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10/10/2011

40 in 40: Lesson #32

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Route 40

40 in 40: #32

I’m full of quick judgments. Especially about people.

My brain is constantly feeding me information about the world. I judge circumstances, people, public figures, friends, family and more.

Often when I meet someone, within a few minutes I’ve made a number of determinations about them, their life, and their circumstances.

And to be fair my intuition is often right. I have a certain ability to take a wide range of information, process it quickly and make determinations. And in my work as a brand builder and a consultant this ability is often very helpful. It’s one of the strengths I bring to the table.

But many times reality is not what my brain tells me it is. Often I misread, misinterpret, and misunderstand people.

More often than not when I get slightly deeper into a relationship I find a different reality than what I expected.

Lesson #32

If I leave room for a wide range of possibilities to be true I will often get a far clearer picture of reality.

There are some HUGE benefits from practicing this perspective:

  • My circles of influence are wider.
  • My depth of friendships is deeper.
  • I’m able to hold things in tension with less anxiety and worry.
  • My ability to respond to difficult circumstances is less fatalistic.
  • I see the world more for what it is and less from what I THINK it is.

The consequences of living with a small and narrow perspective is equally powerful:

  • My world closes up and I distance myself from relationships.
  • Friendships are not as safe and I’m not able to stay in them.
  • My reactions to situations is often poor and consequences are negative.
  • I don’t see the world for what it is and I see what I THINK I see (or worse what I WANT to see).

How wide open is your world?

Keep moving forward,

Greg

09/03/2011

I Have a ZERO Birthday Coming Up

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Route 40Turning 40: Just another day

On the other hand you only have 8 of them in your typical life.

So to mark 40 I’m writing 40 in 40.

40 lessons I’ve learned in 40 years.

All the great lessons in life have been handed down from someone else. And for that I’m thankful. There is wisdom in lessons that stand the test of time. These are a few of mine.

Lesson #1

A lesson I teach my kids when they start middle school and we begin meeting together weekly for breakfast:

You become who you follow

This is one of the fundamental truths in life. For better or worse, come hell, or high water who I follow will shape me.

Talk to anyone for an hour about real things in life and you will hear who they are following. Watch teenage kids and how they dress and what they are listening to and you will get a glimpse into who they follow. Look into any culture anywhere and you will see who people are following.

We talk a lot about leaders and I believe leaders are incredibly important.

But in my own life who I follow is THE decision.

Notice I didn’t say who you read or watch or listen to (although these are all good things). I said follow. Following is another ballgame altogether.

Who are you following?

Keep moving forward,

Greg

09/18/2009

Productivity Series: Managing Email

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I have spent a lot of time on personal productivity issues. My first professional mentor was a master at being productive and got more done than anyone I have ever met. I watched and learned and tried to apply and want to share some of what I learned from him. Here’s a post on how I manage email. It’s the first in a series on personal productivity.

This post was also inspired by Michael Hyatt when he wrote this post a few weeks ago.

Productivity Series: Getting to Zero

(and staying there)

Screen shot 2009-09-15 at 5.54.15 PM.png

The inbox is a frustration for a lot of people. I get about 200 emails per day. That’s a lot of messages to go through (6,000 per month!).

About 5 years ago, after reading David Allen’s terrific book, Getting Things Done, I realized I needed to get control of my inbox. Important things that I needed to respond to were getting overlooked, projects that I wanted to move forward were getting stalled, and I was missing out on opportunities that I wanted to take advantage of.

So I took control following the Getting Things Done (GTD) system and spent one weekend going through all of my email. I deleted thousands that weekend, responded to others, and filed a lot. I won’t go into the details of how I got up to date. It was a ton of work but was worth it.

Now my inbox is almost never above 100 at any time and at the end of every day is almost always under 30 and often almost 0.

Here are the top 5 email tactics that will help you get your inbox under control:

Use little bits of time

Use small amounts of time that would normally be wasted to get rid of unnecessary emails or things you can respond to in a minute or less. About 1/2 of my daily inbox influx is things that can be responded to quickly or filed right away.

Eliminate unnecessary emails quickly and religiously

I unsubscribe from anything that I am not interested in and use RSS and other services to reduce inbox clutter. This has reduced my inbox daily influx by 50 emails per day or so. I still get many newsletters and broadcast emails, but they are the ones that I want to see in my inbox.

Use a mobile device to help manage on the road

I use the iPhone which has enabled me to work on my inbox and keep it clean while in the dentist office, the drive through, or while waiting for an appointment somewhere. And the iPhone’s IMAP configuration for email syncs with my google apps gmail so that when I archive something on the iPhone it is also archived in gmail when I log on.

