Jesse Meijers

The meaning of the word ‘but’…

This very simple word, 'but', which is used in many languages, has a very profound meaning that most people do not notice. We tend to use this word very much, yet underestimate its power.

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How to build trust and become trustworthy

If you want someone to trust you, you will first have to become trustworthy. This is not an easy feat to pull off and being trustworthy has to do with very deep and basic personality traits. Stephen M. R. Covey dissected trust in his fantastic book The Speed of Trust. In this article I will discuss the the way to build trust and become trustworthy along the lines set out by Stephen M.R. Covey (this is Stephen R. Covey's son).

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Professional Time Management with Stephen Covey

When I just started as an entrepreneur, managing my time was easy. I didn't. I just put every bit of energy into my company. Of course I also had my education to focus on, but obviously it suffered. Sports suffered too, as I stopped playing any sport for about one or two years. Almost every bit of time went into my company. And then it failed. I felt miserable. Something had to change.

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The rules of rulemaking

Our society thrives on rules. There are rules for everything. From the size of a door or window in your home, to what you should do when you switch your job, there are rules in every aspect of your life. And people are expected to abide to these rules. But if you are an entrepreneur or a manager of a department, or even running a household, you are faced with a different aspect of rules: rulemaking. There are certain dos and don'ts about rulemaking, the rules of rulemaking. Abide to these rules and you'll notice that you are creating success. Break them, and you will end up with chaos!

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Top 5 Meeting Tips

Most of the time I dread them, meetings. They tend to get all lengthy. Back in university the annual members meeting would sometimes last as much as 5 or 6 hours... And meetings usually seem to avoid fun topics like you would the plague. But I also know they are a fact of running a business, so today I present to you my top 5 meeting tips. These tips can be used to steer a meeting in the direction you want to, and have it done with in an orderly time frame.

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4 rules for being successful

During my work as a project manager for IT projects I have seen many different kinds of people. Internal company employees, externally hired consultants, company management, the list goes on. Some of these people are successful. Most are not. What is it that separates the successful from the unsuccessful?

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Must-have ingredients for a good partnership

Yesterday I had a meeting with my business partner who just came back from his holiday. And I was about to tell him something that I knew he was not going to like. But he's my partner so it also felt as though I had an obligation to tell him what was on my mind. In the past we've talked about tough personal circumstances and how that influences your work. Sometimes they make you work harder, at other times it has a negative impact on your work and commitment. But we talked about these things nonetheless, and it would seem as though this was just another case. Yet it wasn't.

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How to take control over your work

Recently I was completely fed up with some of the things I was doing. Or bettter yet, I had to do because others were expecting them from me, or even asking me to do them. They asked because I was the person who did these things well, so why go to anyone else? I had to change this, but I had no clue as to how. So I did a very simple exercise with my personal coach, which helped me understand exactly what I had to do in order to only be busy with the things that I liked. I have to warn you, the exercise is easy but the following up is hard. If you do however, the rewards are well worth the effort.

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The key to problem solving

Do you ever have the feeling that you are completely stuck on a problem? That no matter what you try, you just cannot get a grip of the essence of the problem. I have developed many software applications in the last few years. Programming applications usually is pretty straight-forward once you get down to the real programming. However, sometimes there is a problem which you just aren't able to solve. You have read over the code at least ten times, but you still cannot find the problem. This situation can of course be extrapolated to other problems, in different situations. Any situation where you know there is a problem ... you just don't know where...

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Understanding self improvement with Bateson

When I was in highschool, we had this course about society. Pretty boring most of the time, since we had to learn who was in the government, what they did etc. But there was this one day which I'll never forget in my whole life. That day we had a guest teacher. But not just any guest teacher. A former criminal, with a serious history of organized crime. This person had something to tell. He told his story of how he became a criminal and that while he made tons of money, it wasn't worth it in the end. Not because he got busted. But because his life just didn't have any true meaning. Now the big question was, what made him turn around his life? Because he not only gave up crime, he was putting in a big effort to stop others from becoming criminals. This question has fascinated me for a long time. And recently I learned the answer...

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