If it’s not working, fix it.  That’s my take.

I had made some changes recently as part of my Spring cleaning for Sources of Insight.   The problem is, while I think some of the changes were good, I think some of the changes were less effective and actually exposed other problems.

With that in mind, I set out to simplify the experience and make some more improvements where I could.

I’m also a fan of reducing the gap between what’s in my mind, and what actually exists.  It’s an ongoing process of bridging the gap and hacking away at Sources of Insight and learning and responding until it’s closer to my vision.

3 Key Changes
Here are some of the key changes I made today:

1. Sidebar Changes – To improve the sidebar, I sliced my Popular Posts lists in half, got rid of my tag cloud, and bumped up my Sources of Insight Amazon Shop (I’m always getting asked for book recommendations, and this is where I keep lists of my best book recommendations.)  While the tag cloud was great for first impressions, it created a few problems.  On my end, I had to remember categories and tags and I had to split hairs some times.  On your end, it created two places to look instead of one simple list.
2. Categories Sweep – It’s a longer list now, but it’s consolidated, and now I can fill each bucket with more value.  It’s also easier to find lost gems now.   I took a quick stroll down memory lane through my Life category and quickly found some long, lost pearls of insight.  I need these nuggets at my finger tips because I frequently share these with the people I mentor.  I test my categories list against actually use, both my own use and I get feedback from people that use my site on a regular basis.
3. Vision   and Mission -  The vision in my head was always “world’s best insight” but I didn’t really spell this out on the site.  I also didn’t clearly spell out that the focus is cross-cutting skills for life and work: mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships and fun.  I added this to the description below the “welcome” and it feels better already.

With that in mind, here’s a quick recap of why Sources of Insight exists and what it’s all about …

The Mission
The job is –

Empower you with skills – to improve your mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun.

The Vision
The vision is –

World’s best insight and action for work and life!

The Approach
The how is –

Stand on the shoulder’s of giants — draw from books, people, and quotes.

That’s mostly the how.  I also have best-selling authors stop by now and then, as well as unsung heroes and people with some amazing super skills.

Sources of Insight is a Mash Up of Real World Experience and Wisdom of the Ages …
I also share my experience and lessons learned from my day job at Microsoft, where I write guides that change the world in the technical space, and I lead high-performance teams. It’s a high-stakes, highly-competitive, highly-collaborative, highly-challenging environment … and It’s my stomping ground.  I regularly  test and explore patterns and practices for improving personal effectiveness, thinking skills, interpersonal skills, project management, etc. against impact and real-world results.  I also coach people and teams around Microsoft, especially on my latest book, Getting Results the Agile Way.

My Door is Always Open …
If you have suggestions for me on how to improve Sources of Insight, please send them my way.  Either use the contact form or leave a comment or email me at jdmeieronline “at” gmail.com.

Thank you

Photo by notsogoodphotography.

“Seek truth with open eyes.” – Steve Pavlina

Have you heard of Steve Pavlina? He’s the author of Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth . Chances are you may know him as a personal development leader or a successful blogger or a raw food guy. If you go back in time, you might know him from his days as a successful game developer.

The game developer link is an especially interesting one. Steve brings his game development skills to the personal development arena, and to the ultimate game — the game of life. As a developer, it’s about designing experiences, figuring out how things work, testing results, getting the bugs out, refining as you go, and paving a path forward. Life’s like that, too.

When I first came across Steve’s about page, a few years back, I didn’t know what to make of the stream of attributes: "blue-eyed, colorblind, left-handed, well educated, vegan, lucid dreaming, purpose driven, happily jobless, reality manipulating, meditation practicing, risk taking, goal seeking" … etc. The one that struck me though was "insatiably curious seeker of truth. That what resonated with me—I too am a truth seeker.

What I especially like about Pavlina’s work is that he is often able to put into words, what I already know to be true.

Steve covers a wide range of topics from personal productivity to personal development to personal growth and conscious living, along with experiments in life style design. This post is my attempt to highlight some of the lessons that I think you’ll enjoy the most, as well as where to go for more.

