About

Productive Flourishing is about the art of meaningful action. If you’re new here, you might want to take a look at my New Here? page.

What, exactly, is meaningful action? It’s the synthesis of productivity, personal development, and creativity – in short, it’s how we get out of our head, off our ass, and into the world. It’s that sweet spot between incessant navel gazing and mindless doing.

This blog is for people who:

• are interested in being holistic, integrated people.
• can’t press pause on their life while they learn how to fix it and have to learn to fix their plane while it’s flying.
• are compassionate, creative, and trying to change the world without selling out.
• realize they’ve saved a bunch of time but aren’t any better off as a result.
• are tired of productivity and personal development being about things instead of people

I don’t care much for productivity and personal development advice that “helps” you in the short run by giving lists of 87 things to help you do something you probably don’t need to be doing anyway. If you’re looking for that sort of thing, you probably won’t care much for what goes on here.

The backbone of this blog is the Aristotelian idea that we are what we repeatedly do. We become creative by doing creative things, just as we learn to become more productive by developing good habits and systems that help us do the important things we need to be doing. Since we become by doing, you can’t separate personal development (becoming) from productivity (doing) – this is one of the roots of the concept of meaningful action.

Although I’m flattered if you spend a while reading the posts on this blog, it’s an even greater compliment if you take the ideas and do something with them. My goal is to help you become a more productive, creative, and whole person, and the only way you’ll do that is through meaningful action.

About the Author

I’m helping people change the world. Bold? Not really. I help people do Big Things by making small steps, and by doing so, I’m changing the world.

Specifically, though, I’m helping creative people actually do something with those ideas, and I’m helping people who don’t consider themselves creative learn that they really are. I’m a catalyst that way, and one of my peculiar gifts is being able to see order in chaos the way a painter sees color on a blank canvas.

I’m really excited about where we’re (you and me) are going, but we build our futures on our pasts and presents, so you might like to know where I’m coming from.

Before I got into writing, thinking, coaching, and teaching about meaningful action, I was teaching philosophy at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln while I was completing my Ph.D. (in Philosophy) while simultaneously managing a career as a logistics officer in the Army National Guard. I’m happily married to a loving, beautiful, and brilliant woman – Angela, in case you see me refer to her in posts – so I was doing the best I could to be the husband, friend, and lover that she deserved. And then there was our house that we were remodeling.

On top of that, I’m an incorrigible polymath – I’m constantly learning new things, which means I’ve constantly got a whole bunch of stuff to do. My complicated, layered life was just an extension of my quest to learn and experience a bunch of new things.

Given that I learn by researching, experimenting, writing, teaching, and sharing, I decided to start helping other people become better at managing a whole bunch of Stuff at once. While in the short term, I made my situation worse – after all, starting a blog/business on top of everything was just making another thing to do – in the long term, I figured out how to make my life easier and much more meaningful. It turns out that many of those same techniques and orientations will help you, too.

Today, my life is much less complicated, but by no means simpler. I’m finishing up my Ph.D. this year, but I’m no longer teaching academic philosophy. I’m in a less-taxing duty assignment for the Guard and that’ll end soon. I spend each day doing what I love – helping people change the world by sharing ideas through this blog, designing products and programs that help people do meaningful stuff in the world, and helping individuals put some flexible structure into their lives through coaching.

That’s who I am and what I do. To learn more, well, you’ll just have to hang out for a while. I hope you do.

Random Stuff About Charlie
In no particular order with no particular relevance:

• My philosophical specialties are ethics and social/political philosophy. I’ve also done a lot of reading in American pragmatism, process thought, existentialism, classical philosophy, and Taoist philosophy. (I did mention I’m a polymath, didn’t I?)
• I’m a multi-functional logistics officer in the Army National Guard. That means I (theoretically) know know how to count, store, and move stuff from here to there.
• I deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in ‘04-’05. I was a transportation platoon leader for part of the tour and a plans officer for the other part. It was one of the best and worst times of my life.
• I’m a self-taught singer-songwriter who plays acoustic guitar. I’m a combination of Jack Johnson, Amos Lee, David Gray, and Mat Kearney – these artists would be ashamed at how I butcher their songs.
• I grew up in Fort Smith, Arkansas. I’m multi-racial, in case you’re trying to figure that out.
• I was a cheerleader in high school. Were it not for pictures on Facebook, I might not have told you.
• I attended the United States Military Academy at West Point but decided it wasn’t for me. I had scholarships on hold and slid into undergraduate studies without missing much of a beat.
• I’m an Eagle Scout, but I’m no longer involved with the BSA due to personal disagreement with their exclusivist policies.
• I learned a lot of practical craft skills from my father who was a general craftsman. I learned the hard way that just because I can build stuff doesn’t mean I should.
• I hate running, as much as I wish I loved it.
• I keep things relatively clean and ordered because I get overwhelmed by big messes to clean up.
• I laugh a lot and my sense of humor can range from slapstick to academically dry. Sometimes this comes through in my writing, but I think people find me more jovial and entertaining in person.
• I have a hard time asking for help. It’s a flaw that I’ve gotten much better about over the last few years, but I could still use some work there.
• We have three cats. Like most cat stewards, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how I can love them but hate having them at the same time.
• I’m not a fan of cold and snow but live in Lincoln, Nebraska – for now. Go figure?
• Due to a football injury, I can’t move the last knuckle on my right ring finger because that finger has a screw in it fusing those joints.
• I’ve been in life-threatening situations more times than I’d like to count. I get more scared thinking about them than I was during them.
• I’d like for Seth Godin, Merlin Mann, and Jack Johnson to know who I am. As far as I can tell, they don’t.
• I’ve always gotten along better with people 5-20 years older than me than with people my own age.
• I’m an old soul, it seems. At least, that’s what people tell me.
• I have a really good memory about some things. I often remember passages and facts from books I read 15 years ago.
• I love art and artists more than I love having art. Art and artists aren’t just limited to the black beret type, either.