One Particular Harbour
Thoughts about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness from Dave Darby.
All posts in Leadership & Legacy
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If
Jun 25, 2010Posted by Dave Darby
Read more »If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!~Rudyard Kipling
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Don't Be a Sucker
May 14, 2010Posted by Dave Darby
Read more »PT Barnum said “There’s a customer born every minute.” Yup. Now as with many quotes attributed to famous people, this one is more likely to be recounted as “There’s a sucker born every minute.” While it is disputed that PT Barnum was that disingenuous with his customer base, this quote is also true.
Here’s the problem with the cocky, American economy as I explained some time ago in Economic Cannibalism – we are so proud of our role as the world’s leading economy of consumption that we don’t even realize that we are eating ourselves to death.
And we are suckers for urgency and chaos. So what do snake oil pitchmen do? Never mind importance, they only need focus the gullible masses on urgency. How about a few examples:
- “Sunday, SUNday, SUNDAY!” – great for selling monster rally tix
- “Yours now for only 3 LOW monthly payments!” – most as seen on tv ads
- “But that’s not all folks, order within the next 10 minutes and we’ll DOUBLE your offer!” – most as seen on tv ads
- “Billy Mays here…” – enough said
- “Don’t wait, ask your doctor about Cialis” – gotta love pharmaceuticals skipping the middleman here – MDs study for 7+ years, consumers on average, 7 minutes, nice
And do we really “need” another set of knives? Yeah, the can-cutting thing is cool and I’m sure the tomato drop/perfect split took some skill/practice, but really – have you seen most people’s over-crowded knife drawers?
The point is – if you have overstuffed drawers, can’t get your car(s) in your garage, have a loaded attic (or storage unit) and generally find yourself struggling with clutter – well, you have been duped, sucked right in. You see, we should be following our passions which should be only a few things, I mean, who has time for more??
But, when we are sucked in, we consume/buy until we have trouble storing everything that somebody else told us we ‘needed’. And these people convince us to place a high urgency on something that is of little importance to our life or survival. So, don’t be a sucker. Put a stop to the madness.
a) don’t follow priorities that are urgent but not important and
b) don’t ignore priorities that are important to the point that they become urgent.If you do, you’re just chasing your tail and your focus will always be survival. If you break free and pursue ‘real’ priorities – well, welcome to significance and your Ideal Life and you will be surprised at how much time you will have for leisure – who hates that?
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Tornado of Priorities
May 12, 2010Posted by Dave Darby
Read more »Most people would argue that tasks that are both “urgent” and “important” should be their top priorities when organizing their agendas.
I am challenging you to think otherwise.
Remembering that most every priority that is both urgent AND important was once only important. It only became urgent to do because it was ignored or missed altogether. That’s right, procrastination, disorganization or just plain blindness results in ultra-urgent and ultra-important tasking. So, are we to believe that this is the way we should be striving to organize our lives – by ignoring ‘priorities’ then rushing around when they become urgent?
Uh, no thanks. Because when we chase urgent tasks, we are missing the tasks that ARE really important. How do I know? Because if a task was once so important but not urgent, why didn’t you spend time on it?? Let’s be real – it wasn’t all that important as we once thought it was.
Don’t get me wrong – we all have events that happen in our life in which are important but we have little control (say, a recession maybe), but we’re talking about those areas of life where we have control in our jobs, in our relationships, in our finances and around the house.
So it is in our best interests to remove the blinders (which could be general clutter, high-maintenance people and other typical distractions) and increase our ability to manage and execute tasks while they are only important and NOT urgent.
How? By taking a few minutes each day, week or month (depending on the systems you have in place to manage priorities) and prioritizing tasks before you launch into them. You may argue that you typically like to jump in rather than waste time staring at lists, but again, I challenge that a 10-minute planning/review session will save you hours per week staying out of crises, stewing over urgent tasks and just plain ole wasted efforts. Try it. Prove this exercise to be right or wrong and drop your comments below.
And it doesn’t matter your personality type. Even if you are naturally a flexible personality as opposed to a more rigid/scheduled personality, planning to some degree is not only necessary but a means to protect your desire for flexibility. Let’s face it – when you are moving in a tornado of constant crisis (like working on urgent tasks), how much flexibility do you really have? So, planning, while it doesn’t have to have color, laminated charts is important for everyone who wants to Build Their Ideal Lives. Otherwise, you might find you’re too busy only helping somebody else Build Their Ideal Life in a win-lose exchange. Boo win-lose.
In an upcoming post, I will touch on the only thing worse than important and urgent tasks – non important, urgent tasks. Come on, you’ve had ‘em – life suckers – they vacuum years of our lives under the guise of good intentions – think PT Barnum.