25 Lessons Learned from Steve Pavlina
Here are 25 lessons from Steve Pavlina that just might change your life:

1. 3 attributes of personal development. Steve says personal development has three attributes: 1) getting an increasingly accurate view of reality (understanding how reality works, interacting with reality),  2) experiencing your desires, and 3) becoming stronger (capable of achieving greater goals.  Watch Self-Development Video Interview with Steve Pavlina.
2. Get perspective from your past, present, and future self. In this exercise, you visualize versions of your past, present and future self (e.g. You 2005, You 2010, You 2015.)  Have a conversation with your future self.  Ask your top of mind questions, and listen as your future self answers with compassion and confidence.  Next, have a conversation with your past self.  Let your past self ask questions, and notice how easily you can answer them.  Next, step into the future and be your future self, and have a conversation with your present self.  Let your present self ask questions, and notice how easily you can answer from the vantage point of your future self. See My Favorite Meditation.
3. The Past Does Equal the Future. You can predict the future in a general way. Steve says, “If you want to know where your current path is taking you, look to your past. That’s the best way to predict where you’re headed.” According to Steve, “The truth is that past performance is in fact the best predictor of future performance, not just with individual human beings but with teams, companies, technology, political bodies, and other time-bound entities.” See The Past Does Equal the Future.
4. You have the right to be wrong.  Don’t be bent on being right.  After all, you’re only human.  Trying to be right all the time, takes away your freedom to experiment and go out on a limb. According to Steve, “You have the right to make mistakes. You have the right to fail.” See You Have the Right to Be Wrong.
5. Take your ego out of the picture. Divorcing your ego from your outcomes, and taking it out of the picture, is a key to growth.  It enables you to see things more accurately, because you don’t have to be right.  It enables you to go out on a limb, because it’s OK to fail, because you don’t have your sense of self wrapped up in your outcomes.  Steve says, “Separate yourself from your ideas and your work and see them as something separate from yourself, you’ll feel you truly have the right to be wrong. If an idea fails, why not let it be the idea’s fault instead of your own? Allow your ideas to fail without turning them into personal defeat.  When you fail you discover your boundaries. You map out the edges of your capabilities. And this allows you to eventually move beyond them.  Being wrong eventually leads to being right. And even where it doesn’t, it’s still a more interesting path than being nothing.”  See You Have the Right to Be Wrong.
6. You are your consciousness.  Who are you?  According to Steve, “what defines you as a person is your consciousness. Your consciousness gives you the capability of self-definition by choosing your thoughts. So if you associate the failure of your ideas as a personal failure, then you use your own consciousness against itself (to define yourself as a failure).”  See You Have the Right to Be Wrong.
7. We’re all cells in the same body.  Steve says, “I realized that we are all cells in the same body, and that the health of the body depends on the cells.”
8. Focus on the good things in your life.  Rather than focus on your financial debt, focus on the good that’s around you and what you want to experience.  Why feed so much time, energy, and attention on the worst part of your life?   Focus on the stuff you want to experience, feed your time and energy into things you want to experience – abundance and creativity.  Create your own abundance vibe. Creating Abundance.
9. Don’t give your power away.  You limit your relationships, career, and social life when you give your power away.  On relationships, Steve says, “The basic pattern is that you decide something else has to happen first before you can attract the relationship you truly desire.”  On career, Steve says that instead of using your power to create work that fulfills and inspires you, “you stick with unfulfilling work to make ends meet. You feed your power to your bills, as if those small pieces of paper somehow control your destiny for the near future…”  On social life, Steve says that instead of surrounding yourself with friends and family that uplift, encourage, and support you, you feed "your existing disempowering relationships.  You obsess over what others think about you, people who really don’t encourage you to be your best self anyway.  You worry about what your Mom thinks about you."    See How You Give Your Power Away.
10. Stop creating false prerequisites.  Progress is faster when you focus on what you want, over focusing on your problems.  According to Steve, the answer is to stop creating false prerequisites.  Instead, feed your desires.  Steve says, "The idea of feeding your power to your desires is incredibly simple. All you need to do is decide what you want and then focus your thoughts, feelings, and actions on those desires."
11. Build a strong ego.  If you think of your ego as your personality and sense of self, not arrogant, there’s a good reason to build a stronger ego.  Building your ego then is a character building exercise, where the goal is to build out a strong character with well-defined attributes.  Steve says, "Your ego is your character, an important part of your human avatar.  If you try to weaken your ego, you’re simply weakening your character."  Steve teaches us that many spiritual seekers end up in limbo when they try to detach from their identities and possessions.  Steve says, "They can’t get themselves to relinquish all attachment to their identities and their stuff, so they strive to get by with a sense of minimalism. But they’re never really satisfied living in this halfway space, so quite often their “spiritual practice” devolves into attacking others they believe are more ego-based than they are. It temporarily makes them feel better about themselves."  According to Steve, you can grow your character, build your ego, experience a better life, and create more good for the world, by 1) owning your character, 2) engaging with life, 3) focusing on intelligence, and 4) focus on character building (honesty, courage, exploration, service, acceptance, discipline, and connection.)   See How To Build a Stronger Ego.
12. Balance self-acceptance and personal growth.  Accept the now, while you grow to who you want to be.  Steve asks the question, "Why not fully accept yourself as you are and also be totally committed to lifelong growth?"  It’s an oscillation along a spectrum — "The more you accept where you are, the less motivation there is to grow.  And the more you push yourself to grow, the less satisfaction you derive from your current position."  According to Steve, the conflict between self-acceptance and personal growth is due, in part, to a linear mindset, where your life is moving down points on a line.  The first point is your birth, the last point is your death, and the points behind you are your past.  In a linear mindset, it’s natural to rate the quality of your experiences on those points on the line and compare them.  When you compare them, you want to improve or increase the quality.  The problem is this fluctuates a great deal depending on your situations and positions in life.  If you root your self-acceptance and sense of self in your positions, then you don’t have stable ground.  Instead, root yourself in something durable, while enjoying your unique journey of growth.  See Self-Acceptance vs. Personal Growth.
