My Morning Person Dilemma

I am a morning person—a 5 A.M. morning person. I am also an Eat That Frog! kind-of-guy. (By this, I mean I believe in Brain Tracy’s advice to always do my most important task first.) My dilemma? I am trying to decide whether to first do a 5 A.M. workout or to first do...

Being Late

There’s only one reason for being late to a meeting: poor planning. That’s why I see it as a sign of disrespect towards the person (or persons) I committed to meeting: they weren’t worth the effort to plan for carefully. Simply put, I see being late...

I Like Lists…but

I like lists. Using a combination of Omnifocus and Reminders, along with an adaptation of a productivity system called GTD (Getting Things Done), it’s accurate to say that lists are the tool I use to run my life. But they do have one downside: they work best when you...
My Keystone Problem?

My Keystone Problem?

We often think of terms such as cornerstones, lynchpins, and keystones in the positive sense: this is a cornerstone skill, she’s a lynchpin in our organization, that’s our keystone supplier. But I wonder if we can also use these terms to help shed light on our...

Slow Down

I live in Bellevue, Washington, but my health club I go to every morning is in Redmond, Washington, about 10 miles east of me via Highway 520. I usually go quite early in the mornings, around 5 a.m. I find the world is much slower at this time. However, occasionally I...
Habits, Memory, and New Book Smell

Habits, Memory, and New Book Smell

I have an odd habit. Whenever I buy a new book—such as Folk-Tales of the Coast Salish, shown above, which I am using for research in my RAVEN books—the first thing I do is open them up wide, take a deep sniff, and smell the fresh print on paper. But why? Well, we all...