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One of the books I’m currently reading is The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. So far, I have found the book to be awesome but its very “dense”. By that, I mean you can’t read too much in one sitting because every sentence, paragraph and page is packed with so much good information. I was originally tuned into this book by Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-Hour Work Week) where it was listed as one of the “fundamental four” in the restricted reading section. It so happened that I have a copy in the library of books I inherited from my Dad and I had been referred to it elsewhere as well so I started it.

Anyway, as I mentioned, the book is packed with great stuff, but what I wanted to highlight today is one particular section that really resonated with me. Here it is:

Ideas are the fruits of your thinking. But they’ve got to be harnessed and put to work to have value. Each year an oak tree produces enough acorns to populate a good-sized forest. Yet, from these bushels of seeds perhaps only one or two acorns will become a tree. The squirrels destroy most of them and the hard ground beneath the tree doesn’t give the few remaining seeds much chance for a start.

So it is with ideas. Very few bear fruit. Ideas are highly perishable. If we’re not on guard, the squirrels (negative-thinking people) will destroy most of them. Ideas require special handling from the time they are born until they’re transformed into practical ways for doing things better.

The book then goes on to list three ways of harnessing and developing ideas: don’t let ideas escape, review your ideas, and cultivate and fertilize your idea. This is definitely good advice. I have been working with ideas in this way even before reading the book. So, here are my thoughts on cultivating brain fruit:

1. Don’t let ideas escape: make sure you capture them somewhere. I use three different mechanisms for capturing ideas. First, I have a full-size coil-bound notebook I keep with my morning reading material. When I’m reading in the morning, I write, in point form, any ideas that come to mind and any passages from the material I’m reading that I find particularly inspiring. Second, I keep a USB stick on me that I use to hold ideas that are larger in size. This would be things like book outlines, business plans, and draft blog posts. Finally, I keep a little field notebook (and pen) in my pocket at all times. The field notebook has been key as I find that if I don’t write an idea down immediately, I’m likely to lose it. Honestly, I’m amazed at the number of ideas I have. It scares me to think that I’ve had these large quantities of ideas all along and I’ve just been letting them rot on the ground instead of picking them and saving them for later.
2. Review your ideas: its not enough to save your ideas, you need to review them regularly and then add to them, refine them, and finally, act on them. Some of the “ideas” I save are nothing more than inspirational notes while others are concrete, actionable items. Either way, I find great value in reviewing them regularly. The bigger ideas that I store on the USB stick I tend to review whenever I add to them. As for the two notebooks I keep, I try to review them on the weekend. Depending on the volume of ideas I’ve had over the previous week, this can take anywhere from a few minutes to a good half-hour. Maybe more if I act on some of them or if they inspire further ideas (which does happen). At any rate, this is a key step. When I first started recording my ideas, I didn’t go back and review regularly. Over time, I found that I started repeating the same ideas while thinking they were new. The review process keeps the good ideas fresh in your mind and allows you to process and discard the not-so-good ideas.
3. Cultivate and fertilize your idea: For me, this step has been difficult. I have a natural tendency to procrastinate so even when I have good ideas that are repeatedly brought to my attention, I still may not act them. A good example is this blog post. When I first read the excerpt above, I immediately felt compelled to write this. That was three days after my last post. As you can see, there’s more than three days between posts here. However, my lack of action notwithstanding, this is the “money” step. This is where you flesh out your idea fully by doing research, running your idea by others, prototyping it, and generally moving forward. This is where you bake the pie from the good fruit that you’ve gathered and saved.

Ultimately, we all have ideas. For years, I have lamented my lack of useful ideas when it appears that I’ve had them all along, I just hadn’t been capturing them. Since I’ve started cultivating my ideas, I have outlines for three books, a couple of complementary business models for an internet-based business (stay tuned for more on that) and numerous little “ideas” ranging from inspiring quotes to potential blog posts. Get in the habit of cultivating your brain fruit and soon you’ll be enjoying a bountiful harvest.

- Dave

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

- Galatians 6:9

Good advice. When we’re working towards an important goal, it’s easy to get discouraged. It may be lack of results, it may be results that are less spectacular than we expected or it may just be the sheer effort required to do the work. Regardless of the cause of our weariness, we must not give up. Anything worth doing is going to be difficult. As long as we persist in our cause, we will “reap a harvest”.

As leadership guru Robin Sharma would say, “Life’s timing just might not be the same as your timing”. We all occasionally need to be reminded that we may have to wait a little longer while keeping up the work we’re doing before things go our way. Although there are countless examples of persistence in action, with the Olympics at hand, one example that stands out is Michael Phelps, the American swimmer who has won more medals than any other Olympic athlete and broke numerous world records this time around. When asked what the US Swimming Team’s secret of success was, Phelps explained “I arrive at the training pool at 5am and spend most of the day in water. I’m interested in nothing except swimming”. It’s that persistence and determination that helped him win.

So remember, when the going gets tough, just keep working at it. Eventually, persistence pays off and you will achieve the goals, and rewards, you have set out for yourself.

- Dave

I’ve been holding off on posting (at least partly) because I wanted to update the Wordpress version and then update the theme. Well, I’ve finally done it. Although I managed to find a theme that was pretty close to what I was looking for, I still had to make some changes to it. I’m sure I’ll futz with it more in the future, but for now, it’s good enough.

