How Should I Have Spent My Time?

I've established a good habit of getting up early each day before 6am to check the online job listings. I've also looked into getting a "project management" certification in order to make myself more useful to prospective employers. In the mean time, I've done some volunteer work, and talked to people about doing more volunteer work in the near future. I figure it's a way to make more connections and possibly open some doors that I don't even know exist yet.

That's a satisfying set of respectable and socially useful activities. I'm not writing this to blow my own horn though, but to contrast this to an alternative activity I could have spent my time on.

I'm not a stock market expert, but I did suspect that Citigroup and AIG stock, which both dipped below $1 on fears of going bankrupt, were undervalued because the government would not let them go bankrupt. If I studied this a little more and convinced myself that it was worth the risk of investing my severance pay on these stocks, I could have made over $100,000 in the last two weeks as these stocks shot up. I didn't make that investment out of fear that I could have lost a good portion of my severance pay if I was wrong, and my family needed that money to survive on until I find my next job.

Does this seem wrong to anyone else? An economic system that rewards stock speculation so much more than socially useful efforts seems broken. Maybe we accepted this in the past, but perhaps now the problems this leads to have become all too painfully apparent. Perhaps the economy won't fully recover until this situation fundamentally changes. As long as the most economically profitable thing to do involves financial speculation, we can't consider ourselves to be on the road to creating a reasonable and sustainable economy for the 21st century. Just some speculation, and I don't know if it's more wishful thinking than reality yet.

The Next Stage of Life?

Back in December when I was contemplating ways to make significant transformations in my life, I posted the following note on my office wall:

Make some change - get rid of something to signify putting things behind you and moving forward.

I struggled with this idea for a while, looking for something perhaps only symbolic, or perhaps more substantive, that I could put behind me to signify moving forward into a new stage of life. Mozart changed his middle name when he got married, which may have been his way of signifying a rebirth or new phase of his life. What change should I consider making?

Ironically, that note on my office wall foreshadowed the involuntary event of being laid off 2 months later. I guess I finally have my answer. For me, this may well become a new distinct “4th stage” of my life. The first stage was my childhood in my parents home. The second stage was my life in college. The third stage was raising a family and a 26 year career at IBM. Now I may well be entering a fourth stage with a new career and focus. As a friend recently told me, consider this opportunity to be a great gift to be exploited in the fullest.

With that in mind, I wanted to share an inspirational quote from Mary Oliver's poem When Death Comes that our minister recently shared with us:

When it's over, I don't want to
wonder if I have made of my life
something particular,
and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing
and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply
having visited this world.

Perhaps making this an end of my "just visiting this world" phases is a good way to look at my new opportunities.

How far can you go before giving up?

I find that when I've gone about as far as I think I can go, I'm usually about half way there.

- From a good friend of mine, Stan Goldstein

New Year's Resolutions, or Alternatives

Most of productivity experts seem to have little enthusiasm for New Year’s Resolutions. In large part that’s because they are often just wishes (“I want to loose some weight”) and not really goals. To be an effective goal, there should be a clear description of what success is (“I will loose 20 pounds by June 1st”), and a plan for how to get there (“Starting today I will eat 3 healthy meals a day, avoid all other snacks, and I will avoid completely the following foods and drinks …..”).

Some people suggest picking your most important single goal for the year and just focusing on that to maximize the chances of success. A variation on this that works well with setting new habits is to set a single goal of establishing a new habit each month and focus on that. If you’re successful you’ll set 12 new good habits in a year, which is actually quite an accomplishment.

So after giving this a fair amount of though over the holidays, here’s what I would like to publicly declare. After completing several exercises to examine my strengths and interests, my single big goal for the year is to:

Use my insights and leadership abilities to inform people and inspire them to promote a cooperative, sustainable and peaceful society.

That high level description is too general to be an effective goal, so I’m developing a description of what being successful would look like and a plan to get there.

In terms of a monthly habit I’d like to establish, I came up with the following cluster of related habits for January:

Establish a habit of being better organized, uncluttered, and focused on my important goals. This includes:

• Write current life goals on a wallet sized card. Every project must follow from these.
  