13. Root yourself in something durable, and keep your self-esteem separate from your circumstances.  Don’t root yourself in something changeable, such as any form of position or status.  Instead, find a firm foundation in something durable, such as unconditional love, service to humanity, compassion, etc.  Steve says that if you separate your position from your identity and attach your ego from your outcomes, then you find inner peace … "your position can rollercoaster all over the place, and you can still be at peace on the inside no matter what happens."   See Self-Acceptance vs. Personal Growth.
14. Experience drive without attachment, ambition without ego, and peace without passivity.  Steve says, "You don’t have to withdraw and be totally passive.  You can enjoy being an ambitious overachiever and set and achieve goals like a maniac — and have a great time doing it.  But meanwhile, you don’t see your identity in those fluctuating outcomes."  Ultimately, "you can experience drive without attachment, ambition without ego, and peace without passivity."  See Self-Acceptance vs. Personal-Growth.
15. Clarity is an important quality of success.  Steve shares 11 ways to gain clarity: 1.) assume 100% responsibility for your own level of clarity, 2.) stop creating the opposite of clarity, 3) harvest and apply the clarity lessons from your past, 4) use visualization to create the vibe of clarity, 5) ask for help, 6) put your goals in writing, and review them daily, 7) accept that any goal is better than no goal, 8.) crystallize your goals, 9) pay attention to the path, not just the end result, 10) stick with one primary goal at a time, 11) explore and experiment.  See 11 Ways to Gain Clarity.
16. Conduct your own personal growth experiments.   Steve says, “Whenever you come up with a new idea for increasing your effectiveness, test it to see what effect it has.  Don’t dismiss any ideas until you’ve actually tried them.
17. Courage plays a key role in relationships.  When it comes to relationships, according to Steve, you need courage to:  1) initiate new connections and overcome the fear of rejection, 2) intimately connect with people, 3) face the truth about relationships that have gone awry, and 4) end those relationships that no longer serve you.
18. Sense the big picture that emerges from multiple viewpoints.  Switching perspectives is a skill you can build.  You can switch perspectives, by asking questions, such as, “How would a Buddhist view this situation?”  Steve says, “When you first attempt to perceive reality through multiple lenses, especially those that seem to inherently contradict each other, it will feel as though you’re trying to do the impossible.  You’ll be like a new-born baby trying to make sense of garbled blobs of light, noise, and pressure.  You may feel overwhelmed and frustrated, as if you’re flooding your mind with utterly useless information.  Be patient with yourself.  With sufficient practice, you’ll gradually learn to combine data from multiple viewpoints into a single coherent picture.”
19. Seek truth with open eyes.  Steve says, “Seek truth with open eyes.  Courageously accept your discoveries and their consequences.  Rid your life of falsehood, denial, and fear of what is.  Make truth your ally, not your enemy.”
20. You exist only in the present moment. Along the lines of Peaceful Warrior, you are this moment.  Steve says, “Your past is composed of memories, but you still access those memories in your present. Your past is only real — it only has existence to you — when you consciously focus your attention on it. It is your attention that gives your past its power, and it is also your attention that feeds your ego. You can choose to stop focusing so much attention on your ego and your personal history, and instead you can redirect that attention to identify more with your consciousness and your awareness.”  See Trial and Error, Ego and Awareness.
21. Find the sustainable path.  If you take care of yourself first, you can take care of others better.  Don’t ignore your own needs or you won’t sustain your journey.  Steve says, “This made it clear that if I wanted to effectively serve others, I had to make sure I was also meeting my needs, or my work wouldn’t be sustainable.”
22. Be the boss of you.   The problem with a job is you only get paid when you show up.  Another problem is that many jobs are about being a cog in somebody else’s wheel.  You have to fit the mold and follow the instructions.  This robs you of your creativity and you trade your time for money.  Instead, focus on your creative genius and deliver value up, while growing yourself and creating value for the world.  Setup system that make you money, even when you’re not working.  “Non-dummies eventually realize that trading time for money is indeed extremely dumb and that there must be a better way.  And of course there is a better way.  The key is to de-couple your value from your time.”  See 10 Reasons Why You Should Never Get a Job.
23. Show up.   Turn abstractions into actions and show up.  Simple practices over time can yield amazing results.  Showing up is more than half the battle.  While it doesn’t guarantee success, it gets you the bulk of the way there, and keeps you in the game.  Steve says, “Showing up is always the limiting step.  Showing up doesn’t guarantee I’ll become a black belt, but it will get me about 80% of the way there if I stick with it.”  Steve goes on to say, “If you allow abstract concepts like health or love to remain abstract, you won’t move forward in these areas.  Abstractions are wonderful tools for thought, but eventually you need to turn them into concrete physical actions.”  See Showing Up.
24. Shape your personal brand.   You can shape your brand through awareness and authenticity.  On your external brand, what three adjectives would people use to describe you?  On your internal brand, what three adjectives would you use to describe yourself?  People will label you whether you like it or not.  You even label you whether you like it or not.  It’s natural to have labels, since people are pattern matchers by design, and labels help us simplify a complex or overwhelming world.  If you accept this, then the question becomes what are you going to do about it?  You can influence and shape your personal brand, by being mindful of how what you say, how you say it, and what you do.  The simplest way to be congruent and make this low stress is to be yourself, and be authentic.  There’s only one you in the world.  It’s a lot of work to try to be somebody else, especially somebody you’re not.  Steve says, “I think the best external image to project is the one you believe best reflects who you really are. Being yourself simply means being honest.”  See Personal Branding.
25. Use creativity to serve you.  Don’t be normal.  The planet needs more creative problem solvers.  Use creativity to get results in your health, relationships, finances, personal productivity, motivation, and happiness.  Use creativity to overcome boredom and as a competitive advantage.  According to Steve, one way to do this is, “figure out what everyone else is doing, and then do the opposite.” Steve says, “If you’re not very bright, then following the masses is generally a good idea.  But if you have a half-decent intellect, then you can do much better than average, so hold yourself to a higher standard.”  Steve goes on to say, “Obviously not everyone in the business world will appreciate your creativity, but if most of your competition is wholly uncreative, you’ll stand out from the crowd and get noticed, which can bring you opportunities that uncreative people will never be offered.”  See Creativity for Smart People.

