It seems that every day brings a new round of articles that talk about how to be productive while working from home. As a home worker for the past 5 years or so, I can attest that it took time to get used to working outside the office daily. There’s a lot that can distract…
A look back at some of the six most read posts from 2017 here at BoxThoughts.
It’s been a good year. I honestly feel like this has been one of my favorite years of blogging. Things came a bit easier and I didn’t have any multi-month stretches of writer’s block. Hopefully, you all got something from here as well. So with that, let’s take a look back at the year! Taxis,…
Systems and data have no ethics or morals.
There’s an intriguing article up at Quartz about AI self-replication. In the middle of it, there is an interesting tidbit about AI adopting the biases and flaws of its developers. Basically, an artificial system will accept whatever data and rules are programmed into it and become reinforced through new data inputs. It may go without…
How’s your personal plan coming along?
It’s that time when everyone starts to develop their goals and objectives for the next year. Reviews and appraisals are being completed. Company objectives are being set. Personal objectives are being setup to align. It’s a time for planning! Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the corporate one-year objectives planning as I think it…
Do you know how your workplace is actually used? #WorkplaceWednesday
One thing that I’ve seen over and over in my career is that few people actually realize the ways their workplace is used across the business. It’s not uncommon for a real estate group to have a complete misconception of the day-to-day reality of a site they are about to run a project in. This…
I can’t tell you how badly I wish I had written this article: Data shouldn’t drive all your decisions
Quartz just published a phenomenal article titled Data shouldn’t drive all of your decisions. Go read it first because I can’t find a single thing I disagree with in it. It hits all of my favorite topics on innovation and decision making. Go ahead, I’ll still be here after you finish reading it. Done? Good! Because…
The trap of the Echo Chamber.
A truism in this world is that we all end up reading our own press. Whenever someone clicks the “Like” button on one of my posts here or on LinkedIn, I get a sudden rush of feeling important. It is easy to start thinking about how smart you are because you got some clicks. Similarly,…
Keep pushing because sometimes momentum is the only thing keeping success possible.
It’s easy to let off the gas every now and then. Keeping the pressure can take a lot of work with seemingly little gain. It usually doesn’t make many fans and doesn’t necessarily advance things regularly. Is it really a problem if that report takes an extra three weeks to come out? Think about how…
Minimizing your least productive moments helps you become more productive.
It’s easier to raise your floor than to raise your ceiling. Cutting out the least productive moments is an easier way to help yourself become more productive than building in maximum productive moments. Why is this true? Usually, unproductive moments are caused by external factors while moments of maximum productivity are a combination of opportunity,…
Everyone can be a data person – that includes you!
I come across a lot of people who proudly proclaim that they are not “data people.” They avoid spreadsheets, they hate columns of numbers, and they claim to get confused easily amidst it all. I’m here to help them all understand – data is your friend and everyone is a data person. Let’s start with…