Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

What about a GTD merit badge?

Over the past year or so, I've become increasingly involved in my son's Boy Scout troop. I know the Boy Scouts get some bad raps sometimes, but I'm so happy my son's involved in the Scouts.

I've seen a bunch of pretty cool boys get the chance to try their hand at leading others (anyone who's been promoted into a role in which they manage their peers knows it can be tough - imagine what it's like for a 15-year-old!).

I've seen boys who get a ration of abuse at school because scouting isn't cool, but refuse to cave in. I've seen boys push through life challenges (family issues, sport / job / girl pressures, learning disabilities) and hang in there until they become Eagle scouts.

These boys help people - I've worked beside them during grueling community service projects I know I'd have bailed on when I was in high school. They participate in food drives, and other activities to benefit the less fortunate.

Some of these kids will be impressive leaders because of the skills they develop in the Scouts, and I've seen some of them deliver presentations that gave me goosebumps. One year, I spent some time at one of the summer camps and couldn't believe the professionalism and skill with which 17 and 18 year old camp staffers handled rowdy groups of young scouts.

Of course, they also have fun. My son and I will be going on a snow tubing overnighter on Mt. Hood this weekend, which should be a blast.

I mentioned I've been getting more involved - last week, I decided to get Scout leader training so I could be an Assistant Scoutmaster and "officially" help the Troop (I was impressed with the training, particularly the emphasis on Youth Protection practices to keep the kids safe).

Where am I going with all this? Well, I would just like to encourage you to consider supporting the Scouts (Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, I'm not picky) any way you can - the Scouting programs are so good for kids. To help out with financial support, contact your local Scout council and find out about becoming a "Friends of Scouting" donor.

Oh - and the GTD merit badge? The boys involved in scouting learn a lot about balancing the conflicting priorities of home, school, friends, church, and adolescence. They earn merit badges, rank advancements, and help with service projects, but still keep it together enough to get good grades in school, participate in sports, and have a social life. Pretty cool stuff (Yet another reason I wish I'd gotten into it more when I was their age!)

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Oh what a tangled web we weave...

I just came back from a trip to Orlando for an Internal Auditor conference, and got a chance to listen to some audiobooks on my fancy new iPod Shuffle. I just finished the audiobook version of "Leadership and Self-Deception", which could very well be one of those life-changing sorts of books.

The book is one of those that takes a business teaching and wraps it up in a story designed to guide you through a series of "a-ha" moments. In this case, it's about a new manager at "Zagrum Corporation" who is invited to a meeting with a senior exec at the company, and is told he has a "big problem" that he needs to solve if he's ever going to make it at the company. Things proceed from there, and some very powerful concepts are revealed.

From the title, it should be apparent that self-deception plays a major role in the book. The book not only deals with this, it deals with how your self-deception negatively impacts your dealings with others because it puts you "in the box" where you have tainted dealings with others, causing them to initiate tainted dealings with you, causing a vicious circle.

This is basically a primer on how to change the results you get in life by adjusting how you choose to approach, deal with, and think about other people. At times, I felt like I'd already gotten to the a-ha quite a bit before the author chose to spring it, but that doesn't change the value of the lesson they are trying to teach.

The book covers a set of concepts that look deceptively simple, but which could be very difficult to apply. My gut says this will definitely be worth continual effort - they will make you a better person at work and at home if you get better at the techniques.

Worth a read or listen, for sure. The link above is to the book version on Amazon - you can get the audiobook from Audible. Oh- by the way, as audiobooks go, it's pretty well done with good voice characterizations by the reader.

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Keeping score and self-improvement

In my last post, I wrote about how Benjamin Franklin recorded and focused on his Virtues. This was part of what he called his "Moral Perfection Project." Many of us who have goals, mission statements, and the like. But how can you tell if you're doing better or worse in moving toward those aspirations?

In Walter Isaacson's book, he describes the system Ben Franklin used to track his progress as he tried to improve himself - perhaps Ben's approach will work for you. On the pages of the notebook he carried with him everywhere, Franklin made a chart with seven red columns for the days of the week and thirteen rows labeled with each of his 13 Virtues.

Each week, he focused on one line without worrying about the other lines, moving through all of them in sequence. For example, in the first week of the cycle, he focused on temperance, and any infractions were marked with a black spot of ink. In the course of a year, he would complete the thirteen week cycle four times.

By choosing one focus area each week and tracking our own infractions against that focus areas in a similar way, we might derive some of the same benefits as Benjamin Franklin.

This is another instance in which we can take courage from the fact that Franklin himself struggled with self-improvement. In fact, Isaacson's book states, Franklin's book became full of holes as he erased the marks so he could reuse pages (he eventually moved to more durable materials that could withstand being wiped clean). Franklin is quoted as saying, 'I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined."

Hear, hear!

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Do you like a speckled ax?

I'm reading Walter Isaacson's "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life" right now, and it's interesting how relevant it is to some of the things I'm focusing on (and struggling with). I'd always heard that Franklin carried a notebook with him, and that he wrote down his virtues (core values) and systematically worked to improve himself in those specific areas.

What I didn't know was how tempted he was to not do those things. For example, one of the virtues he struggled with was:

"Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time."

Hey - that sounds like something I'd like to do, and something I work on!

How relieved I was to find out that Franklin had trouble with that one, too. According to Isaacson's account:

[Franklin] likened himself to the hurried man who goes to have his ax polished but after a while loses patience and declares, "I think I like a speckled ax best."

I certainly identify with that one. Pick up this book (click on the title above to see it on Powell's, the best bookstore in the world) if you haven't read it - it's very well done, and great for aspiring productivity geeks like me.

Next time I'll talk about how Franklin kept score to track how well he did with his Virtues.

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