Building a billion-dollar enterprise, 4

I just read a piece in the Harvard Business Review in which Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson lays forth "The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs."

If you're reading this, you should go ahead and read that. Here's what you'll find:

• Focus
• Simplify
• Take Responsibility End To End
• Put Products Before Profits
• Don't Be A Slave To Focus Groups
• Bend Reality
• Impute
• Push For Perfection
• Tolerate Only "A" Players
• Engage Face-To-Face
• Know Both The Big Picture And The Details
• Combine The Humanities With The Sciences
• Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

That's a long list of leadership lesson; Steve Jobs did a lot right.

So, how much of this can I learn? How quickly can I learn it? How can I learn it, quickly?

Important prior questions, perhaps:  How much of this do I already have? How much of this is appropriate for me to appropriate?

On an entirely separate note, I also read this evening a piece that relates to the challenge to overcome my night-owlish ways: "How I Made Sleep A Priority - And Got More Productive," by GOOD software developer Nick Hughes. Once I got past my discomfort with the title (shouldn't "got" be replaced with "became"?), I found it an interesting read about the author's shift from doing what I'm doing right now to getting to bed by 10 pm or earlier on a regular basis.

I consider 2 a.m. my bedtime, and don't always make it to bed by then. I've lived with the ill effects of this long enough to believe quite readily Hughes' reports of benefits gained. But those beneficial results are not my biggest takeaway. My biggest takeaway is this sentence: "I made up my mind to correct my sleep patterns."

"I made up my mind to..." Not, "I felt like I should..."

I need to exercise that muscle more. 

Like now.

Managing Abundance: postscript

(NOTE: This post was originally titled "Cultivating Abundance: postscript")

I don't know what provoked that last post. Just feeling nervous, I guess. I am working to create value, I just don't have any entities promising me a paycheck. But if I'm diligent with all of my projects, I'll create too much value to not get paid.

My definition of diligence: working on everything every day. Need it be said: working a little bit on everything every day.

I want to work on one thing at a time for 3, 4, 5 hours. Long ago, I observed that focusing on one task for 3 hours or more induced flow.

But I have so many projects, and within those projects, so many small tasks each day - emails, phone calls - that maybe the Pomodoro technique would work well for me.

I'll give it a shot soon. But not tonight. Past time for bed, even if I did have a 1.5 hour nap.

posted from Bloggeroid

Getting more done.

Over the last week-and-a-half, I have had three articles, one "The Week That Was," and two posts to "My Homewood" published. That level of productivity feels good, especially after a period when I seemed to struggle to produce one or two pieces a week.

I don't know what makes the difference between the two levels of productivity, but I need to get more deeply rooted in getting more done. To put it another way, I need to notice what I'm doing when I'm getting more done, and do more of that.

Here are the articles:
"Summer doesn't mean you can't dress for success"
"Game on: Software company may bring headquarters to Pittsburgh"
"Saturday Diary: Life in the slow lane"

"The Week That Was" is not so much an article as a look back at the week's business news (in the Business Department we call it "Weekback). I like doing them, because they're a chance to have fun, and they force me to read the paper (confession: this newspaper reporter is a magazine junkie. I have just received my first check for writing a magazine piece, from Pitt Magazine, the alumni magazine for the University of Pittsburgh - in fact, my first check for a freelance piece, period. I am excited about that.).

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George Carlin is dead, and the only thing I can think of to say is *%$##!!&*@&!! - that would be any two of the "Seven Words You Can't Say On Television."