Welcome To My Blog

I’ve been talking about creating great personal stories for years now. I’ve written books about it and even host a conference helping people live more strategically. And now I’ve got a great tool that is helping me execute my stories more efficiently. It’s called a Personal Life Plan. You’ve probably heard about them, but my friend Mike Hyatt has given us a way to create a plan for free. Mike’s free e-book, Creating Your Personal Life Plan can be downloaded at his site. I think you just have to give him your name and address and it’s all yours. Mike won’t spam you, so don’t worry. And believe me, it’s worth it. Here are several reasons to create a Personal Life Plan: 1. A personal Life Plan is a foundation: If you feel like your life is crumbling, it’s probably because you either have a foundation that isn’t quite strong enough or you’ve got too much weight on your foundation. Strengthening your foundation is accomplished through a clarification of values. What matters to you most? What do you really care about? What will matter in the end? All great questions, and all questions that strengthen our foundations. 2. A Personal [...]

Before the Oregon football game Thursday night, a reporter asked coach Chip Kelly if he felt any pressure. The coach shot back without hesitation “pressure is something you feel when you are not prepared.” He said they were prepared. Oregon beat UCLA that night by a score of 60 to 13. I think coach Kelly has a point. I don’t think it’s completely true, but it’s largely true that if we feel nervous about a task we’ve got coming up, what would take the pressure off may be a few hours of preparation. As I thought about the idea that preparation takes the pressure off, it motivated me to sit down and go through my major projects and do a little more preparing. I had a speech coming up, I had to go through the script and prepare a few scenes, I had a book tour lined up only  a couple weeks away. Now, for all those things, I’m feeling a bit more prepared than pressured. But I’m not sure what to do about nerves.

A recent article in the New York Times asks the question why so many people in their 20′s are taking so long to grow up. In the article, Robin Henig proposes: “It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.” [...]