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Why can’t I stop doing nothing ?

January 13, 2012 By 3 Comments

It’s another day. You are laying in bed looking at the ceiling wondering why you are in the same place that you were in yesterday. Not physically (same bed, same apartment). But you are in the same relationship you were in yesterday. You are in the same financial situation. You are in the same job, earning the same amount of money working with the same people. It was the beginning of a new week/year and you vowed to make a change. But here you are. Lying in bed. And nothing has changed. And you are beating your head against the wall wondering “Why can’t I stop doing nothing”

I’ve been there brothers and sisters. And I believe the answer that most people would give is:

It is easy

.
To do what you are used to doing takes very little effort. You are on auto-pilot. When you are on auto-pilot you are running around in a daze. Life is a series of waves that you have set yourself up in. And if you keep doing nothing the waves will keep pushing you around. Now you can put your arms out and change direction any time you want. But that requires effort and work.

Don’t be that guy/gal

. Stop Doing Nothing. Pick the things to do that are hard (reading instead of watching TV). Get up and move your body. Nobody ever had great success by sitting around. Change the people that you surround yourself with. Stop ingesting things into your body that provide no nutritional value.

Please start taking an active attitude about your life. You will get further faster. I promise.

Filed Under: Productivity

Getting to where I want to be

March 13, 2011 By 2 Comments

2011 has been a banner year so far. And I want more of it. And by more of it I mean more productivity. More happiness. More metime. More public speaking and presenting my story. More time to do what I want when I want with who I want and how I want.

So what has happened in 2011 to make me feel this way:

I became a member of the National Speakers Association. This is the premier nationally recognized organization that helps speaking professionals learn about and grow their business of coaching/public speaking. It take certain qualifications to enter, namely a lot of public speaking and presenting. I didn’t think I had the qualifications over the past 12 months but after reviewing my calendar I was pleasantly surprised. And the the huge push from my wife didn’t hurt. This is something I’ve thought about for about 5 years and this past week it came true. Mark that off the bucket list.

My speaking engagements are getting larger. It is one thing to speak to a group of 5 people. But when it grows to 20. And then 200.  And then you are being hired to join conferences and being paid to be a breakout session leader. This is ‘get real’ time. And I ready to put my game face on.

I am getting recommended by others for speaking business. There is no better business than recommendation business. When people sell you before you ever walk in the room or get on the phone it makes your job easier. You are already sold. It also makes the ego feel good to know that others think you are good enough to recommend.

I’ve figured how to replicate myself. I know that sounds weird, but it is very true. Every day my eyes are being opened to the power of online video, to private paid membership sites, to charging for the valuable content that I provide and to the value of writing books. All of these are items that I need to add to my marketing arsenal. The planning and execution of these items is exciting – almost as much as the actual execution.

Have you ever had a time when you got excited to future possibilities once your eyes were opened? If so please share it below.

Filed Under: Productivity

10 B4 10: 10 great articles to read over coffee this morning

April 3, 2010 By 1 Comment

Happy Saturday April 3rd. I am in the process of catching up on my Google reader feeds and I thought it would be better to share some of the great content here than trying to tweet each one out. 140 characters is never enough to say what needs to be said. So get a full cup of coffee and enjoy the following great articles to read I thought were well above par this morning.

Business Success Secret: Deliver on What You Promise
Why Stupid People Succeed
Derek Sivers: How to start a movement – Love a quote from this “The first follower is what transforms a nut into a leader”
What NOT to do in conflict
The Value of Time
Why you should sin more often
How I became Google Free in a day
Over-sharing: problems with social networking and privacy
Yes. Another Backup Lecture. – About backing up your data on your computer. Very important.
How to Be a Positive Person, in Under 300 Words

Enjoy and I raise my cup of caffeine to you this fine Saturday morning!

Filed Under: Productivity

Do It Well, Do What You Want, and Get Paid!

February 4, 2010 By 2 Comments

Earlier this week I discovered this chart below – and I have been obsessed with it ever since. I made it the backdrop for my dual screen system, and I need to make it the backdrop for my laptop soon. It represents something that I, you, and most of the people in the world fail to keep in focus. We get so hung up in getting that check on the 1st and 15th. We get so hung up in meetings. We get so hung up chasing after business opportunities that seem like they will make a lot of money when in reality a lot of money is not your true motivator. The chart is probably the picture that best represents my mindset for having this blog. I consider the man who created it brilliant. He may not have come up with the concept, but he made it very easy for us to ‘get it’ in about 15 seconds.

