My Riffs

Start early whenever possible.  You’ll rarely if ever regret an early start.  We usually need that deadline to motivate us but if you can motivate yourself to start early you can do things better. 

The best motivation comes from within. Needing external motivation means that you are alway relying on unpredictable factors for your motivation. It's best to find motivation from within so that it's always there.

People who say they need motivation are usually lacking vision for their life. People who have good, big, long term vision for their life don’t need motivation for today. They have long term motivation in the form of vision. 

Forcing someone to do something doesn’t teach must. Getting them motivated to do it from their own free will is the right way to do it. 

I've lived long enough to learn you can find a reason/excuse for almost everything. No matter how bizarre it is. I've seen (and probably done this) people act how they want, then find the excuses later. Rather than informing themselves then acting out in accordance to being informed. Acting out then finding excuses is a not a good way to live. Inform yourself, then act out from there.

The mission isn’t always what is stated. The mission is revealed in where the resources are spent.  Defence, energy, time, money. Want to understand what your real goals are if you're unsure? Look at where these resources are spent.

Pet peeves and dislikes are like a magnet. In a weird way we're drawn to them. They pull from us rants, rage and the behaviour of bashing. But it's unwise to bash that which you are trying to reach or change. Use the dislike you have inside to form a positive reach. Pull the person or situation from bad to good rather than try and bash it from bad to good.

We know some of the effect fear has on us. Fear has some negative effects, rendering us less able. It can paralyze us. It also causes logical parts of our brain to shut down. Doing something because you're scared it not an acceptable reason. At least not for very long. Examine the things your afraid of, and the behaviours they cause. They're likely unhealthy. If you're doing them of fear, you're doing them in a somewhat paralyzed state, and without full mental capacity. Examine these things and either rid yourself of them, or change your reason. Some of the things we do for fear have much better reasons than fear for doing them. Fear is an unsustainable reason for behaviour that greatly handicaps us. Find a better reason than fear.

People are looking less for perfection and more for direction. Perfection is a bit of an impractical goal. But direction is practical. People want to be part of something that they feel is going somewhere. You can’t provide perfection, but you can provide clear direction. And that’s what people buy into.

Managers are often being pushed to get more from their employees. More commitment, more productivity, more roles and responsibilities. Parents are often trying to figure out how to get more from their children, especially in terms of obedience. The problem is, the more you ask of someone, the easier it becomes for them to fail or let down. Asking more of someone could potentially be setting them up to fail. This doesn't mean that people don't often have more to give, but rather that the manner in which you ask of people to give more must be done properly. Demands and pushing rarely yield good long term results and often tarnish the culture or atmosphere. The better way to extract more from children or employees is to get their buy in. To give them purpose. If they are involved in the planning and design stages of things, they will likely buy into implementation. An invested person is going to give more than a person with demands placed on them.

In building a plan, engage your team. The plan will be bought into and carried out by the team and be made successful by the team. If they team invests in and contributes to the vision, they will take ownership. Ownership of the plan will give far better results than simply having people carry out the plan out without the investment.

Engagement is easy when something is being built that matters and will last. Engagement is difficult when building for the short term.  Engagement is one of the hardest things to quantify, it's more of a metric that has to be felt, not quantified. Engagement is one of the best metrics though in measuring the success of an organization, community or team.  The engagement metric can be loosely defined as the amount an individual is able to both contribute and receive, and the extent to which they are doing so. Someone would not be counted as engaging if they only receive. Yet an individual could not be counted as engaging if they are only giving. The fine balance between the two is where engagement measures best. When building for the long term, that balance between giving and receiving is oftentimes met. The giver is receiving the satisfaction in building something that may outlast them, or something that will at least stand for a long time.

Every action has a preceding cause. We work to make money. We eat to have energy. We read to learn. And on and on. While the above examples are good reasons for action, if you can do something simply for the love of it, that will take you further and give you more passion than a rational reason. When we do something for the love of it, there is a passion that drives us to put our best into the action. And that's when you can really do something special.

The rich will buy stuff simply to feed their ego. But the poor can be just as guilty of feeding their ego. Speaking and trying to appear "smart" in order to feed the ego is the same thing, just a different way of getting there. What if we dropped the ego? I think it would benefit both ourselves and those connected to us. Remain teachable. You don't have it all figured out, and you never will. Remain genuinely humble. There's always someone doing better and someone doing worse than you. Remain a servant. Live for others, not to build your empire, bank account or status. The ego drives us to selfish behaviour that harms us and any community we're part of.

Everybody has a driving force, a fount of sorts. What drives people to become wealthy? What drives people to want to be famous? I think the best "sources" of drivers are in things that are beyond ones self. If you're living for a cause  bigger than yourself, that is a good source. If your living to simply get rich, that's a shallow source. Find a source that is bigger than yourself and you have found something much more important than anything money could purchase.