Archive for the ‘Personal Development’ Category

Getting Started with GTD (Getting Things Done)

Monday, November 9th, 2009

I’m a big fan of Getting Things Done (GTD).  It’s an elegant, almost simple, set of disciplines and systems that promises “Stress-Free Productivity”.  However, like anything worth doing, those disciplines and systems require dedication to get the most out of them.  The following is a short list of the GTD systems that work together.  The discipline is keeping them up to date.  The freedom comes when they *are* up to date.

System One – The Master Project List – Every project (defined as something you want to get done that requires more than 2 tasks, taking longer than 2 minutes) that you want to accomplish in your life.  All down on paper (or in a system somewhere)

System Two – The Filing System – Active projects, Reference files, Archives

System Three – Your Tickler System

System Four – Your Calendar

System Five – The Waiting On System

System Six – The Next Action List

System Seven – Your In-Basket

System Eight – Your Weekly Review

Your homework for the week:

1) Tell me what you would accomplish if you achieved “Stress-Free Productivity”

2) If you are already a GTD fan, tell me how your story of getting your systems to work together.


Posted in Executive Coaching, Life Coach, Personal Development, Systems | No Comments »

Vision – Just How Important Is It?

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Vision:  Just how important is it?

This is not just a rhetorical question.

If you are coaching someone, and that person is failing to complete their assignments, there is a good chance that your coachee has either lost connection to their vision, or their vision has expired.  Riding your coachee about the failure is pointless, they don’t care anymore.

Assignment failure is only a trip wire for noticing vision disconnection.  This is where you as a coach get to visibly and dramatically do your job; vision creation.

Lets assume that at one point in the past, your coachee had a vivid compelling vision of their future.  A future that was so bright they had to wear shades.  A vision that was so compelling that you had problems getting them to get enough sleep because they are so busy driving towards the fulfillment of their vision.

Now they don’t have that connection anymore.

So how do you get them back in touch with their vision?  How do you create one in the first place?

I’ll be coming back to this question, I think you’ll like my approach.  But in the mean time, what’s your approach?


Posted in Executive Coaching, Life Coach, Personal Development | No Comments »

Post Notification – Acid Test

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Ok Successies, going with the philosophy of “ready-fire-aim” I just blindly added “Post Notification” to my WordPress site (yes, what you are reading at this very second).   The goal is to give you elite subscribers a notification when the site is updated.  The goal is also to NOT spam you.  If it doesn’t work, I’ll be pulling it off the site and trying something else.

Before you go, I’ve got a quick question for you while we’re here.

What is that question?  I’m glad you asked.

It’s really simple, “Why are you here at ‘How much success can you handle’?”  Are you looking to administer your wordpress site (cuz that’s what I seem to be talking about the most), or are you more interested in the nominal topic of this blog, which is taking the game of your life to the next level?  Either way, I thank you for being here.


Posted in Personal Development, Uncategorized, Web site development, Word Press Administration | No Comments »

Have you reached “good enough” ?

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Last week was a low week for me.

As a quick warning, if you thought that this blog was going to be, “everything is rosy, all the time” then you thought wrong.  The road to success is full of pot-holes.  Deep, suspension destroying pot-holes.

I am involved in an organization called Toastmasters, and last week, my member speech blew chunks.   Toastmasters is a global organization dedicated to improving the art of public speaking.

Bottom line, this week, my speech was “good enough” it wasn’t horrible, I spoke, I was coherent, I had a minimum of distracting habits, but it wasn’t practiced, or polished.  It had no structure.  None.

It really had me thinking, where else am I “good enough”?  Where am I just phoning it in?  Conversely, where are you just phoning it in.  Where in your life and your business have you reached “good enough” and what could be possible if you were to take it up a notch to “good”?


Posted in Life Coach, Personal Development | No Comments »

Joining the let’s-find-out club

Friday, July 31st, 2009

When it comes to a new idea, a mentor once told me that my feelings and past experiences are lousy tools for evaluating that new idea.

What he said was something to the effect of, “You need to join the let’s-find-out club.  Will that idea work?  I don’t know, let’s find out”

At the same time, if you are using someone’s already successful system and that system has worked for others, but not for you, just maybe, you’re not really following their system.

And don’t say, “but we’re different here.” No you’re not, you’re just unwilling (or in some corporate settings, not allowed) to make the changes dictated by the successful system.

I once heard a trainer explain

If I told you to dial (555) 123 – 4567, give my friend on the other end your name & address, and he’ll send you a check for $100, don’t come back to me and say,

“I tried your system, and it didn’t work, I didn’t dial the number in the order you gave me, but I dialed all the numbers”

“I tried your system, and it didn’t work, I didn’t use the number 4 because I don’t like to press the number 4, so I just replaced it with two 2’s.”

“I tried your system, and it didn’t work, I put in the first 6 digits and didn’t get any result, so I didn’t bother to finish implementing your system you fraud.”

Laugh, but I have watched people, at great expense, implement their version of other peoples systems and then complain that not only did the original system not work, but that the people explaining the system were unyielding zealots who didn’t understand how things worked in the real world.


Posted in Life Coach, Personal Development, Systems | No Comments »