In my research about vision, mission and strategy I found this gem about strategy – ‘Same strategy as last year…’
Source: mammoth-strategy
This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.
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I saw this on Twitter yesterday, a condensed lesson in business.
People are not buying what you are selling.
They are buying the result of what you are selling.
This was originally posted at Forty Plus Two, another blog of mine.
Seth Godin posts about “Why am I here?” The title made me think of how to discover your life purpose or how to find your passion in life but it was more straight forward than that.
This is a simple mantra that is going to change the way you attend every meeting and every conference for the rest of your life.
You probably don’t have to be there. No gun held to your head, after all. So, why are you spending the time?
A simple but powerful question. Use your time wisely and if you go, make the best and most of your time there.
If there isn’t a good reason, go home. If there is, then do something. Loud, now and memorable. Productive too, please.
A side note.
I like Seth Godin’s blog and his style with fairly short posts, 200-300 words.
This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.
Coaching is about change. It can be finding a new career, creating better balance in life or adding a new activity in order to “spice up” life. In these contexts we often talk about trying to find ones passion and to follow ones passion. But finding ones passion is sometimes easier said than done, we either make it too complicated or think (hope) that it will be obvious and just pop up.
It is said that “Find Your Passion; the Money Will Follow” or “Do what you love and money will follow“. Money is not guaranteed but finding and following your passion will for sure make life better. Your passion might be in a tiny market which means you can not make a living from that alone.
If you don’t know what your passion is, you are not alone. At INeedMotivation it says that According to a recent survey, about 75% of the population do not know what their true passion is.
Where to start?
Finding your passion is not just about work, it’s about your whole life. If we have activities off work that we are passionate about our life will improve. It’s also a way of testing if our passions can be transferred into a job or a business. Skellie writes that Your hidden talents are the things you could do that would make you happy. My view is that among your hidden talents is your passion.
Your hidden talents will always fit your personality or interests in some way. Instead of being hidden and random – things to be discovered by accident – the things you love doing actually make a lot of sense.
Life Script says it well, A passion in life isn’t something you’re born with. It’s cultivated by your interests, what stimulates you and what you are genuinely excited about.
At Lifehack it says If there’s already something you love doing, you’re ahead of the game. Now you just need to research the possibilities of making money from it. They offer some questions that will help you in the search for your passion.
Mike over at ZenDonut writes in 3 Steps To Develop Your Passion … Not Just “Find” It that:
My concept is that a passion is not just floating around waiting to bump you in the head (i.e. “to be found”), but rather, by taking an active approach, you can develop your passionate interests proactively.
I share that view, we have work to do in order to figure out what our (more or less) hidden talents are. Then we have to find out if we can make money from it and how.
How did I find my current passion?
I had been working with IT and computers for a long time. That was and still is a fast changing area which made my work my passion, learning and doing new things at a pace that kept me on my toes. Off work I have always been doing other things, being active in organizations and learning new things – more or less related to what I worked with. Personal development, my own and others, has been a running thread in my life.
As often happens, eventually my passion for IT and computers started to fade. I wanted to do something else but could not figure out what. Like Mike says above, I could not describe my passion yet I knew it was hidden somewhere within reach. That was rather frustrating but I started putting the pieces together. I described my own personal profile, in terms of knowledge – experience – interests etc, using mind mapping and other techniques to connect the dots. One thing I focused on was analyzing situations that made me really feel alive, what was the key and was there any common factors.
After spending time at connecting the dots I realized that many of my different interests overlapped to some extent. That made me curious and I focused on that common ground, the core area that united things. I started to describe that core area in more detail and then realized that I had found my passion: I want to help people be the best they can be.
I had been coaching friends and workmates for years but I decided to take a coaching course that made me a professional coach. I love working as a coach and I learn something from each client session.
Are we resisting it?
Jonathan Mead asks if we know what makes us feel alive, why do we resist it? Why do we avoid doing what we love to do? and lists four reasons. One of them is that we have turned our passion into work. “Anytime you feel that you must do something, you lose inspiration.” Once we have made a passion our work we do need to keep the fire burning, to re-ignite our passion.
Read more elsewhere
• 7 Questions To Finding Your True Passion
• The One Question
• The 5 Percent Trick: Finding Passion and Purpose in Life
• How Do You Find Your Passion In Life?
• Find Your Career Passion
• How to Find a Passion In Life (eHow)
• If you don’t have passion and purpose, greater productivity won’t help you!
Update September 10, 2011
A great post: 5 Ways to Quit the Confusion & Find Your Passion
Note: This was published in the weekly newsletter Coaches Mojo on May 26, 2009.
This was originally posted at Forty Plus Two, another blog of mine.
Zen Habits has a great post about 55 Ways to Get More Energy.
If you’re tired all the time, a change in what you eat (diet) or what you do all day (activity pattern) may be all you need to turn things around 180°.
At times we get stuck and/or feel low on energy. This post gives you ideas about what you can do to get back on track. Pick something from that list and feel the change. Today I’ll opt for number five (Have a piece of chocolate) and number ten (Take a power nap).
Some of the items on the list are daily habits for me. I always do some of number 23 (Play to relax), number 24 (Eat smaller, more frequent meals), number 25 (Enjoy a cup of tea), number 45 (Take a walk outside) and number 50 (yoga).
Number 39 is great – Purge low-value tasks from your todo list. Focus on what’s important and don’t waste energy on what’s not.
Credit: Photo by johnmarchan.
This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.
