Use This Activity To Develop The Most Crucial Habits for Lifelong Success It’s a cool October night. One of those nights where the sun starts going down, coaxing people back into their houses. The type of night that is actually perfect when you are going to exercise and sweat. Moving through the subdivision is easy enough. You can chart a rectangular course to meet the distance requirement you have. In my case, I’m able to do one big loop to get in 5k of activity. Little did I know that the distance was going to be the easiest part of the night. Most people outside of the military have never heard of rucking. It seems absurd when someone explains it to you. Rucking, is a low-intensity exercise in which you add weight to your back while walking or hiking. But what makes this the best exercise you have never heard of? It creates a unique set of conditions and variables to play with. It challenges you mentally as well as physically. The Physical This part is easy to understand. It’s ...

 The Lost Art That Changed The World   People hear the word philosopher and this is what jumps to mind. Icons of the past that changed the world thousands of years ago. Brilliant thinkers that changed how everything was understood. Ideas that changed the course of history. This isn’t you. So you aren’t a philosopher. That statement is wrong. Completely wrong. Philosophy isn’t about a few brilliant thinkers. Philosophy is something that we can all do. Most of us DO do it when we aren’t drowning in the busyness we have built our lives around.     Philosophy is our ability to wonder. About life and everything in it The goal isn’t to come up with answers. The real intent is this: It’s about the process of trying to find answers versus accepting without questioning. The most important ideas in your life will come from your own individual reasoning. They will not come from what has been forced upon you by society.     The beginning of thought is in disa...

 Building Habits In One Area of Your Life to Improve Others     Everyone knows that exercise is good for you. We are meant to move. The lifestyles that many of us lead today keep us glued to our chairs, in front of screens. I’m not sharing benefits for your body. This quick hit will share 6 qualities that will improve ALL areas of your life. The experiences we have, the habits we build, are not locked into the activity you developed them in. How you train yourself to behave or react in one situation will carry over to others. Running alone will allow you to build personally and triumph professionally.  [1] DISCIPLINE In order to achieve any goal, you have to take action. The biggest challenge people face is keeping themselves accountable. All too often we quit at the wrong time.  The world is full of distractions. Our mind is loaded with resistance.  Build your inner strength by sticking to a routine not giving up when things are hard. [2] CONSISTENCY...

 How My Focus on Writing is Influencing Everything For every year that has gone by, I have written more. You meet more people, attend more meetings, work on more projects and balance more commitments. To juggle all of those different activities, we communicate with each other more than we did in the past.  A lot more. It does people a huge disservice. And they don’t even know it. Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Jump-starting 2022 It’s cliche, but I decided that I was going to get back into writing. I had first picked it up when I left my job in 2019 and dove headfirst into the professional world of networking. My weapons of choice? LinkedIn and a personal blog. To step outside of my comfort zone and showcase my business prowess, I took to writing. I developed a strong habit of posting 1–3x a day on various industry news. My network was growing. Eventually, I let it drop off. I got busy with a new job and didn’t prioritize it. One day turned into ...

  People hate to fail. We drive ourselves crazy trying to avoid it. The irony however, is that we are natural experimenters. Our ancestors started roaming the planet about 6 million years ago, modern form humans back 300,000 or so, with civilization starting about 6,000 years ago. The constant through all of that has been trying out new ideas, methods or activities. Do you know what happens when we experiment? We get things wrong. If We’re Built for Experimentation, Why Do We Hate It? While failure comes with experimentation, it has an unfortunate connection to our fundamental needs. Originally developed in the 1940s, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs helps us identify and rank core human requirements. Level one being were most of our trouble resides when thinking of failure. Biological and physiological needs — air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc. Our earliest memories set the stage for our future. We go to pre-school to succeed in kindergarten. From there we move through...

 How Measuring Differently Helps You Stand Out In a digital world, information is everywhere. At work, at home or at play, you have more access to information than ever. Use it. Below you will find some things I have learned leveraging data to keep making improvements in anything I do. Data is not something only for the office. When you realize how much information is out there, your world starts to change. Feedback is the secret to success. Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Tik Tok - they all provide services. The platforms and devices aren't the only reason their are winning. Data is their real advantage. It should be yours as well. Measure What Matters Whatever it is that you are about to do, if there is a path in front of that needs to grow or get better you HAVE to think about what to measure. Some of what you need to measure is easy to understand. These are the things that everyone else is doing. Those core key performance indicators that start the journey. Here are some examp...