• Unclutter: nothing is to be stored on horizontal surfaces - desk, table tops, floors. Regularly discard unused items.
  
• Email inbox: reduce to less than one screen every evening. When a response is called for, do so within 24 hours.
  
• Web browser: shut down every evening (i.e. no long list of unread articles in tabs)
  
• Simplify activities by applying the 80/20 rule - focus on that 20% of work that produces most of the benefits and start eliminating the rest.
  
• Awake at 5am for daily reflection and planning of the day’s activities. Focus on the most important thing I can accomplish that day to achieve my long term goals.
  
• Regular weekly / monthly / yearly review of goals, projects, progress, plans

Practices specific to work:

• Write current work goals on a wallet sized card. Every project must follow from these.
  
• Keep track of time spent at work to see how well I'm focusing on the important projects.
  
• No personal email or web reading until 4 hours of work is accomplished, then only 30 minutes until work day is done (at least 8 hours).

That’s quite a challenge for establishing new habits in one month, but if successful it could have a big impact on my daily life.

What would a transformed life look like?

Recently I was talking about a life transformation with a good friend who asked me a very helpful question: "What does a transformed life look like to you - what is your vision of an end goal?" I've been giving this a fair amount of thought lately. While I don't have a complete description yet, I think I can list some of the high level aspects of what such a transformation might end up producing. This is a highly personal list and I wouldn't expect it to be the same for any other person contemplating similar changes, but here's what I came up with.

Some aspects of a transformed life

• Permanently put behind me all the anger and frustrations of the past
  
• Inner changes in how I see the world, and how I see myself
  
• Started on an exponential growth in both understanding and making contributions
  
• Develop a much clearer understanding of what to do and what not to do with my life
  
• Simplify other aspects of my life in order to become radically more effective
  
• Change my habits and daily schedule to better promote these goals
  
• Have my discretionary schedule and finances reflect my values and priorities
  
• Have my decisions based on compassion, and never on anger, resentment, fear, greed, or pride.
  

More details to follow.

A midlife crisis, or something else?

It occur ed to me that a desire for a life transformation was similar to having a midlife crisis. I did some reading on this and learned that the most common times for this to happen is around the age of 50 now. Since I'm 51 it seemed that I was on to something here and I wanted to learn more.

I turns out that the classical stereotype middle age crisis (picture a man becoming depressed and anxious about growing older, divorcing his wife, buying a red corvette, and marrying a woman half his age) is actually very rare. The best data suggests that between 5% - 12% of middle aged people suffer a "classic" midlife crisis. Most people, on the contrary, find life very satisfying and content around the age of 50.

I found that there are multiple different types of midlife crises. For example, it's possible to assess one's life and future without becoming clinically depressed. In fact it's quite common and appears to be a healthy thing to do. This is more accurately categorized as a "midlife assessment" possibly leading to to a "midlife transition". This is covered in more detail on Life Two, an excellent blog about midlife improvements. This is a more accurate description of what I'm going through than a midlife crisis.

How you deal with the desire for change makes all the difference. You can take a harmful approach in a vain attempt to show some sort of youthful vigor. This often results in pursuing change for the sake of change and make radical changes without thinking them through. Such impulsive behavior can seriously damage or destroy relationships or a career.

On the other hand, a midlife assessment can come about when you have a feeling of disquiet brought upon by a sense that you are living your life in a way that is out of alignment with what deeply matters to you, or that you are failing to live up to your potential. When handled properly, this can result in some very positive changes in how you live the rest of your life.

One of the tricks about this process is to be realistic. To the extent that you've come to terms with your life and your limitations and accept yourself as you are, you can enjoy the accomplishments and successes that you have achieve. Many of the people who find themselves very unhappy turn out to be out of touch with reality with unrealistic goals and fantasies. They're disappointed at not becoming the president of their company or a world famous best selling author. In a study on midlife crises, Orville Brim advises people to "live a life of just manageable difficulty. Goals set too low often lead to a boring life; those set too high can produce bitter disappointment."

