Posts Tagged ‘united states’

You look back at all of the interactions you’ve had in life and then consider the common denominator in all of those: you.

You’re the common denominator. You’re the thing that stays constant from one meeting to the next. You’re the same person from meeting to meeting, while the people you interact with invariably change.

So are you satisfied with the impression you’re leaving? Are you good? Are you satisfied with the effect you’re leaving on others, or are you aware that issues need to be tweaked?

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And yes (in the interests of full disclosure), James Hacking is a client.

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live – Deuteronomy, 30:19

Let’s say there’s this bar in Toronto I haven’t visited in several years. It’s a dark little place. Tons of candles. Tasty martinis. Stimulating conversation guaranteed from anyone you invite there for a couple of drinks. Lots of locals who pop in with backstories you want to get to the bottom of. Good community. My kind of place.

I had a chat with the owner last night. Saturday. Party time in the big T.O., even with this snow and all the messiness.

I remember five years ago the owner introduced me to his cousin. Let’s call him Michael. A twentysometing kid in Toronto, a regular visitor to the city, this being a relatively large city compared to his native Winnipeg. Lots of distractions and stimulation to be found. Lots of craziness for a kid from the Prairies. Bright lights. Draw the necessary conclusions as you will…

Michael and I hung out a few times. We enjoyed some coffee, and many more laughs. We ate a few pizza slices. You know, guy stuff. Compared stories. Compared books. Talked about chicks. The whole nine.

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Here’s what I want to see when you share your lofty New Year’s Resolutions:

• thirty days into 2011 – or into any New Year, for that matter! – are you still practicing what you preach or have you slid back into familiar patterns?
• did you set the bar too high, or did you draft achievable goals? Resolutions can certainly be ambitious, just not too ambitious.
• is that behavior you’re attempting to modify even being addressed by the specific Resolution you’re professing to keep for 2011? Or do you need to repair some underlying motivation first before you go about making minor course corrections through Resolutions. Think about it…
• why do you need a milestone like the secular calendar changeover to establish and chart your personal or professional goals? Most corporations have year-ends during the summer or spring. Personally, I think January is so overrated as a month.
• why do you need the arbitrary change from December over to January to take better care of your health? Shouldn’t you be attending to your healthy lifestyle on a more regular basis than just a few short months in the year?
• don’t you feel like a bit of a tool when you join the cacophonous chorus of folks making “drastic” life changes during the New Year? Would it be better to do all of this behind-the-scenes instead of making bold announcements? And then again, don’t you panic when you publicly commit to keeping goals and then fail to stick to the program? These are all things I would be thinking about, actually…

The Bottom Line:

Don’t be flippant about New Year’s Resolutions.

If you’ve invested them with this much gravitas, then keep them and check in with yourself regularly. If you were that serious about sticking to them, you’ll have ideally drafted a plan for realizing them as well.

I’m one of those rare breeds who absolutely thrives on pressure.

Ramp up that old stress level and marvel as I hunker down under my canopy – fast fingers, fast fingers – clocking out lines, churning out analyses and copy…basically making my voice heard across the interwebs and in the communities where – semen-like – I seed myself, merging with those groups’ rises and falls, waxes and wanes.

Nice opening paragraph, hm?

But anyways, living a high-stress lifestyle – be it at work or at play – of course has its costs. You can’t burn your candlestick at both ends forever, and the stories of the (mostly) men and women who ignore the call of their bodies’ natural biorhythms are legion and horrifying.

All this calls into question the entire discussion about pace versus speed.

Sure, deadlines bring out the best in folks while being interminably slow invites its share of loss-generating situations. But which is the best long-term strategy? Is success right now really where it’s at in our quixotically-altering internet, or is the measured “wait and see” approach more called for, given that what’s hot today is on the way out tomorrow in the world of 1s and 0s.

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I’m not speed reader, even if I’m not slow.

I equate speed reading to having the ability to blow through a 300pp book in a matter of a few hours, as opposed to an entire day, perhaps two. To being able to spot a title you like, scoop it up at the bookstore and be done consuming its inherent lesson with the minimum amount of turnover. That’s a real speed reader. Anything else is a poor facsimile.

But I have my reasons for wanting to be more efficient about my reading time, even though I realize the activity can be pleasurable at the best of times. Reading, too, is also leisure, even if it can sometimes also be work.

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The other day I shared with you my three words for 2011.

This trio of guiding mantras for the Coming Year will act as my beacons, measuring every single thing I do against a rigidly discernible standard. I have crafted them as my signposts and I intend them to become as inseparable as the fiber of my being over the next dozen months. In fact, I should get them tattooed on my arm or another appendage of my body, such is their critical value to me. Of course, I won’t do so. But they will be displayed prominently elsewhere, I assure you.

Anything I do which doesn’t fall neatly under one of these three rubrics will be placed on the back burner…or discarded.

This New Year — like all new years, ostensibly — is set to commence with a bang. The abundant energy promised of at 2011′s outset will be maintained throughout the grueling months ahead. This year, in particular, is monumental for me personally because I’ve returned to a country — Canada — where I haven’t lived for the past five years — which, compared to others is no big shakes. But given how quixotically the interweb changes every day, my past half-decade of sojourn in Europe seems like ancient history.
I wanted to supplement the words with a List of Principles. If my three words are like the summits of my personal pinnacles of achievement, then the following several principles are their building blocks. They’re the very mortar keeping the whole edifice intact — values, by another description — that in their absence condemns even the best-laid plans.

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