 The Lost Art of Observation, Experimentation & Debate It’s 7:17pm on a Saturday night. You have had a brutal week. You’re behind on your project, your boss asked you to create a new report, an employee is out sick and you got nothing done because you attended 23 meetings in the last 5 days. You’re gassed. Sitting with a friend, having a beer, you start talking about how stressed you are wouldn’t be surprised if you were teetering on the brink of collapse. Instinctively, your friend reaches into their pocket pulls out their phone and jumps on Google. “What are the physical signs of burn out” Let’s go through the list and see how if you check the boxes. Rinse and repeat. For everything. All the time. The Value of Wonder Have you ever thought about what we have lost having the world’s knowledge at our fingertips? That question is the inspiration for this article, and quite possibly an ongoing series. I was out earlier today rucking, and that question dominated my thinki...

 The Simple Awareness of Re-balancing Your Priorities Do you wake up some days and feel like something is completely out of whack? You aren't quite sure, but you know that there isn't the balance you need. Most people think of this as binary, the famous work / life balance. This ends up being unfair because it does two things. First it makes people think in terms of work vs all other. Second, it does not give enough visibility to other area in the "life" bucket. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans do a great job in their book "Designing Your Life" expanding on this concept. They break the traditional work / life balance argument into four categories: work, play, love, health. Another important element in their view is how we see work. Don’t for a minute reduce work only to that which you get paid for. Most people have more than one form of work at a time. One suggestion I have for you, would be to expand the love category and think of it as relationships in general....

The Art of Better Decision Making Have you felt scared to make a decision? Maybe you get preoccupied with making the 'wrong' decision?  Did you know that 68% of people have admitted to not doing because they thought it would be harder than it actually is. Getting comfortable with making decisions is one of the biggest challenges new leaders face. You will be placed in situations where there isn't enough time to get all of the information. Or even harder, you will be placed in situations where you'll never get more information than what you have. The good news? Making better decisions is something that you can improve by being deliberate with your learning and how you choose to approach it. This is the approach I take to decision making. These have been test and is what I have used over my 15 year career to teach and develop teams. - Accept that you will make mistakes. There is rarely a perfect answer. Getting comfortable with ambiguity is a leadership muscle you need to...

  I love how Rita McGrath shares her frame on blind spots, seeing around corners. It's a great way to think of these types of opportunities. In business there is always that point when something new is starting to take hold. It could be a new technology, a new service or a dramatic shift in consumer or market expectations. We can get stuck in the trap of what we are doing and how we have been doing it. This limits our ability to properly assess the situation. It is not always a lack of ideas that leaves us caught off guard, rather inadequately addressing the problem. This is one of the reasons I love working with younger teams.  People that are new to the workforce, new to a new company or industry see things as they are. They don't have years of experience that is guiding their thinking or altering their perceptions; they are free from the workplace biases we create and support by having to execute day in and day out. Because of this gap in knowledge or understanding of the c...

If you have a problem and you can't solve it, it's time to reframe it. Reframing a problem is simple. You force yourself to look at it from another perspective. Why would this help? Because most of the time the problem is a result of how you are seeing or understanding the problem. You are using your own assumptions and experience to solve what's in front of you, however these are often the same things that created the environment where the problem is thriving. People will often confuse problems, causes and effects. We take for granted our own default node network and the role it plays in everything we perceive.  The best approach to reframing a problem has two elements. First you need to understand how something got to the way it is today. Second, you have to drop everything you already know about the situation and start with a beginner's mind. Innovative solutions are a result of thinking about a problem differently than you (or other people) already have been. You ha...

  You may not have heard of the term "dysfunctional beliefs", I can guarantee you though that you have them. Dysfunctional beliefs are things that you tell yourself that are generally untrue and uncooperative. You can also label these as negative or limiting beliefs. No matter what you call them, they are ideas that influence your thinking, which means that they are influencing your actions. These types of beliefs will impact your career, keeping you stuck in the same place or role for too long. They will make you more risk averse and will limit the opportunities that are presented to you. Negative beliefs will tax your mental health, making you judge yourself harshly while constantly comparing your achievements to others.   Dysfunctional beliefs grow. As we get older, and the longer we hold onto them, the more dominant they become in our mind. We latch onto this type of thinking because it provides us with an easy answer to explain why something happened; as a general rule, ...

  There is such a shift happening with new world thinking. How we approach problems and where we need to apply focus and effort. Provoke is a great read that helps push your strategic thinking. What you will see from this book is the major differentiator that separates start-ups from established brands, and why some brands are able to adapt while others seem to fall off the cliff. Provoke is all about how you as a leader, need to embrace taking action versus the slow burn that is so prevalent in our organizations as leadership is focused on year over year results and protecting the bonus. Here are some key takeaways for me that will help you and your team have more success. Accepting a Trend and Properly Understanding How Mature it is Evaluate the trend that you are seeing and label as "if" or "when". Leaders often miss an opportunity because they either miss it, deny it, over analyze it or respond poorly A correctly labelled "if" vs "when" trend...

