Sure you know Bruce Lee the martial artist and movie star.  But do you know Bruce Lee the philosopher, comedian or master of personal development?  Bruce was one of my early inspirations.   He continuously pushed his mind and body to new levels and his physical prowess inspired and influenced body builders and martial artists alike.  As far as heroes go, Bruce Lee truly set an example of what it means to be YOUR best.  Bruce was all about making the most of what you’ve got, seeking truth knowledge, and applying what you know.   If you’ve seen him in movies or you know some of his quotes, you know exactly what I mean.   In this post, I share my lessons from Bruce Lee.

My Top 10 Lessons from Bruce Lee
These are my top 10 lessons from Bruce Lee:

• Be YOUR best.  It’s not about following in someone else’s footsteps or trying to be somebody you’re not.  It’s about unleashing your best version of yourself.  According to Bruce, “Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”
• Absorb what is useful.  It’s not about blindly adopting patterns and practices.  It’s about taking the best of the best and tailoring it.  It’s also about throwing away what doesn’t work.  Bruce borrowed concepts and techniques from everybody and every art in a relentless pursuit of the best of the best.  According to Bruce, “Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.”
• Keep an open mind.  You have to be willing to throw out what you already know and have a curiosity to explore new paths.  If you’re cup is already full, you can’t learn new things.  According to Bruce, “First empty your cup.”
• Aim past your target. Aim past your target, so when you fall short, you still land in the ballpark of success.  Bruce Lee was famous for his one-inch punch, but in reality he was aiming past the one-inch.  According to Bruce, “Don’t fear failure.  Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
• Stay flexible.  Be flexible in your approach.  Learn from everybody and everything and don’t get locked into a particular style.  According to Bruce, “Expose yourself to various conditions and learn.”
• Focus on growth.   Push past your limits.  According to Bruce, “There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”
• Know yourself. Your blind spots and ignorance can be your biggest weakness.  According to Bruce, “After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge.”
• Master your mind and body.   It’s not enough just to be smart.  It’s not enough just to master your body.  Your body and mind support each other.  Your body helps turn what you think or dream up into results.  According to Bruce, “As you think, so shall you become.”
• Apply what you know.  Life is not about watching from the sidelines.  Use what you know and put knowledge into practice.  Test yourself.  According to Bruce, “Knowing is not enough, we must do.  Willing is not enough, we must apply.”
• Make things happen.  When there is no wave, make one.  According to Bruce, “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”

I think it really boils down to making the most of what you’ve got, including your mind and body, pushing past your limits and following a path of continuous learning and growth.

Bruce Lee’s Physical Feats
While we don’t know whether the following stretch the truth, we do know you don’t look the way Bruce did by default.  It was by design and he pushed his physical limits.

These are some of the physical feats attributed to Bruce based on various demonstrations, his friends and associates, and interviews:

• Bruce performed one-hand push-ups using only the thumb and index finger.
• Bruce performed 50 reps of one-arm chin-ups.
• Bruce performed a sidekick while training with James Coburn and broke a 150 lb (68 kg) punching bag.
• Bruce could cause a 200-lb bag to fly towards and thump the ceiling with a sidekick.
• Bruce could snatch a dime off a person’s open palm before they could close it, and leave a penny behind.
• Bruce’s striking speed from three feet with his hands down by his side reached five hundredths of a second.

Bruce Lee Quotes
I’ve included some of my favorite Bruce Lee quotes below.  I’ve organized them using the following categories: Art / