Everyday Excellence

Bryant May 30th, 2009

Sometimes I think we get a little too comfortable in our cozy homes, and we need to be reminded that the wild world abounds with adventures. Often people think comfort is what they need, when what they really need is something to throw their passions into – something they can chase with all their heart.

I witnessed a literal example of this last weekend. We were at my mom’s house and had brought our dog Dolly with us. In her heart, she is a hunting dog. In fact, that’s what her lineage (the Mullins Feist) is bred for. But she has settled nicely into the lazy life of a suburbanite dog of occasionally chasing tennis balls and running, but mostly relaxing in the house.

Last weekend, Molly was walking Dolly along a wooded path near my mom’s house. She was trying out a new collar and didn’t realize it was not clipped on properly. Just a few minutes out the door, Dolly had spotted a rabbit and slipped out of her collar. In an instant she was in the woods chasing the rabbit.

Molly tried in vain to retrieve her, but was unable to, so she came back to the house to get my help. With a hotdog in hand as bait, we tromped into the woods after Dolly. We heard her high-pitched “YIP, YIP, YIP!” which she makes after spotting prey. So we knew she had found something, but it was no rabbit…

Seconds later Dolly came crashing out of the woods running at top speed with her tongue hanging out a bright twinkle in her eye. You could tell she was in her element. After noticing the glee on her face, I began to wonder why she was running so fast out of the woods?

Then I noticed a huge animal bounding behind her, it was making all kinds of noise as it jumped out of the woods after her. At first I thought is was some kind of gigantic wolf or dog. Once I got a clear look, I realized that it was a huge deer and it was MAD!

Normally you picture a deer as this tranquil animal hopping through the forest. Not this one — It’s face was snarling and it was snorting. I imagined that it must be protecting some newborns. You’d think that Dolly would have been scared to be getting chased by an animal about five times her size, but she loved it. She had a look on her face like she was playing a rip-roaring game of tag with the deer!

And sure enough, after seeing us, the deer turned around back into the woods and Dolly started chasing it! Luckily, we got her attention and she decided that she wanted the hot dog that I was holding more than the deer. When she got close enough we clipped her collar on properly and her wild adventure was over.

But it got me thinking, she seemed so happy during that crazy romp through the woods, even when danger was near. Maybe a tame life isn’t always the best one?

"One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down–and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion."

-Mr Tumnus from The Chronicles of Narnia

Tags: Tame Life

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Bryant May 17th, 2009

Do you ever feel like you don’t have enough time in the day? In our busy world that’s becoming more and more typical. Between keeping up with the Joneses and getting the kids to soccer practice there never seems to be enough time in the day.

There are a handful of ways to solve this problem:

• Sleep Less
• Do Less
• Time Machine (Crossed off due to lack of delorean and flux capacitor)

The truth is that everyone is given the same twenty-four hours each day and we can’t change that. So let’s dig into the first two options.

Sleep Less

Recently I was reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s a classic and an insightful book for programmers or really anyone trying to focus on “quality”. As I started to research the life of the author, Robert M Pirsig, I ran across this quote:

In a 1974 interview with NPR, Pirsig stated that the book took him four years to write. During two of these years, Pirsig continued working at his job of writing computer manuals. This caused him to fall into an unorthodox schedule, waking up very early and writing from 2 a.m. until 6 a.m., then eating and going to his day job. He would sleep during his lunch break and then go to bed around 6 in the evening. Pirsig joked that his coworkers noticed that he was “a lot less perky” than everyone else.

Talk about making something a priority! This guy was serious about making time for his writing. I’ve always liked the idea of writing a book but I’ve never been quite that serious about it.

How many of us would modify our sleep schedule and rearrange our entire day just to write a book? Do we make anything that much of a priority? If you interested in becoming an early riser like Pirsig, I recommend the canonical resource on the topic – Steve Pavlina’s How to Become an Early Riser.

Do Less

For those of us that don’t want to mess up our sleep schedule, another option is just to do less and focus on what the real priorities are. I’ve always thought that Leo Babauta from Zen Habits has some great techniques for cutting your day to the bare essentials or how through focusing on less, you can be more productive:

It may seem paradoxical that Do Less can mean you’re more productive — and if you define “productive” as meaning “get more done” or “do more”, then no, Do Less won’t lead to that kind of productivity.

But if instead you define “productivity” as a means of making the most of your actions, of the time you spend working (or doing anything), of being as effective as possible, then Do Less is the best way to be productive.

Consider: I can work all day in a flurry of frenetic activity, only to get a little done, especially when it comes to lasting achievement. Or I can do just a couple things that take an hour, but those are key actions that will lead to real achievement. In the second example, you did less, but the time you spent counted for more.

