As I’ve discussed before, one of my current challenges is finding enough time in my day to fit in all the various tasks I need and want to accomplish. Reducing the task list is not an option – dishes need to get done, and you must always budget time to reflect on your dreams and progress. The only viable option is to make my pipelines more efficient, so that’s what I’ve been working on. I’m glad to report that I’ve found a few new tools that help make my day much easier! Sharing is caring, so here they are.

Pinterest   http://pinterest.com/     My userpage
Pinterest, a fusion of pin and interest, lets you easily create a collage of inspirational source materials. You simply click on the “Pin It” bookmarklet tool on the page with your inspiration, a popup lets you write a quick note and you select the board you want to pin it to, and voila, there it is for you and all the community to see. The nature of this tool allows you to browse other people’s boards, which can offer a trove of further inspiration and sharing!

Up until now, I’ve had a problem in my life in that I encounter so many cool and interesting ideas but I don’t have enough time to blog about each one. Pinterest lets me keep a hold of these inspirations without requiring the overhead that a blog post does. This tool helps solve my problem of keeping my inspirations on file, accessible, and visible to help inspire others.

Workflowy  https://workflowy.com/
Workflowy is one of the most simple yet powerful tools I’ve seen. In a nutshell, it’s a glamourized Notepad to-do list. But oh the glamour it has! It takes a node-based approach to to-do items, allowing each item to itself be the title of another to-do list. This recursion allows you to pre-plan and list out each element of your brainstorm. It also has #hashtag capabilities as well as a completed indicator and user sharability/editability. These features help take it from a simple to-do list into a powerful project management tool.

For me, The phrase “I love lists” is a gross understatement. I believe so strongly in lists! It’s simple: if you write down your desires and the steps it takes to get to them, all you need to do is that first step. There are no excuses when you have a list. You can see why I highly value a tool that helps me make and share such lists.

Of course, I continue to use Google Reader as the way to catch up on all the many blogs I read, although I’m disappointed with their new interface redesign. The first rule of design is “Don’t impede the primary purpose”, but they broke this by allocating less screen space to the blog posts and more to the menus around those posts… A silly mistake. A novice mistake, actually, one that leads to competition beating you.

Another tool I use to keep up to date with friends etc is the very popular Facebook. I’ve noticed with their recent improvements, more people have been sharing more diverse content, so in a way it acts as an information hub now more than it ever did before. I love the convenience it offers me in keeping up to date with friends, but as a tool for new discovery, I find it’s completely lacking. Facebook is for friends you already have, not for meeting new friends. That saddens me a bit, as I do love to meet new people and see new ways of thinking.

For that, I find Flickr is an excellent tool. There are tons of pools of content dedicated to certain topics, like cupcakes, home design, graphic design, photography, etc. Its community aspects are some of the best available. I find Flickr is very lacking in embracing new development ideas though, for example uploading video still has many limits (format, time, etc) despite how common video capturing is nowadays.

Over the past weeks my learning has included a focus on leverage and how important it is in being successful in business and life. Think about a lever – by using a stick (a tool) and a fulcrum (a certain piece of knowledge in a certain position), you can move a huge object with little effort. You literally do more with less: leverage. This principle can be applied to other areas in life, such as in business: by having an employee use tools and knowledge to create huge effects with little effort, you leverage them and create value. Of course, you already have the best tool possible: your brain. You simply need a fulcrum to let you use it to its maximum potential.

The tools I’ve listed above let me do more with less, they let me leverage my time and energy into something more than just seconds and potential. They let me capture and streamline the processing of information, and as I’ve come to re-learn, information is knowledge, and knowledge truly IS power. By using tools like this, I’m able to make myself stronger, do more with less. What more could a busy person ask for?

It’s amazing how much difference a few months can make. A year ago I was harvesting vegetables on my farm, now I’m back in Barrhaven pouring lattes and cooking up elaborate meals. Unexpected, quite; then again it seems life has a way of choosing the unexpected over the expected, almost as if it gets a thrill out of the resulting chaos and calamity.

Mom, I finally understand your thoughts regarding time being your currency. This very moment I’m beaming with happiness simply because I found the time to sit down and write these words, as time is what I’m seriously lacking nowadays. I have so many thoughts and ideas and plans but so little time to actually sit and write them down, let alone take steps towards achieving any of them. Yet this doesn’t stop the ideas from flowing. Many days I feel like a boulder in a rushing stream – unable to join the movement of energy despite being surrounded by nothing else.

Throughout this year I’ve been reading so many books – more specifically, so many different genres of books. Business books. Photography books. Finance books. Personal development books. Kids’ books. Cooking books. Psychology textbooks. Even a manga-style comic book, a format I’d never actually read before (in English, that is). I’m also reading these books in a completely different way than I did before, and as such I’m starting to gain a much deeper knowledge from them, far more than the mere sum of the words themselves. Tiny droplets of thoughts start beading up in my brain, then trickle down into each other to form interesting ideas and “what if’s”, which flow and pick up speed, combining with other ideas until they reach the rushing flow of ideas past and present alike.

And they add to the volume.

I’m starting to realize now that over recent years I’ve been adding quite a lot of volume to my idea pool without taking much of it out. University was a good outlet, although the high levels of creativity often added more volume just as fast as the pool was depleted. Same with my farming adventure, it was a great outlet but added more ideas and dreams just as fast. Nowadays though, my lack of long chunks of free time combined with plenty of tiny pockets of time here and there is the perfect combination for disaster – my brain has just enough time to spark ideas and add to the pool, but I have no time to dedicate to emptying it out.

No wonder I sometimes feel as if I’m drowning. It seems I’m doing exactly that.

Until now.

