Note Taking Tips

Note taking is important right? It is if you want to ensure that there is follow-up to the time you spent in meetings and other activities.

There is more to note taking than just writing stuff down.

Michael Hyatt, the Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Thomas Nelson Publishers, explains why note taking is important and provides some tips like using symbols to quickly identify different types of information.

Gina Trapani provides an interesting presentation expanding on Michael’s tips that helps further organize the information in the context of taking smart meeting notes.

Now all we have to do is follow-up on all the beautiful organized notes we will be taking by keeping in mind the purpose of why we took the notes in the first place.

Thinking and Reading Critically

Roland Paris, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa, has a nice summary on how to read critically based on a 5 step CLEAR approach. He provides a concise explanation why critical reading is important: Critical reading supports critical thinking which helps reduce how much your opinions are influenced by bogus information. Critical reading and thinking ...

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Shouldn’t that be the Do-Say Ratio?

Photo by passiveaggressivenotes - http://flic.kr/p/3PoEvj On the 21 rules blog for standout project management a case is made for dealing with performance problems by not apologizing Technique: Never Apologize. Just fix the delivery problem by having a plan and following through with corrective action. The example used is ...

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Vitamin-R for Results

When you think about it, we can't really manage time so "Time Management" is a misnomer. What we can really manage is our attention and how much time we allocate to paying attention to a chosen task. There are new tools becoming available to help us do that. Getting Bigger ...

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Brain Wars

There is a lot of brain research that is being published that shows that the brain rewires itself based on how it is used. This is sometimes referred to as neuroplasticity of the brain. The bad news is that doing some activities can actually rewire your brain in a negative way. The good news ...

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10 Habits of Highly Effective Brains

To guide you here, Dr. Deb summarized the gist of 10 Habits of Highly Effective Brains: 1. Use it or lose it. 2. Take care of your nutrition. 3. Exercise your brain and your body. They nourish each other. 4. Practice positive thoughts until they become your default mindset. 5. Thrive on learning and mental challenges. 6. Aim high ...

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Applied Brain Research

There is a lot of brain research that is now being popularized and presented in ways that are useful to people that aren't science researchers in the field. Sharpbrains is a new company dedicated to brain fitness research and marketing. They have published a book on the brain fitness market that is available from their ...

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Why Projects need Innovation Solutions

By definition a project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. Every project creates a unique product, service, or result so it includes elements that make project tasks new to a project team. Innovation solutions help a project team deal with these new challenges by applying whole brain smarterware techniques. Smarterware is ...

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Enabling a Culture of Innovation

This Harvard Business School video is about the top 2 ways to foster innovation in an organization: Creating a culture for innovation Establishing organizational habits that make innovation happen A couple of good examples are given and a case is made that success takes systematic discipline rather than chaotic disorganization to empower creativity.

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Innovation is Needed in All Parts of a Business

Tom Peters has a new book The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence. One excerpt is explained in a video called Innovation Equality which reminds people to not think of innovation as something that applies only to new product introduction. Innovation projects are valuable in all parts of a business or organization.

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