Month: June 2013

Have you thought about this before? One decision can change everything.

Literally. Just one. This was brought to light for me in a real way when my dad fell recently and broke his hip area in five places. (See my last blog post for more detail on this mountain bike crash.)

Just one decision of his did this. He decided to push it a little harder and go a little faster down the last downhill. He was doing great until the bottom… And then bam! That one decision has made it so he won’t be fully active for three months. Three months has been radically changed because of one decision.

Now I’m not saying don’t ever push yourself or live on the edge or have fun – I’m just saying think about your decisions and choose wisely. Because there can be negative consequences that you don’t think about in the moment. I will still do extreme sports and live my life as I do, but I will be more mindful of the potential effects of my decisions.

So choose wisely, because ONE decision can change everything.

 

Calling 911 for my dad was crazy. And for it to happen on Father’s Day too… He said I handled it well, but a lot of emotions went through me.

But this instance gave me a renewed sense of what’s important to me. It really hit me that I love him so so much. I didn’t want anything to happen to him, so I just kept praying that God would heal him. (As of 6/19/13, he is still in the hospital recovering from breaking his hip in five places from falling on our mountain bike ride. He will hopefully be out soon. Then he’ll be on crutches for about a month. And then about two more months after that before he’s fully active.)

Later, it hit me: It’s not about what you’re doing, but it’s about who you’re with. 

We had quite a different Father’s Day than we had planned. Instead of a family dinner with our extended family, we spent our day hanging out in the hospital room with my dad in lots of pain. And yet it was still a great time together. Just being together was enough. And that’s what’s important.

It’s about love. And people. And relationships. That’s what matters. Jesus told us to love God and to love others. So that’s what we are to do.

So in the midst of the crazy things in your life, take some time to think about what’s important in your life.

What’s important to you? I hope it’s simply put: Love God and love others.

Don’t you love procrastinating? At least in the moment we do… Sometimes I’m the king at it.

I’ll have some big task or assignment I have to do, but I won’t want to do it so I do everything else on my list of things to do but that one task that I actually need to. Which usually means I turn to Facebook…

 

This isn’t good, because you not only give yourself less time to do the important task, but you also stress yourself out all day thinking about the thing you’re putting off.

 

Instead, try doing the hardest thing first.

Brian Tracy calls this “Eat That Frog!”.

The idea is this. If you were told you had to eat a frog, you’d be stressing about it all day long dreading that gross frog you’re going to have to eat. What if instead the first thing you did that day was you ate the frog! Well you’d get it done and nothing else would seem as hard later in the day, because you’d gotten the biggest and scariest thing out of the way.

 

So stop procrastinating on that big frog. Eat it as the first thing you do in the day, and everything else that day will be easier!

 

What’s that frog you need to eat today?

Have you ever tried cutting thick rope? Well it’s hard. How about doing it thirty times in a row? Even harder. I can answer yes to both of these. But doing this taught me a very valuable lesson of the difference between being effective and being efficient.

Peter Drucker explains the difference this way:

Efficiency is doing things right.

Effectiveness is doing the right things.

There’s a big difference in that, and I’ll expand on that now.

My Story:

For my previous internship at Convene, a random task I was asked to do was to cut rope for them for a visual demonstration they wanted to use it for. This was based on Francis Chan‘s illustration exemplifying our time on earth in comparison to eternity. (Click here to see Francis’ video).

So cutting rope is not an easy thing. I started out using a wood burner with a small sharp tipped blade, but it took forever to cut and burn the rope using this, something like 6 minutes for each piece of rope – way too long of time… I was determined to make it faster though.

I thought if I could just better position all my tools and materials or keep the burner hotter, then I’d be doing the right thing and make good improvements.

Little did I know I was focusing on the wrong thing. I was using the wrong tools. It was like using scissors to mow a lawn – tedious and terrible.

Listening to my boss’ advice, the next day I went and got a big X-Acto knife to cut it and a coworker brought in a little blow torch. With these tools, I could make the pieces of rope in about 18 seconds.

What a huge change! That’s 20 times faster!

When I shifted away from caring about how to become most efficient with the tools I had to thinking about if I even had the right tools is when I crossed the line from efficient to effective.

My Lesson Learned:

I could’ve kept trying all I wanted to improve my materials’ positioning or I could’ve gotten the right tools. Thankfully, I switched to getting the right tools.

This shows the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. Rearranging my materials to a better position (becoming more efficient by doing things right) only got me so much. It’s when I evaluated if I was even doing the right thing and using the right tools that I actually got to effectiveness.

Efficiency is good and helpful, but it will only get you so far. Focusing on effectiveness is so much more important if you actually want to dramatically improve.

I’d encourage you to focus on being effective in your life. This is where real and impressive change will come about. And in time, efficiency will naturally come as well.

So go ahead and play with the knives in your life to see if they are even the correct ones to be using!

What’s an example from your life where you focused on efficiency instead of effectiveness? Share your story by commenting below.