7 Principles of Personal Growth
This might very well be Steve’s most important contribution to the personal development space.  It’s a simple framework and lens.  Steve identified 7 universal principles of personal growth.  There are three core principles: truth, love, and power.  There are four secondary principles: oneness,  authority, courage, and intelligence.  Oneness = truth + love.  Authority = truth + power.  Courage =  love + power.  Intelligence is when the principles of truth, love, and power are in harmony.

Here are the 7 principles at a glance, along with their key components:

1. Truth.  Truth includes perception, prediction, accuracy, acceptance, and self-awareness.
2. Love.  Love includes connection, communication, and communion.
3. Power.  Power includes responsibility, desire, self-determination, focus, effort, and self-discipline.
4. Oneness.  Oneness includes empathy, compassion, honesty, fairness, contribution, and unity.
5. Authority.  Authority includes command, effectiveness, persistence, confidence, and significance.
6. Courage.  Courage includes heart, initiative, directness, and honor.
7. Intelligence.  Intelligence includes authenticity, creative self-expression, growth, flow, and beauty

Steve says, “observe how a lack of truth creates problems for you, how a lack of love causes you to feel disconnected and alone, and how a lack of power makes you feel helpless and victimized.  Discover how much easier life becomes when you align yourself with truth, love, and power.”

Top 10 Steve Pavlina Quotes
Here are my top 10 quotes by Steve:

1. “Be afraid if you must; then summon the courage to follow your dreams anyway.  That is strength undefeatable.”
2. “Being normal is a myth. There’s no such thing.”
3. “Beneath the surface chaos of reality, there are many governing patterns to be found.  As you become aware of these patterns, life becomes incredibly fascinating.”
4. “Embrace your unique path of growth.”
5. “I see my beliefs as a toolbox of lenses to choose from; they’re an extension of my senses.”
6. “The closer your internal model of reality matches actual reality, the more capable you become.”
7. “The purpose of planning is to focus your present-moment decisions.”
8. “Total clarity is a rarity.”
9. “Where is the path with a heart?”
10. “You can focus your mind on the inside, and take disciplined-action on the outside.”

Quotes Organized by Category
I’ve included some of my favorite Steve Pavlina quotes below.  For simple scanning, I’ve organized them using the following categories: Career, Courage, Ego, Growth, Intelligence, Relationships, Self-Discipline, and Spirituality.

Catalog of Steve Pavlina’s Resources (Sites, Book, Videos, Posts)
Steve has a vast body of knowledge, from articles, to posts, to videos, to books.  For simple scanning, I organized Steve’s collection of resources into the following buckets: Key Links, Book, Videos, and Popular Posts

My Related Posts

• Lessons Learned from Seth Godin
• Lessons Learned from Tony Robbins
• Lessons Learned from Guy Kawasaki

“Are you getting results? …”

Over Christmas break, I committed to finishing the writing for a book that I expect to change a lot of people’s lives.  It’s my first non-technical book.  The working title is, Getting Results the Agile Way.  It’s all about getting results in work and life.  It’s the playbook I wish somebody had given me long ago for finding work/life balance, managing time, playing to my strengths, and making the most of what I’ve got.

Why Getting Results
The world is a tough place.  Between layoffs, the economy, and simply the unknown, a lot of people are having a really tough time in their lives.  There are constantly new challenges at a pace that’s tough to keep up.  Worse, I don’t think you learn a lot of these skills in school or on the job, except through the school of hard knocks.