A Virtual Retreat

I've been giving more thought to what would be the end goal of a life transforming change. I have some initial thoughts on this that I'll post later. One of the things I have decided upon is to spend the next month conducting a "virtual retreat" to take some time to focus on this question. I started a few days ago and will continue to Jan 20th. Besides being one month from today, that just also happens to be the end of the transition period for our nation and the beginning of a new era as we change leaders.

During this next month, I will:

• Read as much as possible about life transformation and finding a purpose in life.
  
• Spend the first and last hour of each day journaling, reading, or thinking about life transformation
  
• Put off watching almost all TV or attending non-work events of questionable value.
  
• Get up at 5am to start early when the house is quiet and my family is asleep
  
• As a discipline practice: Eat only 3 simple healthy meals a day. No snacking before or after meals.
  

I started a few days ago and I already like the routine. I haven't made 5am every day, but I've always been up before 6am. Taking an hour or more of undisturbed time in the morning to read and write down your thoughts is wonderful. I've already finished reading two books on the topic, which is amazing progress for me.

Christmas vacation with the relatives will be a challenge for both the TV and eating discipline practices, but I want to try to stick as close to the guidelines as possible. Following a guideline to avoid ALL between meal snacking over the holidays could have some very practical benefits. I'm not sure if my relatives will be impressed, or just consider my behavior to be very odd.

Local Discussions - What do we do now?

I had been planning a regular series of posts on how to use the recent election as a transforming event in my life. I posted some thoughts, and then I got stuck for a while and had to spend some time sorting things out. During that time we had a series of discussion with local progressive groups on the question - “What do we do now?” (i.e. now that the election is over). Let me summarize some of those discussions that could impact us on a personal level.

• People have hope now. There's a lot of optimism. We want to put our energy into something. But many of us are not sure what to focus on now.
  
• We need to take time to absorb all that happened and consider what our individual approach should be.
  
• There was a strong desire to approach our work with a win-win attitude involving people from across the political spectrum. People are extremely tired of polarizing politics and demonizing those who think differently. If we really want to change the system, we need to change that.
  
• Realize that for some people, the election didn’t bring hope - it brought anger and fear. There are good people, often friends and relatives, who did not support Obama and expect the worse now. Understand their emotions, don’t argue with them, but shed a positive light on the future and invite them to participate in a positive way.
  
• What happened was a change in direction for the country, and plausibly for the world. Changes in direction result in very big changes in the long term, but barely noticeable changes in the very short term. Don't get discouraged if nothing major changes in the next 3-6 months - big changes often take time.
  
• Think local. This time between the election and the inauguration is a good time to build and strengthen local community groups and organizations. Do what you can to help in your local community. With the downturn in the economy there’s more of a need for help in local communities than ever.
  

To me, one of the biggest changes we have to focus on is to move from a stance of “opposition of bad policies” to a focus on “promoting good policies”. On a personal level, that means making an effort to be as helpful as possible to your community in the coming months.

Making this Election a Transformational Event

It’s Saturday evening, Nov 8th, or as some of us call it, the 4th day of the new world. Now that I'm able to focus on something other than an uncontrollable compulsion to check the latest poll numbers every 2 hours, or to read the latest episode of "The Miss-Adventures of Sarah from Wasilla" (man I'll miss watching Tina Fey), I can finally write some blog entries.

The election on Nov 4th was certainly a transformational event for our political system. It was more than just a change of administrations; it was a change of direction for the country. Changing directions means the immediate impacts may be small, but the long term impacts can be enormous.

Clearly it energized and empowered the progressive movement. There is a true sense of hope, optimism, and even renewed pride in the air. There is also a growing consensus that now the hard work begins if we really want to make this election a transformational event for the society. In that spirit, I would like to exploit this opportunity and make this be a transformational event for myself too. But how to best do that?

There is a “Coming of Age” class for teenagers at my congregation that is meant to help them in the transition from childhood to the next stage in life (not quite young adults yet, but no long a child). As part of the process, they bring in something from their childhood that is relinquished and taken away during a ceremony to symbolize leaving that prior life behind.

