focus on building.................

 

The important stuff has no finish line.

-James Clear

 

the essential things.............

 

As you continue to clear out the closet of your life, you will experience a reordering of what really matters.  Life will become less about efficiently crossing off what was on your to-do list or rushing through everything on your schedule and more about changing what you put on there in the first place.  Every day it becomes more clear than the day before how the essential things are so much more important that then next most important thing in line.

-Greg McKeown, essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Counting.................

 

There was a sign hanging in the physicist Albert Einstein's office at Princeton that said: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

-Peter Bevelin

thoughts....................

 

What you’re taught isn’t always what matters.

-Farnum Street

On the importance of having................

 

..................................the most leverage.

-Seth Godin

Don't care much about the tech industry.....

 ................................................but this is serious.

Some judgment required............

". . . doing the most important thing is always the most important thing."

-Gary Keller

which matter........................

"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least."

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Reasons why I like living in Newark and Licking County.......

Reason #73.............................................The Newark Skate Park

Thanks to collaboration between two local philanthropic foundations and the City of Newark, we are blessed by the $2,000,000 re-imagining and rejuvenation of Everett Park.  Today was the ribbon cutting ceremony for the cornerstone of this project - the Newark Skate Park,  The skate park is clearly a world-class facility.   Free for kids of all ages.  Amazing:

Eleven Universal Laws of the World.........

………………………..can be found here.  Ignore them at your own risk.  Here are two, just to whet the appetite:

1. Littlewood’s law: We can expect “miracles” to happen regularly, because in a world with 7 billion people the odds of a one-in-a-billion event are pretty good.

7. Wiio’s laws: “Communication usually fails, except by accident.”

via

On the importance of........................

...........................................................................Krulak's Law.

The important..................

"Remember that there is only one important time and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future? The most important pursuit is to do good for the person standing at your side, for that alone is the pursuit of life." 

-attributed to Leo Tolstoy

88 Important Truths......................

The first ten:

1. You can’t change other people, and it’s rude to try.

2. It is a hundred times more difficult to burn calories than to refrain from consuming them in the first place.

3. If you’re talking to someone you don’t know well, you may be talking to someone who knows way more about whatever you’re talking about than you do.

4. The cheapest and most expensive models are usually both bad deals.

5. Everyone likes somebody who gets to the point quickly.

6. Bad moods will come and go your whole life, and trying to force them away makes them run deeper and last longer.

7. Children are remarkably honest creatures until we teach them not to be.

8. If everyone in the TV show you’re watching is good-looking, it’s not worth watching.

9. Yelling always makes things worse.

10. Whenever you’re worried about what others will think of you, you’re really just worried about what you’ll think of you.

The next seventy-eight may be found here.

via

The indispensable Nicholas Bate..............

more great stuff here

History.............................

xkcd takes us back in time to the fall of 1881, a sad time in American history.  While many faithful readers will recognize the events involved, I'm guessing many a recent college graduate won't have a clue.  Perhaps we ignore history because there is so much of it, or maybe it's because we feel our own time (and by default, us) is special and unique.   The study of history offers an important context for understanding the human experience.   We avoid it at our own peril.

For those interested in the events of 1881, this book is highly recommended.

It's important............................

       via

When he says "essential".................

.................................................................he means essential:

Focus..............................

lifted from this powerpoint presentation

On what is important.......................

     At Colonial that year, I was in a playoff with Johnny Pott, and at the ninth hole I found myself in a greenside bunker.  I led by a stroke and desperately wanted to get down in two for a par to keep my lead.  As I was standing over the ball ready to play the shot, I heard the voice of a small boy behind me.  I backed off the shot and laughed as his mother shushed him.  Then the boy began crying, so I backed off again.  When I settled over the ball a third time, I heard the boy's muffled cry, and when I turned around, there was this little boy turning red because his mother had clamped her hand over his mouth to keep him quiet.
     Finally I said the the mother, "Hey, it's okay.  Don't choke him.  This isn't that important."  Then I went back to the ball, blasted out, saved par, and went on to win the tournament.

-Arnold Palmer,  A Life Well Played:  My Stories

Speaking of............................

....................................................................Ray Bradbury:

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. 

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” 


-Ray Bradbury