This is my playbook for you.  For more than 10 years at Microsoft I’ve tested and evaluated ways to get results.  I’ve had to find things that not only work for me, but that could work for the people I mentor inside and outside the company, as well as for large teams around the world.  I’m a big believer that everybody can get great results if they have the right know-how.

What Sorts of Problems Does It Tackle
The book is a system and a playbook for some of these common challenges:

• How to find work / life balance
• How to shift from tasks and activities to meaningful results and outcomes
• How to use stories and scenario-driven results to carve out value in your life
• How to overwhelm your challenges with fierce results
• How to defeat perfectionism
• How to avoid analysis paralysis and take action a simple story at a time
• How to find your flow state for more engaging work
• How to find your passion and purpose
• How to play to your strengths for more energy and better results
• How to conquer fear and avoid learned helplessness
• How to motivate yourself in ways that make you feel you can move mountains
• How to focus on what really counts
• How to prioritize more effectively
• How to create more value for yourself and others
• How to spend more time on what you want, and less time on what you don’t

It helps with a lot of things because mostly it gets you spending the right time, on the right things, with the right energy, the right way.  This is the key to your best results.

My Story
When I first joined Microsoft, it was sink or swim.  I saw a lot of people fail.  Among the chaos, I also saw many people thrive.  I wanted to know their secrets.  I started with people on my team, but the next thing you know I was studying success patterns around the company.  If somebody was known for getting results, I hunted them down and studied their ways.

I learned so many simple things that actually worked.  For example, instead of managing time, the real key is managing your energy.  I’d rather have four power hours, than a week of just going through the motions.  The secret of work life balance is setting up your own artificial boundaries, whether it’s “dinner on the table at 5:30″ or “no work on the weekends.”  Finding your passion can be as simple as connecting to your values.  For example, I use metaphors to make my project an epic adventure and I have the team create the movie poster of what great results will look like.  How’s that for wanting to show up and give your best every day knowing you’re working on blockbuster results?

What is Agile Results?
You’ll hear me talk about Agile Results quite a bit.  It’s the name I gave the system  that serves as the foundation for the Getting Results guide.  Agile is all about responding to change.  It’s agility in action.  It’s all about making progress while the world changes under your feet.

My Agile Results system borrows the best principles, patterns, and practices across a variety of disciplines from sports, positive psychology, personal productivity, Agile development, Scrum, project management, time management, leadership skills, and strengths-based development.  It’s more than a mash up — I’ve tested and honed the system to work for individuals and teams while refining it over years of deliberate practice.  To me, great results for the team, always starts with unleashing an individual’s best.  Having fun is contagious and getting results spreads like a wild fire.

Agile Results in a Nutshell
Here is the Agile Results system at a glance:

• The Rule of 3 – You can apply the Rule of 3 to work and life to avoid overwhelming yourself while carving out  value, a day at a time, a story at a time.  (See The Rule of 3.)
• Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, and Friday Reflection – This is a simple weekly pattern for results.  On Mondays figure out your 3 compelling results for the week.  Each day, figure out your 3 best results for the day.  On Fridays, identify 3 things going well, and 3 things to improve.  (See Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, and Friday Reflection.)
• Hot Spots -  This is your heat map.  Hot Spots are a simple lens to look at your life as a portfolio you invest in: mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun.  It’s under-investing or over-investing in these areas that can get in the way of great results.  (See Hot Spots.)

How to Get Started
Getting started is really easy.  If you write down 3 results you want for today, you’re doing Agile Results.  Is there more to it? … Sure, but take it at your own pace.  Here’s a one-page guide for getting started with Agile Results.

How To Follow Along for the Ride
You can read Getting Results for free online in HTML.  I’ll continue to shape the guide over the next several weeks based on feedback.  I’ll also be making March a focus on getting results so if you’ve been looking for a jumpstart for your life, this is a great month to make it happen.

If you’re not getting the results you want in your life, you just need the skills.  Use my guide to stuff your bag of tricks with some new tools that will change your game and help you unleash your best.

“Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.” – Mark Twain

Motivation is your drive and it’s a skill you can build.  When it comes to your performance, motivation is one of the most important things you control. One of my favorite places to look for motivation practices is sports.  After all, athletes depend on motivation to perform their best.

In the article The Power of Prime, Jim Taylor, Ph.D. outlines the three D’s of what he calls prime motivation:

• Direction – Consider three potential directions: stop, continue your level, or become your best.
• Decision – Decide on your direction (stop, continue your level, or improve.)  This tells you how much time and effort to put in, based on how good you want to become.
• Dedication – Dedicate yourself to your direction and decision.  It’s your level of dedication that will limit or enable your results.

It’s a simple frame, but I like how it lays out your options and puts it in black and white.  It also helps you troubleshoot your thinking.  For example, if you want to become your best, but you’re not putting in your time and effort, then there’s a mismatch.  In an opposite example, you might not want to improve at something, in which case, you might trim down the time and energy you spend on it, so you can invest it somewhere else.

