Jesse Meijers

Beyond proactivity: Accelerating personal development

About 5% of people on the world are proactive by nature. The other 95% are procrastinators. It is no small feat to step through procrastinating and become (more) proactive. Yet this is one of the main things that separates successful people from the rest. But that is just half of the story. Obviously the 95% of people who are not by nature proactive, should aim to become so. But proactivity alone is just the beginning. If it is not combined with thinking, it will lead to nothing.

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The Pygmalion Effect – Using Self Fulfilling Prophecies to your Advantage!

You have probably heard of the Pygmalion effect, usually called a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is used to describe the effect that when you've talked about something bad happening, that it would actually happen. The fact is, this is much closer to the truth than most people realize. And you can use this to your advantage!

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The secret ingredient for success

There is a secret ingredient that successful people have, and others lack, or don't use. This ingredient is a personality trait. One that you can learn if you are not in posession of it already. And train if it is not yet at the level it should be.

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Go R.O.W.E – Results Only Work Environment

Recently I posted about location independency. This is one of the great opportunities that the Internet has given us. But it also means that we need to adopt our management strategy, to match the location independency of our team. The Results Only Work Environment is a proven strategy used by a few very successful companies (large and small) to do just that.

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How to bring good news and bad news

From time to time we have to bring people bad news. Luckily, we also have good news to bring them now and then, so all is not lost. But how do we make sure that we take advantage of good news, and we minimize the impact of bad news?

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Intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation

The current economic crisis has led to a lot of new insights in how we should deal with our economy. On of those insights is that it seems that big bonuses don't seem to work well. The banks of who the top executives had huge bonuses, haven't exactly performed very well. There is a different way to get results, and would you believe me if I told you this has actually been scientifically proven and has been known for over 60 years?

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The harsh truth about pension plans

Let's face it: we all grow old some day. And when we do, we want to keep living in the same way we have become used to. Which means we need some sort of income. The standard way this desire is met, is by using a pension plan. However, did you know that most people with a pension plan will never see all of that money?

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How successful entrepreneurs organize their business advisers

All successful entrepreneurs have a group of business advisers. Basically, this group is a number of people that you have around you for advice. But let's face it, we can't just go to anyone for entrepreneurial advice ... so how do we pick the people we need in our adviser group?

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Getting Real – The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application

A friend of mine recently recommended this book to me. The book discusses the down to earth methods that the people at 37signals used to build their massively popular web applications, used by hundres of thousands of users world wide. With only three people!

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How to learn any skill

When you learn any skill, there are a number of stages that you go throw in order to learn that particular skill. This is the same for any skill that you can think of. Being aware of this process will greatly increase your ability to learn a new skill and also allows you to assess your progress when learning skills.

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