W03 - Honesty and Business Ethics

Week three has been both fun and inspiring. I especially liked the Launching Leaders videos where Jim Ritchie explains the Formula for Success and Happiness. Seeing the three step programs to two men like David B. Haight and J Paul Getty combined into a single formula really drove a couple of points home for me. 

First: Always have a plan, even if the current step of the plan is to wait.

               I love personal productivity tools like processes, apps, websites, books, podcasts, etc. I LOVE THEM. I think it’s because, as a young man, I was incredibly disorganized, constantly late, and a complete underachiever. I was perfectly content to float along in life playing baseball and relying on talents instead of working towards goals. But life (and God) have a way of forcing you to grow up. The book “Seven Habits for Highly Effective People” changed my life. But not because I was inspired or follow the habits. It just made me focus on myself and my shortcomings.

               Now, I teach organization, time-management, and process improvement as part of my job responsibilities. For me, having goals and a plan is a critical step in getting your life in order. No Plan? No Goals? No chance…

Second: Getting up early is wildly under-rated… it really works.

               Getting up early is amazing. It really is. Not because I’m “beating the competition” to the mark. No. for me getting u pearly is my time to decompress. Like many adults, I wear far too many hats to really be effective at any one thing. I’m a husband, father of three, soon to be Grandfather, I work a full-time job, I run my own side company, I serve on the High Council in my Stake, I’m taking several classes this term, and Lacrosse starts in two weeks. I typically go to bed about midnight and I get up every morning between 4:45 and 5am.

               That hour of solitude is time that I really need. I can read scriptures, plan my day, go for a walk or a run, or even just mediate. But this time helps me hit my day running.

Third: Making your Mark requires faith and inspiration.

               Making your mark is something I struggled with for a very long time. Until I sought help from God. As it turned out… I was trying to make my mark in the wrong place. You know the parable of the talents? I was sitting on five coins, but I was working on things that wouldn’t turn them into ten. I didn’t have a phenomenal spiritual experience; I just got an answer to a question and I tried to act on it. That was three years ago, and my life ever since has had more meaning and satisfaction than I ever had before.

               Making your mark doesn’t have to be about putting your stamp of this world. Making your mark can be a something more eternal than that.

Ultimately, combining inspired spiritual advice like David B. Haight's with proven business practices like J. Paul Getty's can, and should, lead to a life of ethically earned success. I look forward to seeing what else I learn in this class.

W02 - The Importance of Dreams

When I was a child, we moved around a lot. My father was in industrial construction (power plants mostly) and I never lived anywhere longer than four years. Part of living a fairly transient lifestyle is becoming comfortable with change and a lack of stability. Don’t get me wrong, we were always comfortable, my father was in management and earned a good salary. I just didn’t grow up around my extended family like grandparent or cousins.

I think that lifestyle really impacted me in ways that I am still figuring out. All of my childhood dreams had to do with me succeeding in various ways: Sports, career, etc. Very few of my childhood dreams involved other people or having my own family.

I think dreaming is very important, but I also think our dreams should be dynamic and adaptive. For example, my biggest dream as a young child was to play major league baseball. And I worked my tail off to get there! There were very few times between the sixth grade and twelfth grade that I couldn’t be found on the diamond. I was an excellent catcher, I started varsity all four years and played in college before going on a mission. But I never made the Major Leagues. 

Failure taught me two things:

1. Sometimes we fail, no matter how hard we try.
2. Dreams that don’t help you get where you want to go aren’t worth achieving.

I haven’t played baseball or even softball in more than twenty-five years. Yet my life is full and satisfying. I don’t miss baseball. I don’t even watch it on television. I believe I’ve outgrown my childhood dreams and replaced them with dreams and ambitions that are far better for me than the glory stadiums of fans on summer days. Being a professional baseball player would mean that I don’t have the life I have today, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

In Randy Pausch’s “last lecture” he shared his childhood dreams and which ones he was able to accomplish. I think Randy is lucky to have been able to identify lifelong loves like technology and visual arts at such a young age. But Randy also worked hard and put himself in a position to fulfill some of those childhood goals. For example, after gaining education in a relevant field, he applied to be an imagineer and was politely rejected. But Randy still worked in the field and continued to develop his talents. That led to another opportunity and to achieving his dream. He didn’t let one rejection kill his dream. He continued to develop himself and sought more opportunities.

I think that’s the key to his achievements. Not letting the brick wall stop him. He continued and tried again. No, he didn’t meet every goal, but he still learned valuable life lessons from his failures. Then he prepared himself to seize opportunities when they came up later or made his own opportunities, like on the zero gravity story.

Randy achieved as much as he did because he prepared himself everyday and didn’t let his first rejection stop him from trying again. That’s a lesson for all of us.

W01 - The Excitement of New Beginnings

Excitement is a strong word…I'd be lying if I didn't say I was excited about writing more. I'd also be lying if I said I like "journaling". Either way, I do like the idea of regularly capturing lessons, ideas, quotes, and ideas for this class. As someone that lives in his OneNote app and has been following a similar practice for the last 5-6 years, I really appreciate this assignment.

Full disclosure… I didn’t take this class to learn how to start a business. I’ve already done that. Although I think learning new, different, and better ways to start and run a business would be a good experience. I do plan of starting new businesses in the future, but not for a few years.

I really took this class because the description talks about planning and goals, something I really enjoy learning and sharing with other people. I love the different methods and tools available in the personal productivity space. I also love that I’ll be able to study some of these principles through a gospel lens. I didn’t get my first degree from a church school and I have really loved my classes at BYU-I for that reason.

A couple of things stood out to me from the reading:

1.     1. In “Your Whole Souls as an Offering Unto Him” by Elder Bednar, he restated a scripture from Section four of the Doctrine and Covenants. He reworded “Heart, Might, Mind, and Strength” to “a mighty heart and a strong mind”.  I really liked this because it helped me think “Am I approaching my academic endeavors with the right mind set?”

2.     2. Also, in Elder Bednar’s remarks, he speaks of sacrifice and consecration, and that the act of learning is a way of consecrating our efforts and our minds to the Lord. I don’t actually believe that is limited to learning. As a member of the High Council in my Stake, I spend more than a few Sundays and weeknights away from my family. We are often thanked for our sacrifice by the Stake Presidency. But Elder Bednar’s comment made me look at that time away from my family as more than just a sacrifice, but a way of consecrating my efforts and time to the Lord.

3.    3.  In Jim Ritchie’s video from Launching Leaders he talks about the importance of great friends and learning from them. Jim has an unorthodox view on what a friendship is. He considers authors and successful people his friends because he values their opinions and beliefs. I hope to employ that attitude to further develop my personal and professional network.

Overall, I am excited about this class and the focus on both personal and professional development. I work for a very large and respected international manufacturing company and I’ve had a fair degree of success. But my wife and I have plans for what we call “life 2.0”. We want to be in a position to take more control of our time and finances in the next 8-10 years. By then, the kids will be on missions, or close to it, and our situation will have changed. I’m looking forward to planning how to be ready when the time comes.