I thought that was a neat idea, and wondered if I could do something like that to symbolize leaving the pre-election Bush years behind, and moving into the new era symbolized by Obama’s election. The first act I’ve decided to do is to remove from my browser the pointers to all the political blogs and web sites I obsessed over before the election. I’ve wasted way too much time on them with no benefits to show for it. Time to put that behind me and move on now. Instead I'll limit myself to tracking a very limited number of web sites and blogs that I get some true benefits from. More steps to follow….

Making and Keeping New Year's Resolutions

It’s the time of the year when people traditionally think about New Year’s resolutions. I did some research on what the experts had to say about these resolutions and came up with some interesting thoughts I’d like to share with you.

How to fail:
1) Picking resolutions at the last minute without adequate thought, especially if they are based on what happens to be on your mind at that moment.
2) Trying to make too many resolutions
3) Pick ones that your friends want, or that seem socially proper, instead of ones that you are really internally motivated to pursue.
4) Being unrealistic and underestimating the effort required.
5) Being too abstract, or just plain frivolous. Examples include “getting fit” or “having more fun”. These are too difficult to develop a detailed plan for, especially when there’s no time frame in mind. “Winning the lottery” is another example of a frivolous goal - you cannot develop a detailed and realistic plan to accomplish it.
6) Framing your resolutions as absolutes by saying, "I will never do X again."
7) Being too critical of yourself and giving up on the resolution as a failure.

How to succeed:
1) Pick the right resolution: Your resolution statement should include why you want to make the resolution, and/or a description of the benefits you expect from achieving it. You should have a strong initial motivation to work on this resolution. Give yourself adequate time to think the resolutions through. Start well before New Year’s Eve, and don’t consider Jan 1st as a hard deadline. It’s better to take a few weeks in January to come up with the right resolutions and plans than to commit yourself to a poor resolution after 15 minutes of thought on New Year’s Eve.
2) Work on a small number at a time. Your best success rate will come if you work on one at a time.
3) Frame the goal in terms of specific things you will do on a schedule. Instead of “getting fit”, resolve to “get fit by exercising 3 times a week starting next week”.
4) Develop a specific thought-out plan for how to achieve your goal and write it down. Include sub-goals that you need to accomplish along the way, and small rewards when you achieve them. Also include plans for what you will do when you face difficulties or temporary setbacks. Have coping strategies to deal with problems that will come up.
5) Get started immediately when the motivation is high. Or if the motivation is not high, get started immediately anyway. Action will increase your motivation level and help you build momentum.
6) Don’t be an extreme perfectionists. Look at temporary failures as growth and learning experiences. The key to success is often the ability to keep going in spite of the temporary setback along the way. Remain flexible - expect that your plan can and will change.
7) Don't keep your resolutions to yourself. It helps to share your goals with friends. It builds your own resolution to succeed, and your friends can gently nudge you in the right direction when you veer off course.
8) Remind yourself every day - After a few months, a resolution has a tendency to work its way out of your mind and off your to-do list. One way to combat this is to create a simple reminder, such as writing your resolution down on a small piece of paper and tape it to the mirror in your bathroom. Do this simple action is a good way to judge how serious you really are about achieving the resolution.
9) Keep track of your progress, monitor how you’re doing, and make adjustments when necessary.


Some great links that I found helpful:
How to keep up with those New Year's resolutions,
researchers find commitment is the secret of success

New Years Resolution Results

10 Career Killers to Avoid - part 2

Thomas Hoffman has an interesting article in Computerworld on 10 Career Killers to Avoid. Here are some more interesting thoughts that are worth exploring (part 2)


6. Believing You Knowing all the answers. "... Winners remain unceasingly interested in learning new ideas and approaches. Asking a lot of questions is a hallmark of great leaders" [ Remember, the world keeps changing and that rate of change is increasing. Learning needs to be a life long process, now more than ever. ]

7. Surrounding yourself with "brown-nosers." - Get a good set of friends and advisers that can give you honest views on how you're doing, and good advice when you face difficult decisions.

8. Forgetting to give credit to others. - Your reputation for honesty and integrity will impact how much people are willing to work with you.

