Ideas, stories, and reflections.

Hey everyone!

I had a thought the other day about what makes a "good day" different from a "bad" day.  You know, the days when you feel awesome, energized, and inspired to get things done.  Like you are almost invincible when it comes to being productive!

Then there are the days where no amount of kitten pictures, coffee, chocolate, or aspiration can get your butt moving.  You feel cruddy, sluggish, and unmotivated.

I realized, for me, many times it comes down to the question, "how did I start my day?"  How did you start your day today?  

In graduate school, I studied information systems and there is a saying we had - garbage in is garbage out.  Meaning, bad information into a system leads to bad information leaving the system.  Imagine if you are trying to get directions to your friend house, and you put in a bad starting location.  You currently are downtown in Chicago, and you enter Cleveland, Ohio as your starting city.

How are the...

When I first started my career, I had a job where I wore a ton of different hats.  Project manager, programmer, support guy, business analyst, customer relationship manager, and sometime, punching bag.  

My business degree was helpful, though I felt like I was pulled in 1000 different directions and never made progress on anything.

Eventually, I learned four things that helped me feel more in control of my day, and generated momentum with my work so I didn't feel frustrated.

1. Focus Management -  What was the theme for the day, meaning what was the one thing to do to move things forward?
2. Block-time -  Did I have a significant amount of time on my calendar today to do the one big thing?
3. Prioritization - What are all the open loop or tasks I have, and what are the top two I can work on today?
4. Delegation - Of all my tasks, what are things that need me, or what are things that others can take up?

Reflecting on these things, and implementing them helped increase...

In this week's video, I share three big ideas on how to survive in a startup or corporate envirnoment!

Have you ever struggled with feeling like you did not control your career, or that no matter how awesome you were at your job that you didn't get noticed for promotions?

Having worked the last ten years at corporate offices for Wal-Mart and Apple, I have learned how to effectivly navigate business environments as an individual contributor.  

The first idea:  Most business, techincal, or engineering problems are people problems.  Start-ups expect you to work 20hours a day!  If you are not taking care of your body, and more importantly your brain, you effectivly are hurting your creativity, your descions making, and your ability to use your brain to do the most effective work!

So sleep at least 7 hours a night.  Eat veggies.  Drink tons of water.  Stay away from too much caffiene.  Do not drink energy drinks.

The second idea:  ...

As 2016 wraps up, it' time to reflect on what we learned and set up to make 2017 the best year ever!

To help, I have a webinar that will share the 6 Secrets of the World's Highest Achievers so you can make 2017 the best yet!  Sign up for free here.

If you are interested in coaching, check this page out!

As always, please share and/or comment on this video.  I love hearing how people are doing. :)

Summary:

It's Halloween time, so I thought a quick video on fear of change would be appropriate!

As we move closer to the end of the year, I wanted to talk about one thing many people feel uncomfortable with - change.  

Have you ever had worry over changes in your job, house, relationships, plans, or expectations?  Me too.  That's how I got stuck with my first job out of college.

 So how did I change my first job?

First, we can realize it manifests in three different ways:

1. Process Fear
2. Outcome Fear
3. Loss Fear

To push through these three, you need to focus on what you gain, and know you got this.  You can figure it out!  And also, be strategic and plan small chunks of time to try and course-correct.

Summary: 

In a world of constant change, you can build up stress.  We all need to SLOW IT DOWN and take care of ourselves.  So, what is your perfect day?  

Sometimes we are so busy getting things done, we forget to take care of ourselves, or to think a bit more strategically about how we want structure our life.  In high perforamnce studies, we talk about expression and how it is important with happiness.

Before we get to my five ideas to have the perfect day, take a second to think of five ideas to express and plan your perfect day.  What would be your five components?  I ask you this becasue there is no right or wrong answer - just perspective.  

Got your five ideas?  Cool - Here are five ideas to think through to express and plan your perfect day:

1. Nutrition - What will you do to fuel your body in your ideal day?
2. Workout - What will you do to strenghen and energize your body?
3. Rejuvination - What would you do to generation...

Hey Everybody!  This weeks video is all about communication.  Communication is something we can always work on to improve - with your spouse, with your co-workers, and/or with your team.

The biggest example I can pull from my career so far is when I went on a business trip to Japan when I worked at Wal-mart Logistics.  We had three different cultural groups, terms that each group shared but meant different things, and I essentially became the punching bag for the Japan team because I was the first person in a long while on the project team to show up in person.

The struggle was real.

The biggest value I added to that project was not the official mission of that trip.  By seeing and undertanding the communication problems the project had, clarifying shared terms so we understood common words, and building relationships.  To sum up, here are four points for better communication:

1. Understand - Try to understand, in an unbiased way.
2. Clear - Be sure you are...

Hello!

Today's video talks about the important life lessons training for a marathon can teach you.

Have you ever had a huge challenge in your life, or had trouble getting from point A to point B in your life?  Maybe you want to move to California, or start a business, and it just seems too big to tackle.

That's what I thought when I decided to run the Chicago Marathon in 2008.  I was out of shape, hated running, and was not sure if I could actually finish a marathon.

I had some marathoner friends, and they helped me figure out how to survive training and running a marathon.

Here are the four big ideas I learned along the way, that can help you tackle that big life challenge!

• Plan - You need a plan that tells you what you need to do each day to make progress.  I found Hal Higdon's How To Train (I totally messed up his name in the video, sorry Hal!) 
• Recover - You need to bouce back when you fall off the plan, and you need to plan rest to ensure success.
• ...