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So the result of getting up early is that I’ve written 3 blog posts for this week. Since starting my business last year, it has been much more difficult to keep up with my blog, Social Media Philanthropy. Client work comes first, followed by new business development. While I love blogging, it has just fallen behind. This week however, I’m already done, having put together 3 posts to be published, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Feels good to be ahead of the game, rather than playing catch up.
This morning my dog woke me up around 6am…on a Sunday. I got up and took my dogs out for a walk and began to wonder whether I’d climb back in bed when I got home, or use the opportunity, since I’m already awake anyway, to write and tie up some loose ends? The only thing I could think was: “How bad do you want it?” My bed sounded like a great idea, but much like the athlete that gets up early to train, I had to seize this time to get better and work towards my goals. I don’t normally get up early to work as I’m much more comfortable “burning the midnight oil,” but I can’t look hard work in the face and say “I’ll see you in a few hours, I want to sleep in.”
Extraordinary people don’t wait to be told to do something extraordinary. Take the initiative. Live and die with your motivation to be incredible.
Recently Sheryl Sandberg, of Facebook, stated that she leaves work at 5:30 everyday. I believe we need more high ranking people to talk like this. It’s become all-to-common for people to burn the midnight oil and frown upon those who relish their downtime or slow days.
Today, I am having a slower day and I am quite grateful for it. When you work hard every day, you are entitled to a slow day now and again. As I build my company, I will stay focused on the reality that life is about more than work, and much like relationships, distance can make the heart grow fonder.
I’m still handling my business today but the ebb and flow of business has allowed me to take today a little more slowly, and with a day like this outside, I’m glad I have the good sense to appreciate that.
It used to be that the person with the biggest head full of facts was the smartest in the room, but now we have iPhones with access to wikipedia, google and the rest of the web.
Now, knowledge is a commodity, and that same person that was smartest person in the room is matched by a smartphone.
Knowledge of facts, figures and stats is wasted brain space when compared to the ability to quickly and efficiently search and find that same information. More often than not, we won’t know something, and no person can store the amount of factual information that the web can.
Wisdom is still unrivaled by technology because wisdom is acquired over years of experience and insight.
In today’s world and the world of tomorrow, the success stories will be less and less about those that have acquired specific knowledge than it is about those that can find anything about anyone or anything if given the chance to access the web.
Today I spent nearly 4 hours simply clearing out old bookmarks, deleting old blog posts and cleaning up my digital space. I populated my task list with next actions and converted paper notes to digital, searchable notes. As a business owner and as a human being, I’ve found that the more uncluttered my workspace becomes, the more clear my mind is and the higher quality of work I produce.
Recently, I’ve been reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD). The book has caused me to re-examine the processes that I use and caused me to optimize everything for maximum efficiency. Additionally, I’m getting better at realizing what processes will stick, and which ones will fall by the wayside. For instance, Laundry…I don’t do laundry, so instituting a new process by which I do laundry rather than outsource the task only ends in failure. Likewise, in my professional life, I know that to effectively manage projects I need to use a robust task management software and ensure that my email is quick and easy to deal with.
So now it’s 3:35 and I have several hours left in the day with which to rock out on some client work.
