Nicholas Bate

Be Creative, 7

1. It all starts with believing that you are creative: 'I am creative'.
2. As we all are. It's just some have had more practice and some have had more encouragement and some have had both.
3. Simple tip 1 is to generate quantity of ideas. '50 ways to disrupt the competition'. Quantity always guarantees some quality.
4. Simple tip 2 is to disrupt the usual thinking patterns. Thus write the list of fifty whilst standing up. Fresh perspective is all when boosting creativity.
5. Simple tip 3 is to inject the fresh perspective by opening a random page of a book, watching 60 seconds of a car ad........
6. Simple tip 4 is to try out De Bono's 6 Thinking Hats.
7. Simple tip 5 is to practise the skill of creativity daily. 

Sunday 36

1. 25 Mini Standards.
2. The Writing Primer.
3. Bram, A Spy Story is now out; a story of coming of age, of Queen and country and the origins of Covid-19. “Once you start reading this book, it’s difficult to put down. Initially, you are immersed in the delights of Oxford academia, only to then be exposed to the starkness and brutality of Moscow during the Cold War. Bram, a brilliant Oxford chemist, turns spy whose mission is to save the world from a highly dangerous and ubiquitous threat. This book is characterised by most of the attributes of a good spy story with action, heroic exploits by a larger-than-life protagonist and a strong plot. Well worth a read.”
   
4. How to Start your Very Own Business.
5. Instant Productivity.
6. Seven choices.
7. 22 Essentials.
8. How to Create your Home Office.
9. plus The Start Up Myths
10. Stay STRONG
11. Crazy Bold Experiments
12. Just say NO to PPT
13. The Marketing Primer.
14. Being the Best version of you, the book, back in stock.
15. Redundancy
16. Hunter-Gatherer 21C
17. Tackling Stress.
18. Manage that career
19. Be Bold 101
20. You still haven’t read Being The Best?! 
21. Things They Don’t Teach at Business School
22. the secrets of success
23. Life Tips 101
24. Zen & Art of Cubicle Freedom
25. Carnage At Kodak
26. The Very Best Drugs You Need
27. Billions of Light Years Away In Another Galaxy
28. 22 Routes To Your Non Fiction Book
29. Lists For The Life You Love
30. How To Lessen E-Mail Pain
31. Professionalism 101
32. 21 Ways to Improve your Zoom Conference Call.
33. Productivity Primer
34. 101, redux
35. The Basic Basics.
36. Not a single one made the NYT best-seller list. 

 

1. 25 Mini Standards.
2. The Writing Primer.
3. Bram, A Spy Story is now out; a story of coming of age, of Queen and country and the origins of Covid-19. “Once you start reading this book, it’s difficult to put down. Initially, you are immersed in the delights of Oxford academia, only to then be exposed to the starkness and brutality of Moscow during the Cold War. Bram, a brilliant Oxford chemist, turns spy whose mission is to save the world from a highly dangerous and ubiquitous threat. This book is characterised by most of the attributes of a good spy story with action, heroic exploits by a larger-than-life protagonist and a strong plot. Well worth a read.”
   
4. How to Start your Very Own Business.
5. Instant Productivity.
6. Seven choices.
7. 22 Essentials.
8. How to Create your Home Office.
9. plus The Start Up Myths
10. Stay STRONG
11. Crazy Bold Experiments
12. Just say NO to PPT
13. The Marketing Primer.
14. Being the Best version of you, the book, back in stock.
15. Redundancy
16. Hunter-Gatherer 21C
17. Tackling Stress.
18. Manage that career
19. Be Bold 101
20. You still haven’t read Being The Best?! 
21. Things They Don’t Teach at Business School
22. the secrets of success
23. Life Tips 101
24. Zen & Art of Cubicle Freedom
25. Carnage At Kodak
26. The Very Best Drugs You Need
27. Billions of Light Years Away In Another Galaxy
28. 22 Routes To Your Non Fiction Book
29. Lists For The Life You Love
30. How To Lessen E-Mail Pain
31. Professionalism 101
32. 21 Ways to Improve your Zoom Conference Call.
33. Productivity Primer
34. 101, redux
35. The Basic Basics.
36. Not a single one made the NYT best-seller list. 