  We live in a world that is obsessed with solving problems with a system or technology. How many times have you hear someone [basically] say "let's get an app for that"? Crazy. I'm all for shiny new things. I love my toys as much as you do.  Rarely however does that new systems, application or software suite fix any of the underlying issues. When was the last time you started using something new, either in your personal or professional life, and it immediately fixed your problem and you changed nothing about what you are doing. Often, what ends up happening, is that as businesses look to implement some new tech, they also end up having to change HOW they are doing things. The changes that are made to core processes is what drives the success. Using your phone to track your steps, your sleep, your workout or to even help you write. Pause for a second, think about any of those situations.  Tracking your steps and setting daily goals means that you are actually walking ...

  Have you ever been scrolling your feed, listening to a friend or what to shout out "EXACTLY!" during a presentation?  That happened to me earlier as I saw a post on Twitter, and some how I found the quote that I had save quite some time ago (synchronicity, who knew).   There is a lot of confusion in the world. In almost every area we interact, there is a gap in perspective, understanding or breadth. We have expectations that the other party should be the one explaining, and breaking it down, surely it is their reason why we don't understand. This can be the answer. Sometimes it is for the other person or party to explain. They need to build out their idea, their solution, their value proposition. Here's the challenge however. What is on you? If you are not looking to see things completely with other eyes, if you are not willing to let go of what you hold onto, it is often extremely difficult for someone to explain an opposing thought or position to you because they ...

  I had an interesting experience the other night that level me surprised and questioning some assumptions. I saw an article on LinkedIn that was written to support route optimization and highlight differences between different types of final mile (last mile) deliveries. As I went through it, I couldn't help but feel like it was a little off. Not that the information was wrong per se, more that the frame didn't quite capture all of the nuances I felt it should (I appreciate I am a touch opinionated - I prefer to call it passion). It dawned on me later that evening, a question that might explain why I was feeling off after reading the article. In an on demand world, that is based on dynamic orders and routing, is knowledge being lost that supported the previous "traditional" models. The major difference I am making between dynamic and traditional models is that traditional models are/were built on fixed and planned service schedules. This could be five deliveries per w...

  Have you ever wondered why we get stuck on the concept of making the right or wrong decision?  Have you realized that thinking a decision either leads to the right path and that the other leads to the wrong one is binary? How limiting. I appreciate the picture for this post is exactly that; it was by design to re-enforce what most people go through when making decisions. We get stuck trying to settle on whether or not we should do a particular thing. This simple lens, while easy to process and helps us feel in control, usually results in a failure to consider other alternatives. Rarely are our choices black or white, yet we spend so much of our time trying to decide against one single thing. This is to to our detriment in two major ways.  First, we are limiting our our choices. We don't consider alternatives that could be equally rewarding and adequate to solve the problem. Second, causes us to miss out on the experience of trying and testing alternatives, which could l...

  A thought popped into my head the other day, and I haven't stopped thinking about it.  Why is modern philosophy so weak? That sounds full of judgement, clearly there are many modern day (and impactful) philosophers. A quick Google search this morning easily gave me a list of the top 50 living philosophers. Being able to generate a list of 50 people in 2 seconds seems to blow up my comment rather quickly. What is philosophy then? Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind and language. The questions are often posed as problems to be studied and resolved. With academic philosophy healthy and strong, I started to wonder where my feeling and original question came from. I am now considering that it is not modern philosophy that is weak, the reality is it handles more complexity and nuance in the topics it explores than every before, rather it is the general importance and interest it has with the g...

   How many times have people told you the best thing to do is make your job something you love? Easy right, just go out, get hired into a role that speaks to you professionally and personally, love life and be happy. Reality? Not anywhere near that easy. That dream is out there an exists, however it is probably one of the hardest things to define, find and then actually make happen. I am not sharing that to discourage you, far from it, if you follow my writing here and on social you know that I constantly encourage people to push themselves to do the things they want to do. The point of the post is to support you until that happens. We all need to work, maybe you don't have everything completely figured out yet, so what do you do until you do? Or maybe you will never be one of those people that has one burning passion that you can turn into your life's work, and that's more than okay too. If you don't have that passion, what do you do then? Follow your interests, follo...

It's been a while since I have written anything new. As I have started and gotten into a new role with a new organization, finding time for other interests has been harder. I had couple of events over the last two weeks however that found me back in a place to share. My new role is all about Continuous Improvement. Working with my team and the broader operations teams to drive a lot of change. This is not a new world for me or aren't responsibilities that I haven't had in the past, however it is the first time I find myself in a role completely dedicated to it. The most important thing that you need to be able to do in order to drive change is to understand what is going on. You HAVE to ask A LOT of questions, to keep asking "... and what else?", to keep pushing past the first answers and responses you get (often these are what the business has always done, or what individuals have been doing based on their understanding). Asking questions and pushing ...