This is a classic story which unfortunately mentions time management. But time management is a misnomer since time can not be managed. We can only manage ourselves, our attention and our priorities.
One day, an old professor of the School of Public Management in France, was invited to lecture on the topic of “Efficient Time Management” in front of a group of 15 executive managers representing the largest, most successful companies in America. The lecture was one in a series of five lectures conducted in one day, and the old professor was given one hour to lecture.
Standing in front of this group of elite managers—who were willing to write down every word that would come out of the famous professor’s mouth—the professor slowly met eyes with each manager, one by one, and finally said, ‘we are going to conduct an experiment’.
From under the table that stood between the professor and the listeners, the professor pulled out a big glass jar and gently placed it in front of him. Next, he pulled out from under the table a bag of stones, each the size of a tennis ball, and placed the stones one by one in the jar. He did so until there was no room to add another stone in the jar. Lifting his gaze to the managers, the professor asked, ‘Is the jar full?’ The managers replied, ‘Yes’.
The professor paused for a moment, and replied, ‘Really?’ Then once again, he reached under the table and pulled out a bag full of pebbles. Carefully, the professor poured the pebbles in and slightly rattled the jar, allowing the pebbles to slip through the larger stones, until they settled at the bottom. Again, the professor lifted his gaze to his audience and asked, ‘is the jar full?’
At this point, the managers began to understand his intentions. One replied, ‘apparently not!’
‘Correct’, replied the old professor, now pulling out a bag of sand from under the table. Cautiously, the professor poured the sand into the jar. The sand filled up the spaces between the stones and the pebbles. Yet again, the professor asked, ‘is the jar full?’ Without hesitation, the entire group of students replied in unison, ‘No!’
‘Correct’, replied the professor. And as was expected by the students, the professor reached for the pitcher of water that was on the table, and poured water in the jar until it was absolutely full. The professor now lifted his gaze once again and asked, ‘What great truth can we surmise from this experiment?’
With his thoughts on the lecture topic, one manager quickly replied, ‘We learn that as full as our schedules may appear, if we only increase our effort, it is always possible to add more meetings and tasks.’ ‘No’, replied the professor.
‘The great truth that we can conclude from this experiment is: If we don’t put all the larger stones in the jar first, we will never be able to fit all of them later.’
In other words – make room for what is most important first, those are your stones. Other things can then be fitted around the stones.
This was originally posted at Forty Plus Two, another blog of mine.
Worrying keeps the mind busy and zaps energy but it does not change anything.
Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. ~ Glenn Turner
Worrying in itself does not make the future better.
Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy. ~ Leo Buscaglia
Worrying stops you from doing things.
You can’t wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time. ~ Pat Schroeder
Worrying can cause physical problems.
Heavy thoughts bring on physical maladies; when the soul is oppressed so is the body. ~ Martin Luther
Worrying is often about things that will never happen.
Most things I worry about never happen anyway. Tom Petty
Worrying about something is like paying interest on a debt you don’t even know if you owe. Mark Twain
Since worrying does not get you anywhere, do something about it instead. Take one worry at a time, either solve it or drop it. It is a waste of time and energy to let worries continue to spin.
“Worry a little every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.”
This was originally posted at Forty Plus Two, another blog of mine.
This TED Talk has popped up several times lately but it was not until today that I took the time and watched John Wooden: Coaching for people, not points.
With profound simplicity, Coach John Wooden redefines success and urges us all to pursue the best in ourselves. In this inspiring talk he shares the advice he gave his players at UCLA, quotes poetry and remembers his father’s wisdom.
I like this video a lot, John has a definition of success that makes a lot of sense to me:
Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.
John Wooden talks about success but also about patience and action. He of course talks about coaching and basketball, he has an impressive resume. At TED the profile about Speakers John Wooden: Coach says:
John Wooden, affectionately known as Coach, led UCLA to record wins that are still unmatched in the world of basketball. Today, he continues to share the values and life lessons he passed to his players, emphasizing success that’s about much more than winning.
I went chasing for some quotes:
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
Read more:
Coach John Wooden’s own site
This was originally posted at Forty Plus Two, another blog of mine.
Fortune has a very interesting article about What it takes to be great. The article is from October 30, 2006 but it popped up on Twitter today. The post title says “Secrets of greatness: Practice and hard work bring success” which sums it up nicely.
The good news is that your lack of a natural gift is irrelevant – talent has little or nothing to do with greatness. You can make yourself into any number of things, and you can even make yourself great. It’s nice to believe that if you find the field where you’re naturally gifted, you’ll be great from day one, but it doesn’t happen. There’s no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.
They conclude that practice makes perfect but it has to be practice that is focused on improving performance – challenge your comfort zone in that area – and gives you feedback:
The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call “deliberate practice.” It’s activity that’s explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.
The article then goes to the business side:
How do you practice business? Many elements of business, in fact, are directly practicable. Presenting, negotiating, delivering evaluations, deciphering financial statements – you can practice them all.
Still, they aren’t the essence of great managerial performance. That requires making judgments and decisions with imperfect information in an uncertain environment, interacting with people, seeking information – can you practice those things too?
The key according to the article is to change your mindset: Instead of merely trying to get it done, you aim to get better at it. It is about constant improvements, Kaizen, and seeking feedback and ways to measure your progress.
In summary, change your mindset – aim to get better at what you do – and then practice to make you great.
This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.
I came across this quote which has a message worth considering:
When you’re lying on your death bed, you won’t wish you spent more hours in the office.
Robin Sharma
This was originally posted at Forty Plus Two, another blog of mine.
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