Get Out. Get Moving. Start.

Action always beats intention.

A dream you don’t have to fight for isn’t a dream—it’s a nap. One changes your afternoon. The other changes your world. Keep fighting.

How to have shorter meetings.

Random March 21, 2012 • Comments

I don’t know anyone who absolutely loves meetings.

I’ve never heard anyone ever say the phrase, “I don’t have enough meetings each week.”

I’ve never met anyone who felt more productive because they attended more meetings.

If anything, I’ve heard countless people say, “I was in meetings all day and didn’t get any ‘real’ work done.”

So what’s the solution to this meeting dilemma? It isn’t to stop having meetings. Some of them can be critical to the success of a project.

The answer is to have shorter meetings.

Or, rather, to meet like a sea captain.

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The hardest part of writing a book.

Creativity/ Writing March 19, 2012 • Comments

Right now, I’m in the beginning stages of writing my fourth book. And though I’ve learned the lesson I am going to share with you a million times, it hit me last week as if I’d never seen it before in my entire life.

The hardest part of writing a book is that every good book hides behind a bad book.

To write a good book, you have to write your way through a bad book first.

Scratch that. Let’s make that a horrible book.

And you know this is true. We’ve heard brilliant authors like Anne Lamott share this wisdom time and time again, but I promise when you sit down to start a new book you will think:

“Every sentence must be perfect.”

“I can’t waste time on this first draft.”

“I can’t throw away any of these words, they have to start great.”

But the truth is, for me and for you and for anyone who will ever write a good book, they are very easy to find.

They’re hiding behind the shadow of a bad book.

That’s where they are. Write your way through them. Go find them. Clear the bad book out of the way so you can get to the good one.

Question:
Have you ever struggled with perfectionism?

How to take a compliment.

Leadership March 16, 2012 • Comments

If you complimented me in the last 36 years, I’d like to apologize to you.

Chances are, when you said something kind to me, I immediately deflected your words.

If you said, “Great job on that speech, book, or helping an old lady across the street,” here is how I responded:

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What do you need to start working on your dream?

FinishYear/ Quitter March 12, 2012 • Comments

Most of us spend most of our lives trying to earn enough money to one day buy back the soul we lost along the way.

But those years are unfortunately never for sale again.

Choose wisely how you invest the years of your life.

Want to chase a dream but think you need money first? Think again. You’ve already got the most important resource there is: time.

Don’t wait until you’re 80, and wake up with a bank full of opportunity but no years left to spend it on.

Start dreaming today.

Sunday Summary – FinishYear Week 10

FinishYear March 11, 2012 • Comments

Week 10, done and done! (It’s not too late to join FinishYear with us! Here’s what we’re doing.)

Every Sunday during March, let’s share a quick summary of how we did that week on our Finish List.

Here’s my list of goals, and the summary of the progress I made:

1. Make the Quitter Conference awesome for people who attend.
We’re hard at work at a fun announcement about this goal. Stay tuned.

2. I am going to finish reading 12 non-fiction books this year. One per month.
This one is a slow go. Have you ever read Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son? There’s so much in each sentence that you can’t really speed through it. (Which is not a bad thing.)

3. I am going to finish running the Nashville half marathon Saturday, April 28th in under 2 hours and 10 minutes.
I ran three times this week and completed my 9 mile run. I was able to complete the 9 miles with an average speed of 9:31 so I think I’m in good shape for this one.

4. I am going to finish writing a new book in 2012.
Best week I’ve had as far as the book is concerned. I’ll probably tweet more about this later this week, but I found the 4 words I’ve been looking for in the book. It took me a while to get there, but I finally did.

5. I am going to finish a box of thank you cards this year as a sign of my gratefulness.
Wrote 0 cards this week. No progress here.

6. I am going to finish handwriting out the entire book of Proverbs in a moleskine notebook.
I’m in the middle of Proverbs 18 and still really enjoying this goal.

That’s my week.

How was yours?

What on your Finish List went well? What on your Finish List needs more attention next week?

Why it’s so hard to figure out your calling.

Quitter March 9, 2012 • Comments

The first session of the Quitter Conference is about figuring out what your dream really is. Why?

Because that’s the thing that stops most of us in our tracks.

We don’t know what are dreams are. We don’t have a sense of what our passions are. We feel like everyone but us knows exactly what their calling is.

Why is figuring out our passion so hard? Why is finding our life’s purpose feel like such a struggle sometimes? I think it’s because figuring out your dream is an act of recovery, not discovery. As I detailed in Quitter, we often want Eureka moments. We want to be walking across the street at 42 years of age, get hit by a lightning bolt, and suddenly say, “Eureka! I’m meant to be a beekeeper. All these years I’ve been an accountant, no wonder life has been so difficult! I’ve discovered my passion.”

But, more often than not, figuring out your calling is an act of recovery, of rescuing something from your past that you loved and you lost. Something that life got too busy for and you stopped doing, or something that someone who mattered to you told you didn’t matter.

“You think you can do that for the rest of your life?”

“How could you ever make money doing that?”

“It’s time to grow up. That idea is silly.”

The older we get, the more our dreams get chipped away by life, until eventually a passion we’ve always had gets covered up by years and years.

Finding your true passion is a reunion, not a first date. It’s an act of recovery, and recovery is not easy.

I love the way David Whyte talks about recovery in this short section from his brilliant book, The Heart Aroused. In it, he takes a modern look at life via the lens of the famous poem “Beowulf:”

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When should you quit your dream?

FinishYear/ Quitter March 5, 2012 • Comments

A few weeks ago, I took a trip to Arkansas.

Since I didn’t know the area that well, I decided to do my half marathon training in the hotel gym instead of outside. Like most hotel gyms, they had a large list of disclaimers on the wall, but the last sentence on the sign stuck out to me:

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