About

Better Insights, Better Results!

Join me on a quest for the world’s best insight and action for work and life.

I believe everybody deserves a chance at a better life.

I also believe that life’s better with skill.

I empower people with proven practices for personal effectiveness.

Welcome to Sources of Insight!

Sources of Insight is the place to help you become a smarter, more creative, and more capable you.

Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

One of my favorite phrases when telling folks about Sources of Insight is:
Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

Sources of Insight draws from books, people, and quotes, and features special guest stars from around the world that are the best at what they do, including top experts and best-selling authors. You don’t have to start from scratch. Sources of Insight puts wisdom of the ages and modern sages at your finger tips all in one garden of greatness.

Learn proven practices for personal effectiveness and “stand on the shoulders of giants.”

Extraordinary results for work and life

The purpose of Sources of Insight is to help you on your quest to be awesome at work and life and provide you with principles, patterns, and practices for getting results.

My mission is simple: I empower you with skills for work and life.

The vision: Skilled for Life.

The way: Proven Practices for Personal Empowerment.

Source of Insight is a source for skilled living featuring life hacks, principles, patterns, and practices for personal empowerment.

Learn skills to pay the bills and lead a better life.

Sources of Insight puts a focus on mind, body, emotions, career, finance, relationships, and fun, as well as topics like leadership, personal development, and emotional intelligence.

Realize Your Potential the Agile Way

Here is the vision in a nutshell:

People from all walks of life are empowered with the skills necessary to move forward, to realize their potential, and achieve great things.

Join me on a quest for the world’s best insight and action for work and life.

Sources of Insight is for people with a passion for more from life … to help you “flourish with skill.”

About Me

Hi, I’m J.D. Meier …

I work through a lot of challenges. You can read my story of personal transformation, but the big idea is this: life gets better with skill.

I help underdogs, leaders, and achievers make the most of what they’ve got. I have a passion for excellence and a passion for getting results. I’m also a fan of better ways for better days.

By day, I am Director of Digital Business Transformation on the Microsoft Enterprise Strategy team. As part of my day job, I lead project teams on agile projects. Each project is a new team, a new adventure, and new lessons learned. I’ve authored several technical books, where I write prescriptive guidance to share and scale patterns and practices for success. Getting Results the Agile Way is my first non-technical book, and it’s designed to help you make the most of work and life, using success patterns. It’s also a highly effective time management system.

I’m also an avid mentor at work. I regularly work with several mentees to help them improve their effectiveness. This includes everything from improving communication skills to leadership skills or basic project management.

Over the course of leading many projects, many teams, and many adventures, I’ve learned how to get results and balance life. I continuously invest in what I call my “Life Frame”, which is the hot spots in life: Mind, Body, Emotions, Career, Financial, Relationships, and Fun. I continuously study these hot spots on a quest for the best insights and actions, for work and life. I’m a fan of finding and sharing the principles, patterns and proven practices that work in the real-world under extreme conditions.

By night, I share skills to pay the bills and lead a better life through Sources of Insight.

About Sources of Insight

Exponential results for the Underdog.

Sources of Insight is my channel for finding and sharing patterns and practices from the great books, great people, and great quotes that I find. Here are some of the important points about Sources of Insight …

Mission
Empower people with skill.

Improve the quality of life for as many people as I can … as long as I can. Best of the best skills for work and life. Crack the nut on personal effectiveness — Create exponential results for the underdog by sharing the best principles, patterns, and practices.

Vision
The world’s best skills for work and life.

Tagline
Stand on the shoulders of giants!

Outcomes
You can expect that Sources of Insight will be a browsable collection of nuggets:

Principles, patterns, and practices – A reference library of patterns and practices for work and life.
Book nuggets – A reference library of insight and wisdom from key books along with how I’ve applied it.
Heroes – A reference library of heroes, role models and mentors.
Quotes – A reference library of insightful, inspirational, and practical quotes.
Lessons Learned – A reference library of lessons learned.

Guiding Principles

A few simple rules serve me well:

Life’s not a spectator’s sport.
Absorb what’s useful; reject the rest.
It’s not what’s on your plate, it’s how you eat it.
Don’t take life too seriously, or you’ll never get out alive.
Success is a journey, not a destination.
Live more, laugh more, learn more, love more.
Roll with the punches.
Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.
If you fall down, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, carry the lessons forward.
Don’t seek to be better than others; seek to be better than yourself.

The Approach

Finding and sharing nuggets of insight and action for work and life. Draw from the best sources. Real results for real people.

Basically, I model the best. I ask the most successful people I know, what books, people or lessons changed their lives. I test the knowledge against real-world scenarios. I share the lessons with my mentees. It’s a continuous process of improvement. I stand on the shoulders of giants and I draw from the wisdom of the ages. I’m also a fan of sharing through principles, patterns, and practices.

Measures of Success

My measures of success at this point is pretty simple:

Users who need the blog, can find the blog.
Users can easily find relevant posts that help them.
Users can easily consume the posts.

The Design of Sources of Insight

Sources of Insight is really driven by one thing – to help you make the most of work and life. One of the things that surprised me about Sources of Insight is how many people have asked me about the design of it. It’s a work in progress, but there is certainly an element of design about it. I’ve added a flip book that illustrates the design of Sources of Insight.