The most wonderful thing about being honest with yourself and your potential is that it doesn’t hurt to say, “Hey self, if you don’t like it, it’s time to change it.” On the contrary, it feels amazing to have that level of frankness with yourself. I know many people disagree, subconsciously choosing to accept a version of reality where their life is simply a result of consequences beyond their control. However I have long since learned that if one is honest and frank with themselves, if one fully embraces cause and effect and chooses to look at themselves and their actions non-judgmentally yet critically, if one identifies their weaknesses and learns from their mistakes then continues to dream and attain bigger and better: you truly become the master of your own destiny. Everything is possible. Life is no longer like a box of chocolates, it’s the entire chocolate factory, and you are Charlie.

With that in mind, I’ll be taking some time for myself, time to sort out some thoughts that need sorting, working on either emptying out the idea pool or digging it deeper. One way or another, this imbalance will be fixed, I promise me that.

Some might think it’s a bit too early to write about how amazing a new job is after working less than 10 hours at it. In most cases I would have to agree. Today, however, is not a most cases kind of day, for it was the day when it finally sunk in – I’ve found a company that acts with the highest level of integrity I’ve ever seen in my quarter century of life.

Respect, integrity, efficiency, ethical responsibility – the same traits many of us strive to achieve in our lives are so amazingly reflected in every facet of this organization that I came away from my training session feeling humbled at my own relatively small achievements, yet intensely inspired to achieve my greatest dreams! To find this feeling often takes hours of reflection, learning, and growing. To experience it as a job perk seems unfathomable, an offer that truly seems too good to be true; yet this is exactly what happened  today.

Reflecting on the day’s events, the one element that comes to the forefront of my mind was reading the most down-to-earth yet soaring-in-the-stars mission statement I’ve ever encountered; one that, while not denying the fact that this is a revenue-generating business, is far more motivated by the intrinsic rewards gained by being an exemplary member of its community. And unlike the vast majority of other companies, this one simply does not believe that exploiting people to gain greater profit margins is the right thing to do. I support that principle strongly.

Legally speaking, a corporation is a person. We never really think of businesses as an actual human-person like you and I are, but sometimes it’s fun to, like right now: pick a company you interact with regularly and envision them as a person – what are their characteristics and traits, what is their life goal and purpose, where are they heading in 10 years time and how will they get there?

When I envision Walmart, I see a middle aged businessman with piercing blue eyes and a legendary smile. He thrives on selling items and he’s damn great at it, but he’d sell you a medium-quality item at a low price just to see your face again next year. His life goal is to sell at least one item to every person in the world, no matter how he has to gets there.

When I envision Chapters/Indigo, I see the kindest and most gentle elderly woman with a delightful flower-pattered scarf. No matter what the subject, she has the answer to any question you have, but she doesn’t really keep up with today’s fast paced world anymore. When asked about her life goal, she responds,  “Goals? Whatever do you mean, dearie? Things have always been like this, and they will always be like this. Don’t fret about the future.”

When I envision my new company, I see a trendy young adult dressed in whatever clothing expresses themselves best that day – it’s a hot summer day, thus comfy khaki capris, brown sandals, and a t-shirt of their friend’s band paired with a boldly patterned half-buttoned summer dress shirt. Their demeanor exudes a friendly confidence which is irresistibly attractive; when you ask them what their life goal is, their eyes light up as they begin talking about all the wonderful ethical things they are doing and want to do! There’s a sense of youthful naivete underneath all this, but they catch your thought: “Yeah, I dream big. But if I don’t dream big, I won’t achieve big! And when I inevitably make mistakes, I don’t fear them, I learn as much as I can from them and become a better person. There’s no way I can’t succeed with this attitude!”

While all three are completely valid business approaches, this last person is someone I want to hang out with on a personal side of things. With their varied life experience, they have tons of cool tips and tricks to teach, anthologies of experiences to share, and are an amazing storyteller to boot. Now I’m being told that I get to hang out with them AND I get paid to do so… sounds like one heck of an amazing new job!

Today I was a ship captain!

That’s my little ship pictured above. Her name is La Damoiselle, French for dragonfly, an accurate name to describe her size and agility.

Here are the tools we use in our seafaring adventure:

Dice! By now you see that I’m talking about a game. But not just any old game, one of the best and most rewarding games out there: roleplaying games, games where you and your friends create the story and characters. Calling it collaborative storytelling is probably a better way of describing it.

What do you need to play a roleplaying game? You need friends, dice, a rulebook, and this:

A Character Sheet. This piece of paper represents your game character. Depending on what rulebook you play with, your character can be a wild gun-slinging cowboy, a mysterious elderly wizard, a strong and mighty warrior, an elusive techno-spy, a nature-loving wood elf… anything! You are limited to only what you can imagine.

One of your friends, or possibly yourself, plays the role of Game Master. They think up quests and adventures for your characters to go on, play the role of any characters you meet, and controls the bad guys in an attempt to thwart your characters’ desire for success.

However, the true fun comes in the sheer freedom you have as a player. Consider our pirate game – while sailing the seas, we encountered pirates attacking a British ship. We could choose to help fend off the pirates, or we could join the pirates in attacking the British ship (being a French crew, we have no sympathies for those Englishmen!), or we could ignore it and sail away. In the end we chose to attack the pirates and did so successfully, after having a hair-ripping naval battle in which I almost crashed out ship into a rocky island.

Ah, the life of a pirate! It’s fun to put on a different hat from time to time, and roleplaying games certainly let you get deep into the mind of a character in your chosen scenario. If you are a creative person who enjoys socializing while collaborating, or if your group of friends is looking for something new and interesting to do, consider roleplaying!