Please spread this around to as many people as possible. I am not the originator of this chart – his name is on the chart. But if I could I’d climb up to the highest room of the tallest tower (Love my Shrek) and hang a banner with this on it. It is just that powerful to me.

Filed Under: Attitude, Goals, Productivity

Let’s go get high together

January 24, 2009 By 3 Comments

I believe that one of the reasons that you and I get frustrated with life is that we are spending too much time thinking about and focusing on the details of our lives.

I would like to offer you a simple solution for you to consider the next time you feel any stress or tension creeping into your life.

Do you drive a car ? Do you shop in a crowded grocery store ? Do you ever eat in a restaurant ? These are very common activities that force us to interact with a lot of other people. And if we are going to interact with other people they are not always going to the things we want, how we want them, and when we want them then done. They are going to drive too slow. They are going to take too long in the checkout lane. And they are going to take a lot longer than we would like to bring out our order sometimes.

But if you stop, take a breath, and look at our way of life from a higher perspective – you’ve heard of looking at things from 5000 or 10000 foot view before. When you look at thing from that perspectiveyou see and realize that overall we have it pretty good in this country. Things move relatively smooth for us. And some of the things that cause us frustration or to get riled up in our lives are issues that other people in other countries would love to have as their problems.

One the hobbies that I have that I really get a kick out of is flying. I literally can take a break from details every now and then of life and literally look at our city and our way of life from 10000 feet up. And when I do look at our life from that perspective I feel a a lot better and I realize that my issues and your issues really are not that bad.

So the next time someone cuts you off on the freeway take a deep breath and think about how lucky you are to have a car and a well paved countrywide highway system to drive it on. Then call me and I’ll take you up and we’ll look at the world from 10000 feet together.

Filed Under: Attitude, Productivity

Did you write them down… yeah… those goal thingys?

January 1, 2009 By 6 Comments

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 !

    Filed Under: Attitude, Goals, Productivity

    Leadership Series Part III: Why would you want to be a leader?

    November 20, 2008 By 1 Comment

    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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    Filed Under: Attitude, Leadership, Productivity

    Leadership Series Part II : Why is leadership so important?

    November 18, 2008 By Leave a Comment

    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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    Filed Under: Attitude, Goals, Productivity

    What to do right as a new…

    September 28, 2008 By Leave a Comment

    Recently there was a question on /. about what to do right as a new programmer. After I posted my response I thought “This is just a good answer to any question that starts with ‘What to do right…’”. Read and enjoy!

    –

    Do not believe in finites, infinites, right or wrong.

    In regards to your business logic…

    If someone says this will always happen this way, be ready for it not to happen that way.

    If someone says says this will never happen, be ready for it to happen.

    Plan for bad data.

    Plan for a connection to another system, database, etc. to fail. Handle it gracefully.

    Nothing you do in application development is right or wrong so long as it accomplishes the business objectives.

    There may be better, more efficient ways to do things. But give 10 programmers one business problem and they will solve it 10 different ways.

    Programming is an art not a science. I would avoid anybody else that tells you otherwise.

    Do not get attached to a programming language or any code you’ve written. Don’t get pissed off if you burn away a week of your life code some amazing code and then find out it was all for not because of a requirements change. It can be frustrating. But it is just 1s and 0s and in the big scheme of life it is just unimportant.

    Schedule your life first, then schedule your coding around it. Doing it the other way is just unhealthy. Physically and mentally. When you do code do it with extreme passion. Don’t do anything halfass. Always strive to learn something every single day. Be the go to guy.

    Filed Under: Attitude, Productivity

    What did you accomplish this week?

    May 22, 2008 By 2 Comments

    >???????? the type of person who wants to constantly better myself. One of the area I am focusing on is physically. This week I have taken some major steps to get on track with my weightlifting. I am not attempting to break any records in this world. But I do want to get on a program of consistent progress to achieve a fixed measurable goal. My thought process on this is in line with how you should be approaching all of your goals:

    1. Plan out the steps in detail
    2. Every day/week take that step
    3. Did you take that step? If so celebrate the accomplishment and start focusing on the next step.

    This is the only way in life you will get anywhere. It does not matter what you want to improve on or what area of your life you want to improve in. Financially, Spiritually, Physically, etc. The path is always the same.

    Did you take any steps this week? Today? This morning? If so I’d love to hear about them. Your steps and your progress will help the rest of the people reading this blog to take their first steps. Those first steps are always the hardest. But once you get rolling it is hard to step.

    Have a great weekend. Make sure you leave a comment below with what you accomplished this week.

    Filed Under: Attitude, Goals, Productivity
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