Welcome to the Saturday Summary.
Blog Posts
This week, the theme is loosely tied to time management and priorities. We cover overwhelm, calendars vs. planners, distraction and more.
Cognitive Overload and Why it Matters. This first post of the week talks about the three types of cognitive overload we all face and provides some tips to help manage the overwhelm.
How Do You Organize Your Life? We are all likely to use to-do lists and calendars to organize life. This post talks about the difference between a calendar and a planner.
Process Drives Performance. This post explores how a lot is spent on what needs to be done to meet goals, but less time is spent on the how of the process and infrastructure to support.
Balance and Weight. We are always trying to balance multiple parts of our life at once. We feel the weight of different areas. This post explores how to know when weight turns to burden.
What Am I Doing Right Now? We end the week with more of a rant than a suggestion. I explore my own frustration of getting distracted when looking for things online.
Podcasts That Caught My Attention
This week, we can all use tips from the first podcast on how to write better outreach emails. I also really like the second one about wealth and happiness. In today’s world, the last one on the list is a thought-provoking listen.
How to Write Cold Emails that Get Opened. 8 minutes. Optimal Work Daily. We all want our messages to stand out in crowded inboxes. This podcast provides tips on how to make that happen.
Five Timeless Lessons for Building Riches and Joy. 11 minutes. The Next Big Idea Daily. This episode shares a summary from Eric Jorgenson’s 2020 bestseller The Almanack of Naval Ravikant that distills how to build wealth and happiness without depending on luck.
The Four Best Financial Assets. 9 minutes. Optimal Finance Daily. Christine Luken highlights four essential financial assets that anyone can build, regardless of their bank balance: a strong credit score, a high income, a growing net worth, and most importantly, a high financial IQ.
Urgent. Expensive. Unfair. The Question That Unlocks Everything. 10 minutes. Career Blast in a Half. This episode talks about how this question changes how you look at a job search: “What urgent and expensive problem do you have the unfair advantage to solve?”
You’re Being Manipulated. Here’s How to Fight Back. 13 minutes. The Next Big Idea Daily. Manipulation is in ads, algorithms, politics, even workplace incentives. This episode highlights the new book Manipulation: What It Is, Why It’s Bad, and What to Do About It by Cass Sunstein.
What I’ve Been Up To
On the professional front, my Wayfarer Solutions focus has been on how to use gamification techniques to amplify holiday campaign plans. We are talking to airlines and CPG clients about countdown calendars, year-in-review communications, and how to use interactive experiences to collect zero-party data. As you all know, I love digging deep into how to eek even more performance out of a strong marketing plan! How’s your holiday plan looking? Drop me a note if you want to learn more about what I’ve been doing in this space.
Outside of work, I enjoyed painting my parents’ kitchen before they had new floors installed. Yes, I’m one of those crazy people who finds fun in projects! I love looking at the before and after transformations. It provides such a tangible measure of accomplishment. Do you feel this? I also tore through the fiction book The Restoration Garden. I enjoy books that go between two different time periods with two perspectives on the same experience. This book did that with a layer of mystery and a bonus of content around the meaning of flowers. I’ve been learning about the language of flowers this year, so that was an unexpected and pleasant surprise!
What Do You Think?
How are you using your calendar and planner to find space in your life?
When you think about balance in your life, which of the 8 dimensions of wellbeing is off?
What ideas did the posts & podcasts spark that you could implement in the week ahead?