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I suspect that most people live their lives in reasonable accordance with their values, at least most of the time. It’s not always easy to do, of course:

• You may value independence, yet, when your daughter has grown and is ready to move out on her own, you are not sure you want her to be so independent.
• You may value creativity, but find that you stifle your own creativity because you also value security, which makes you not want to take chances.

But, I also suspect that most people could not set down and list their values. So, if you are included in that group, I encourage you to take some time to list your values. It can be very enlightening. And, it can let you see that you might have some values that you are not living up to as well as you desire.

To help you think about your values, I’ll share my current list with you and we’ll use a couple of examples from this list to illustrate some important points. My current list of values is as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

I came across a few really good articles the past couple of weeks. This is good material for reading over the weekend, and/or to help you get in the right frame of mind on Monday.

• Leo Babauta recently wrote 3 Truths to Help You Live a Life of Gratitude. As with all of Leo’s articles, this one is very well thought out. Perhaps you already live a life of gratitude, and need no further guidance on it. But, if you are like me and are horribly inconsistent at being grateful, and if it is not really internalized within you, you’ll want to read this article.
• Earlier this week, my friend John Rocheleau published an article on empowerment and the Courage to be Yourself. John reminds us that we too frequently look to external resources for our empowerment, instead of looking within.
• Toward the end of 2006, JD wrote a post entitled Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. The article is very well written and has a number of excellent points (whether you plan on being a millionaire or not).

Mark Cuban has a two-sentence blog post, which says

“Today is the youngest you will ever be. Act like it.”

And, Seth Godin has a post entitled Is It Worthy? I really like his summary paragraph:

“The object isn’t to be perfect. The goal isn’t to hold back until you’ve created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all.”

Have you ever caught yourself working feverishly to solve what your mind had classified as a problem, only to later discover there was no problem at all?

Well, it just happened with me and caused me to waste a lot of time. Since it is fresh on my mind, I figured I would share the problem with you and what I learned in the process of “solving it.”

The Case Study: My Non-Problem

A couple of times over the past few weeks, my server has been down for about an hour. That, of course, is an actual problem. The non-problem came from the perspective I put on it. Specifically, rather than acknowledging that almost all servers go down every once in a while, even the most expensive ones, I took those down-times as an indication that I needed to change my web-hosting.

So, I looked at the facts that I knew: Read the rest of this entry »

Editorial note: This is a guest blog post, written by my friend Thomas Hall, regarding his thoughts on what the iPhone SDK means for him. He and I have been Windows Mobile and Palm enthusiasts for a long time, but now we both are thinking we could migrate to iPhone-only. Anyway, I don’t want to steal Thomas’ thunder, but just wanted to take a moment to thank him for writing this and to encourage you to chime in with your thoughts in the comments.

I am excited about the iPhone SDK announcement. The iPhone SDK makes it relatively easy to make feature-rich programs for a mobile platform. Other development platforms do not make it as easy to create the UI or the programming language or APIs were too restrictive. But, that’s not why I’m excited.

Being a Palm user since the Pilot 5000, I went to a Treo and then Windows Mobile, Symbian (S60 and UIQ), and then the BlackBerry, trying to find the “perfect” platform. The iPhone was interesting to me, but not as a primary device, as it lacked support for third-party applications. That had always been the great allure of the Palm. There were so many apps on it that you could find almost anything.

Currently, I use a combination of a BlackBerry and a Windows Mobile device because there just aren’t enough of my favorite applications on the BlackBerry yet. The tipping point in my move from Palm to the Windows Mobile/BlackBerry combination was that enough of my favorite software had been ported over to Windows Mobile or I found decent equivalents.

So the iPhone is now a possibility for me as my only mobile device. Why? Because the SDK means that developers will port some of the third-party applications that I have been a loyal user of over the years. Here are some examples of items I’ve used on the Palm and Windows Mobile:

• Astraware games (Sudoku, Bejeweled)
• Chess Genius or PocketChess
• eReader
• eWallet
• ListPro
• Mobipocket Reader
• PhatNotes
• SplashID
• SplashShopper
• Secret!

So, that’s not a long list, but the other apps are minor or are replaced by features native to the device itself, or that have some different equivalent that is platform-specific (a great example of this is PhatNotes). Generally, you can categorize the list above into the following main categories: Games, Productivity, eBook Readers, and Security.

Looking at that list above, I decided to go see what has been said now that the iPhone SDK has been released, and I am VERY pleased with what I see:

• Astraware, Nothing on their blog yet, but their forums indicate they are looking into iPhone support
• Mobipocket, mobi_cs1 indicates they have been waiting for the iPhone SDK to come out (near the bottom of the forum page)
• Iliumsoft indicated that they definitely plan to support the iPhone (this is major!)
• SplashData states they plan to launch an iPhone beta before year end.

So, that really makes me happy! The developers not only see how nice the SDK is and what they can do with it, but customers are asking for these programs and they’re listening. And since the SDK will allow you to run these applications natively and supported (instead of on a jailbroken device), there are going to be some amazing things released

Several months ago, my good friend Lance Gallup wrote a guest post for me: Reducing Mind Clutter: Tuning It Out. Yesterday that post received several hundred visitors from being recognized on StumbleUpon. I am delighted by this because I am glad to see Lance’s excellent article get the circulation it deserves.

Well why did it take so long, you say? I suspect there could be several underlying factors, but the point that it illustrates to me is the principle of delayed germination. I am old enough to have seen this principle play out many, many times in my life. I can think of many examples where I have advised my children on something, felt that it was completely ignored, and then years later see the advice “dawn on them” as worthy of their implementation. Of course I have seen it in the business arena as well, as I am sure you have.

I mention this for a couple of reasons:

• In case there are some of you who are discouraged that your “seeds are not germinating,” and that all of your efforts are in vain, maybe further reflection can help you be more optimistic. Think back to the times when your seeds did germinate, after you had given up on them.
• This can be a reminder to us all that we are always planting seeds. Eventually something will come of them. Hence, it is just one more reminder that we should be careful what seeds we do plant.

Now, back to Lance Gallup. Lance is an extremely talented musician. He is an excellent song writer, singer, and guitarist. He and I share a passion for music and yesterday he shared one of his songs with me. Today, I am sharing it with you: Back In the Day. (Lyrics are here.) Enjoy!