Photo by Iqbal Saggu.

“They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” — Confucius

I’m testing my new tag line and taking it for a test drive.  It’s Insight and Action for Getting Results.  I’ll share my story and what I’ve learned since it might help others whether you’re branding you, your blog, or your business.  Keep in mind, I’m not a brand master and I don’t play one on T.V. (though Robert Redford stepped on my foot while filming The Quiz Show, but that’s another story for another day.)

Anyway, I’ve been revisiting my tag line since Annabel posed the question, “Lifestyle design sounds far sexier than self improvement, personal development or self help, doesn’t it?”  It’s a good question, and it’s worth exploring.  Personally, I think sexy is in the eye of the beholder.  For example, if you’re on a personal development mission, then sites that use those words, become the apples of your eye.

Tests for Success
Unfortunately, when I started cycling through potential tag lines, I didn’t have a great set of tests for success.  Now I do:

• What’s in the box?
• What works well on a t-shirt?
• What’s sticky in the halls?
• What can you say to another person live without feeling weird or sounding hokey?
• What can you say that promises a benefit in a nutshell?

Some tag lines passed the “pithy and precise” test, but didn’t resonate.  Some passed the technically accurate, but failed the “what works well on a T-shirt?” test.  For example, while I focus on personal effectiveness, that’s just a piece of the puzzle and some said it’s “cold.”  “Results” has sizzle (and sell the sizzle, not the steak.)

Approach
I’m a fan of asking the right people the right questions and testing results.  There’s plenty of people smarter than me that are more than happy to share their know-how and expertise.  I just have to ask.  I asked people far and wide from every Joe’s to engineers to marketing maestros.  However, until I had my tests for success, I couldn’t pick a winner.  It was the tests for success that helped me parse the feedback.

Breaking Some Rules
Sometimes you just have to break the rules.  I’m breaking a couple of golden branding rules.  For example, “results” isn’t a well-known category like “personal development.”  I’m also going against the rule that the specific is better than the general and that you win by narrowing your focus.  I agree that’s true, but for me, I’d rather go Renaissance Man and generalize over specialize — and leave getting results wide open.  One of my mentors echoed that point, saying that I help anybody do anything better, and that’s my super skill.

The Winner (for Now)
For now, I’m test-driving “Insight and Action for Getting Results.”  My previous manager said that I’m all about “getting results” and that he’s never seen anybody learn and improve in a shorter time.  “Insight” is fun little word, and coupled with “action” means we’re going to use this or apply it somehow.

Getting Results is pretty sticky and I bridge work and life.  I focus on mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships and fun, which I think are key hot spots for life.  If you flip through my past posts, you’ll find everything from lessons from Oprah, to improving decision making, to dealing with tough bosses, to skilled happiness, to using stress to be your best., to feeling good.  It’s an eclectic set of patterns and practices for success in work and life.

Why do I say, “for now”?  Because I’m a believer that branding is a journey of continuous learning and refinement … and sometimes it’s just a plain “do-over.”

Photo by Rene Ehrhardt.

If you know the cycle you’re in, you can make more effective decisions.  You can anticipate instead of react.  I’ve been trying to get a handle on the economy to know what to expect and to figure out what the best moves are.  The New Economy Cycle is apparently one of the most important financial planning cycles for your life, your investments, and your business.  It’s less about the day to day decisions, and more about the big structural decisions you make in your life, such as where to live, what jobs to do, what to learn in school, … etc.

The New Economy Cycle of today is 80 years. It used to be 58-60 years.  During the cycle, the economy moves through four seasons.  At a high level, the overall cycle starts with innovation in key niches.  Gradually, the changes move to mainstream, and there’s a growth boom.  Next, there is a shakeout which is an extreme downturn and economic correction. Finally, there is a maturity stage where prices stabilize.

In the book,The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History , Harry S. Dent writes about today’s 80-year generation-based New Economy Cycle.   Whether or not his predictions are right, Dent makes me think and it’s a new lens for looking at the big picture.  What I think is interesting is that his fundamental model is based on demographics and trends.

Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

• The seasons of the economy are largely predictable.   While you can’t anticipate disruptions and other surprises, you can look at the bigger picture in terms of the markets overall patterns for rising and falling.
• Think in terms of 4 seasons.  The four seasons are: Innovation Season, Growth Boom Season, Shakeout Season, and Maturity Boom Season.  The Innovation Season is where radical new technologies and products first move into niche markets.  It’s where inflation rates rise and peak.  The Growth Boom, follows the innovation season.  It’s where the innovative generation grows up and learns and spends more money while adopting new technologies into the mainstream.  The Shakeout Season is where deflation and depression set in.  The Maturity Boom is where the economy becomes fully saturated with the new technologies, and this triggers the next radical innovation and inflation cycle.
• Missing the changes in the seasons can be devastating.  If you don’t know you’re in a downward trend, you could be swimming upstream against the current instead of riding a wave.
• The previous New Economy Cycle was 58-60 years.  Before the early to mid-1900’s the old New Economy Cycle occurred every 58-60 years.
• Today’s New Economy Cycle is 80 years.  According to Dent, the rise in the middle-class populations from the Industrial Revolution stretched the old New Economy Cycle from the Kondratieff Wave, to the 80-year generation-based New Economy Cycle of today.  The Kondratieff Wave was simply made up of two 29-30 year Commodity Cycles.  The 80-year generation-based New Economy cycle includes two 40-year generation boom and bust cycles.

