I remember how happy I was on my graduation from the Royal Military College of Canada. The double-major I chose had the heaviest course load of any program at my college, so each fall and spring exam session was a gruelling non-stop blur. I was so happy to never endure another exam for the rest of my life!

As I transitioned to my new career, that hope was somewhat dashed, but it wasn't so bad. There were some tests, but nothing that really pushed me to my limits as did the exams I endured in college. And what tests I did have to take became fewer as I progressed in my career.

Our society is set up to minimize discomfort, but I'm not sure that it is necessarily a good thing. Without opportunities to measure our abilities, there is little incentive to further explore our potential. I'm grateful for not having to relive the pressure of test-taking like I had in college, but on the other hand, I miss the opportunity to measure my abilities and push myself to a new level of performance.

I believe it is important to proactively put challenges in front of oneself in order to provoke growth and development, before life imposes a test that one might not be ready to take.

[Read more →]

We are programmed from an early age to think: "If I just work harder, I can reach my goals faster." This attitude is reflected in Daft Punk's hit "Harder Faster Better Stronger":

Work It. Make It. Do It. Makes Us
Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.
Work it harder, make it better,
Do it faster, makes us stronger
More than ever hour after
Our work is never over

But what if this belief is false? What if working harder, instead of making my results happen faster, just contributes to burn out?

Does turning the thermostat all the way up make the room heat up faster? So why would just "working harder" accelerate success?

My realization is that I should "work smarter": find the right level of effort that yields the best results. And take care of myself better so I can build a stronger personal foundation to support results that last longer.

[Read more →]

Lately I've been "burning out". I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself to launch new content simultaneously in English (for my Internet audience) and in French (for my local audience). It got to the point where my head was constantly buzzing with a low-grade headache, and my patience was in short supply.

Then I received a morning thought from Heather Frey, a fitness trainer who I follow on Facebook:

You are unfinished. Yet everyday you race, scramble, and pressure yourself to be finished, which is both impossible and exhausting. Your life is a beautiful project, not a task. It is not to be completed and put away but rather relished, enjoyed and learned from. Your life is not one day after another, it's a span of time with rest in between where you get a chance to grow and build momentum. Your life is suppose to be joyous and your "project" is to figure out how. Stop trying to "finish".

Stay CLEAR...stay FOCUSED...and it will be yours...

Best,
Heather

The moment I read Heather's message, the buzzing stopped, and I felt a weight lift off of my shoulders.

I also then remembered what columnist Roger Cohen wrote in a recent New York Times essay called "Florentine Choices":

In the U.S. culture of achievement, efficiency and logic are prized. In the Italian culture of aesthetics, the artful scam has its place. America acts in the belief that life is linear and leads to the realization of goals. Italy idles in the belief that life is circular and objectives an illusory distraction from pleasure.

Are objectives really an illusion? Did I get so wrapped up in the linear pursuit of trying to "complete", that I started driving myself to exhaustion chasing the impossible? [Read more →]

What does the word "tactical" mean to you? It might conjure up images of heavily armed soldiers storming a building, a swarm of tanks overrunning enemy defenses, a squadron of aircraft dueling it out over the English channel. Tactics rhymes with execution, punch, getting things done.

Are you thinking tactically enough to win?

Most entrepreneurs have a big-picture idea of what they want, recorded in a business plan or vision document or a simple list of goals. But then the document stays in a drawer or on the hard drive as they stumble into reactive mode, day after day, and not accomplishing what they initially said they wanted.

Planning requires two levels of thinking: strategic and tactical. Strategic planning is vision-focused, the "who am I", "what do I want to create" and "why is this important to me".  Strategic is longer term, one, three, five, ten years out. Strategic planning is important, because it gives a context and a purpose for action.

Tactical planning is goal-focused, the "how", the detailed actions needed to move the yardstick forward toward the big vision.

Where the strategic plan can be done in the abstract, because it deals with possibilities and assumptions, the tactical plan is how we dance with reality, respond to the actual situation on the ground, execute to create results. Tactical plans are meant to be short term: created quickly, executed boldly, then superseded by the next tactical plan based on the new situation. Rapid execution of a succession of tactical plans moves you step by step towards realizing the overall strategic plan.

For the entrepreneur, thinking tactically means creating a daily, execution-focused, tactical plan. [Read more →]

I follow over 231 blogs on leadership, business, marketing and personal development using Google Reader.  As I browse the stream of ideas, there are some that catch my eye for one reason or another, which I post to my "shared" list. This creates an interesting blog available to you at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/davenderg .

Here are some recent articles I recommend:  [Read more →]

Do you have a task that you've been procrastinating on, one that gets bigger every day even though you're trying to ignore it? I usually have a couple of those on my list. These are tasks that I'm dreading for one reason or another: tediousness, refusal to face the truth, fear, shame...

The more I try to push these tasks to the future, the bigger they get, to the point that just resisting them is sapping my energy and blocking my ability to spot and respond to other opportunities.

So it's time to do something about it.   [Read more →]

So it's a New Year, but how are you going to make this different then the old one? Here are three ideas to help you make this year your best ever!

For more information:

Link to this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBAMjY2vHto

My YouTube channel (includes my videos and other "favorites"):
http://www.youtube.com/coachdavender

My New Year's Eve was quiet, as usual (I don't like big celebrations). I ended up flipping through YouTube and randomly found the movie "Groundhog Day" starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. I've seen this flick several times before, but there was something that made me watch it with another perspective.

If you're not familiar with the movie, it's about the obnoxious Pittsburgh TV weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) who is assigned to cover the Groundhog Day festivities in small-town Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He grudgingly does his on-air spot and sets off on the return trip to Pittsburgh but has to turn back because of a snowstorm. Forced to stay in the small town for another night, he wakes up the next morning realizing to his horror that he has to relive Groundhog Day again, and again the next day and the day after that. Stuck in this time loop, he realizes that he is powerless to change the situation and sinks into a depression until something clicks and he decides to start living positively. Even that doesn't break the time loop, until...well, you'll have to see the movie to find out how it ends.

There was one point in the movie where I was sure that once Phil Connors "got the girl" then he would snap out of the time loop, but I realized it was only half-way through the movie. Then it came to me: this movie was calling me to snap out of my own "Groundhog Year". [Read more →]