of decisions to make in the face of uncertainty. Iit's genuinely interesting to hear what others need to weigh up to get the job done.

Something we may have in common...

I'm watching the Olympics, along with I suspect a few billion other people. The womens' triathlon, a sport I know almost nothing about (I remember seeing it when the Olympics were held in Athens as well). Why does someone like me who basically knows nothing about the sport. Is it that we like to watch people compete, partly, I suspect that this is the case but if that were really the case I would much prefer to watch boxing or wrestling (which I don't). I think it is much more basic, I think people like to watch other people to succeed in difficult circumstances. Perhaps this s why we like to support the underdog, greater achievement.

Of course we just may be curious about how things turn out.

Live in the future

Something that helps me a lot - mentally thinking ahead when dealing with an issue.

In my case this comes from a TV series about fighter pilots. The faster the plane, the more you have to think ahead. With a jet fighter you have to think a long way ahead, if you don't fly the plane it will fly you.

If you believe that your skills and capabilities are high performance (like a jet fighter) then think like a fighter pilot and think ahead.

This line of thinking was well supported by the study I did in the Products Development Management course around forecasting - and in particular scenario planning. Scenario planning (thinking of possible outcomes and using these as reference points to identify what other outcomes could exist between these) is something that gets easier with practice. It's the system I use to understand what could be coming next.

Thinking ahead isn't hard - just ask yourself what could this lead to? What is hard is learning the discipline to understand potentially conflicting futures and knowing when one or other becomes the most likely to occur - i.e. when to act.

Bottom line is we are all different, this may not work for you but I find it works for me.

Scorecard or scoreboard

Subtle difference, this article explains the difference quite nicely.

Don't confuse a scorecard with a scoreboard