Chris Edgar | Purpose Power Coachings last blog post..Job Interviewing From Within (Part One)

@JayCruz: Thanks – I’m glad you enjoyed the conversation.

@Hunter: It’s even better getting faces with voices, but we’re not quite there yet. And if you don’t think you’re hacking your moleskine right, you’re probably not. Search Flickr for ideas. :p

@J.D.: I really don’t see the distinction in the categories you mention, but that’s probably more due to my stubborn Aristotelianism than anything. I’ll definitely have to think about a readable, concise way to explain this – as I’ve told others, it’s about time for me to bring the background of my thinking into the foreground for a little bit.

@Dustin: There is currently no link just for the series, but we are on iTunes under Productive Flourishing.

Dustins last blog post..Reaching Your Goals – Dutch Style

I actually distinguish between results, productivity, personal development, personal excellence, and self-help. They’re all complimentary, but orthogonal.

I think it helps to have a frame for these, otherwise, it’s easy for one topic to bleed into another. For example, my personal development frame is a set of categories that includes mind, body, career, financial, emotions, relationships, and fun. I invest across those buckets. Being productive helps me to to be effective in the categories, but productivity for the sake of being productive isn’t effective. It’s too easy to get a lot of thing done that don’t matter.

On the other hand, having a great productivity system that supports you, makes life easier. Having a system is way more powerful than ad-hoc, because you can stop wasting time thinking about the basics and use your brain where you need it most. You can also dramatically reduce time on things that don’t matter and make more time for things that do. The right system also helps you turn your dreams into results. Best of all, the right system helps you enjoy the process.

Personal development on the other hand is acknowledging that there’s skills that you can learn to improve your thinking techniques, you can improve your body’s performance, you can develop your emotional intelligence, you can master situations, and most importantly, you can improve your own attitude under a variety of scenarios. There’s a simple reality that you’re climbing or sliding in these areas and if you don’t use it, you lose it.

I think the balance across categories is key. Just like martial arts how some styles focus on some things more than others, there’s a lot of styles of personal development that are too focused on the mind or too focused on feelings or too focused on just one aspect. The sum is more than the parts and an integrated approach is more powerful. I’ve learned time and again, it’s best to have a large toolbelt so you can use the right tool for the job.

J.D. Meiers last blog post..Luck and Success

I got my first moleskine notebook recently, but I don’t think I’m doing it right.

Carlas last blog post..Does Eating Organic Mean Going Broke?