9. Failing to self-promote. "Bragging is one thing, but letting colleagues throughout your industry know of your success is quite another" [In any career, I've always maintained that it's your own responsibility to keep your manager informed of what you're doing, the problems you've overcome, and your successes. Finding a way to document or report these to others is also a good idea. Now, if I could just learn how to better promote this blog... I guess that's an important "to-do" task for me.]


10. Losing perspective. "Despite your best attempts to do everything right, sometimes you approach roadblocks and seek the advice and perspective of a respected friend or colleague... Don't forget the reasons why the business exists, why you're in this business, and what you intended to accomplish when you entered this industry. You need to be excited about what it is you're doing, and you need to put more enthusiasm into what it is you're doing. If you're not looking forward to getting out of bed in the morning, you're working on a downward trend"

Another Benefit for Goal Oriented People

Goal Oriented People May Avoid Alzheimer's Disease — A new report claims that individuals who are goal oriented --in other words, those who are more conscientious and have a tendency to be self-disciplined, careful and purposeful--appear less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, or at least suffer less from the effects of it. That's a nice side benefit :-)

Has setting goals become more challenging?

Why are setting goals more important and more difficult than they were in past generations? I can name to major reasons. First, people are simply living longer periods into retirement with better health and more resources than previous generations did.

The second reason is that people seem to have many more options today. It was not too long ago when people had fewer choices and fewer opportunities. Most aspects of people’s lives were determined by fixed conditions such as tradition, social class or race, limited education, or simply where they were born. For most of the population this dramatic growth in options is a recent development. But it will be increasingly common for an increasing number of people from now on. And the continued growth in computer and communication technology will only increase the opportunities and options in the future.

NY Times Article on Setting Life Goals

Alex Williams wrote a NY Times article titled Ten things to Do Before This Article Is Finished (Aug 26, 2007). It's a fascinating description of the growing phenomena of people writing down their life goals - a list of things they want to accomplish before they die. This is apparently becoming quite popular with a number of web sites devoted to collecting a summary of the most popular goals sent in by people (ex: www.43things.com )

People are often drawn to create a list of life goals because they feel unmotivated, lack a sense of accomplishment or direction, or just need more focus in their lives. Working through the list of goals gives more meaning to their lives, creates a greater sense of accomplishment, introduces them to new activities, and helps them take steps towards self-improvement.

One women described a fascinating exercise she undertook to make good on her vow to "develop persistence". She trained herself to pause at work every 15 minutes to record the activities she had just finished. The point, she said, is to eliminate distractions and time wasting activities. She says she has doubled her daily productive hours. I'm tempted to try that.

The article also observed the growing phenomena that "baby boomers are at a point in our life that this is the moment to stop and take stock". All this is really great as far as I'm concerned. But there seemed to be one important element missing - a discussion of how you chose what goals to set. Among the life goals given as examples in the article were: attain the perfect golf swing, see a dinosaur fossil,get a tattoo, and learn to surf. Those are all fun (except maybe for the tattoo one) and can add a sense of adventure to your life. But can't help but think that life should be more than just a series of personal adventures undertaken for the fun of it. Such adventures should be a part of life, but the main goals? That seems a little shallow to me.

"The meaning in life takes on a special significance when people reach their fifties"

I have been reading a little book titled "The 100 Simple Secrets of the Best Half of Life" by David Niven. I want to paraphrase a wonderful little discussion found on pages 161-2.

"...the question of meaning in life takes on a special significance when people reach their fifties. Before age fifty... most people have almost an automatic identity either through their work or through their family or both. There is little need or time for big questions of meaning...

But then you reach a stage in life when you enter a new phase. You may be winding down a career, you may be retiring, your children may be off raising children of their own. And for the first time, you are confronted with a combination of big questions and big openings. Because now you can go in a new direction. You can redefine yourself, because the responsibilities you have carried are no longer there...

