In the zone (curry, wines, & videotape) One summer evening in Birmingham in 1997, English cricketer Nasser Hussain retired early to his hotel room, ordered a curry and a glass of wine, and watched videotape of the Australian bowlers he would face the next day. Little did he know that… full article

Testing times These are challenging times for employees, with the global supply of labour increasing & wages growing slowly. A macroeconomist might surmise that you should sit tight, pray for unemployment to fall, & wait for wages to rise again;  but while this may be sound logic, hope isn't a proactive… full article

Panic & overwhelm! There's often an unspoken rule in the modern corporate world that staff should be continually busy and buzzing with activity, in turn leading managers to become overloaded with innumerable responsibilities. In many cases, it should be said, people seem to rather like it; telling people how busy… full article

Worst nightmares Last night I woke up in a cold sweat, having had that dream again. You may know the one. Sitting in the school hall aged 18, I was about to sit the all-important final exams, but with just one slight problem: I'd done no preparation or revision whatsoever… full article

Tickets to ride The acclaimed Richard Koch of The 80/20 Principle fame suggested thinking of life as a lottery, for which you can buy two types of ticket: -red tickets - expensive & time-consuming to obtain, but the conventional route to success. Most people can only acquire a small number… full article

No return to boom & bust! At the G20 Summit in London in 2009, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown struck a historic deal to tackle the gathering financial meltdown, at the time hailed by President Obama as a turning point for the global economic recovery. Following days of intense and stressful… full article

Income quadrants Author of Rich Dad Poor Dad Robert Kiyosaki has a simple genius, being the ability to explain ideas in a way that anyone can understand, including the various potential sources of income or profit - depicted in a quadrant - and in turn how these translate into your personal financial… full article

Learning from failure In his excellent book Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed examined how individuals and businesses can learn from failure, through marginal gains, rigorous testing of what's working & what isn't, and adjusting course appropriately. He cites the fascinating (to me, anyway!) case of Unilever's laundry detergent nozzles, which… full article

We're all selling something You may or may not work in a defined sales role, but in a sense we're all selling something these days. In any case, you'll likely be involved in many transactions through the course of a productive working week, so it makes sense to understand a… full article

Blind beginner's luck I'll never forget the first time I set foot in a casino as an unworldly teenager, as the mate I went with immediately won an improbable 35 to 1 payout on a single number bet. I strongly suspected he had no idea what he was doing, but… full article