Successful Blog

Here is a good place for a call to action.

When Saying “Thank You” Can Never Be Enough

by

I’ve been thinking . . .

about saying “Thank you.”

It was always a problem, from the time I was wee one called “Bashful.” How do I express sincere gratitude when the words, the simple words that are available have been over used and pounded in to submission? How can I just say them, when I need their tired forms to carry the deepest meaning, yet they sound just the same as when they are tossed out frivolously by anyone with a vocabulary?

They say actions speak louder than words, but . . . sometimes words are necessary. The right words are an action in and of themselves. They take time to be chosen and arranged to convey the thought.

Here is the thought:
We, everyone of us — those who went, those who held their breath in anticipation whether they were going to attend SOBcon or not. — We all made it happen. It was a product built from our faith in each other and a focus on hard work –the details that the committee — Chris, and Lisa, Terry, and Mike worked on daily. It’s the serious work that the speakers put into the content and the passion with which they collected and delivered it with joy and generosity. It is the open hearted joy of those who could attend and the quiet support those who could not –all standing by ever ready to help. Always ready to offer their faith and passion for the event.

This was so not the worde of one — simple words cannot expand to describe or express my deep, deep gratitude for every voice, every thought, every good feeling that was a part.

So I am left with a heartfelt “Thank, you, you have changed my life.”

black%20signature

A Sense of Urgency

by

I’ve been thinking . . .

about my sense of urgency.

When I was a publisher, I placed a high value on my sense of urgency. Everyone in my book of “those who are good at this” had a sense of urgency about the work we did. We tried to trim any schedule while still delivering top-notch quality.

Urgency is a highly personal relationship between a person and the work. It is a decision on how quickly something needs to be done in order to be done well.

Urgency means meeting the schedule with outstanding work.
Urgency means coming in early so that the next guy has more time to do what he needs to do.
Urgency means focusing on the task at hand, focusing to do it well on the first and only try.

When you work on unrealistic schedules that drive revenues that support your paycheck, urgency is value that is worth cultivating.

I taught my team in publishing that urgency is a merit skill.

Then I came online. I found it unfortunate and frustrating that folks didn’t seem to have a sense of urgency. I heard my urgent voice saying why don’t folks care that things slip and take longer than they need to?

Then I looked again at my sense of urgency. I started to realize that I had learned to be urgent about everything. Everything must get done. There were musts and shoulds, where I needed none. When I unpacked the word urgency I found the words responsibility, control, and oh no! . . . oh yes! stress.

Over time, I’ve adjusted my steps to walk when I don’t need to run.

I’m urgent only when time makes a real difference to the outcome.

I wish I had been a blogger before I was a publisher. Having known this would have made me a better manager.

Sometimes I truly do need a sense of urgency Sometimes I truly am better off without one.

Liz signature

What Do I Offer Those Who Don’t Blog?

by

I've been thinking . . .

If I asked you, “Are you 5 years old?”

You would say, “No.”

If I said, “Could you predict how a 5 year old child would answer my questions?”

You would probably say, “No.” again.

But you’ve been 5 years old, what would get in the way of your answering?

You no longer represent the group called “5 year olds.”

In the years since then, you have made discoveries; you’ve picked up details; you’ve learned things that you might not even remember how you know them.

Why am I writing about 5 year olds?

Hang in for one more minute.

Once I built my first blog and I learned to spell HTML, I left the world of “those who don’t blog.” I made discoveries; I picked up details; I learned things, things that I don’t even remember how I learned them.

I no longer represent the group called “those who don’t blog.”

Many of “those who don’t blog” read blogs, yet many will never become bloggers. Many more of “those who don’t blog” are bound to start reading blogs too.

What do I have to think about to be sure that I offer them the same positive experience that I offer bloggers? Hmmmm.

Liz's Signature

My How We’ve Grown!

by

I've been thinking . . .
We don’t grow at steady pace. Maybe our cells do, but we don’t. We grow in spurts, in leaps and jumps. We grow, often without even knowing.

After 8th grade graduation, I was incredibly hungry. That first year in high school, I was eating twice as much at lunch. It was hard to miss that I was growing. By the end of 9th grade, I had grown three inches in one year. To my mother’s dismay, clothes in stores were too short for me. We started designing and making what I would wear. I grew two more inches the following year.

My son was the same way. When he would start eating two or three times as much, we would know he was growing. We’d get ready to replace his wardrobe. With my son, just as my mother did, I kept marks on the wall to record how tall he was getting.

My son and I get incredibly hungry about learning too.

We’re saturation learners. We go live in the knowledge. We become whatever it is that we want to know. That’s how I became a dancer, a teacher, a publisher, a blogger. That’s how he mastered stop action video, how he became an award-winning webmaster, how he aced the final on game theory.

Benchmarks for learning are there for all of us. While we’re kids in school, we have report cards. They get us to stop for a brief moment. They get us to know what we know now that we didn’t know then. Classes and courses summarize outcomes to remind us of what we’ve picked up while we took them. In traditional jobs, performance appraisals are set up to get us to look at progess.

We need a reminder to reflect on how far we’ve come in living our lives.

Sometimes we’re so busy living, we don’t stop to see how we’ve grown. We especially don’t see the wisdom, knowledge, and experience. We tend to look at ourselves only when things are going wrong.

One incredibly cool part of blogging is that a blog is a record of where we have been.

This weekend I’m going back in time. I’m going on a walk through my very first posts for the distinct purpose of seeing how I’ve grown. Like I used to with my old journals, I bet I’ll find myself answering the person I was when I wrote those posts.

Every now and then, I need to stop on this road. I need to see where I’ve been, to see how I’ve grown, to let go of the myths about myself that I might still be carrying. That’s how I know where I’m going.

That’s how I make sure I haven’t left anything important back where I was.

Liz's Signature