Hi, I’m Daniel.
I’m paving the way for people with great ideas for improving the world.
About me.
I’m an operations analyst at the Center on Long-Term Risk and a personal coach, currently based in London. See my LinkedIn for my professional background.
I’m curious about everything and love to learn new things. I’m particularly interested in how to have peak energy and focus, get the most out of my time, and struggle more gracefully. I spend my downtime meditating, hiking, and enjoying dark chocolate.
Coaching.
I help people face difficult challenges and go from good to great in their personal effectiveness.
Resources.
Materials that I’m using in my day-to-day work and beyond.
Minimalist Productivity System
To be productive at work without struggling unnecessarily, you need to have a reliable way of organizing everything that’s part of “your world”, including tasks, deadlines, meetings, external dependencies, etc. This post outlines a minimalist approach to designing a productivity system that helps you do your best work. Introduction Getting Things Done, or GTD as…
Professional Development in Operations
In my previous role as COO at the Effective Altruism Foundation, I was seeking answers to the question of how to become an excellent business operator—both for myself, the people I managed, and others in my network. I condensed my best guess into a roadmap.
Goal Setting
I rely heavily on setting ambitious monthly goals for myself and the people I work with. This post provides guidance on how to set and evaluate goals. I recommend doing this on a monthly basis. Set aside 2-4 hours at the end of each month to go through the steps outlined below. Your manager should…
Brainstorming
Coming up with options is one of the critical steps in any decision-making process. Brainstorming is a useful tool to explore the options space. This post illustrates how to do it. 1. Setting the stage Decide whether you’ll brainstorm on your own or in a group. The latter is preferable since the perspectives of several…
Life Principles
As a disoriented teenager, I started collecting principles that helped me align my thinking and action with my values—how I want to be and how I want to relate to the world. I put those principles in a document that I’d review roughly once per week to stay on track and avoid getting washed away…
How to Give and Receive Feedback
Giving others feedback is critical to help them succeed. It’s also really difficult, both for the giver and the receiver. Here are some pointers on how to do well in both roles. How to give feedback Goal: Provide outside perspective and encourage effective future behaviour.Step 1: Permission. Ask the Receiver whether you can give them…
Coaching Learning Map
In this post, I’m sharing the learning map that I’m using to acquire a strong coaching skill set. After some deliberation, I decided to pursue this as a self-guided learning project instead of getting formal credentials. To set myself up for success, I wanted to get clear at the outset on my motivation to learn,…
Career Reflection Framework
In early 2019, I felt stuck in my career and took this as an opportunity to reflect on my situation and career prospects. Here, I’m sharing the framework that emerged from this period. I’ve removed personal content so you can directly apply it to your own career. The framework helps you work through a complex…
Issue Log
Mistakes are one of our best opportunities to learn and improve. Unfortunately, we’re conditioned to associate mistakes with failure instead of opportunity and to deny or turn away from them. This way, we end up staying the same and likely making the same mistakes over and over again. To start learning from mistakes requires a…
Energy Log
Managing and improving your energy levels is a crucial ingredient to becoming a top performer at work. Being able to show up energized and motivated every day is necessary to achieve big goals and enjoy the process. This post presents a tool to benchmark your current energy levels as the basis for improvement. Energy levels…