Wiped Out in 3 Years
You can lose more in the downturn, than you make in the upswing.  Dent writes:

You don’t have to catch all the corrections and crisis along the way in each major boom and bust to progress in your quality of life and your standard of living, but missing the changes in these seasons can be devastating.  The entire gains of the Roaring Twenties were wiped out in just three years.

The Seasons of the Economy are Largely Predictable
Dent writes:

… these seasons of the economy are largely predictable.  Thousands of years ago, we learned how to chart and predict the annual weather seasons with great implications for agricultural planning and advances in our standard of living.  Even before that we learned how to track migration cycles for animals and to make clothes and store food in preparation for winter when we ere in the hunting and gathering stage.  The most remarkable insight in modern times is of unprecedented scientific advances and expanded predictability in most arenas is that economists, politicians, businesses, and investors still don’t see clear seasons and cycles in our economy, stocks, bonds, real estate, and commodities – even though they follow similar longer-term seasons with regularity.

The 80-Year Generation Based New Economy Cycle
The New Economy Cycle used to be 58-60 years, but now it’s 80 years.  Dent writes:

In our lifetime, the New Economy Cycle has developed over about 80 years in four distinct seasons, but before the early to mid-1900’s it occurred about every 58 to 60 years.  Rising middle-class populations from the Industrial Revolution stretched the old New Economy Cycle from the Kondratieff Wave (which is simply compromised of two 29- to 30-year Commodity Cycles) to the 80-year generation boom and bust cycles) and we are likely to return to the 58- to 60-year cycle in the future as generational cycles recede in importance with falling birthrates around the world.

My Related Posts

• You Lose More Money When Stocks Go Down
• How Much Profitability Do You Need?
• The Five Small Business Success Formulas

Photo by woodleywonderworks.

In my previous post, Likeability is a Skill, we learned that likeability is something you can work at and invest in, just like working out.  We also learned that improving your likeability, improves your quality of life.  Now it’s time to turn that into action.  Great, so how do we get going? …

In the book, The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life’s Dreams , Tim Sanders shows us how to improve our likeability by working on 12 key practices.

The 4 Likeability Factors
According to Tim, the 4 factors of likeability are:

• Friendliness
• Relevance
• Empathy
• Realness

12 Practices for Improving Likeability
The following table summarizes 12 practices you can work on to improve your likeability, according to Tim:

I’m finding that it’s a healthy set of practices.  It’s an interesting blend of staying connected to others, while being your best version of yourself.  It’s about finding common ground, and focusing on that, as well as building bridges, rather than starting from differences or focusing on flaws.  At the same time, the key is keeping it real and being true to you.  It’s not about being fake or people pleasing … it’s about genuine connection.

Photo by studiosmith.

Sources of Insight is 10 months old!  She’s growing up so fast.  (If you ask me, I don’t think she looks a day past 6 months.)  What started out as my practice blog is turning out to be my real blog.  Anyway, it’s time for a quick check in on results.  This is actually a good time for a check in since it’s review time at Microsoft and I’m already reflecting on performance.

Lessons Learned
I’ve learned a lot, but here are a few key lessons:

• Slow growth beats no growth.  While I’ve always been inspired by Def Leopard’s infinite wisdom “it’s better to burn out … than fade away,”, apparently, slow and steady wins the race.  My accountant is a fan of get rich slowly and he’s taught me to stick with things for the long haul.  That’s a good thing because my growth just isn’t what I expected.  Then again, I can’t complain.  I’ve gone from 1,800 visitors a month to ~20,000 and it seems to be accelerating.  Any growth seems good in a down economy.
• It’s the difference that makes the difference.  This is where I struggle.  What makes my blog any different from the bazillion other personal development blogs?  I’m not sure yet.  It might be my focus on patterns and practices.  It might be the way I stand on the shoulders of giants, drawing from books, people, and quotes.  It might be my unique experience building teams and running projects at Microsoft.  Either way, I think differentiation is important.  I think of the blogosphere as one big connected system and I think it’s important to bring at least some unique value to the table.  I do focus a lot on expert techniques, but I’m not sure that’s the key.  I need to think more on this.
• It’s about raving fans.  Not only do my raving fans make it worth it, they help spread Sources of Insight through word-of-mouth marketing.  I’ve seen it in action several times.   This is a good thing since I really haven’t done my marketing homework yet.

Highlights and Lowlights
I’m a fan of the old “3 things going well” and “3 things to improve” model we use to have in our reviews.  It helps balance out the good with the bad.  I’ll go ahead use that format here for my blog.

