Goodbye © woodley wonderworksEach time you travel by plane, you are bound to experience a miracle. As the plane takes off, the busy throng of life is gradually scaling down, as houses melt into cities and cities sink into the patchwork of the earth.

Your spirit is unclamped. That sensation is so overwhelming that I wonder what astronauts (cosmonauts and taikonauts as well, of course) feel when they talk about the moment they saw the earth from space for the first time. You simply want to transcend your individual existence and do something (anything!) of lasting value.

Well, you are made to be great! Master productivity authors like  » Read more

Alim Khan, by Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-GorskyHave a look at the photograph to the right (click to enlarge). It depicts Alim Khan, 31 years old.

I find his colorful vestment really enjoyable. Doesn't the image look like a folkloristic picture taken in a country far far away? Actually, it was. In Bukhara, Uzbekistan.

Besides its originality, the wonderful colors and the solemn atmosphere, there doesn't seem to be anything too special about this photograph.

Until you learn that  » Read more

Why should I care?

It's just some used paper. I mean: the world won't perish because I throw it away, will it?

«Paper Ball» © Davide Guglielmo

Well…

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Stephen R. Covey's «The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People» isn't a quick read. It doesn't want to be either. For Covey, success is based on habitual formation of the character - comparable to the cycle of sowing and harvesting and about as time-consuming.

In this eight-part series, I'm going to present the key concepts of the book and what I've learned from them. This is Part 3 of the series.

[Note: If you happen to be a follower of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD), the chapter discussed in this posting will show you an interesting approach to defining goals in your life from the 50,000 feet perspective. If you're more interested in the lower levels, this posting probably isn't for you.]

An overview of the series can be found here.

Leadership vs. management

It is easier to learn management than to learn leadership. Leadership is about developing an inner compass, whereas management is about going into the direction suggested by that compass. Leadership is  » Read more