On Writing, 79

Edit, edit and edit some more. Get rid of typos, redundant adverbs and confusion.

Molly and Ben, the third part of the Molly trilogy is ‘finished’. It is now time to edit, edit and edit some more. I expect to release it on kindle mid-September.  What’s next? A collection of short stories including The Time Machine; In Memoriam Mr Rock Star and Where The Star Dust is Found. 

Meet Molly: a tale of love, entrepreneurship and the hero’s tale.  Molly and The Isle of Kasta: the sequel. Bram, A Spy Story: it’s 1988:  a story of coming-of-age, Queen and country and the origins of Covid-19. 

Managing a Business in a Crazy World, 24

Those on the shop-floor, at the sharp-end of the business may well have some excellent ideas on how to make the business more responsive and/or more effective and save cost.  What’s the route-and incentive-for sharing those ideas?

A Confession

From Patrick Rhone. 

And it’s an interesting one. Like Patrick I don’t believe I have ever listened to an audio book novel.

But in my early start-up days when I was trying to learn everything about everything as quickly as possible my passenger seat in the car was littered with business books on audio tape. And a very effective method of learning it was too. 

Thank You

Michael Wade. 

To be in the stack is a gift. 

An Approach for the curse of E-Mail Overload

(1)Send less. Every e-mail you send will eventually generate pieces of e-mail for you; it's a sort of e-mail karma. The fewer you can send, the fewer you will ultimately receive. Email is easy but it has consequences. (2)Cc less. They really don't need a copy. Have one off conversations with the necessary stake-holders explaining why you won't be cc ing your boss, the team, everyone in future, necessarily. Only when it matters. (3)Get real; sort the politics. If the amount of mail you send, if to whom it is CCd are really the sole measure of your success... (4)Batch more. It is time effective to do (within reason) the same task for some time. Decide when you will check you mail. Check it, action it, send it. Then forget it for a while and get on with some real work. (5)Handle once only. When you do review your mail, consider it once and once only. Then delete it, file it or note it on your action list. Or possibly action it there and then. With complex and/or emotionally laden mails, don't send immediately but let them incubate and then send during your next batch period. (6)10/10 quality e-mail not 3/10 out of mind for moment e-mail. There are broadly two kinds of mail. The 3/10 for effort ones which get it out of mind but do not anticipate questions, make it clear what actions are required and are confusingly written. Of course they do only take 90 seconds to write but they'll take many hours of your time sorting out consequences down the line. Then there is the 10/10 for effort mail: explicit, action focused and anticipating the questions the recipient might have. Takes 15 minutes to put together of course. But it saves hours if not days of confusion and poorly executed projects down the line. (7)Zone: go for density of e-mail rather than continuous pouring of mail. Create a working period when you will do e-mail. Work at it, hard. Then ignore it: enjoy your evenings, enjoy your meals, enjoy your family. (8)Switch off e-mail in meetings. The brain works best one thing at a time. (9)Create a filing system. File mails you need to keep. Keep your main in box as near to empty as possible. (10)Agree ways of working. With Tokyo, with Washington. In a 24/7 working environment you'll fall apart if you try and keep up with the shop being open. Liaise with colleagues around the globe as to what they can expect from you as a response rate. Saying yes to working all hours is saying a potential no to your health,your relationships and your greatest business asset: your creativity. (11)Pick up the phone more. Phones, even voice mail carry nuances. A mail (even one riddled with little smilies) simply cannot do that. (12)Remember.E-mail is not free: it has a profound loss of productivity cost if not well managed.

Managing a Business in a Crazy World, 23

Observe the competition intently.

But don’t copy them, leap them. 

Always more in Instant MBA. 

The Most Powerful Productivity Tips, 57

Walk into working Monday with a plan.

(Best created Friday mid-PM)

The Breakthrough…

…you seek will probably take time and will undoubtedly need a variety of approaches to be executed before-hey presto-finally it has worked. Be it health, the novel, the promotion, the start up, the move, the workable pension plan, the ……

One thing is sure: give the breakthrough you seek 100% attention at regular intervals and all will fall into place. The frustrations along the way? All part of the process.