Here are 3 things going well …

1. 1,000 raving fans.  Last week I hit my 1,005th subscriber.  I had a mini-goal of a 1000 raving fans within the first year, so I’m happy.
2. Books, People and Quotes.  I really like drawing insight from books, people, and quotes.   It compliments what I can share from my direct experiences and it helps provide me with more material to test and put into practice.
3. Featured Guests.  This is a big part of how I live my mantra “stand on the shoulders of giants”.  My featured guests range from best-selling authors to unsung heroes.   If you’re wondering how I pick my guests, it’s based on finding the best-of-the-best for certain categories.  For example, I think Dr. K’s superpower is interpersonal skills.  I think Jim Kousez’s superpower is leadership.  I think Michael Michalko’s super power is creative thinking.  I let the authors choose whether to write about their superpower or simply their life lessons.  For example, Michael Michalko shared his life lesson in his guest post, Choice.

If I could pick another thing, I’d have to say it’s hot spots for life.  I really like having a defined set of hot spots to help scope what I focus on.  Life hot spots include: mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships and fun.  I try to find the best patterns and practices for those categories.   These are great categories for personal development or skilled living.

Here are 3 things I need to improve …

1. SEO.  I messed up here in so many ways it’s not funny. Live and learn.  I’m sure I still have mistakes, but I’m slowly correcting key things.    I finally took some time to sweep my tags and categories.  I also started to map out
2. Impact.  To amplify my impact, I have work to do both inside my blog and outside.  Mostly outside.  I hear time and again that you make more impact on your blog, by what you do outside of your blog, such as guest posts and social media sites.  I’m going to test this soon.
3. Benefits and Features.   I don’t think I’ve made my benefits and features “pop” yet.  They’re in there, but I find it takes a bit of hand holding.  I’ve tried to rework the sidebar to make some things simpler to get to, including a “Getting Started” as well as quick access to book nuggets, experts, and quotes.  I’ll need to get more feedback and ideas here to take it to the next level.  I should probably start considering creating a forum or community and a newsletter.  A newsletter would be a simple way for me to share some more prescriptive guidance.  Perhaps an “Insights and Actions” newsletter?

Highlights and lowlights aside, the cool thing for me is when real people stop by or email me about how something I’ve shared helped them get results.

Stats at a Glance

OK, enough with the mushy stuff … what about the data?   The data doesn’t really tell the story, but it at least tells me I’m trending on an upward path.  Here are the key stats at a glance:

My page rank seems stuck.  I probably don’t have enough incoming links from the right places yet.  More homework for me to do.

Top 10 Pages
Purely from a data standpoint, the top 10 posts on Sources of Insight are:

• SourcesOfInsight.com (Home page)
• The Zen of Results Free E-Book
• The 10 Best Ways to Persuade
• The Top Ten Leadership Lessons
• 13 Motivation Techniques
• Rituals for Results
• Personal Development Books
• Motivation Quotes
• Finding Your Key Strengths
• 10 Distorted Thinking Patterns

If you have feedback on what you’d like to see more of or ideas on how I should improve my blog, feel free to either leave them in the comments or use the contact form and you can send to me directly.

My Related Posts

• Sources of Insight is 6 Months Old
• Sources of Insight is 1 Month Old

Photo by Sarah G …

In my previous post, I wrote about the power of Hot Spots.  In this post, I’ll show you how I apply Hot Spots to life.  These are the categories I use for skilled living.  This is the big picture.  It’s how I chunk up my overall time and energy.  There are certain areas in life that if I invest in, I get rewarded.  On the other hand, if I ignore these categories, I get penalized.

Hot Spots for Life
Here’s the starter set of categories I use for thinking about the areas in my life that need focus and energy:

Setting Boundaries
I set minimums and maximums for my hot spots in terms of time and energy.  This keeps me from getting over-invested.  I use my hot spots to set boundaries.  For example, I set a max on career and a min on relationships, body, and fun.

So step one was deciding to spend no more than 50 hours each week on my career hot spot.  That forced me to bite off only what I could chew.  That’s how I started improving plate management and pushing back effectively.  I can only spread my life force over so much.  The categories help support each other.  They can also work against each other.

Life Hot Spots
Here are some simple prompts to help you think of hot spots in your life.   The list is not complete or exhaustive and it’s not meant to be.  You may want to add some other hot spots for your life, such as spiritual or social.  The key is to have a simple heat map of what’s important for you.  It’s a high level way to remind you to spread your life force across your meaningful buckets.  It’s a way to more thoughtfully invest in yourself.

If you’re not getting the results you want, explore how you’re investing in Hot Spots.  Maybe with a few tweaks of where you spend your time and energy is just the trick you need.

Photo by Mike PD.

Inspire … “To breathe life into” …

… That’s how one of my instructors defined it.  Now, I have a new respect for the word inspire.  I find myself asking, “how do I breath life into others?”

Photo by km33068.