...the greatest gift people can give themselves is the opportunity to think through what they really believe and value"

It was wonderful to read a confirmation that it is common to take some time in this period of your life (I just turned 50) to look for meaning and set new goals. In my case though, it was not a result of a transition leaving me with much more free time and flexibility (such as retirement). If anything, my responsibilities and work are more time consuming now than they has ever been. Instead, I just used turning 50 as a significant milestone that gave me the incentive to step back and reexamine my goals and efforts. It's somewhat arbitrary compared to using a major life transition to do this reexamination, but it seems to be incentive enough to work for me.

I guess also that the busy nature of my life forced me to accept that I can't do everything that I wanted to, and time is starting to run a little shorter to get major things accomplished, so I better decide just what it is that I want to accomplish from here on.

Less than ideal examples of life goals

There are some very interesting web sites out there dealing with setting life goals and life after 50 in general. One that I came across in my searches was http://www.eons.com/ which uses the catch phrase “Lovin’ life on the flip side of 50". Overall it seems to be a nice site, but one thing caught my eye. People can submit their life goals and dreams, then the web site tabulates the 100 most popular ones. When I first saw this, I thought "great, this should give me some really good ideas for setting my own life goals." However, here is a list of their top 20:

1. Lose weight
2. write a book
3. stay healthy
4. exercise more
5. Become debt free
6. Take a cruise
7. Go to Hawaii
8. Retire
9. Travel to Europe
10. Pay off my mortgage
11. Travel in Italy
12. Learn Spanish
13. Go to Alaska
14. Visit Australia
15. volunteer
16. Be financially secure
17. Take an Alaskan Cruise
18. See the Grand Canyon
19. Get a college degree
20. Make new friends.

Does it occur to you that many of these goals are rather superficial?

Write a book (#2), and volunteer (#15) – OK, these seem admirable to me as ways you can indirectly or directly help others. Lose weight (#1), stay healthy (#3) seem to be more examples of good habits than important accomplishments.

The rest, which seem to be dominated by travel, are nothing more than expensive vacations. If you sit down and list what you most want to accomplish in life, and visiting a popular vacation destination pops up to the top of that list, then I think it’s time to do a little soul searching about what’s really important to you. I once heard that nobody wants to die and have the epitaph on their grave stone read "He took exotic vacations".

More on some better web sites I found in the next append.

Most Important Tasks (MITs)

One of the common themes from many experts on organizing your time and your life is that you should be aware of and pay attention to your long term goals. Unless you give them some attention, the most common result is that short term day-to-day activities, which are easier to do but much less important in the long run, tend to crowd out work on the more important longer term goals. If you have to chose between starting to prepare for a second career after retirement, and checking your email this morning..... well I think we'll all generally decide that checking your email is an easier task to get your arms around, so let's do that first. And so it goes, with an unlimited stream of short term activities continuously sprouting up and pushing out the really important stuff.

One way around this is to make a short three item to-do list each morning containing of your three Most Important Tasks (MITs) for the day. You can then add other tasks which may or may not get done, but make sure that you spend adequate time on the three MITs. At least one of these tasks, if not all of them, should be related to longer term goals.

The more I think about it, the more I like this approach. Even my wife said it sounded like a great idea. So I started giving it a try, with the goals of keeping up this habit rigorously for 2 months to help get it established as a longer term habit. The results after the first few days? Great success at writing down my 3 MITs - it really does help you focus on the important longer term tasks. I strongly recommend it. Actually getting my MITs accomplished (or at least spending adequate time on them to make some progress)... well.. it turns out that habit is going to take some work still. Simply having a birthday does not cause change to happen, it's going to take some more work.

Effectiveness vs. Efficiency

I just turned 50 (a few minutes ago in fact), so it's time to make my first posting to this blog. I've spent the last few days reading books and articles on how to better manage your time and life in anticipation of this event. It's clear that one of the most important things to do to achieve success is not to focus on becoming more efficient, but to become more effective. Effectiveness means selecting the best task to do from all the possibilities available and then doing it the best way. Making the right choices about how you’ll use your time is more important than doing efficiently whatever job happens to be around.

Obviously being more effective means setting the right goals, having a reasonable plan to actually achieve them, and realistically pursuing that plan. That's what I plan to discuss in more detail in my next append.