David Nyeste

Meetings, Minefields and Mindfields Today I will elaborate on why it is necessary to have a strategy for focused work. In case you don't have a clear strategy for how you can finish complicated, demanding tasks on a regular basis, you should start to think up a solution for this problem immediately. How and why I do this is revealed in the next lines. This will hopefully stay an exception, but let's start with a rant: it often strikes me with what level of ease and with what level of total disregard for people's time and schedule some colleagues invite to meetings of questionable purpose on short notice. By 'questionable purpose' I mean those meetings, where you don't have any agenda, you don't get any info on your expected input or why you're being invited in the first place and of course -the classic- : no documentation of the outcome. My impression is that as I proceed through my work-week those spontaneously created 'alignment-meetings' keep ...

Meetings are the Mirror of the Soul of an Organization  The way meetings are held in a company tells a lot about the corporation's culture and its values. Most large or medium sized companies have some kind of formal values they are committed to and a mission statement, that clarifies the purpose of the organization. However it is in everyday work life only that one will truly experience how much an organization and its members live up to these values and how purposeful they act upon their vision and mission on a daily basis. When I set up and invite to meetings, I like to provide the participants with three basic elements in advance: 1. The purpose of the meeting (Why are we meeting? Why are you invited?) 2. The outcome and participants' expected input (What will be different after the meeting? What is expected/required that you bring to the table?) 3. Some basic agenda, if applicable. (Plan of time and topics) Though most do, not all my meetings have a formal agenda. That is...

God, Grant  Me This is a meme -read the following headers- I see very often these days. I have to remind myself of its validity from time to time. Even though I am not a religious guy, I believe there's a higher force that is present in all matter and in all life. Thus I am going to refer to this higher force as 'God', even though I don't think there is some devine entity that steers the fate of all things and living creatures. Alright, let's not get too philosophical here. Let's start with a lesson I've learned in my early years and that I like to challenge every once in a while: The Strength  to Accept the Things I Cannot Change People usually learn this lesson the hard way in school. I gained the impression -actually still valid to this day- that the German school system is majorly flawed in its concept, that it is the mission of education to make young people memorize knowledge instead of understanding concepts. I still have those in/famous rhetorical qu...

How NOT To Write Emails Work without email is hardly imaginable these days. Emails have become so ubiquitous that sometimes you have to take a step back and ask yourself: is this still communication or is this art? I am pretty sure, what I received today was the latter. To give you the necessary context, here's how it went: Sender wrote an email to multiple TO-recipients, of which I had the privilege to be one. Subject: FWD:FWD:FWD: "<<lots of acronyms none of which I was familiar with>> contract" Content: "Hello, this with supplements of <<more cryptic acronyms>> <<27 lines of signature>>" Attachment: <<acronyms>>.xlsx Somewhere not too deep in my mind I have three simple drawers for emails:  1. do now,  2. delegate,  3. art.  Upon first scan the lights of the art-drawer immediately started to blink. But then I hesitated. I doubted. I questioned. I contemplated:"Nah! That's too easy. Let's do this old...

With ongoing vaccination the end of the pandemic and the return to the office seems a realistic scenario. Having experienced the limitations of remote work people are already preparing themselves for post COVID_19 work at the office. Yes, you heard right: working together with colleagues in a common space at - the same time. This will however be anything than a 'back to normal', so here are my personal tips for post COVID working: 1. Try not to pour coffee in anybody's face in case anybody should tell you about his or her exotic vacation in some sunny piece of paradise. I have not been away from home for over a year and my only business travel worth mentioning has been between home office and the actual office. But I will do my very best to restrain myself. 2. Don't mention to anyone how you passed all those endless hours at home. In my case, I will eschew any confession about how many hundreds of hours I have spent in my newly created hobby room in the basement, let...

The Vehicle This simple model may help you to lay out your strategy for the development of your skills, your personality and ultimately a large part of your identity, that will be influenced and defined by your work. Over many years I have developed a model for work that generally resembles a generic type of vehicle that will take you from A to B. Anybody is free to pick their own type of vehicle according to their personal preferences and thus embark on their individual journey. Basic Idea The basic idea behind the model: Different types of vehicles with different kinds of implications make up the unique work experience of the individual. Whether you would rather focus on the journey itself or rather on achieving certain goals, you can make your choice accordingly. For instance there is the hot air balloon,  which could represent the work within a large corporation. With minimal attendance it moves slowly and comfortably -pretty much on autopilot all the time- and is only mildly s...

 #HWBTWTDWH Action and execution are the only means that will move you towards your goals. They will always have a larger stake in the value rendered than any groundbreaking idea, any bulletproof plan, or talent and genius. Don't get me wrong: great ideas, plans and talent are all viable multipliers. However, without execution they will not make any difference. Thus t here's one law to career making and success in business or life in general: Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard . And for the work part, there’s good news: smooth and steady effort is more effective than sporadic strong effort. 'Hard work' thus should not be understood as excessive, over ambitious but sporadic work, but as a steady and sustainable flow of effort over a long period of time. The compound effect will make the difference. It is like throwing dice: It's not about trying to throw the maximum sum with one or a few handfuls. It's about accumulating the desired results over...

Imagine what if I think most of us can picture ourselves lying at a cloudless beach with a pina colada, interrupting our sunbath only for the occasional coolings in the blue ocean and sporadically checking in on the regular returns of our passive incomes (plural of course) provided by our ridiculously vast assets. But can you actually? True capability of imagining a dream or creating a vision also means to come up with a -more or less- specific plan or some kind of a roadmap towards that dream. A plan that you trust will -upon execution- pave the way to your vision. So make sure you have a vision and you have a -specific- plan. Which brings us to the hard part:  Relentless Faith  The catch of course is the ‘believe’ part. There’s a famous quip in the US Marines Corp: ’Everybody wants to go to heaven, nobody wants to die.’ To truly believe in something will imply that you are willing to make the necessary sacrifice in your pursuit of the goal...in fact, to make any sacrifice n...

 Why Long Term Motivation Matters Motivation is doing things when you're feeling good. Long term motivation is doing things regardless of how you feel. Jan Frodeno applied a specific motivation method during his preparation for his first Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing, where he won the gold medal in the olympic triathlon. Eventually he went on and won the Ironman World Championship in 2015, 2016 and 2019 in Hawaii applying the very same method to stay highly energized and motivated over a long period of time - over more than a decade to say the least. Here you will find the method he used analyzed. I will show you how I use it and how you can also apply it for your own purposes. Since I am always susceptible to advice on motivation and I have been interested in the topic of self improvement, inspiration and motivation for quite a while. The other day I stumbled upon this interesting method, how to get and stay motivated and instantly felt energized. So I decided to share this piece ...