January 1st, 2009 at 9:54 am
Happy New Year my fellow earth dwellers (shout out to those from off the planet that may be reading via RSS). Here it is January 1, 2009 8:32 Central Time. I am catching up on my RSS feeds, Twitter Feeds, etc. and sitting here wondering what the New Year will bring me. I am also thinking about what I will accomplish in the coming 365 days.
Have you thought about that? Yep… those trendy New Year’s resolutions that are so popular to talk about. You made them yesterday. Now it is time to ‘Cowboy Up’ and dig in and do them.
Don’t even bother.
Because you did not write them down. In the past 30 days if you verbally or mentally built a list of items that you want to accomplish in 2009 and you did not write them down you wasted your vocal cords and burned some brain cells that could have better been used elsewhere.
Don’t get me wrong. I love New Year’s resolutions. As human beings we love to set goals
that start on a major time period. Every morning when we wake up it is a new day and most of us feel it is a new time to start over and do something with our life. The same goes with Sunday morning and the 1st of every month. The New Year is a very large milestone in each of our lives (we usually get less than 100 of them) and therefore it is natural that we want to set very lofty goals for the next 12 months. It is also a great time to measure what we have accomplished in the past 12 months.
But if you did not write them down so you can see them then they might as well not exist. Writing them down is the equivalent of making a personal contract with yourself. Thinking about it (the gentleman’s handshake) is one thing. But we all know that handshake contracts can be dangerous. Actually writing it down make you legally bound with yourself to actually perform said services. Plus you don’t ever want to break a contract that you can see taped to the bathroom mirror every morning so you?
So the question to you is: Did you write them down? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Happy 2009 !
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December 29th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
You are a person that is blessed with many skills.
I know that Mr/Ms Reader without even meeting you or ever talking to you. I know that you have the ability to do some amazing things and do them well. It is just something that happens to us once we leave the womb. From the moment the sunlight hits ours eyes each of us starts getting great at something. And thankfully it is never the exact same thing for two different people.
As I network with people online and offline the one thing that I want to know when I meet them is what you have to bring to this relationship. If I meet you in person I will gladly tell you that I am a great communicator and I love anything involved in that field. I’ve owned my own business for a decade, and the one thing that I really enjoy is listening to what my customers want and making sure that they get it. I have to be able to communicate it back to them effectively. And if I screw it up, tell me. I will listen intently, repeat it back and make it right. But you don’t have to tell me twice.
But if somebody (like me) asked you (like I am) what is absolute ONE best skill you had what would it be and why are you so good at it?
December 20th, 2008 at 9:54 am
And now for something completely different…
I went flying last night and took a buddy to go see the Festival of Lights in Chickasha Oklahoma. Enjoy the basic footage that we took! I didn’t to the entire audio track so I probably get pretty excited in there every now and then.
December 9th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
The Oklahoma Twitter Community is having a twitter meetup this Thursday morning in Downtown Oklahoma city. I’ll be there along with Derrick Parkhurst and other people in Oklahoma City trying to make the tech community grow and prosper. Every event that is put together is a great amount of fun, and really helps out in the networking department. Everybody is welcome and invited - not just the tech community (props out to all of the ad firms that are on twitter :) )
For more information and to sign up visit: http://okccoco.com/
You can also connect to me on twitter and get the latest updates: http://twitter.com/stopdoingnothin
And don’t forget to get Derrick’s twitter also for the latest info on the OKCCoCo project: http://twitter.com/ThirtySixthSpan
December 8th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
As a big fan of time management and itemizing what I want to do in life I have always been a proponent of checklists. One of the reasons I have always loved Outlook (all versions) is that it has all of the essentials tools of organization: Email, contact lists, calendar and to do lists/checklists .
Over the past 18 months I have strayed from my marriage with Outlook to snuggle under the covers with my mistress Google Apps. As much as I love my nice warm web-based mistress mistress and as much time as I spend with her I have still been hooked on Outlook for my support payments. Google Apps has just been missing a little something.
And now it is here.
Google Apps and Gmail FINALLY have todo lists. They are available AFTER you click the little beaker for Google Labs and enable todo lists. You should see the link show up over on the left hand side above your chat lists and below your contact link.
More to follow in later posts. But this is something that really could break up a marriage.
December 8th, 2008 at 8:45 am
A huge glass of water is one of the best things you can do first thing in the morning right when your feet hit the ground. Why?
1. Warm water with lemon has health and immune system benefits. http://www.quantumbalancing.com/news/lemon%20water.htm
2. Your body has been lying around for awhile and now has to get all that flushed out. Got to pee!
3. Keeping your body hydrated is an excellent way to keep the metabolism moving and…
4. If you keep that metabolism moving…. you lose weight.
So take a break from the email/twitter/blog reading/etc. and go drink a HUGE glass of water. Chug it like it was a beer. And then smile afterwards. And then…. come back here and brag about it.
