Gretchen Rubin: Change Your Habits, Change Your Life

  • Posted by Liz Gooster
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Do you make your bed in the morning? If you do, that’s good. If you don’t – yet – starting to do so could make a drastic difference to your clarity of mind. Sounds trivial, and yet in her extensive research into the habits that work for us, and against us, Gretchen Rubin, author of […]
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The Mindful Workplace by Michael Chaskalson

  • Posted by Liz Gooster
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The Mindful Workplace is an extremely clear-headed introduction to mindfulness, its proven benefits, especially in the context of work, and how to begin practicing it. Michael Chaskalson defines mindfulness as ‘a way of paying attention, in the present moment, to yourself, others and the world around you.’ He says that ‘mindfulness training boosts your attention […]
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Financial Times Guide to Business Coaching

  • Posted by Liz Gooster
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Business coaching: what it is, why it works, how to do it, when to do it (and when not to). Plus, critically, how to make money doing it. One of the Financial Times Guide to Business Coaching’s biggest assets is it covers all this and more in a single, elegantly written volume. It is genuinely a […]
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Eat that Frog! by Brian Tracy

  • Posted by Liz Gooster
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Eat that Frog! is my favourite book on productivity, and I often find myself rereading it in January, to remind myself of the disciplines and practices I’d like to follow in the coming year. While there are 21 tips in the book, these are really just variations on a few key themes. These themes are […]
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Getting Things Done by David Allen

  • Posted by Liz Gooster
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Getting things done. Time management. Productivity. Whatever you call it, this is one of today’s critical issues. We all have too much to do and want to feel in control of our spiralling to do lists, our groaning inboxes and our bulging diaries. In terms of the amount of ‘stuff’ we try to cram in, […]
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Help! How to be slightly happier and get a bit more done, by Oliver Burkeman

  • Posted by Liz Gooster
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As the title makes clear, this book doesn’t offer the holy grail of happiness, productivity, time management or work-life balance. Help! is a tongue-in-cheek swoosh through the morass of self-help advice that assails us from the heaving shelves of the popular psychology sections of the bookshops. Liz GoosterI like to describe myself as happily ‘At Large’ […]
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Review of Nancy Kline’s ‘Time to Think’

  • Posted by Liz Gooster
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‘Create a particular environment and people will think for themselves. It is that simple.’ This statement encapsulates the underlying precepts of Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment, elaborated in her marvellous book, Time to Think, which has become a classic of non-directive coaching. I make no apologies for beginning this review by saying I love this book. […]
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Review of ‘Working Identity’ by Herminia Ibarra

  • Posted by Liz Gooster
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I’d wanted to read Herminia Ibarra’s Working Identity for a long time. It was first published in 2004 and was widely reviewed – and praised – in the business press. I’d even met the author once, on a book commissioning trip to INSEAD, where Ibarra is Professor of Organizational Behaviour. So I was excited to […]
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A Game of Two Selves: Timothy Gallwey’s Inner Game of Tennis

  • Posted by Liz Gooster
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‘The Inner Game ‘is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance.’ Gallwey’s book is a thought-provoking overview of how our performance is affected by the relationship between our two inner selves, the self-conscious mind, or ‘teller’ (Self 1) and the unconscious mind, or ‘doer’ (Self 2). Dealing ostensibly with tennis, […]
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