11 Little Secrets - Eddy's version
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 1:21PM
I just read Chris Penn's, DJ Waldow's, and Olivier Blanchard's 11 little secrets, and was totally inspired by them. From Chris:
We strive desperately to look for the next big thing, the next big secret, the magic wand that will make everything better. What we tend to overlook – or most of us, anyway – are the little secrets, the little hacks and tweaks you can make to your day, your year, your life to help things operate better.
So, what are my 11 little secrets, my things that help me organize my life? I'll start in the morning, and go chronologically:
- A big thank you. Most every morning, before I get out of bed, I thank God for another day that I'm alive. If that's not your religious outlook on life, I understand, but for me, an attitude of thankfulness is key. A lot of crap and loss has happened in my life, so I value the important stuff even more. Attitude is everything for me. What am I thankful for? A roof over my head, a warm bed out of which to roll, and a family/kiddos that wake me up are all extravagant, and getting to do what I love is just icing on the cake.
- A tall drink of water. After I wake up, I get myself a big glass of water. I'm not like DJ, who has a 7:1 ratio of water to coffee, but I'm at about 4:1 these days, and I can totally tell when my body is lagging from lack of water. This one glass of water makes my whole day different. I challenge you to start the day with 8oz of H20.
- A break from my fast. Whenever I have a crappy day energy-wise, I can usually attribute it to not having breakfast. Likewise, when I'm powering through the day, I can pretty much tell it is due to a good breakfast. How do you expect to work intensely when you haven't eaten for 6-8 hours, and then demand that your body last until lunchtime? I usually break my nightly fast by eating some oatmeal or a bagel with peanut butter. On Sundays, I always make pancakes at Casa de Badrina, usually with a spread of fruit, bacon and coffee. I ain't messing around; we do breakfast right.
- A morning paper. The first thing I do for work is... not to do work. I spend about 30 minutes in the morning reading over my Google Reader feeds, especially the news and the marketing/PR feeds. For a person whose top Strengthsfinder ratings are Learner, Input, and Intellection, Google Reader has allowed me to start my day with my strengths.
- A batch of emails. I try to check and write my emails only 4 times a day ("try" is the operative word). 10am, 1pm, 4pm, and 9pm. I have a lot of meetings, so downtime between meetings (ok, at stoplights), I'll do it too, but emails are constant interruptions in otherwise important work. I try and limit it as much as possible in this age of ASAP. It's hard, but I think it's worth it.
- A notetaker. About every 5 minutes, I get inspiration for client ideas, business ideas, and useful links on websites. I'm sure you do, too. I've found that a combination of Delicious, Evernote, and Remember the Milk , all available as Chrome extensions or on my iPhone, do the trick for saving links, note-taking, and to-do's. They are all synced, backed-up, and easily accessible for editing and checking off. I can't live without them.
- An actual pad of paper. I've got a little notebook that I take everywhere I go, in case it seems uncouth to access my Evernote on my iPhone (you know you have those meetings where people give you the evil eye because they think you are doing what they WANT to be doing: checking email). However, my friend Eliot Kerlin introduced me to Livescribe, a seemingly perfect cross between old school writing and new school digital archiving. I'm getting one soon, and will report back on it. In the meantime, you can check out this review with a cool video example.
- A predetermined reflection time. Because I like to dream, I get distracted pretty easily from day-to-day tasks, and if I'm not careful, I can also get distracted from larger goals, both personally as well as professionally. But all that dreaming is good; it's the creative stuff, the new ideas, that keep my work fresh and my life exciting. So, I make a point to take some time during the workweek to reflect,refresh and plan. I turn off all the technology and take a walk, with a notebook in hand, usually around the Dallas Arboretum. Here's how I break it down:
- 1 hour a week
- 1 day a month
- 1 week a year
- (and hopefully) 1 year every 7 years. Yes that's right, I want to take a year off every 7 years.
- A scroll down my contact list. When I was in Washington, DC, working like a maniac, I found that my saving grace was having very few friends who were actually in politics with me. It kept me in touch with the real world "outside the Beltway." Nowadays, although I have a great many friends in marketing, PR, and the social media crowd, I make it a point to connect with my close friends who are brick-and-mortar business owners, engineers, doctors, investment professionals, and Marine Corp officers. They tell me what's going outside the marketing Beltway, so to speak, and give me a well-rounded view of the current business environment and economic landscape.
- A non-work book and little TV. I'm a voracious reader, and in addition to my daily RSS feeds, I am always reading a non-marketing piece of literature. You can see what's in my library on Shelfari, and right now I'm reading Snowball, a book on Warren Buffett. (Tim Walker and I are slogging our way through it). I also co-host a monthly literary discussion on works by a wide variety of authors, from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to Abraham Lincoln to Flannery O'Connor. How do I have time to read all this? I don't watch TV. Except for Lost and 30 Rock (and a little bit of sports), I tend to stay away from the boob tube. We've been slowly downsizing our TV consumption, and while we have basic satellite, we will soon make the jump back to the rabbit ears (in HD of course). Between Boxee, Hulu, and streaming Netflix, who needs 150 channels? The caveat to all this is....
- An XBox full of friends. Once a week on Tuesday nights, and an occasional auxiliary night on Thursday, a gaggle of friends and I fight terrorists on XBox360 Live. Our current games de jour are Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 (TXSpecialEd is my handle, in case you want to join). While keeping America free, we also talk a lot of trash and stab each other in the back repeatedly. It's a guilty pleasure, nothing but fun, and keeps me from taking myself too seriously.
What are your 11 secrets? To follow the 11 Little Secrets meme, track the hashtag #11LS on Twitter. While you are at it, you should follow me on Twitter here. Enjoy this post? Please consider subscribing to this blog in your RSS reader of choice.
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