Now Available: The Relaunch of Sources of Insight
“Do your own thing on your own terms and get what you came here for.” -- Oliver James
Long ago, I had spun off a focus on Personal Effectiveness to Sources of Insight.
I mentor a lot of teams and leaders for high-performance, and I needed a place to consolidate and share principles, patterns, and practices for personal effectiveness. In fact, the tag-line is:
Proven Practices for Personal Effectiveness
I’ve significantly revamped the user experience, the content, and the collections of resources on Sources of Insight to reflect the latest feedback that users have shared with me (thank you all.)
Sources of Insight is for people with a passion for more from work and life. The goal of Sources of Insight is to be your source of insight, inspiration, and impact to help you achieve more in work and life. Whether you are an achiever or a high-performer, or simply want to work on your personal effectiveness, Sources of Insight will help you accelerate your results.
Better Insights, Better Results
One of the slogans I use is “Better Insights, Better Results” because the big idea is to “empower people with skill for work and life.”
Sources of Insight is now a success library of more than 1,300 articles with a focus on helping you “create a smarter, more creative, more capable you.”
You can think of this as applying patterns & practices to work and life, as well as making “Agile for Life” real.
The idea here is to give you the tools and techniques that will help you rise above the noise, get a better vantage point, and make better decisions to change any situation you find yourself in, or to create better situations from the start.
Stand on the Shoulders of Giants
As part of building out Sources of Insight, I draw from great books, great people, and great quotes, to help you “Stand on the shoulders of giants.”
As my friend puts it, what I really do is help you “Run with the titans.”
I’m a big believer in finding the “best of the best” from various disciplines and experts around the world and synthesizing into actionable guidance.
I periodically have featured guests on Sources of Insight. I try to find the people that are the best in the world at what they do, or that have some interesting insight that will help you think differently or make more impact.
Many of my guest posts are by best-selling authors, but I also include comedians, and others.
Some of my guests include Al Ries – the father of brand positioning in the mind, Guy Kawasaki – who is all about empowering people, Gretchen Rubin – author of The Happiness Project, Jairek Robbins – author of Live It (and Tony Robbins’s son), Jim Kouzes – author of The Leadership Challenge, Marie Forleo – some say she is a female Tony Robbins, Michael Michalko – author of Thinker Toys, and a former Disney imagineer, Rick Kirschner – author of Dealing with People You Can’t Stand, Tim Ferris – author of The 4-Hour Work Week, and many more. (You can see featured guests at a glance on the Feature Guests page on Sources of Insight.)
Realize Your Potential
What makes the articles a bit different on Sources of Insight is they usually reflect problems that I am helping people with, so they are real-world scenarios and solutions.
In this way, Sources of Insight is more than a clearinghouse of the world’s best insight and action for work and life – it’s also a self-paced, virtual mentor where you can learn how to be YOUR best.
Some readers say that the key thing for them is that Sources of Insight helps you “realize your potential.”
As Ralph Waldo Emerson would say, “Make the most of yourself....for that is all there is of you.”
And I would add, nobody else is going to do it for you 
Popular Topics for Personal Effectiveness
On Sources of Insight, I cover key topics for personal effectiveness. The most popular topics are:
You can browse more topics including Confidence, Conflict, Influence, Intellectual Horsepower, Interpersonal Skills, Strengths, Time Management, and more on the Topics page at Sources of Insight.
Great Books, Great People, Great Quotes
I also have collections of Great Books, Great People, Great Quotes:
Great Books – These are hand-crafted indexes of interesting and insightful books that you can use to improve all aspects of your work and life. I spend a lot of money on books every single month and I read a lot of books each and every week. In fact, many of my blog posts are what I call “Book Nuggets” which are like the best needles in the haystack. My Great Books collection reflects a heavy investment in my quest to find the best wisdom of the world that is spread across hundreds, and thousands of books. Some of my more popular collections of books include Business Books, Career Books, Leadership Books, Personal Development Books, and Productivity Books.
Great People – This is where I shared and scale my best lessons learned and key insights from all walks of life. What I do is I try to compact and distill the best insights from various people into lessons learned. You can think of it as “Greatness Distilled.” Some people are famous and others are unsung heroes. What I focus on is the interesting insights that you can use to get better at work and life. Here are a few of my more popular great people pages: Bruce Lee, Chalene Johnson, Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins, and Steve Jobs.
Great Quotes – This is my attempt to organize collections of the world’s best wisdom of the ages and modern sages at your fingertips. The right words can spark the right ideas, or the right thinking or the right feeling or taking the right action. The right words help us live better, and they help us do better, and they help us be better. The right words help us build better vocabularies and better mental models and better ways of doing and being, living, and even breathing. Here are some of the more popular quotes collections: Focus Quotes, Happiness Quotes, Inspirational Quotes, Leadership Quotes, Motivation Quotes, Personal Development Quotes, and Productivity Quotes.
Articles
As I mentioned early, Sources of Insight is a Success Library of more than 1,3000+ Articles for Personal Greatness. You can start at the Articles page,
The Articles page has a simple set of some of the best articles. From there, you can also explore the Archives. You can also browse Topics from there.
Some of the most popular articles include: 7 Habits of Happiness, 25 Inspirational Movies, 50 Life Hacks for Your Future Self, 101 of the Greatest Insights and Actions for Work and Life, 101 Questions that Empower You, How To Get Whatever You Want, How To Think Like Bill Gates, Inspirational Quotes, Lessons Learned from Bruce Lee, The Exponential Results Formula, You 2.0.
