La crise, quelle crise ?

Catégorie : Idea

  • Day 465 – What will be your 5 wins today ?

    Day 465This morning, my tweet feed contained this little message from Robin Sharma: What will be your 5 wins today?     And the picture on the tweet was the one I put on the right of this post. This is just so simple and so powerful. Every day, all of us do little things, win little victories, and contribute to a better world, most of the time without noticing. This post reminds us to notice. When we become intentional, we increase our footprint. When we become intentional, we notice and other notice too, even if they do not say it (but this is another story). So what are your 5 intentions of the day that will be your 5 wins today? Let me share mine to help you:

    • My daily running routine is generally around 5 to 6 kilometers. I felt for a while that I needed a little more, so today, I left 15 minutes sooner and did 8 kilometers. I feel great! – 8:00 AM – WIN 1, won!
    • I generally postpone the writing of this daily blog post to later in the day, when I have a gap, but it generates some stress, so today, my win was to write it before 8:30 AM, and here it is (I scheduled it for later though) – 8:26AM WIN 2, won
    • I booked time to prepare for two important meetings I have today so I can get more impactful and contribute more during those. Win in preparation. UPDATE – 11:35 AM, WIN 3, won!
    • I set the goal of cleaning my due tasks. There are not much, 4, but it will require some work without being disturbed. Time blocked in my calendar. Win ahead. UPDATE – 12:04 PM, WIN 4, won!
    • I will review my personal task list for the week-end before I leave on holiday in 10 days, so I am sure nothing will have been forgotten so I can benefit fully from my holiday with my wife and elder son. Beautiful win in sight. UPDATE – 10:18PM, WIN 5, won!

    Voilà, this is not that hard. It took me 5 minutes. And I have a powerful blog post and a fantastic day ahead. Thank you Monsieur Sharma, once again you rock!

  • Day 463 – What you should focus on…

    No comment.

    Day 463

    Source : https://twitter.com/JongeGeesten/status/585494879763099650

  • Day 462 – When to pull the plug?

    Day 462Success is the result of many failures. Many stories have been told around successes and failures. One salient point is generally about persistence. But persistence is a two-edge sword. Persisting while you know you’ll get through the hurdles is good and necessary. However persisting beyond the point of complete failure is mad. How many businesses have persisted and bankrupted their owners and investors? Probably too many.

    It’s interesting to discuss with professional traders and derive some learning. Successful traders are cold-blood human beings. They can weather storms, and we know there are violent storms in the stock exchange, but more than anybody else, they know when to get rid of a losing position> they will cut their losses before it’s too deep, for a simple reason: it’s better to lose one arm than both! But how do they do it? They follow a simple rule: they set a target and fire the action when the target is reached. There’s no emotion, just action!

    The same should happen with any project you pursue! Set a limit, persist until you reach it and if you reach it, pull the plug! It may happen you never reach your limit so you may persist until you reach success. But the lesson here is to avoid being stupid in face of adversity. In each and every project, there is risk. Risk ties to our fears and fear is an emotion you need to go beyond. With a limit, you do not kill the risk nor the fear, you inoculate the emotion. It’s like a vaccine: you may catch the disease, but it will not be deadly! So to answer the question I asked in the title is fairly simple: set a limit and pull the plug when you reach it!

  • Day 461 – Debt

    Day 461Debt is the price we pay to live in a modern world. Stop allowing a state to go into debt and most of our infrastructure will stop being maintained, large scale projects will not exist due to lack of funding. Debt can be good and debt can be bad, like most things in life by the way. However, with the various issues around debt in lots of countries and economies across the world, we may need to rethink progress. The world has grown so fast in the last century, so our debt. We will leave an almost dead planet to our kids and a debt they will make years to repay.

    Although I am not a macro economist, not an economist, I keep thinking of debt has good and bad, depending on whether it’s generating wealth or not. I could had to this its neutrality to the environment. In other word, a wealth generating debt that is taxing our environment is bad and so is a non-wealth generating debt that is neutral or positive to our environment. Although we can question the latter in terms of wealth, since if it’s positive to the environment, then it’s generating a certain form of wealth.

    Look at your debts. Get rid of those that are making other wealthy and keep those that are making yourself wealthy!

  • Day 460 – Scripting your life

    Farmers shed in the fields along side a gravel roadMy former partner in business had a motto: « what is not written does not exist ». He was, and still is, right (or shall I play a pun, he’s write). If you do not write it, you cannot share it, you cannot keep it, you tend to forget it. This stands true for everything in life, including your life. What is planning your day? Writing the script of the day. What is writing your goals for the year or your resolutions? Writing the script for the day. What is being part of the 5AM Robin Sharma’s club? Scripting the first hour of your day. In other words, all those activities are about scripting your day.

    When we talk script, we tend to think movies. Each movie has a script. A script contains, of course, the words the actors will need to say, as well as indication on how to play the scene. You will hear some directors stick to the script has it was Holy Scriptures, while others are loosely referring to it, letting actors play more « freely ». In all cases, a script is open to interpretation and therefore change. It’s not because it’s written that it should be played like it’s written, however, it if were not written, it probably could not be interpreted and changed. It’s because it exists it can be played differently.

    This goes with our own life. It’s really, really important to have a very precise idea of what you want in your life, emotionally, psychologically, financially, socially, etc. Thinking precedes scripting, scripting allows clarity, clarity provides direction, direction drives action. You may and will deviate from your script, because you will have to weather a storm or answer an unexpected opportunity. The script will be your own North Pole. There’s no good wind for a ship that does not have a harbor. Do not delay the writing of your script, do it!