Joshua Guffey

Posts Tagged ‘productivity’

At work…at home…we  all have things that are vitally important to us.  These are the imperatives for us to continue to function at the same or higher level.  Our imperatives feed us and keep us going and enable us to do our work well and with love and passion, because our deepest needs are already met.

When our needs aren’t met we start to break down.  We borrow from other areas of our lives and seek other ways  to bring ourselves up.  These other means typically aren’t sustainable because, by their very nature, they are substitutions for our deep basic needs.

Just to bring greater clarity to the types of ‘needs’ I’m referring to here I’ll use my own as an example.  For me I need clarity around expectations.  This helps me to know that I’m headed in the right direction.  Without it I start to wonder what is expected and if I’m doing what is most helpful and in everyone’s highest interest.  I also need to feel appreciated for who I am and what I’m doing.  I know that we all make mistakes and that we all need to course correct from time to time, but for me I simply need to know that “I’m ok” and that my efforts are appreciated and making a positive difference somehow.

When I start to experience flack from an important person in life (a boss, my wife, a close friend) I ask myself “wow, do I need to change something here about what I’m doing?  Have I screwed up or headed in the wrong direction somehow?”  I try very hard to be doing the right thing, so criticizm tends to stop me pretty fast and to be honest, I have a low capacity for it.  I tend to be a bit overly sensitive and I try to meter my responses with this in mind.

I’ve spoken far too much about me though.  This is really about the concept that if our needs aren’t met that we are ultimately not in a sustainable situation.  And so I’d just like to emphasise the importance of finding your words around your own personal set of imperatives.  I firmly believe that if we don’t, eventually we’ll be asking ourselves where things went wrong.

I hope that there’s some value in this post for those of you who have taken the time to read it.  I’m truly always thinking of you and asking ‘what can I offer of value’.  I hope you’re well.

Love,
Joshua

I’m thinking about the question “What one thing, if you did it consistently, would revolutionize your life or business?”

I can’t really take credit for this question.  I read it somewhere a while back in some form and I’m sure I’m paraphrasing it.  Unfortunately the original source escapes me right now.  But the point remains: If we were to be consistent about the things that matter most, we’d be far along the path to where we’d like to be.

For me one of these things is writing.  For you it may be getting up and out the door daily for your morning exercise.  Or spending a few minutes in reflection before you switch modes and begin to engage with the world.

Whatever it is, it’s powerful and it’s something that you’re not doing consistently.  If you were your life would be a revolution and you probably wouldn’t feel the desire to read this because inside you’d know you were already doing that thing.

Something else to remember here is that we are learning, changing, growing beings.  We’re never static.  We’re either growing or dying.  That said, your ‘one thing’ is going to evolve right along with you.  As such it’s important to be asking this question frequently to reconnect with where our efforts could be better spent.

What’s your ‘one thing’?  Why not leave a comment and this can become a brainstorm for those of you who participate?

As I wake in San Diego, California this morning just after 4am, I have an itch to write.  The thought that is going through my head revolves around ‘creative mode’ vs ‘consumption mode’.  I think if you read on you’ll find that you can resonate.

After getting a shower, putting a tiny breakfast in my belly and grabbing my morning cup of joe, I find myself in creative mode.  I realize that I want to write, record, compose, construct or in some way create.

What I’m not in the mode to do is to consume new ideas or concepts just yet.

I recognized this ‘mode’ as I felt a resistance to immediately dive into Twitter.  I care very much about what is happening with you and with the rest of the world.  This isn’t about you.  It is about my need to respect what what my mode currently is and to flow with that tendency rather than fighting it.

If I’m in creative mode, I’d better damn well be creating.  Especially considering there is so much to read, digest and respond to in a given day.  When I am in a creative mode, perhaps the very best thing I can do is to surrender to it, letting it flow.  And then when I’m finished, take a step back and view it as part of the whole…part of the world that I haven’t yet engaged for the day; and allow it to be my starting point.

How about you?  Does think make sense?  Is this true for you?

photo credit: scenar308 (Highlands & Kührointhaus)

Today I had to move some of the people I follow on Twitter into a list entitled “oversharers“.  They post great stuff so I don’t want to unfollow them, but having them in my main Twitter stream kills.  Now I can go check out what they are posting about anytime I want without having them population my main stream.  Just a quick note about these tweeps…they both share each item multiple times.  As of now it’s just @QuadMedia and @Minervity, but as all things do, I’m sure it will grow with time.

You can make lists for anything.  I also have one for health and wellness and one for funny tweeps.  They each only have one tweep right now, but again…that’ll change.  The nice thing is that you can follow other people’s lists if they’ve made them into public lists.

You can follow my Twitter lists above by clicking on the associated links.  Or you can follow me on Twitter and see what I have to say.

What good uses can you think of for Twitter lists?

If you attempted to use Google Wave when it came out last year, it’s likely that you met with the same fate as I did.  Honestly, I tried it for a bit, found (at least at first) that NO ONE was on the service, and discovered that, worst of all, there were no notifications of any kind when ‘waves’ were updated.  (They also don’t have a practical version for iPhone yet, but I won’t go into that.)  So I dropped it.

Well yesterday Google announced that they have created the option for email alerts when waves are updated.  It’s a bit tricky to find the option to turn it on.  You’ve got to push the arrow to the right of your Wave inbox tab to view the option.

Google hasn’t gotten it perfect yet, as you can see from their psuedo-disclaimer below.  Still, this is a huge leap forward with a feature that, in retrospect, should have been shipped out-of-box for a service that has positioned itself as a tremendous advance in online collaboration.

How do you use Google Wave?