Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the month “July, 2010”

31 Jul 2010

Elevator Pitch Methodology

A brilliant methodology for a good elevator pitch is described by Mike Southon in his FT Column. He first describes how in sales there is the concept of “golden nuggets”. He identifies that customers have very short attention spans and can only remember three things about your product whereas the average marketing team tries to cram 50 amazing features into your literature:

‘The problem is…. that as soon as you mention the fourth golden nugget, the first, and probably the most important one, drops out of their memory.’ The simple methodology for a good elevator pitch ‘centres around five ‘P’s: Read more…

Posted in Business, Communication, Focus, Leadership, Management, Strategy and tagged , , , | Leave a comment
18 Jul 2010

Reasons to Quit: Questions to Ensure You’re Doing Work That Matters

Fried and Heinemeier Hansson in Rework suggest the following questions to ensure you don’t ‘throw good time after bad work’:

‘Why are you doing this?

What problem are you solving? – ensure it’s not an imaginary problem

Is this actually useful? – don’t confuse enthusiasm with usefulness

Are you adding value? – sometimes things you think are adding value actually subtract from it

Will this change behaviour? Is it really going to change anything?

Is there an easier way? – Problems are usually pretty simple. We just imagine they require hard solutions

What could you be doing instead? – what can’t you do because you’re doing this?

Is it really worth it? – can you determine the real value of what you’re about to do before you take the plunge’

Posted in Business, Focus, Mindfulness, Reviews, Time Management and tagged , , , | Leave a comment
18 Jul 2010

The Management of our Attention

‘The ability to attend to our environment, to our own feelings, and to those of others is a naturally evolved feature of the human brain. Attention is a finite commodity, and it is absolutely essential to living a good life. We need attention in order to truly listen to others – and even to ourselves. We need attention to truly enjoy sensory pleasures, as well as for efficient learning. We need it in order to be truly present during sex or to be in love or when we are simply contemplating nature. Our brains can generate only a limited amount of this precious resource every day.’ – Thomas Metzinger, The Ego Tunnel

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Posted in Control, Deliberate Practice, Focus, Happiness, Mindfulness and tagged , , , | Leave a comment

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