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One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is the number of people that make New Year resolutions, and how many of these resolutions never make it past the month of January. Over the last couple of days, I asked over 10 people I know where they stood with respect to resolutions I knew they had made on New Year’s Day. All of them admitted that their resolutions had already fallen by the wayside. This, barely a month after the resolution was made. I believe the primary explanation for this is that the reason for making the resolution is artificial. “I am going to lose weight.” "I promise to drink less.” These goals (for what are resolutions but goals you wish...

In my last post, I discussed a tool I sometimes use when I need to make a decision. This often helps me in my work as well. For example, when I am thinking through a new product offering, I need to consider its viability and decide whether the idea is worth pursuing, and so on. I break this process up to simplify the decision-making, again using the grid method I have spoken about in my earlier post. Here, I need to figure out how easy it would be for Kenexa to execute on the idea, and if so whether we can operationalize it, and what would be the perceived market value of the product offering; is there a demand for it or will the demand have to be created. Thus, on my mental grid, the X-axis...

Life has become complex in many ways, one of which is the abundance of choice that we have in every sphere of life, from the brand of toothpaste we are buying to the car we would like to drive. Then there is further choice within each of those choices. This especially crosses your mind when you are faced with buying a gift for your child, as many of us have been doing during the holiday season. If you turned the clock back to, say 30 years ago, your choice of gift for your child would be much easier as you didn’t have as much to choose from—you’d buy a toy, or maybe a book, or maybe some clothes. Your choices within each of these categories would not be very large, either. ...

I have, in earlier posts, talked about the idea of stretching time and simple methods by which we can stretch the hours a day so we can accomplish much more. A useful thing we are taught while at school is the art of tackling a math exam—or any exam, for that matter. Do not linger over a question if you don’t know how to do it, we are told. Go on to the next one and the next; complete all the ones you know as quick as you can, and then use the extra time left over to figure out the ones you are unsure about. You can apply the same technique to your daily work. You must first prioritize whatever you need to complete in the day, and visualize the order and manner in which you are...

One of the things that I have noticed in recent times is the rate at which people expect you to read, absorb and process information they might send you, and respond to it. For example, I might have a meeting at noon and someone sends me a spreadsheet a few minutes before noon and expects that I will read it and be ready to talk intelligently about it during the meeting that ensues. The question that occurs to me when I reflect on this is that at the speed at which we are operating nowadays, are we making more decisions that are smarter, or some decisions in haste because we need to make them quickly? I’m not sure that I have the capacity to read a document of 500 words or more and com...