Click on the image below to make it readable (and laughable).

When it gets close to Stanley Cup Playoff time my goals involve a frozen rubber puck. Thanks to Doug Savage of Savage Chickens.

When do you press the Go button?

Are we ready yet?

How about now?

How about now?

That’s pretty much been the discussion over the last three weeks at Box of Crayons as we prepared for the launch of  Find Your Great Work.

And then, on Tuesday, we pressed the Go button.

Sat back for a bit…

And then spent part of the day fire-fighting, tweaking web pages, fixing links … perhaps more of than the launch day gremlins that we’d been hoping for.

So were we too early in pressing the Go button?

Well, I’m not one for regrets.  But in thinking about this today on a bike ride, I considered some alternatives…

If you’re thinking of starting something, launching something, beginning something, which alternative will you be running with?

• 1. Wait until it’s perfect

Ah, perfection.  If only such a thing were achievable.

Waiting for perfection is an outstanding way to never do anything.  Why start when you know you can but fail?

I can cross that off my list right now.

In fact, it’s powerful to say, out loud, this will be a flawed creature that makes it’s way out into the world and to make peace with that.

• 2. Do a Google

If any of you use Gmail (or as it’s called in the UK and Germany Google Mail), look up to the top left hand corner and you’ll see, in small faint print under the Gmail logo the word “beta”.

Gmail was launched “invitation only” in 2004 - and to everyone two years ago.

It has over 100 million users.

And it’s still Beta, a work in progress.

You launch something to say “this is as good as it gets for now.”

And you tweak, and share the update. And tweak again.  And again. And add things through the Labs.

Until finally (maybe) it’s good enough to put out as the Alpha version.

• 3. Never launch it

A repeat of option #1 is not really what I mean here.

I mean, launch it before it even exists and watch it be built and grow and evolve as it’s shaped by those who use it, need it, want it.

Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody is a fantastic look at how technology reinvents what community and collaboration mean, and he tells great stories about this approach.

The most famous are most likely the open source software, Linux and the online encyclopedia Wikipadia.  But it’s a lesson for anyone trying to shape community.  You can’t build it by yourself (that would be a contradiction in terms).  But you can hold and create the space for something to happen.

Don’t take my word for it

Smart people thinking about starting, sort of starting and not starting at all.

“Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?”
-A.A. Milne, British writer

“I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is, why did other people stop? ”
-William Stafford, American poet

“Begin at the beginning and and go on you come to the end; then stop.”
-Lewis Carroll, British writer

From our newsletter Outside the Lines

Time’s a-ticking

Can you believe it - the first 90 days of 2009 are almost done and dusted.

(As of Thursday 12th we’re at day #71 … almost exactly 20% of the year has gone and we’re charging fast towards the end of the first quarter.)

Things don’t seem to be slowing down any, do they?

What do the next 90 days hold for you?

The next 90 days beckon, and you’re going to be at the end of June soon enough no matter what you do.

So what if, instead of just getting through them, you decided that they would be extraordinary?

What if you lifted your game from now until June 30th?

What if you made this 90 days of more Great Work?

(Why 90 days?  It seems to be a perfect planning period.  Not too short so nothing can really be done.  Not too long that your plans don’t deteriorate into “5 year plan” fantasies. It’s the Goldilocks planning period… not too long, not too short…just right.)

How to make a plan

It’s all about focus.  Don’t try and plan the world.  Don’t try and “boil the ocean”.  Focus on “the valuable few”, the things that will really make a difference, the things that really matter to you.

Try following this structure to see if it helps.

1. Write down two things that you’d like to remember 2009 for.  Two things that, if you achieved them, would make 2009 an uncommon year, a year to remember.

2. Turn your attention to the next 90 days.  For each goal, write down a project or an action that would move things forward that would
=> Be the easiest thing to do
=> Have the biggest impact
=> Be most fun to do
=> Take the most courage
=> Be Great Work

3. Pick two of these.  Pick the two that would have the most impact … and that you will truly do. You should have four in total, two for each of the 2009 goals.

4. For each of the four actions or projects, list the two things that will mostly likely get in the way of you completing them.

5. For each of the four actions or projects, list the two things you need (eg resources, support) that will most likely help you accomplish them

6. Make a commitment to someone about what you will do by June 30th

Click on the image below to make it readable (and laughable).

The best kept secret in a successful professional life. (Thanks to Kim Warp.)

Click on the image below to make it readable and laughable.

Ah common sense meets shiny new toys. (Thanks to Nitrozac & Snaggy.)

Click on the image below to make it readable (and laughable).

Items not to include on your resume. (Thanks to Jim Borgman.)

A meeting of minds.  Thanks to

From our newsletter Outside the Lines - The Business Edition

Great Work Truth #5 - Great Work is not a solo act

Here’s the bottom line question:  You can’t do Great Work alone.  So who are you inviting in to share the adventure?

Saying hello

I probably go on about this in this newsletter more than than any other of the Great Work truths, because it’s what I’m most trying to learn myself.

It’s both an inviting in.

And an inviting out.

Start with inviting some new folks in. It’s never been so easy or so difficult with the explosion of the social networking phenomenon.