Books
On Sources of Insight, the Books page is where I share free eBooks as well as feature the books I author. At this point, my main book featured is Getting Results the Agile Way, which is a personal results system for work and life.
Getting Results the Agile Way is where I introduce my simple productivity system: Agile Results.
Agile Results is really a simple system for meaningful results. It helps you create more moments that matter. It also helps you work on the right things, at the right time, the right way, with the right energy, to amplify your influence and impact.
Most importantly, it gets you spend more time in your strengths, less time in your weaknesses, and it helps you give your best where you have your best to give.
In terms of free eBooks, on the Books page you can find the following free books: You 2.0, 30 Days of Getting Results, Getting Started with Agile Results, and The Zen of Results.
Courses
On Sources of Insight, the Courses page is where I share training to help you realize your potential and bring out your best.
My favorite way to provide training is through what I call “Monthly Improvement Sprints” or “30 Day Improvement Sprints” or just “30 Day Sprints.”
They are effectively 30 Day Challenges where you practice a little each day, to get better over time.
I find 30 Day Challenges or 30 Day Sprints are a great way to build better habits, learn new things, and improve your skills and abilities at whatever you focus on.
On the Courses page, you’ll find 30 Days of Getting Results, which was my attempt to share the absolute best principles, patterns, and practices for personal productivity.
Best of all, it’s free. It could well be the best self-paced training you ever take for high-performance and for mastering productivity, time management, and work-life balance.
Plus, it’s a powerful way to learn Agile Results in a simple way, with one mini-lesson each day, that includes an exercise to put it into practice.
Resources
On Sources of Insight, the Resources page is effectively a library of helpful resources at your fingertips. Here are a few of the key resources:
Book Review – My Book Reviews are like mini movie trailers of books, where I include key highlights from the book as well as my key take aways. I don’t really do book reviews, where I talk about pros and cons. Instead, I look for the most interesting or the most insightful parts of the book and focus on those. I always ask the question, “How can I use this?” and I apply those “Book Nuggets” and those key take aways to real world scenarios.
Cheat Sheets – Cheat Sheets put key information at your fingertips. The only Cheat Sheet I have so far is a Blogging Resources Cheat Sheet. It’s actually a very powerful Cheat Sheet though, if you happen to be a blogger. I get asked a lot about blogging, everything from how to get started to how to create a successful blog. People ask me what the connection of blogging is to Personal Effectiveness, and to me it’s simple: Working on your blog, is working on your life. By building a blog, you build a personal platform for learning and growth. Blogging is still one of the most effective ways I know to focus on personal development, while giving your best where you have your best to give, and sharing your unique expertise with the world. I plan to add some very special Cheat Sheets of hard-core knowledge, so this page is more of a placeholder for now.
Checklists – Checklists are a quick way to provides lists of “one-liner reminders.” In general, I try to focus on creating actionable checklists that inspire and trigger the right thinking or the right actions. Currently, I provide a Focus Checklist, Leadership Checklist, Time Management Checklist, and The Charge Checklist, which is a checklist I created based on the best-selling book, The Charge.
How Tos – How Tos are a great way to turn insight into action. My most popular How Tos include How To Achieve Any Goal, How To Avoid Breaking Under Pressure, How To Change Any Habit, How To Find Your Strengths, and How To Find Your Values.
Product Recommendations – This is my roundup of the best products I’ve used for personal development and improving personal effectiveness. The big deal here is The Greatest Personal Development Gifts Ever. Not only are these the personal development programs that have served me well, but they are the gifts that I give to friends and family to give them an edge in work and life.
Trends – This is where I share key trends each year. If you’ve ever read one of my trends posts, you know that they are deep, and they help give you a big advantage when it comes to seeing the road ahead. One of the most important personal effectiveness skills that you can build is anticipation. The way to improve your anticipation is to learn how to identify, understand, and apply trends to create your future. When you focus on trends, they also help you build your visionary leadership skills, and if there’s one thing this world needs more of, it’s visionary leadership. Here is my Trends for 2016 post. It is a really deep dive into what’s happening around the world, but it also provides you the balcony view at a glance. Use this as your advantage to maneuver at work, to shape your business, and to shape yourself, with clarity, courage, and competence. After all, 2016 is the year of the bold!
Personal Effectiveness Toolbox
I wonder if I saved the best for last? The Personal Effectiveness Toolbox is, to this date, my greatest compilation of the greatest programs and tools to help you do more and achieve more in this lifetime.
On the Personal Effectiveness Toolbox page, I share all of the best tools that I have used over the years to exponentially improve my ability to get results and to amplify my impact.
These are some of the best programs that have helped me really understand influence and impact.
They have helped me create my own personal achievement systems.
They have helped me get over any limiting beliefs and master my mind.
They have helped me really understand emotional intelligence at a deeper level and learn real skills and techniques.
They have also been my greatest programs for personal development and improving personal effectiveness across mind, body, emotions, career, finance, relationships, and fun.
Change the World or Go Home
We have a little saying that we use in the halls at Microsoft:
Change the world or go home!
Every now and then, you can see a poster in the hall or on somebody’s wall of the Microsoft Blue Monster.
It was the work of Hugh MacLeod as you can recognize by his art – simplicity and elegance in action (and you can read the backstory at The Blue Monster.)
You have everything at your fingertips to be YOUR best and to realize your potential, the agile way.
Go ahead and change the world, your way.
Always remember to give your best, where you have YOUR best to give.
Thrive on.