Blog – Sean Oliver

Blog

The Coalition of the Moderately Willing

“Happy to help! Here to help with any questions!” Meanwhile, they’re withholding the exact information you need to actually do the work. Welcome to productivity theater. When Teamwork Becomes Performance Art I’m seeing this everywhere lately. Teams that look collaborative on paper but are really just working in parallel toward similar (but not identical) goals [...]

If You Want More Friends Do This One Thing

I’m the least cool of all my friends. It’s something I have refused to accept. Working in marketing, I know facts don’t matter. Attention matters. So to win hearts and minds I needed a new approach. I started a Friends Newsletter.   It’s what it sounds like. A newsletter I write, for my friends. To [...]

3 Sanity Saving Remote Work Tools

I’ve had some friction in the last 456+ days working from home. Here are three tools that have saved my sanity, time, and money. 1. Krisp It’s noise cancelation software. You can sit right next to your dishwasher running, or music in the background, and they won’t hear a thing. That’s value right there. BUT [...]

Turn On Your Camera

My strongest sense is my vision. I notice folk’s expressions. Facial, physical, you name it. The little twitches, frowns, squints, and pursed lips are something I’ve noticed as a child. The twiddling of fingers. I think they are called micro-expressions. I can’t NOT notice them. In 455 days of working from home, I’ve noticed how [...]

1 Document You Must Update Today (If You Have It)

TLDR: You’re amazing. Enough about you for now. One of the best choices I made years ago was creating a Qualities of Achievement doc(QoA). A Qualities of Achievement document is a spreadsheet or document that captures your successes as well as your qualities that enabled that achievement. Sound good? I’ll get you started on it. [...]