You’ve decided this is the year you’re going to get out of debt once and for all. You’re committed, you’re determined, now the only thing you need is a plan. There are many plans for debt reduction, but they all generally include the same elements. Debt accumulates over time for a variety of reasons…

Bank savings accounts currently offer paltry rates of interest.  If you put leave all your money in banks it should be safe but will not grow much.  The stock market offers much more interesting returns but because of the element of risk many people avoid it.  Worse still they might enter the market at the…

Some years ago I remember standing in my kitchen, staring silently at my boxes of cereal, trying to decide which to have for breakfast.  Was it a Frostie’s morning, or was it more of an Oat Crunchie’s day?  Or maybe granola?  I stood there for 5 minutes, until – utterly frustrated – I marched…

The New Year is fast approaching. Do you have a plan for your business? Do you know what you’re going to do for 2010 to make your business grow and see your income dreams realized? If not, use these guidelines to plan ahead, so you can make 2010 your year of success! 1. Look

Which job should you take? What car should you buy? Should you ask him to marry you? Are you ready for another baby? Is this house right for you, or should you keep looking before you make an offer? Life is full of hard choices, and the bigger they are and the more options we have…

Attaining true productivity can be an elusive process, and often when I look around at the methods people are using I see two distinct approaches: tactics, like motivation hacks, or overarching strategies, like applying the concept of minimalism to productivity. But the best productivity systems use both approaches, with the strategy providing a framework for action…

Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. – Glenn Turner We all worry. The same wonderful tools our brain uses to imagine new innovations and solve complex problems, also has a habit of looking for trouble – even when it may not exist. Mid-terms, budget overruns, bug…

People who think about hacking their lives and their work often speak of “granularity.” It’s a curious word. The online Oxford English Dictionary offers only “granular condition or quality” as a definition. A more helpful definition comes from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications: “The extent to which a larger entity is subdivided…

After the election last week in the United States, change is a hot topic, but it isn’t political change that I have been thinking about recently. It’s how organizations and their leaders cope—or, more often, fail to cope too well—with the need for changes in business practices to promote growth and foster creativity. It’s a truism…

Hamburger Management is a shoddy, debased version of real leadership that focuses on just three things: whatever demands least, can be used fastest, and costs least. It thrives wherever organizations seek to meet unrealistic targets with insufficient resources to maximize short-term profits. Indeed, Hamburger Management is short-term by nature, and will habitually sacrifice long-term advantage…

I’ve been thinking and writing quite a lot this week about Hamburger Management: the type of management approach that is based on always doing whatever is quickest, simplest and (above all) cheapest. Hamburger Managers provide the kind of leadership that is best described as: “Never mind the quality, look how fast it goes and how…

When you write an article on a topic, it’s traditional to start with the problem, explain the causes next, then move into offering a solution. On the Slow Leadership site this week, I took things more or less in the opposite order, starting on Monday with part of the solution, giving my views on…

We live in world full of pressures to conform: to believe what others tell us is true, to toe the line, to accept the values of those in positions of power, and to follow conventional, approved paths. That’s the way to get on in life and business, we are told. You need to fit in…

The German World War II general Erich von Manstein is said to have categorized his officers into four types. The first type, he said, is lazy and stupid. His advice was to leave them alone because they don’t do any harm. The second type is hard-working and clever. He said that they make great officers…

Despite all of mankind’s technological progress, some patterns seem rooted in human behavior. One of these is the tendency to grab for short-term gains and ignore the longer-term consequences, even when those are almost entirely predictable. This attitude has been illustrated this week by the announcement from the Ford Motor Company of still more lay-offs, plant…