The 2K11 24/7 XVIII: What do you want to be known for?

Kevin is one of my favourite people to talk to lately; I can pretty much fire any question at him and he’ll mull it over and come up with a highly detailed response, usually after I’m asleep, there for me to find whenever I next open my computer. The question this time?“What do you want to be known for?”Not the easiest question to answer! There was a time where I didn’t really have a plan for what I wanted to be doing in the next 6 months. Next year. Next five years. Heck, there was a time where I was living cheque to cheque without any care for what was happening in the next few days; I just lived for the moment as if nothing else ever mattered. I’ll tell you right now that that’s not the way to be and that consumer debt is a demon that you should vanquish as soon as possible, but that’s another post unto itself. If you want me to drop some knowledge on that (with my little brother the Financial Rep as the guest speaker – all Palmers have worked in a bank at one point or another…), let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to make it happen!

I know what I want to be known for – I’m working on it in my secret lab daily. When someone tells me that it’s a shaky idea, I don’t get discouraged – I take their advice and retool it until it’s better than it was before I asked them. In my opinion, you need to know how you want to make your mark on this world. What is our purpose for living? If you’re Christian, it’s to live out God’s plan for our lives. If you’re atheist, you’re still trying to live your life as best as possible, right? I think this applies to anyone from whatever walk of life you’re coming from. So it’s all about optimizing the time we have on the planet and continually trying to improve until you get to the point where you want to be. If you’re not doing it, I suggest you really figure out what moves you and make baby steps towards accomplishing it.

Don’t know where to start? Here’s a few things I can suggest to get the wheels turning:

The Keywords Game

Grab some paper, Post-It Notes – whatever works for you. For a minute or two, just start scrawling out the first words that come to mind – keep it up until you can’t write anymore! Now you’ll have a number of random, discrete ideas in front of you. Look for common linkages and themes among them. Which ones stand out to you? What do these words reflect about your dreams? Desires? Current mind state? Try building yourself a framework of how you’d like your days to be from these – you might be surprised with some of the results you find!

What’s Around Me?

This is what I’m currently up to in my mad state of decluttering. Alright, this is how I envision it – we all have a number of possessions in our lives, right? With this approach, I think the most important thing is to realize what they mean to you, individually. I’m looking over to my right and I see this:

To you, it might just be a stack of paper. But to me, it’s the stack of paper that’s in my knapsack daily. For better or for worse, I’ve created this pile of half-completed ideas that I need to take the time to morph into something more substantial. What do I mean there? Well, in this pile is, for example:

• My checklist of things to finish doing for the wedding
• A schedule for church that I really need to input into my BlackBerry
• Script work for Fish ‘n’ Chimps
• Infographic ideas in progress

So there’s a lot of stuff I tend to keep around that will eventually develop into greater things if I sit down and give them time. Speaking of which, I should really schedule that in, too…

What am I Bookmarking?

Similar to the concept of What’s Around Me?, this is all about examining your favourites – the links you save as to-do’s – that sort of thing. They reflect the sites you want to explore and the things that you like to spend your time digesting. What is there that you can do that is along the lines of this? What could you do better? What do you think you could contribute toward it? All things that could be your ticket to doing something that drives you  a little closer to how you should be spending your time…

If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend watching Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams:

I’ll watch this every six months or so for some self-renewal. I won’t spoil it for you, but the words of a dying man often ring with more resonance and sincerity that some other random person who might be trying to give you advice.

So that’s it! You’ve made it through today’s blog post! Give yourselves a pat on the back 🙂 I’ve been reviewing the poll results, and really, seems like you guys are okay with what I’m feeding you daily, so I’m not going to worry about it.

Looking forward to tonight – a Third Tuesday Toronto event based on the book “Content Rules” by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman – haven’t got a chance to really get through the book yet, so hopefully the event will help kickstart my absorption while I finish some other reading.

And with that, I bid you adieu! See you tomorrow!

–case p.

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