This is also called the 80/20 or Pareto principle. Basically focus on stuff that matters! Make time for the “big rocks” in covey-speak.

It sounds simple doesn’t it, but I’ll bet if you look at your day you spend a lot of time on things that just don’t matter. Especially in our modern age with all the email, twitter feeds and Facebook status updates we can get sucked into the never-ending flow of unimportant information.  The key is to disconnect every now and then to work on priorities.

Priorities

When someone says “I don’t have enough time for that,” what they’re really saying is “that is not a priority in my life.” And if the activity is insignificant it’s probably OK that they aren’t making it a priority. But that line should never be used as a cop-out for something that is truly important.

When someone says that what they really want to do with their life is write a book, become an actor, or the next NBA star then the first thing I ask is how often they spend on it. Because whatever you prioritize and spend your time on is what you’ll be good at. That’s the bottom line.

So the next time you’re about to say you don’t have enough time. Consider how important it is to you and whether you should make a priority.

There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do.

-Bill Watterson

Tags: Enough Time

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Bryant May 10th, 2009

A few days ago, I was out at a new client site and I had forgotten to bring my GPS. Usually I’m obsessive about ensuring that I have it with me when I’m going to a new place, but this time I’d forgotten it. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to figure out how to get there. I was a bit nervous without the GPS. It had guided me successfully to so many new places, I wasn’t sure that I could still do it on my own.

So when I started up the car, I pictured the map in my head and started driving not sure if I’d make it to the right place. After it was all said and done, I ended up taking a better (less turns) and quicker route than the one the GPS would have taken me on. My mind still worked and, in fact, I was better without the GPS.

It reminded me of that scene in Star Wars: A New Hope where Luke is flying in the trenches of the Death Star and gets set-up to use his automatic targeting system to fire the critical shot. Obi-Won’s disembodied voice tells him to use the force instead. He is resistant at first. How could he make the shot on his own? But finally he turns off all his electronic gear and nails it.

Our world is so saturated with technology we’re just not used to living without it. We begin to question ourselves. And our own skills are probably weakened from lack of use, but they’re still there.

It reminds of the old debate about the impact that calculators are having on the brains of budding mathematicians. Are we really exercising our brains the same way if we’re just punching numbers into a calculator?

Recently I’ve heard studies of how Google and the internet are changing how we read. People no longer like to dig through and focus on one dense texts. Instead they are being conditioned to jump from one short excerpt to another.

Also, we rarely have to memorize anything anymore now that all of our important information from phone numbers to addresses can be easily stored on our cell phones.

Just tonight the internet was going slow (not off mind you, just slow) and it was like the world had shut down in our house. We couldn’t access our usual sites that had become so routine for us to view without a moments notice.

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology and make my living by it, but there is no doubt that it is having a profound impact on us. Some for better and some for worse. It’s probably too early to determine the overall impact as we’re the first truly wired generation.

But I have to think that sometimes it’s good for us to walk away from the computer and try to solve problems on our own. Sometimes it’s important to stop texting and talk to the person in the other room.

Soon we’re going camping with cub scouts and there will be something nice about being unwired for a night.

“Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology”

-John Tudor

Tags: Reliant on Technolgoy

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Bryant May 6th, 2009

One of the greatest skills in life is the ability to tell a story. All great leaders do it in some form or another.

When telling a story, you need to focus on three things:

1. Repeat the main point
2. Make it personal
3. Make it emotional

Let’s drill into each.

During the most recent presidential campaign, Barack Obama did an excellent job of drilling home his main point. Everyone knew what his main point was. In speech after speech he said the word that summarized what he stood for - Change!

In the 1980s, Reagan introduced a technique in the state of the union where he would mention one person and their heroism. He knew how to make it personal. Ever since then, politicians have talked about folks like “Joe the Plumber”.

Lastly, a story will only hold your attention if it has an emotional hook. You have to care about what will happen to the people involved. For example, think about what you remember in your life. Do you remember where you were on 9/11? It’s those deeply emotional events that stick with you. It’s just part of how we’re wired.

Businesses use all of these techniques when marketing their products. Marketing is telling the story of your product. What was the main theme of Steve Job’s speech when he introduced the iPhone? “Today is the day that apple Reinvents the Phone.” He probably said that phrase five times, but he drove the point home!

In fact, even many charity organizations have been using these techniques. Rather than saying that X number of people will die of hunger each year. Instead they show you a picture of a specific child and tell you her story. That’s what compels people to act!

If I look at the mass, I will never act but if I look at one, I will
-Mother Theresa

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