Go! Go! GO!
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November 27th, 2008 at 4:02 am
Continuing the series of a leadership speech I gave in Oklahoma City.
Leadership Trait 1 of 5:
1. Leaders are not afraid to stand up and say “I’ll do it”.
When I was younger I was taught somehow somewhere - I don’t remember exactly where - that volunteering to help and raising my hand was a bad thing. You didn’t want to get called on by the teacher. And when the teacher or somebody else called on people to help with something you should slink and hide out of the way and hope the teacher didn’t see you.
Do any of you do that?
I know I did. But as I starting getting older I learned something that I am going to share with you right now. I learned that raising my hand and volunteering to help was the coolest thing around. It was not to be feared. It was something to look forward to. Why? Because when people see that you are willing to volunteer to help them or your class they remember that. They remember that that person is not afraid of a challenge. They are not afraid to do something hard.
And as you get on in life you are going to learn that people LOVE people that volunteer. Because people that volunteer to help other are showing one of the traits of a great leader. They are not afraid to stand up and say “I’ll do it”.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:02 am
3rd part in the series.
You can see part I here and part II here:
Part III
It is incredibly rewarding. Your ideas get to be used and implemented. Leaders start things. They get the ball rolling.
Being a leader means that you are going to have to do things that MOST people do not want to do. You are going to have to stand up and say things that most people are afraid to say. And you are going to have to believe things that most people do not want to believe. And for the long term you are going to have to have the courage to stick to what you believe in and follow it through to completion.
Sometimes you are going to have to embarrass yourself. [Bring up audience member for example]
You are going to have to put yourself in front of your friends and your foes and tell them “I
believe this is what we should be doing and this is where we should be going”. They might
ridicule you and put you down. They might tell you that what you want to do cannot be done.
People have tried it before and have failed. But you have to have faith in yourself and your
ideas. Sometimes you may be the only one that does.
Leadership is scary sometimes. Here is an example of family leadership: My wife and I had decided that we were going to take a different direction than all of our friends had taken: We were going to go into business for ourselves. I had to visit another business in Sacramento, California that I was going to be doing some work for. As I was laying on the bed in the hotel room thinking about what I was getting ready to do - to become a leader/entrepreneur this panic overwhelmed my body all of sudden. I remember that it came over me like a wave starting from the tips of my toes and consuming me all of the way to my head. I started having doubts about whether I could do it or not. What if I fail? What if I fail so badly that it hurts my family? What if we run out of money and we cannot eat? These are the things you have to look at and find a way around as a leader. You have to know that you might fail, but you have to believe in your soul that you will succeed.
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November 18th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Another part of my presentation in Oklahoma City on Leadership:
–
If you look around the world today you will see that most people are on auto pilot.
- This means that most people wake up every day at the latest possible time that they can to get to school
- They drive the same route to work as everybody else
- They arrive at the same time as everybody else and go to the same desk that everybody else goes to
- They work the minimum numbers of hours they have to to get done what needs to be done
- They drive home the exact same way that they came
- They go to bed so they can wake up and do it all over again in the morning
Doing the same thing every day is very comfortable and very safe. It makes us feel good to know exactly where we are going and what is waiting for us once we get there. If something ever disrupts this comfort it scares us. For example : If something blocks our road on the way to work we don’t know what to do for awhile. It makes us squirm. We have to adjust.
Occasionally you find someone who thinks that we can be doing something in a better way. That person believes that we can learn a better way in school. Or we can do something in our community or our neighborhood to help another group of people. That person sees a problem that has existed for a long time and has found a new way to solve.
That kind of person is a leader.
And good leaders are hard to find . They are rare because most people just want to do the same thing because it is safe. We need more people like you and you and you that are not happy with being comfortable and safe. We need young people such as yourselves to stand up and say “Hey… I think we should go to the mountain top. And I know a great way to get there. It may be hard. It may take longer than the other way. We may stub our toe every now and then or scrape our knees. It is not going to be the same way that all of the other people are going. But we will be much better people by the time that we get there.”
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November 8th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I recently gave a presentation locally in Oklahoma City on what leadership is and how our youth can become effective leaders. Here is the first part of that series:
Leadership is the ability to inspire people to reach a common destination. It is the wisdom to see the challenges and obstacles that are placed in your way and know that you can get around them. You may not know how or when. But you honestly believe deep down in your heart you know you can get there. A great leader will pull you and help you accomplish things that you did not know that you could do. A boss will sometimes push you to someplace that you did not want to go in a way that you don’t want to go.
It is also someone who by word AND by deed always does the right thing. What does that mean - by word and by deed ? Always - even when nobody is looking. Why is this person a leader ? Because sometimes it is hard to find a person who always says and does the right thing. When we find that kind of person they can become our spiritual and moral leader. These are the kind of people that we can aspire to be like.
Stay tuned for part two to be posted shortly. I’d be interested in your comments below on Part I
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