Archive and file things immediately

Utilizing gmails unbelievable search not sort ability I take 70%+ of my emails and archive them almost immediately after adding a task to my GTD project or task list. For example my plane reservations for the flight I am going on this week don’t need to stay in my inbox because searching for Southwest will produce my itinerary in seconds when I need it.

Stay on it and don’t get too far behind

I spend 30 minutes or so each night getting from 70 emails down to 30 or less. This isn’t hard and doesn’t take much brain power so it is easy to do while watching a TV show or hanging out with Elise.

Some would say that I obsess too much with the clean inbox. I understand that, and my methods aren’t for everyone.

I will tell you this. Every morning I awake and get in the office ready to hit the day and not feeling behind on things because I know that my necessary communication is up to date, filed, or on a project list to be dealt with.

Keep moving forward,

Greg

06/05/2009

The Change (or lack of change) Culture

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i-want-change

Until about 5 years ago I didn’t really believe I could change. I knew I could improve in certain aspects and I knew I could get better at certain skills. But deep down inside in places you don’t share with other people often, I believed that there was some junk in my life that would never change.

I grew up in the church. I went to Sunday school and church religiously, learned the secret handshakes, and figured out the prayer that would get me into heaven. I learned a lot in my head, but when I looked around at the people in the church I didn’t see the kind of radical transformation that seemed to characterize the people who encountered Jesus that I saw in the bible. I was taught a lot of truth, rules, and the right way to do things (some things). But, by in large, people were sort of always the same. Grumpy people stayed grumpy, angry people stayed angry, happy people stay happy. There didn’t seem like there was an expectation of change.

I also experience this as an adult. I have a particular group of friends that I enjoy being with who are all Christians. They are great guys. However, it seems to me it would be hard to look at us and say that we are steadily and progressively becoming more and more like Christ. The culture of this group of friends does not expect that. My observation is that this particular culture does not want to change very much. As a group of friends we are content and comfortable with how things are.

The Living Water of Jesus

Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’.”

It wasn’t until I heard one of my heroes, John Ortberg, speak on change that I realized that when Jesus talked about having living water flowing out of me he really meant it. He meant I could have that kind of life here and now.

This was not the kind of life I was experiencing! This was a life changing shift in my thinking. That was 2004.

Much of the last 5 years has been experimenting and trying on this life with living water flowing out of it. Here are a few of the things that I have been experiencing:

  1. Jesus words are not moral platitudes or strict legalistic rules. His teaching is simply the best way to live. Period. So when Jesus teaches on not worrying or putting aside anger, he is not teaching rules that will simply make us feel more guilty. He is saying “try responding without the anger that you might be tempted to in this situation, see if that isn’t a much better way to live than your current way”. He is teaching that learning how to let go of worry and anger will result in rivers of living water flowing out of us. That’s an abundant life.
  2. God’s expectation (and what ours can be as well) is that we will increasingly be taking off some character traits and and putting on new character traits. Change will come and should be expected. That will become the normal pattern. It won’t always be consistent or easily identifiable. However, it will be progressive.
  3. This process of living the best life ever and putting on a new character will be natural and not burdensome if I am a disciple of Jesus. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. The weight I feel when I struggle with change is usually from me not from God. God-like change will be freeing, even if it is painful at times.
  4. I have a tremendous amount to do with how much I change. It is God’s work in me for sure. But he works when I work and guides me as I exert effort. I do not need to worry about the outcome, he will take care of that also, I simply need to continue to stretch myself into new areas of change.

I still have lots of the junk that was in my life 5 years ago. I still struggle day after day and week after week with some of the same things. This can be discouraging if that’s the whole story.

But there is more to the story than that. God has worked with me, and I have seen steady progress, and I have been able to slowly but steadily put off some junk and take on some better ways of living that Jesus promised. I’m thankful to God for that.

Keep moving forward,

Greg

04/24/2009

Common Greatness

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Heard of Susan Boyle?

If you haven’t heard of Susan Boyle you probably haven’t watched news the past two weeks. If you have, you know that she has come out of nowhere and taken the world by storm with her performance on Britain’s Got Talent. More than 30,000,000 people have watched various YouTube versions of her performance in the past 14 days.

There was a philosopher in the middle ages that said, “God has hidden the greatness of men from themselves lest they be filled with pride”. Susan Boyle’s greatness was revealed and it took the audiences breath away.

You may not be an overnight success like Susan Boyle. You may not be performing in front of the world. But are you aware of your greatness? Within each of us is greatness that is waiting to be revealed to the world that is around us.

So the question is, where can you focus your time, talent, and treasure to reveal yours?

Keep Moving Forward,

Greg

p.s. Here’s the link for the performance.

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