After some great feedback last week, I'm going to continue writing this weekly post: Things to Read While Pretending to Work.
If you missed last week's intro, here's what it's all about: I want to help turn your "dead time" at work into something more productive. Instead of going on Facebook or skimming random news sites to to kill the time, I'm going to post three awesome articles to read instead. Use this post to get a mental break from work, while also learning some tangible, actionable advice that will make your life better.
Is there a specific problem you're struggling with that I haven't covered yet? Leave a comment and let me know. I guarantee that there's an answer out there, so let me do the digging and find it for you.
Enjoy the weekend!
Alistair
Work
68 Rules? No, Just 3 Are Enough (link: NYTimes) -- This is a 2009 New York Times interview of former Accenture chairman and CEO WIlliam D. Green, but don't let the date throw you off because the advice is timeless. He has a great life story and it's worth reading the whole interview, but if you're short on time just check out his 3 simple rules for how to be successful: competence, confidence, and caring.
Life
The All Blacks guide to being successful (off the field) (link: The Telegraph) -- The Rugby World Cup just wrapped up a few weeks ago. It's the third largest sporting event in the World, behind only the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics, and the New Zealand All Blacks repeated as champions to continue their domination of the sport. I've played a lot of rugby (and still play), so this is partially a shameless plug for a great sport that doesn't get much love in the North American market.
This article goes inside the legendary team and uncovers five lessons in leadership that are applicable to many areas of life. My favourite? Their team policy of 'No Dickheads'.
Fitness
Why sitting is bad for you (link: Ted-Ed) -- In case you haven't heard, sitting is the new smoking (or as Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "sitting is the new cancer"). According to Dr. James Levine, a director at the Mayo Clinic, "Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death."
Guess what? Here's a short list of other things that will also cause cancer: alcohol, air travel, bagels, being a woman, being a man, broccoli, cell phones, crayons, Facebook, oral sex, pickles, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think sitting 12 hours a day is good for you, but I just hate it when research studies that show small changes in relative risk get turned into sensational headlines designed to drive website traffic. Instead, get up and move more because it will improve your posture and help your brain perform better at work. This link is for a 5 minute Ted-Ed video that explains what happens when you sit (warning = it mentions cancer). There are also links to a few more detailed articles, and the whole Ted-Ed site is worth checking out if you haven't been there before.
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Is this post useful? What do you want to learn about next week? Let me know in the comments.
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Alistair Clark is a former management consultant that runs worklifefitness.co, a website with realistic work-life balance advice for people in finance. I help people become one of the best at what they do for a living —a top-performer— without sacrificing everything else in their life.
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