The QLog

50/5 Challenge

I have encouraged friends, family, and clients (and some strangers) to consider crafting the following:

A. A Life List of 101 Goals that includes goals for 1, 3, 5, 10, 20, (and maybe 50) year time horizons.

B. A Purpose Statement to explain the reason one has for waking up everyday (a good starting point is to consider what you would like people to say about you...both now and 100 years after you have died).

However, a few people have told me that they have have a hard time with both of these activities. Here is an exercise that can help.

Today, you are given both "the good news" and "the bad news".

1. While having breakfast with your accountant, you discover that your net worth has suddenly increased, due to all your efforts, to $50 million dollars!

2. However, after lunch, during a routine doctor visit, you discover that you only have 5 years to live. These will be healthy years until the very last day; however, there is no cure or treatment.

This is the 50/5 Challenge. Map out how you would spend your time for the next five years. Go into detail. Do not just say "travel the world". Where would you go? Why? With who? What would you do there? What else?

If you have a problem with goal setting, this may help you gain some insight into what you really would like to try, see, experience, be, or have before you really do enter into your last five years of your life.   

100 Goals in 1000 Days

Yesterday, I started a new blog to track one hundred goals I plan to complete over the next 2.75 years. Please visit 100goalsin1000days.com to learn more about this new meme. Although this neoblog has a minimalist look currently, as it matures, the style will certainly change and I have plans to add both audio and video entries. 

My new 100 Goals in 1000 Days blog will NOT replace Qlog as it has a very different purpose. Instead, I will be maintaining both digital journals simultaneously.

What Have You Forgotten?

On March 19th, the world lost writer and visionary Sir Arthur C. Clarke. You can see the farewell video that he recorded for his 90th birthday where he outlines his world-changing "three wishes" for humanity I hope they all are granted in the near future.   

Although Clarke is best well known for his science fiction novels such as Childhood’s End (which has been in print for 50-plus years and has generated over $25 million in revenue) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (plus the 1969 movie of the same name that he co-created with director Stanley Kubrick), he also wrote a technical paper that outlined the feasibility of a true global communication system in 1945 via satellites in geosynchronous orbit, a brilliant insight, some years before Sputnik. Twenty years later, Clarke wrote an interesting essay entitled "How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time" about this idea as he did not patent the the concept (yet, he points out, the patent itself would have expired by the time it would become economically viable anyhow).

I decided to re-read his classic novel Rendezvous with Rama and while I was immersed within his fictional universe, I discovered a great question, a motto of one of the characters, Karl Mercer: What Have You Forgotten?

Consider your current goals, projects, and tasks. What is missing? What is hiding? What have you overlooked? Is there an assumption you need to re-think, a variable you need to re-calculate? In other words, what have you forgotten?

Behavior as a Mirror of Self

"Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I posted the above quote last week and today I'd like to explore the idea with more depth.

Behaviors, unlike thoughts, are observable to other people. Although a witness will often not understand the reasons why someone acted a certain way, they will know how someone conducted their affairs. Your behavior is measurable and can be compared and contrasted in the following ways:

1. What you said you would do (consider the saying "actions speak louder than words").
2. What your peers or competitors are doing.
3. What others have done in similar situations in the past.

Bottom Line: External acts are the main way others judge our qualities as a human being. The summation of what we do, both small and grand, becomes the public record of our life.

Five Year Plan

"We greatly overestimate what we can accomplish in one year.  But we greatly underestimate what we can accomplish in five years.”  - Peter Drucker

Successful people usually have a time horizon that spans several years. So, if you do not have a 5-year plan, I highly suggest you take an evening an map out the next few years, consider everything you would like to do, have, be, and experience. Some things are just not possible to complete within 365 days. Increase your goals list to span long-term targets that may take a few winters to accomplish.

Know-What

"There is one quality more important than "know-how" and we cannot accuse the United States of any undue amount of it.  This is "know-what" by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes, but what our purposes are to be." - Norbert Wiener (the founder of the interdisciplinary field of Cybernetics), The Human Use of Human Beings, 1954

What Are You Learning in 2008?

What one subject do you want to learn in 2008? An additional skill? A second language? A new hobby? Or do you want to become a subject matter expert in specific field or niche?

Both formal and personal studies are important for self-growth. Successful output is linked to wise mental inputs. Make sure that you have decided to learn something novel and worthwhile this year.

Intensity With Direction

A layman's definition for the term velocity might be "speed with direction." What is the velocity of your life? Which way are you going and how fast?

Consider a car. If it is going in the right direction, but only traveling at 1 mile an hour, it has a low velocity. If the same auto has a high speed, like 75 miles per hour, but going in the wrong direction, it will never reach the correct destination. Both factors are important.

For human goals, the velocity of success is probably better defined as "intensity with direction" as projects require many types of effort which may or may not be 'fast'. Goals require work. This is the Law of Action.

Have you determined your direction?
Have you maximized your intensity?

Two Extremes and the Mean

When considering any major problem, it is useful to consider these three potential end-games.

1) What is the worst possible thing that could happen? Consider the bleakest consequence. What steps can be taken to decrease the possibility of this occurring?

2) What is the best case scenario? Stay objective when answering this; however, consider the optimum solution and the methods that would produce this successful result.

3) What is the most likely outcome? Why do you think this is the case? Analyze your assumptions.

THE Answer or Answers?

As we grow up, schools often instill the idea that problems have a single answer. Exams and questions are often worded to provide the 'correct' solution.

Few problems are this black and white. To become a successful problem solver, it is vital you break away from this sociological conditioning. Instead of seeking THE answer, seek a minimum of three potential solutions. Then evaluate the costs and benefits of each possibility and select the best choice.