When I ask you what your strengths are, what comes to your mind? You might consider all the personality tests you have taken, it can be MBTI, DISC, or Tom Rath’s Strength Finder 2.0 (which is what I have taken recently).

This book, on the other hand, asked us to identify our strengths from our experience, not from those what the tests told us. Marcus suggested the acronym SIGN to help us identify our strengths, those are S for Success, I for Instinct, G for Growth, and N for Needs.

While S or Success can be a good start to help you identify your strength, your success can drain your energy instead, and you are simply unhappy about it. Therefore, you need to look up also on the other areas of growth, those are the I, G, and N.

I or Instinct is something where you have an “I-can’t-help-but” quality to them. It’s what you feel before doing it. For example, I can’t help but create a system or workflow to make things easier or faster to be done. That’s one reason why sometimes I’m quite slow in finishing something, or keep on changing things (such as my blog’s theme) to make it is easier for me to be productive.

G or Growth is the area where you grow the most! It is what you feel while you are doing it. Marcus said as if it is your interest, as if it is your true happiness, and yes it is the area where you will find yourself wanting to practice, read more, find new techniques and grow.

N or Needs is about how you feel after you’ve done it. You might be tired, but psychologically, you are excited and fulfilled, and of course you’re looking forward for other opportunity to do the similar thing. For example, system and efficiency is a strong need in my life, I enjoy the opportunity to arrange things in order and make a process efficient. Even if it’s tiring, and sometimes frustrating, there is something of satisfaction after I have done it.

The core concept is that our strength will fuel our energy, while our weakness will drain our energy.

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Maybe the best productivity book so far, this book has inspired me to build a system to get things done. When it comes down to principle, these are the two cores that David emphasized…

(1) capturing all the things that need to get done, both now and later, both big and small into a logical and trusted system. And it has to be created outside of your head and off your mind, so that you can vacate it for the thing you need to do.

(2) disciplining yourself to make front-end decisions about all of those “inputs”, so that you will always have the “next actions” that will move you forward to get things done.

The process itself consists of 5 stages:

1. Collect: capture all the things that might represent something you have to do!
2. Process: as you have your “stuffs”, the next thing is to process it, that is to question them with the following questions: “What is it?”, “Is it actionable?”, “What’s the next action?” (if it is actionable), and just do it if the action takes less than 2 minutes.
3. Organize: processing your stuffs will organize them into 8 categories, those are “trash”, “incubation tools”, or “reference storage” if it’s not actionable. Actionable items will go to “Projects” and “Project plans” if it requires multi-step actions, otherwise, you can either delegate it (”Waiting list”), defer it to be done at specific time (”Calendar”), or do it as soon as you can (”Next action”).
4. Review: Simply putting it into the list will have no point if you don’t remember the list. Therefore review is necessary. David suggested weekly review, and as you’re doing it, you’ll trust your system more, and you’ll be more motivated to keep it.
5. Do: The process is created for you to feel good about what you’re doing at any point of time. And for that, David mentioned the challenge very clearly, that is “to migrate from hoping it’s the right choice to trusting it’s the right choice”.

Here is the image that explains the whole process much better…

To help you with the challenge of choosing the right actions to do, David suggested the 4 criteria to pick the action to do; those are context, time available, energy available, and priority.

To prioritize your actions, I found that the six-level model that David shared is helpful, it starts with your current actions, current projects, area of responsibility, 1-2 years goal, 3-5 years goal, and eventually your life goal.

The book also suggested many more details and tips to increase your productivity. I’m also still in the process of integrating this system into my life. I hope to share more updates on the actions/tools I’m experimenting to get things done.

Enjoy the book, and get more things done!
Robert

I got to know Eckhart Tolle from Oprah’s podcast, when his book, A New Earth has been featured in Oprah’s book club. And it got me interested to know more from his first book on spirituality, The Power of Now.

As the title said, we can tap into personal power when we focus on the present. We are not our mind, a message that is strongly emphasized by Eckhart Tolle. The mind needs time, and that’s what it talks about… It talks about the regret of the past and the worry of tomorrow. The mind often forgets about now, it forgets to enjoy what you have and what you’re doing now.

This book is on spirituality, and Eckhart is a contemporary spiritual teacher who is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition. It taught me some good stuffs, but some I found misguiding, especially his own interpretations on what Jesus said in the bible. For him, God is a matter of consciousness, something that I can’t agree with.

Nevertheless, I learned something from the book, it is much deeper understanding about worry and the present. It’s just like what Jesus said, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Another inspiration I gleaned was about the surrender, which is a much better attitude we need to work on, I’ll share more about it in the future.

Robert

This is the first part of series on Habitudes, or the habit of attitudes. In the first book, Tim Elmore shared the importance of leading our own “self” beyond leading others.

As he emphasized, leadership can be represented as an iceberg, 10% that people can see is your skill, while the 90% is your character, much bigger and the one that can even bring the big cruise ship “Titanic” down.

Habitudes furnishes images that teach you leadership truths. They will enable you to wisely influence your world. Images stick. Images illustrate. They carry layers of reality. You’ve heard it before: a picture is worth a thousand words.
~Tim Elmore

The book comes with full-page photo to help us remember on the habit we need to develop. In fact, it is the point that Tim is trying to emphasize, that we will always remember the principles and practice them. As what he said, discipline is the key that help you cross from where you are to where you want to be.

I have shared some of the principles I have learned from this book, those are the starving baker, and the pop test.

You can check more about the series of books Tim has, together with his ministry here.
Robert

Readers, how have you been? It’s been a while since I’m posting in this blog. I’ve been away for holiday in Surabaya Indonesia, and taking it as a chance to have a break and think through my plan for the new year. Time has passed and here we are in 2009. It’s a bit late, I hope it still feels new to you, and I want to say HAPPY NEW YEAR to you!

Reflecting on year 2008

photo credit: Todd Baker << technowannabe

I’ll just kick in with a project that Robert Hruzek has: BLOGAPALOOZA! or what I learned from 2008. I love the idea of reflecting on my journey in 2008 through the posts I have written. The project requests us to put one favorite post per month in 2008. It will be posted in Middle Zone Musings, and here is the preview special for my readers, with some reflections on my life on that month:

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