Claus on TV in Denmark

On August 29th, Claus was interviewed in a segment of "Go' Morgen, Danmark!", the largest Danish breakfast TV show. In this interview he talked about how you can best ensure you make the most of the time available to you in terms of productivity and happiness.

If you are able to understand Danish you can watch the segment at Sputnik (TV2's online service).
Select Friday, August 29th and choose the segment with "Time Manageren's skaber".

Golden Nugget of the day: Self-esteem

After yesterday's golden nugget about taking responsibility for your life and actions to create a meaningful life, we received a couple of emails saying that for some people it can be hard to take this responsibility and that they felt they lacked the energy to break out from the patterns that they were following. This leads us to the daily nugget:

"Only people with self-esteem and a feeling of power can take responsibility."

If you do not have the feeling of being in control and ability to take responsibility for your life, it is often down to a feeling of powerlessness and low self-esteem. This is where you need to start your personal journey. There are many ways of building your confidence and tackling low self-esteem and everything from good coaches who can help you to finding things that you are good at and then keep on improving on those skills to build your confidence are a good way to start. Once you start to build your self-esteem and come to believe in yourself, you will also come to the realisation of what you need to do in order to take control of your life and achieve your goals.

Take responsibility!

Following on from yesterday's golden nugget, this one is very much along the same lines as it is all about realising that the responsibility for your own success or failure rests solely with you and it is up to you what you do with that responsibility:

"Taking responsibility is what it takes to create a meaningful life."

"Ordinary people can create extraordinary results."

This might seem like an empty phrase, but if you look at the everyday heroes around you in your local community, or in the stories from around the world we see in the newspapers every single day you soon come to realise that there is a hero hidden in all of us. Whether or not we choose to bring that hero out is another matter entirely. Many people choose to trundle through life, whereas others who are just the same as us realise that we can all keep on pushing our limits and through goal setting and planning can achieve incredible results. For some this is a painstaking and on-going process, for others it comes naturally - but the common thread is the realisation that you have to turn up in order to be in the game and to always give it your best shot. Then you too can create extraordinary results.

The Holy Grail of Life: The 3 Ms

Today's golden nugget is about what we all seek:

"Money, Meaning and Magic are what people want from life."

If you think about it, I'm sure you will agree.

Have a great weekend!

Inbox Zero - An Update

Further to the previous post on managing information overload with Janelle Barlow's article and Merlin Mann's presentation at Google Tech, I thought I would share Merlin's slideshow with you. If you watch the video and then download the presentation below to keep as a reminder, you've got no excuses for not doing anything about your information meltdown.

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Simplify & Focus - How to Manage Information

I was just sent a link to a speech given by Merlin Mann (founder of 43folders) at GoogleTech last year. In it, he talks about how you can de-clutter your life and manage, rather than be managed by, emails. He calls this concept "Inbox Zero" and he has also created a series of articles about the concept.

This reminded me of an article that Janelle Barlow, the President of TMI US and my co-author on "A Complaint is a Gift", wrote several years ago about "Coping with Information Overload".

There is no doubt that if you want to be able to not just manage your time, but thrive in today's fast paced business environment - and still have a work/life balance - knowing how to deal with the deluge of information is paramount. You have to be able to simplify in order to keep your focus and perform at the highest level. Starting by clearing out your inbox is probably the one task that will give you the most mental space and energy to tackle the rest of the tasks at hand. It can seem a daunting task, but if you spend a little bit of your time reading the articles and/or watching the video you will be able to make progress right away.

Janelle's article looks at the very important distinction between knowledge and information and how we can deal with the ever increasing amount of information. The article has a wealth of useful tips and ideas for coping with information overload, asks pertinent questions and provides some practical self-evaluation tools.

You can see Merlin's speech below or read Janelle's article here.

Test run of "Beyond Time and Knowledge"

Last Tuesday, Ron Young and I did a first dry run of our new exciting concept called "Beyond Time and Knowledge" (just a working title so far) in front of an exclusively invited audience at Les 4 Moulins in France.

The foundation for the concept is that we live in a world that has become too focused on gadgetry and technology, which leads to people losing track of who they are; what their goals are; and how they can attain those goals.

The underlying principle is that there are some management evergreens, which people of all ages, and in all walks of life, could benefit from learning and that by having a clear focus in both your personal and work life you will also be able to benefit from technology to a greater extent. Knowing where you are going and how you are going to get there will allow you to select the right tools for the job.

We had an incredibly powerful day, where the guests really felt that they had received some valuable inspiration and we got some great feedback in terms of both the contents and the format of the presentation.

The plan is that we will develop the concept into a multitude of products and services from books to articles, tests and seminars and we will probably be ready to unleash "Beyond Time and Knowledge" on the world in 2009.

I am immensely excited about this project, as it will be a first for me to develop a concept with a co-presenter. I have collaborated with others on writing books in the past, most notably "Heart Work" with Dr. Reuven Bar-On, who originally coined the phrase "Emotional Intelligence", and "A Complaint is a Gift" (retail version) with Janelle Barlow. I will continue to lift the veil a bit more as the year progresses so you can follow the development of this exciting project, and I hope that you will actively wish to participate in the development of the concept by giving me feedback along the way.

In the meantime, if you would like to attend one of the small and closed test seminars in the Autumn of 2008 for a marginal fee to cover accommodation and meals, please feel free to send me an email.