There’s no excuse not to be finding and collaborating with the best in the world.  Not just your office, or company, or country.  The best in the world.

And the best are easier than ever to find.  Google, LInkedIn, Twitter - all roads to finding out who’s extraordinary.  Email and phone:  a simple way to make an invitation.

Seth Godin champions this with his new book Tribes.

My tribes

Last week I was in London, and I had the pleasure of spending time with two groups of people I’ve invited in.

The first was lunch with five of the Coaching for Great work faculty:  Steve Pauley, Jonathan Hill, Judith Underhill, Pennie Evans and Daniel Stane.

The second was the world’s first Find Your Great Work workshop.

Spending time in partnership with these two groups was fantastic.

Saying good-bye

But it’s not enough to just invite people in.  You also need to look at which relationships are costing you time, money, energy and effort.

And the challenge is:  How will you reduce contact with them, say goodbye, cut them free?

Time is short, time to do your Great Work is short, and finding the right people to be with and then creating the time to do just that … that’s what’s important right now.

Darwin turns 200 today

This is truly a birthday worth celebrating.

It’s hard to underestimate the brilliance of this man who articulated such a robust and powerful theory, the father of biology in the same way Einstein is the father of modern physics.

Knowing that, it was a pretty easy choice to bring some of his insights to bear on what it takes to create a life of fun, inspiration and action.

All quotes from Charles Robert Darwin.

What matters to you?

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”

While the whole “dares to waste an hour of time” has a bit of a puritanical beat-me-up-with-a-stick feel to it, I’m very struck by the phrase “the value of life.”

One of the things I got from reading Bill Bryson’s fantastic book A Short History of Nearly Everything is just how extraordinary it is to be who we are, now, alive, conscious, on this planet.

Any one of a billion things could have gone wrong to have made it not so.  And an equally high number of things had to go right.

(For instance - our moon is much larger than most moons in the solar system.  The result?  The Earth stays on a steady axis, which means consistent seasons, which means we can grow food reliably, which means we can have civilization….)

This then is not a call to be busy all the time.  (You see in Find Your Great Work that I’m all about stopping the busywork).

It’s about taking the time to focus on what matters to you.

Questions to spark action

• If I was to examine your calendar, or to track how you spent your time … what conclusion would I draw about what matters to you?
• What’s the gap between your proclaimed priorities and reality?
• What’s the Big Thing you’re up to?  (Seriously.  How are you making this world a better place?)
• What will do differently?

How are you adapting?

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

This is no doubt a time of anxiety and lack of confidence, certainly for any of us with jobs or savings, and I certainly don’t mean to make light of that.

I can also feel myself getting swept along on hypothesis, hysteria and doubt - without really knowing what truly is going on.

Grounding myself in the reality of the situation sets me up to be able to adapt to it.  Holding onto old stories, denying things are shifting, believing everything I’m told - that just keeps me frozen.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

And with a sense of “what’s true?”, turn your thoughts to what’s negotiable … and what isn’t.

Your ability to adapt is driven by clarity about what you need to hold onto and what you can let go off.

“Hold on to” is perhaps the wrong phrase.  It seems to be that a better metaphor is that of a magnet.  As we wander through life, stuff just starts sticking to us.  Things.  Expectations.

Obligations.  People.  Habits.

Before you know it, we’re trailing behind us this pile of stuff - physical and metaphysical - which slows us down and impedes our ability to change.

Now, I’m not saying cut and run.  I am suggesting that you’re carrying too much, and that it most likely won’t go away of its own accord.  You need to shake off what you don’t want and keep (and keep more securely) what you do want.

Questions to spark action

• What’s true right now?  Rather than hypothesis, media reports and loose intuition … figure out what’s actually true about you and your situation right now, things you know to be facts, data, objective truth.
• And what have you been making up?
• What will you let go off?
• What must you keep?
• What will you do differently?

Where are you headed?

“As for future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.”

It’s what’s so invigorating and unnerving about the future.

We’ve really got no idea how it’s going to turn out.

The good news about this is that if it was up to just our imagination, it would actually be somewhat boring and predictable.   (Let’s face it, 10 years ago could you have imagined what the world is now?)

Dan Pink said it perfectly well in his excellent how-to-have-a-meaningful-life-at-work book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko : “There is no plan.”

The other good news.  There may not be a plan, and you may not know exactly where you’re heading, but you can certainly set the general direction.

I actually interviewed Dan couple of weeks ago as part of the Great Work Interview series and we both agreed we have no idea what we’d be doing in five years time.  But that it would be something we’d have come to by moving toward what matters to us.

So, without kidding yourself you know how it’s going to turn out, take a deep breath, turn to the sun, and start striding out to the future you’d like to imagine for yourself.

(And all that said, I’ve always loved this quote from Kehlog Albran: “I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.”)

Questions to spark action

• Are you still ‘driving the car’?  Or was the GPS autopilot set some time ago, and now you’re just following directions?
• What’s the bold destination?  For your life?  For your work?
• If you were to pick one path to stride forward upon, which path would it be?
• What will you do differently?

Click on the image below to make it readable (and laughable).

A meeting of minds.  Thanks to (Kartoen.be).