A Farewell to Time Management

For decades there was a focus on Time Management. It was a belief that we could become more productive, and therefore happier, if we could only optimize the use of our limited time. Initial efforts were centered on the process of scheduling. The problem with scheduling people's time (as opposed to a machine's time) is that while it may keep you busy, it doesn't necessarily make you effective.

Personal scheduling gave way to Prioritization in the schools of Time Management. Doing the most important things turns-out to be much more effective than doing the greatest number of things. Thus Prioritization soon lead the way to Goal Setting, Mission Statements, Core Competencies, etc.

It was very effective, very profitable, and fun for a while. After the innovation wore off, 20th century productivity went back to feeling like the same old grind, just a bit more productive - but not enough to take us to the levels we had hoped to achieve.

The question has now become, how can we preserve that "innovation" stage where our efforts were effective, profitable, and fun? It's most easily recognized by feelings associated with Energy. When we're in that kind of state things happen in a tireless and joyful fashion. The issue now facing the 21st Century Active Investor is how can we manage to keep our personal Energy at those levels?

I have been enriched by the opportunity to drive to Snyder for a client. After passing the city of Sweetwater you enter Texas oil country. Here Texans have lived to bring us the Energy from fossil fuels underground that have driven our economy. But on this drive, you won't give oil a thought. What you see is miles and miles of windmills harvesting Energy from the air. If we told our ancestors we could get Energy from just the air they would have considered us mentally unstable; but today it's everywhere on the road to Snyder.

This is a metaphor for 21st Century Personal Energy Management. We don't have to go to great lengths underground to get a limited supply of Energy; it's abundantly available in our environment. The challenge is to harvest it. Windmills reach out their arms to be driven by the air moving in their environment. In a similar fashion we have to create processes that enable us to reach out and catch the Energy moving in our environment.The place to start is to acknowledge what causes our feelings to be high or low. Typically positive or negative perceptions of our environment create high and low feelings of Energy respectively; however each of us have our own Energy attractors.

With this internal guidance system in place, Active Investors can began to recognize those activities, people, and places that either drain or renew their Energy. Our personal Energy supply is both apparent (from our feelings - our internal guidance system) and abundant (from our environment - if we can recognize it). Our 21st Century challenge is now to manage our Energy by knowing how to continually reach out for more.

Image credit: goosegrease

Shaping the future

In President Obama's address to Congress on Healthcare this month, he reminded them that they came to Washington not to fear the future but to shape it. What an inspirational remark and what a great definition for an Active Investor. Active Investors are more than just business owners and professionals; they are the individuals who have made a decision not to fear their future but to take responsibility to shape it.

Once we get beyond the inspirational feelings of that remark, we're left with the reality of exactly how does one go about shaping their own future? For Congress and Healthcare, it involves agreeing to passing enabling legislation. What's involved for us as individuals?

We cannot know the future; however we can understand it through System Dynamics. Our core principle is structure will determine behavior. The future will play-out according to the structures at that time. Our nation will have better Healthcare if a better Healthcare system is in place. An Active Investor will have a more successful business if better business structures are in place.

Each day is a new opportunity to:
1) Faithfully respond to the needs currently presented to us, and
2) Imagine how we can build structures to be even better in the future.

This is a big step beyond "making money." This is building lasting value. The profits earned at any given time will be consumed; but the structures are a lasting value. We see this in business brokerage all the time. Business owners who have created structures cash out handsomely. Those that have just made money get by.

Shaping our future is building our structures. What marketing, sales, management, HR, compliance, fulfillment, etc. resources need to be in place for our complete success? This question is never conclusively answered in our expanding universe. The mere passage of time is enough to continually create new opportunities for everyone. New structures will first form in our minds and later find their way into our reality - shaping our future.

As for politics, our President's speech did affect me. I've decided to believe there is a viable solution to the nation's Healthcare problem. Congress only has to imagine it.

Image credit: dmitryku

On The Edge of Space and Time

Using the image on the left as a guide, image a metal plate with a hole in the center that is being heated. We know that heating metal causes it to expand , so the arrows indicate how the plate will expand. The question is what will happen to the hole? Will the forces applied cause it to get bigger or smaller?

Please take a moment to to quickly decide on one of the following positions before reading further:

1) The hole will get bigger
2) The hole will get smaller
3) I'm just not sure

Let's ask the same question in a different manner. Suppose there is a bolt stuck in a metal hole. If the metal is heated, will that loosen the bolt and make it easier to remove? Yes or No?

Generally, looking at the arrows in the diagram causes confusion. They all appear to be pushing against the diameter of the hole in a way that should make it smaller. Yet that just doesn't feel like a right answer and Position 3, being not sure, is a typical first reaction. Asking essentially the same question without the "helpful" diagram is much easier to answer. Even the mechanically challenged, like myself, imagine the bolt getting looser as the metal heats. The correct answer, which we all intuitively know, is heating the metal plate will cause all dimensions to increase, including the hole's.

Why is it difficult for most of us to quickly see what we know as obvious in that problem? This is really an illustration of two principles. The first is we tend to make decisions using an "Anchor and Adjust" strategy. In this case, the misleading illustration was put first to set it as a mental "Anchor". Then when we try to answer by Adjusting from that image, we run into difficulty because of the apparent shrinking effect of the arrows. Anchor and Adjust is very powerful and will be described further in future postings. The other principle is that even though we know this is an expanding universe, we are easily suckered into acting as if it were shrinkable.

The general acceptance of Hubble's Law and The Big Bang Theory has spread the knowledge that the universe must continue to expand; however, we tend to think of that as something only related to astronomy. Each of us are on the very edge of the space-time continuum and each passing moment of our lives moves our edge further outward. A popular metaphor is to imagine an ant on a balloon. Our ant's "space" (along with all the other ants) in space-time must expand as the balloon of the universe inflates (expands). We are all always in a place of expansion. The universe has no other way of acting. No matter how it appears, it's just not shrinkable.

The Active Investor, a business owner or professional, initially believes in an expanding universe. Time and circumstances wear on us all and we all eventually face "arrows" that indicate we were wrong about the universe. If that conclusion just doesn't feel right, there is every good reason to believe it's just so much junk science obscuring the truth. A suitable path out of the circumstance is to take gentle yet powerful actions that do feel right and to repeat them until feelings coincide with situation.

This blog is written to inspire good feeling thoughts that lead to actions. They will manifest themselves if we seek them. They have to. It's our part in the expansion of our edge of the universe.