- Dave

If you’re in the Winnipeg area and are in need of some top quality plants and/or flowers, be sure to check out Petal Place Greenhouses out in St. Andrews.

- Dave

Technorati Profile

Because I’m leary about entering my blog credentials even though technorati is rather well known (at least more so than me…)

Here’s wishing you and your family the very best during this holiday season from me and my family. Merry Christmas everyone!

- Dave

When I launched this blog three and a half months ago, my intention was to try and write with more of a serious tone and to stick to a specific topic (although I’m not quite sure what that was). Well, after all this time, I’ve found that trying to do that is hard and quite boring really. So, I’ve now decided to mix things up and post about whatever strikes my fancy (much like my tagline claims). This means there will be more inconsequential, personal posts, rants and maybe a bit of tech stuff. I think this change is more fitting for my current lifestyle. I don’t know where this will lead, but its the journey that counts so, Giddyup!

- Dave

I’ve added a list of inspirational quotes I’ve stumbled across while sipping from the informational firehose. Instead of just making it a post, I’ve used a Wordpress page. The way I have things set up currently, it shows up under the About Me page in the Subscribe section. I’ll probably have to do something about where these pages go if I plan to have more of them, but it can live there for now. Here’s a link in case it’s too much trouble to look to the left…

I stumbled across an interesting video called “Money as Debt”. The first half (~25 mins) explains, in simple terms, how money is created. The second half proposes solutions to the issue of money being reliant on debt. Whether or not these solutions are feasible is debatable but learning where money comes from is something everyone should know.

- Dave

For the past month, I’ve been exceedingly busy. Or so it seems anyway. Work has been full, not overly so, but enough that I’m mentally drained by the time I get home. Then there’s daily stuff like meals and cleaning that need to be done. Add to all that an abundance of activities for everyone in my family and it seems like there’s just not enough hours in the day to get everything accomplished. Never mind working on other projects (like generating wealth).

However, over the past week, I’ve been trying to look a little closer at my busyness and I’ve discovered that along with increased activities, my efficiency has dropped. What I mean by that is I spend a lot of time doing inconsequential stuff instead of activities with high value. Now part of my problem seems to centre around the large volume of interruptions when I’m at home. At first I thought maybe I’m just making excuses but I kept a bit of a log and discovered that I average about 6 minutes between interruptions with the longest uninterrupted stretch being about an hour. Unfortunately, that hour is right before bed and by that time I’m mentally exhausted. As if this wasn’t all bad enough, I’ve been sick for the past week with a nagging cough. It’s subsiding now, but I haven’t been sleeping well.

Anyway, my point is that it’s easy to succumb to the pressures of daily life. Weeks, months and even years can pass by while you “live your life” without really accomplishing anything. So, the question is, what can you do about this? At this point, I don’t have an answer. What I do have is some thoughts.

Make a game plan: If goals are your thing, then set some goals; both short and long term. For myself, goals have never really worked so instead, I’m trying to define what I want my life to look like. A set of guiding principles if you will. Either one requires discipline so I think it would be better to have a mix of big and small targets so you can have some small successes to keep you on track while still having the prize to keep your eye on.

Schedule “me” time: It may seem selfish, but blocking out a chunk of time for yourself may help you accomplish things. Right now, various members of my family have activities Monday to Thursday nights and then weekends at various times. As much as I would prefer to stay home to work on my activities that doesn’t seem to be working so I may need to actually leave the house during my “me” time. For those who have a specific work area in your residence, it may be enough to close the door and put a “do not disturb” sign up. Maybe I need to get a door on my office…

Optimize routine activities: I have this feeling that daily chores could be a lot easier if I had a better schedule for doing them. Right now, I just sort of do things when they catch my attention. One good area for optimization is meals. Having a meal plan for the week really helps. I used to plan out the week’s meals and go buy all the ingredients on Sunday, but with all the activities both at work and at home, there are days where we just don’t have enough time to prepare even a quick meal. Still, that’s one area where improvement would help. Another is daily/weekly chores such as dishes and laundry. Both my wife and I just seem to take care of these things whenever we feel like. I think having a regular schedule where I make lunches and do dishes right after the kids are put to bed would help. I’ve used both the meal plan and the daily schedule and they work well but it takes discipline to do it consistently.

Mix work and play: Generating wealth in and of itself isn’t very fun. I suppose this ties in with making a game plan. When determining your goals/principles, you need to ensure that you’ll enjoy whatever it is you plan to do. Sure, there’s going to be hard work. Anything worth having requires work, but find a way to add some fun to it. Even if its something simple like trying to optimize dish placement in the drying rack (yes, I do this, and yes, its kind of weird). With kids, you could do something like a quick game of laundry basketball where you see who can get the most points sinking their clothes in the laundry basket.

Change your attitude: Being grumpy or cranky just doesn’t help. Try and be happy no matter what’s going on. After a long day, the last thing you want to do is cook and clean, but it has to be done anyway so instead of grumping about it, just accept it and get to it. Play some good music in the background, that usually helps. Think about the good things in your life. Do whatever it takes to be in your happy place. This alone will make it all easier.

I’m sure there’s other things that can help overcome the daily grind. I believe the first step is recognizing that you’ve fallen victim to it. Now I’m going to put action to these thoughts and see if I can’t break the shackles of this dull routine I’ve succumbed to.

- Dave