• The first, from Write At Home, with this quote:
  • “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” Malachy McCourt

• The second, thanks to Debra Moorhead is the garbage truck story, by written David J Polley.
  • You can read the story here. Essentially, some people need to dump their garbage, sometimes it is on you.

• The third, thanks to one of WOWNDADI’s readers, Galba Bright from Tune up your EQ who had a difficult course attendee to deal with (How To Learn From Your EQ Hot Spots),

  • In a nutshell, “Thanks for your feedback. I will think on what you said.”

There are people out there with ‘issues’ they need to deal with, just as we have issues to deal with. When they say something nasty or negative, it might not be your fault. In fact, it almost definitely isn’t. It is more about what has happened to them, in the near or distant past, the pressure they are under, and the hurts they are carrying.

People will dump rubbish on you, or use words that wound. When they do, take away the barbed-wire from what was said. Delete the emotional content, sift for actionable feedback, discard the rest. Thank them and move on. Their problems are not your problems. They don’t have the right to change your good mood, let alone to keep you awake at night. That is easier said than done, but it is the truth. If you want to help them, that is great, but don’t expect kindness in return, although you may get it. If they upset you, you are free to shake the dust off of your shoes and move on. If you want to.

Failing all that, this will do your head in and distract you for a bit. I can explain how it works, but then you’d call me a geek.

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“when a firm decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom” John Foster

Strong will power will take you to superhuman undertakings. In life there are the wills, the won’ts and the can’ts – it is the wills that get things done. Will power is the underpinning of success. Without dermination, little can be achieved. Will power over comes hurdles and presses on to the goal. Will power overcomes challenges of ill-health or physical incapacity and even presses the mind on to the purpose.

How about this for will, my favourite quote, from a US anti-slavery campaigner:

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; – but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest – I will not equivocate – I will not excuse – I will not retreat a single inch – AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.”

– William Lloyd Garrison, “To the Public,” from the Inaugural Editorial in the 1 January 1831 The Liberator

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Orison Swett Marden may well be the founder of the American success movement, although he himself credits his start to a book by Samuel Smiles. Mardens’ personal story is one of success despite tremendous disadvantages. He was born in 1850 to poor parents, on a farm in New England, but was orphaned at an early age. Despite difficult circumstances, he achieved both business and academic success, even in the face of various set backs.

Over the next month or two I’ll post thoughts, most likely a chapter at a time…

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I had a wonderful weekend, now I am back travelling again. On the in-flight entertainment I spotted the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale. I’m not a big James Bond fan, but I had heard good things about this one and decided to check it out. I’m glad I did, there was loads of action and a man on a mission. As I had been speaking about mission at the weekend, the two things just clicked in my mind.

Our own lives could be full of adventure, if we weren’t so busy crowding it out and avoiding our mission. I was interested in what Daniel Craig put into the James Bond character. This was an amazingly focused and purposeful Bond. The physical movements, the walk, the posture and the talk. I always wanted to be 007 when I was a kid, maybe I can be as a grown up by being this purposeful. It might not the same level of adventure as James Bond, but there are times when there is more adventure in real-life than you would find in any movie.

No mission, no adventure. More than ever, I am convinced that if we find our mission and have clarity of purpose, it will bring us great adventure. I am looking forward with excitement to the rest of this 007 year, I hope that you are too.

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What does reflection mean? For me, it is investing time in looking back. Pausing to take in what has happened. Thinking about what you did well, and what could have been done differently. Not to turn the past over and over in your head endlessly, but to dig through it at least once over. Reflection lets us see ourselves as we are, and is the first step in shaping who we become.

If you have worked in an organisation that employees formal quality management methods, you will be well aware that the foundation of all of the main methods is a formal and structured feedback mechanism. Feedback means taking the outputs and using them as an input for what happens next. It is a form of reflection.

Reflection is one of my reasons for blogging. The blog enables me to look back over what I have learnt. There are other reasons to, but that was one of my first, and remains top of my list. Speaking of lists, a big thank you to my blogroll friends, I will be adding my blogroll soon, you’ll be there! Trusted peers and friends can be a great source of feedback, and your comments and emails provide that.

Reflection is a key attribute of high performers, and a recurrent theme in performance and leadership writings. Currently I am reading Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performance and Results from Knowledge Workers by Thomas Davenport and it is even mentioned there. Reflection needs to be built in systematically. A journal is one method, the weekly review in GTD can be another. What mechanism do you use to build reflection into your life?

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eDragonu’s recent 7 tips to help you procrastinate in a more productive way reminded me of the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of an overly long to do list. But what do you do with a to do list that gets too long?

Imagine the to do list, like the diagram, as a container with inlets and outlets. Most discussion around productivity is usually focussed around the outlets. How can you get more done? Work harder, work faster, work smarter. Getting the thing done is the best way to get something off of the to do list, as long as that thing was the right thing to do. However, procrastination often stops us getting things done, but that is a topic all to itself. As the to do list grows longer and longer, it becomes harder to prioritise what is one there, and there is that creeping sense of being overwhelmed, which feeds any tendency to procrastinate.

There are two phases to recovering from an exploding to do list:

1. Shrink it.
2. Stop it exploding again.

Doing things isn’t the only way to get items off of the to do list, even though it is the best. Things can be deferred and moved into the diary for some point in the future. However, deferring something doesn’t actually remove it from the set of commitments. It is still there, although there is a temporary relief created by the illusion that it can be done later. Spreading things over time is a good way to reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed, but it can backfire if too many things are pushed out.

There are other ways to remove items from the to do list. One is to abandon an item. When something appears on the the to do list, it has crossed your ‘commitment line’. We have made a commitment to ourselves or to someone else to do something. If we truly become overloaded, then some of those things have to be pushed back over the commitment line. That involves going back to the person the commitment was made to, apologizing and renegotiating the commitment. What stops us abandoning things? It can create a sense of disappointment and a feeling of failure. However, there are times when abandoning something is the right thing to do. Priorities and goals may have changed, or the task may no longer be attainable, it could be part of planned abandonment.

A cunning way to keep things off of the to do list is to do them straight away. There are pros and cons to this technique, but it is very efficient. By acting straight away, you don’t have to worry about managing the task and procrastination doesn’t have a chance to set in. You just need to be sure that the task really was something that needed doing and the moment wasn’t needed for something else that was time critical.

My most recent realization has been to pay close attention to how do things get onto the to do list in the first place. Be careful what crosses that commitment line. Before taking on a commitment, understand how long your to do list already is. Can you commit to more, or is that going to result in a broken commitment? A commitment is a commitment, be it to yourself or to someone else, and it should only be taken on if you have the resources and the will to complete it. A short to do list gives you flexibility, but it takes discipline to get down to that short to do list.

To do list problems? Then do more and sooner, renegotiate when you have to and don’t over commit yourself!

What works for you?

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