Work-Life Innovation |

Do you want to be free? To live without constraints?  Have enough money so that money doesn’t matter anymore? To be free of your work or the demands of others on your time? Do you want to be able to do anything whatsoever whenever it pleases you? Fine aims indeed. And there are thousands of people out there willing to tell you how you can do it (for a price). However, it appears to me that having a life without limits or constraints would be a very uninteresting life indeed. In fact, constraints are essential for all of us, and are what makes life interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

Time will take away everything you have…

This is both its blessing and its curse.

At the risk of spoiling the simple and beautiful phrase above, what I mean by this is that whatever your suffering from or enjoying in your life right now it will eventually be replaced by something else. Understanding this will help you through the bad times and accept the ending of the good times. Nuff said.

How to make the world a better place? You could form a charity, or dedicate your life to finding a cure for cancer. Perhaps, organise or attend rallies to world peace. Maybe you could lobby your political representative to get us out of Iraq. All of these are great steps you can take to make the world a better place. But there’s also a bunch of simpler stuff we can all do. Easy, spontaneous small actions that we can take to improve the day of the people around us. A wonderful little book by Danny Wallace called Random Acts of Kindness lists many many such things and I’d like to share them with you here. Read the rest of this entry »

Though it’s been a little quieter around here on WLI lately, it’s not that I’ve been neglecting my posting duties. A few weeks ago, I was honoured to be offered a writing gig over at TastefullyDriven.com (TD). TD is a brand spanking new lifestyle site that offers quality products, unique blog articles and a community forum to provide a 360 degree lifestyle design experience. Set up by four 20 somethings from Albany, NY, the site also has a conscience - giving 5% pre-tax profits to charitable orangizations in Upstate New York.

My first post for TD talks about problem solving and how we can all improve it. Here’s a quick appetizer:

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These are worrying times - apparently. You can’t go a day without hearing on the news or reading in the paper the latest shocking crime statistics. Only two days ago we heard that within a 24 hour period 5 people had been stabbed to death on the streets of Britain. Worrying indeed. Add to this the threat of suicidal terrorists, rampant, flesh eating hospital bugs, train crashes, hordes of child abductors and marauding gangs of feral youths, and you could be forgiven for refusing to set foot outside your door ever again.

But is this really the case? Just how dangerous is it to live in modern Britain? Is this really an epidemic of danger, or is it a media fuelled panic? Well, Lets take a different tack. Let’s suppose (in some weird, perverse way) you decided you had had enough of this dangerous and trauma intensive world, and you make the decision to end it all. But not in just any old, pop a skip load pills, throw yourself off a cliff way. No, you decide to go for a truly modern death. One that pays tribute, if you like, to the varied and many ways we are told we are likely to bite the bullet in modern day Britain. Read the rest of this entry »

Way back in April, I posted about how I was going to find a personal assistant to list on Amazon all the old books I wanted to get rid of. The basic idea was to test out this whole personal outsourcing idea with a task that was easy to do, but time consuming for me. I hoped it would at least pay for itself and perhaps make a little bit of cash. I supplied the ISBN’s of a set of old books I wanted to get rid of, and asked for whoever was to do the job to find the books on Amazon and list my books 5% cheaper than the going rate for a used copy already listed.

Since then I have put up the details of the task on several websites, such as Your Man in India, Get Friday and DoMyStuff, all to no avail The sites either never got back to me, or the task is still listed with no takers for the job. Undeterred, I found another site called Guru.com where I posted the task again. The very next day I had close to 50 people bidding to do the work! The bids ranged from $20 to $200(!?), coming from places like the US, India, the Philippines, and Canada. Read the rest of this entry »

Update: I’m now a featured author at Brazen Careerist! Pop over there to take a look!

I’ve never really given much thought to leadership. I guess it’s because I’ve never really had to lead anyone before. Most of my academic career was all about me getting me through the next exam, or completing the next paper. Recently though I have started to think about it. I now lead a team in my work, and the concept of leadership has started to hover around the edges of my mind, and is starting to press itself into my thoughts. This is mostly because I suspect I’m not a very good leader. Most of the time I’m struggling with the work I have to do myself and I feel I have little bandwidth left to guide others in their own tasks. The trouble is, as new members join my team I know they are looking for me for guidance, and though I try my best to help them out and get them started on what they have to do, I’m beginning to feel there must be more to my role than offering technical help. I suspect this is where leadership begins. Read the rest of this entry »