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.

 

Phil's 10 Step Program

A couple of weeks ago, I received my official copy of Phil Gerbyshak's book "10 Ways to Make it Great!" I read it almost immediately, and I'm finally staking out enough time to write a review.

For any of you who've encountered Phil, you'll remember it - he is a high energy, positive, and encouraging guy. I've often wondered, "Where can I get some of what Phil's been eating?"

Well, in this book, Phil's bottled up some of that energy and relates some of the techniques he collected, developed, and perfected to move beyond a "nice day" world into a "great day" meme. This is a small, carry-it-with-you kind of book and it contains 10 short exercises (mini-workshops is a good way to describe them) to help you make 10 concrete, significant changes to your life.

Each of these changes is architected to drive a positive result in your life, relationships, and results. They also push for some healthy introspection to help you achieve better clarity of vision to focus your improvement. A lot of these techniques are similar to ones I've encountered along my journey of curiosity. Phil not only brings them all together in a very portable form, he adds his own unique perspective for a new angle on many of the themes.

For example, we've all heard about the power of envisioning your desired outcomes. In chapter 7, "Dream Big Dreams, Do Big Things," Phil describes how to create a "dream room" to help you create a space where you go to dream. This provides a handy way to condition your mind to get ready to create new ideas, because you have a way to "suit up" for dreaming big. Pretty cool.

As someone who tends to try to solve problems on my own, I've been trying to develop a new habit of asking for help sooner when I get stuck. Chapter 5, "Surround Yourself With Those Who Can Help You," gave me some new action steps that should help make my journey easier.

Pick up a copy of Phil's book and carry it with you (it's under 70 pages). Then, when you find yourself having anything less than a Great Day, pull out your essence of Phil and get to work!

Read More

Great new resource

While I was off enjoying the great outdoors last week, the ever-industrious Rajesh Setty (see my review of his book "Beyond Code") was busy working with his team to launch a fantastic resource for all of us.

It's a web site called Suggestica, and it has a noble purpose. In their words:

Suggestica aims to bring the best suggestions (books, audio, video etc.) from the "Trusted Authorities" in their disciplines. Our goal is to create a new kind of web with less clutter and less noise. We are starting with books but will soon expand to other categories.

As I've come to know Raj over the past few months, I've developed a tremendous appreciation for his giving spirit, and his willingness to share what he learns. This site (and its companion blog, Suggestica Notes) are prime examples of this. Go have a look.

Read More

Unplugged

I've just returned from a week at Boy Scout summer camp with my son's troop, at Camp Meriwether on the Oregon Coast. What a relaxing experience - a full week with no connectivity to email, cell phones, or anything like that.

I regularly take vacations, but somehow seem to stay a bit "tethered" to electronic communications during those vacations. This is the first time in about 3 years that I've truly unplugged. I highly recommend it to you, if you can pull it off.

Of course, the down side is that I have about 1500 emails to process (I was at zero the day I left). I need to dust off my email kung fu and get busy.

By the way - I had a couple of posts while I was gone, thanks to my "tool of choice" for blogging: RocketPost. I wrote a couple of posts last Saturday before I left, scheduled them to post during the week and RocketPost did all the work. Pretty cool.

More "live" posts coming as I continue to dig out from my email backlog. I made some interesting brain connections during my week of being unplugged.

Related posts:

Read More

If I had 100 Bloggers...

Is the 100 Bloggers project on your radar yet? 100 Bloggers is a group effort of a bunch of bloggers I admire, and they even let me have a key to the posting booth.

I just dropped by with some thoughts for managers in a post called "Flair up?" If you have a couple of moments, click on over and look around.

And, if you're so inclined, you can join the fray and become one of the contributing bloggers. Despite the name, if the number exceeds 100, that's not a bad thing.

Don't have a blog of your own? That's no hill for a stepper. If you've got something to say in the spirit of helpful advice on business and personal development, you're welcome.

This is all about dialog and sharing - and your voice is welcome. You can go here for more information.

Read More

[Review] Focus Like a Laser Beam

On a recent flight across the country, I devoured a terrific book. The book was "Focus Like a Laser Beam : 10 Ways to Do What Matters Most," by Lisa Haneberg. As you'd expect from a book with a title like that, the book itself is very focused and un-fluffy, though it contains a lot of poignant stories about the advantages of focus, and the disadvantages of unfocused activity.

In the 90's, I was involved in an organizational change initiative in which there was a lot of discussion about "getting all the wood behind the arrow" as a metaphor for focus and alignment. Lisa takes us a giant leap forward in her book, using laser light's focused, aligned, and congruent particles as mental model to remind us to focus our goals, thoughts, and actions on specific goals to accelerate our success.

Part One: Excite and Energize

The first section of the book begins with methods to assess your individual focus, as well as how to assess your organization's level of focus toward a unified set of goals, then discusses how you can create a stronger connection with your employees and peers by tapping into the power of emotion and openness in your communication.

Read More