I frequently encourage my CEO executive coaching clients to set specific measurable goals and to chart their progress visually. For example, my free trailing twelve month Excel template is very popular. Download it by clicking here.
Here is an even simpler and more visually striking graphic you can use. Enter your own title, goal amount and current status and get a one page, printable thermometer to display your progress for yourself or the entire team.
Feel free to share this with your friends and colleagues. Please do not remove my name or web address from the Excel spreadsheet.
You may also download an improved version with schedule information, too, e.g., for a monthly goal the thermometer displays how much of the month has passed. Get it for free by clicking here.
See also Tony’s complete goal setting kit, with audio and workbook,
free on this blog.
The Wall Street Journal has a good survey of the scientific research supporting the health, relationship, and psychological benefits of practicing gratitude. It also includes a nice graphic you can use with your children to foster their attitude of gratitude.
Consciously increasing tension in a muscle can help people carry out unpleasant tasks and avoid unhealthful foods.
Firming one’s muscles [e.g., clench fist, contract calves, tense bicep] can help firm willpower and firmed willpower mediates people’s ability to withstand immediate pain, overcome tempting food, consume unpleasant medicines, and attend to immediately disturbing but essential information, provided doing so is seen as providing long term benefits.
What we should do is not future ourselves so much. We should now ourselves more.
Now thyself is more important than Know thyself.
Reason is what tells us to ignore the present and live in the future. So all we do is make plans. We think that somewhere there are going to be greener pastures. It’s crazy. Heaven is nothing but a grand, monumental instance of the future. Listen, now is good. Now is wonderful.
I advocate leadership that allows employees to contribute, create, and grow. I have several articles on this blog detailing the costs of micro-management and the benefits of treating employees as adults (click here to read them). I am thrilled to see the results achieved by the $2.6 billion dollar HTC under the leadership of a CEO who clearly walks this talk, Vineet Nayar. He is interviewed in the excellent–and free!–Booz & Co. periodical strategy + business.
For example, detailed financial performance data broken out by business unit is delivered regularly to employees’ desktops. This has stimulated employees to ask more questions, volunteer more ideas, and challenge their managers more often. In turn, everyone is making better decisions — the kind of decisions that directly affect the customer’s experience.
Similarly, in a bold twist on the 360-degree employee appraisal tool, all appraisals are posted on the company’s intranet, and anyone at any level can give feedback on anybody else, including the CEO. As Nayar says, “Good or bad, we all learn from the results.”
Here is my favorite quote, one that mirrors a key insight I learned the hard way some years ago: “The lesson for me was to never make assumptions about what somebody else wants or thinks. It is very important to ask people what they are thinking.”
My executive coaching clients and readers of this blog have found my quick and easy Trailing Twelve Month tool very useful. You can download the Excel spreadsheet for free here.
I also encourage my CEO clients to keep a close eye on margins. I have modified the Trailing Twelve Month tool to show monthly results and long-term trends for your business’s margin. The key difference is that since margin is a percentage it makes no sense to look at the sum of twelve months of margins. This new spreadsheet instead shows the twelve-month moving average of your gross margin. Download it by clicking here.
See also Tony’s complete goal setting kit, with audio and workbook,
free on this blog.
Do not trade sleep for exercise. You need both to be healthy.
“In a 2004 study, men limited to only four hours of sleep a night reported increased appetite and showed hormonal changes consistent with increased hunger…sleep loss can wreak havoc with a person’s endocrine system, the hormones that control appetite and metabolism.”
Cutting back on sleep, a behavior that is ubiquitous in modern society, appears to compromise efforts to lose fat through dieting.
In a new study of two groups following the same diet and exercise routines weight loss was the same but the group with adequate sleep lost fat while the sleep deprived participants lost muscle or bone.
Do not trade sleep for exercise. You need both to be healthy.
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