I’ve said before many times that the key to job satisfaction is moving away from your Drudgery and Disinterest Zones and toward the Passion and Proficiency of your Desire Zone. Some readers have raised a good question about this shift. “It’s easy to tell what I’m passionate about,” they tell me, “but how do I […]

Most Americans think of George Washington as a great leader and the father of our country, but I bet few of us think of overdue library books. When Washington was president, he borrowed two books from a New York library and forgot to return them. According to a humorous but true story the fines for […]

When it comes to winning at work, you have to focus on the big things. Don’t sweat the small stuff, right? Not so fast. The small stuff does matter. In fact, according to Andy Andrews, bestselling author of The Little Things, it might matter more than you could possibly imagine.

No sleep.” “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” “Sleep is for the weak.” I often see motivational statements like these hashtagged on social media. The idea is to spur high-achievers on to work harder for better results. But what if that’s exactly backwards? What if our willingness to shortchange our sleep is actually sabotaging our success?

Millions of people all over the world struggle to get things done at the office. A massive international study commissioned by the office equipment firm Steelcase found 37 percent of employees are disengaged from their work. A similar poll by the Gallup organization found barely one in ten workers worldwide is really engaged on the […]

Every year comes freshly stocked with 104 weekend days. That’s 28 percent of all available days in the year. It’s like a full quarter! The trouble is that we treat our weekends like a slush fund to bankroll more work. We’re forfeiting a tremendous amount of time we could invest in better uses. Almost a […]

We’re several weeks into the new year at this point. If you set some significant goals, you might be feeling the challenge of sticking with them. That’s especially true if you’ve got a bad habit holding you back. Do you have a habit you’re struggling to break? Sometimes it can feel impossible. We’ve all been […]

I’m a serious reader and have been most of my life. Most leaders I know are. We realize there’s a major ROI on time dedicated to reading. As I’ve blogged about before, reading makes us better thinkers, improves our people skills, and helps us master communication—not to mention the rest and rejuvenation it offers. We […]

As a leader, the health of your marriage directly impacts your effectiveness. Nothing will undermine it faster than a bad marriage. And few things will advance it like a good one. But it’s not easy. All marriages are works in progress. I’ve been married to Gail for thirty-eight years, and we’re still working on ours.

In her book The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel classifies people as either stasists or dynamists. Stasists resist change and try to tightly manage it. Dynamists, on the other hand, embrace change. They see the future as wide open and teeming with possibility. Which of the two are you? I ask because nothing is […]

More than a decade ago, I decided I needed to get back into regular exercise. I was overweight and tired of feeling exhausted. I needed to do something. But like everyone else, I was busy. I had a habit goal I wanted to install: Exercise for thirty minutes, Monday through Friday, at 6:00 a.m. There […]

We’ve all heard it’s more blessed to give than to receive. Probably like you, I take that on faith. But it’s fun to see how research agrees that special benefits come from giving, not just receiving. Giving has been an important part of Christmas ever since the Three Wise Men presented their gifts of gold, […]

New Year’s resolutions are as old as time, but that doesn’t mean they’re very effective. It only takes a day or two into January before the #resolutionfail hashtag starts trending on social media. Roughly 200 million Americans make New Year’s resolutions at least some of the time, according to research by the University of Scranton. […]

I’ve been an advocate of goal-setting for decades. Most successful people I know are. They set big goals and recommend others do as well. But some people are more doubtful. They point to significant goal-related disasters and suggest goals can backfire. In 2002, for instance, General Motors determined to boost its share of the U.S. […]

You know the adage, “What you don’t measure, you can’t improve”? That’s obviously true for sports, science, and business. But did you know it’s also true for your life? What if you could measure yourself in the areas that matter most? What if you could get an overall score for your life, gain a newfound […]

Duke University’s Mike Krzyzewski is the winningest coach in college basketball. His players have won over a thousand games and five national championships. And I know his secret. Before their 2015 tournament, Coach K and his players and coaches wrote the names of people who had helped them on a ball. They took it with […]

When I asked successful business and thought leaders how they prepared to reach their goals in the upcoming year, several said gratitude gave them an edge. Some mentioned setting aside special time to reflect and express gratitude for all the positive they experienced. This close to Thanksgiving, that seems perfect this time of year. But […]

Many people fail because they are afraid to dream. Their thinking is too small. In this post I provide seven steps for becoming a big thinker.

Leadership and entrepreneurial breakthroughs depend on creativity. But we don’t always feel very creative, do we? Thankfully, research suggests we all have access to the kind of creativity we need to get the results we want—even if you don’t feel especially creative. Last week I went fly fishing on Hesse Creek in East Tennessee. Nothing […]

Ever wonder why some people are likable and others aren’t? Without a high likability quotient, it’s tough to succeed in almost any area of life—especially as a leader or entrepreneur. If you want to win with people, they not only have to know you; they also have to trust you. Likability is the bridge between […]

Setbacks are inevitable. They make us stronger and develop our character. But only if we maintain our perspective and use them to grow. Here’s how.

Leading others starts with leading ourselves. That means leaders must be be committed to personal development if we’re going to have long-term success. But some paths to personal development are more direct than others. My friend Ian Cron is both a priest and a therapist. He’s also an expert in the Enneagram, an ancient personal-development […]

A year after the New York Times published a brutal exposé on Amazon’s 24/7, on-the-job culture, the retail giant announced it was experimenting with a thirty hour workweek for some of its employees. As far as I’m concerned, this is great news. When I talk with entrepreneurs, executives, and other leaders, I regularly hear they’re […]

When it comes to work and life, most of us know what it feels like to be out of balance. But do we know what it feels like to be in balance? It’s not a trick question—even if it seems so at first. A few years ago, I took my mentoring group on a ropes […]