Category: Productivity

No Need to Be Perfect

When you are driving and a great song comes on the radio, do you find yourself singing? What if you don’t know the words? Do you hum? I think many of us do.

Life can be a lot like that. Sometimes we sing. Sometimes we don’t know the words, so we hum. Sometimes we whistle, and sometimes we just listen.

When I find myself in a situation I am not familiar with, I spend time observing. When I find myself in a situation that is familiar, but I am not sure how to proceed, I do my best to follow along. When I am in a familiar situation, it is fun to just jump in.

Even though I strive for productivity, and continuous improvement, life is not about being perfect. Life is about participation on whatever level we are able to contribute at the moment.

Next time you find yourself struggling to make progress, instead of searching for the perfect next step, just hum.

Can We Change?

“Tomorrow we will become what we choose today. To change means to choose to change.” – John C. Maxwell

I love this quote because there is so much wisdom in just fifteen words.

1. Change takes time. We must work today for what we want tomorrow. Our focus needs to be on the future. Very little permanent change occurs within one day.

2. Change is a choice. It will not occur without intent. We have the opportunity to decide what we wish to change.

3. Change is never ending. Every day we can work towards tomorrow’s goals. Incremental change has a huge impact over a lifetime of effort.

Often we stumble on these points, and we don’t change as much as we expect. We can choose to change to meet our goals in our professional life, our personal life, in our diet, our exercise, or our habits. Can we change? Each day we can strive to make ourselves better tomorrow.

3 Lessons I Learned About Keeping a Positive Attitude

President Thomas Jefferson said, “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” Keeping a positive attitude can be challenging in certain situations. Here are some lessons I have learned that help me.

1. Protect myself from negative attitudes that I encounter. If I am not careful, I find myself adjusting my attitude to those around me. Attitude is contagious after all. But when the surrounding attitude is negative, I must be strong enough to keep my positive attitude. I have two choices, allow my attitude to influence others, or leave the situation.

2. Focus on tomorrow’s possibilities rather than yesterday’s results. When I find my attitude slipping away from the positive, it is usually because I am too focused on what has happened rather than the opportunities of tomorrow. Walt Whitman said it best, “Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”

3. Learn more about myself. Carl Jung said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” When I find myself getting irritated, it affects my attitude. The aggravation however is within me, not with the other person. If I spend time understanding myself, then I am better prepared to turn negative situations into positive situations.

Another thing to consider when faced with differing attitudes. My attitude is mine. The attitudes of others are owned by them. I am not better, just because my attitude may be more positive at the moment. As Ziad K. Abdelnour said, “Don’t judge someone’s attitude until you’ve felt their pain.”

Where Is That File?

When I am putting away the clean dishes in my kitchen, I know where to place them. There is a shelf for plates, a shelf for drinking glasses, a drawer for silverware, a drawer for cooking utensils, a cabinet for cutting boards, etc. There are not two drawers where we keep forks.

But yet, when I am looking for a specific computer file, well let’s just say that I know what directory it should be in!

My computer directories are organized, at least compared to what I have seen from others. But yet, I can select any folder on my computer, look at the list of files, and I won’t know what some of them are without opening them.

I don’t believe that I am the only person that has encountered this situation. I can do better at organizing my files and naming my files. Too many times I let programs automatically name my files. Maybe you too have a photo named CIMG3098.jpg.

Why am I even writing about this? Last week my hard drive crashed. I lost my most recent data. I did have a backup of most. Trying to recover has caused me to reconsider the amount of organization it takes to be efficient on a computer.

I can put away the dishes in my kitchen quickly. Getting to the same level of efficiency in putting away files takes a bit more planning. The benefit comes from finding the file you need, at the time you need it. It should keep me from screaming, “Where is that file?”

Hard drive crashes happen. My recovery plan will include better data backup, and better file organization. This event is an example of how to turn set backs into improvements. I have learned some lessons. Can you learn from my mistakes?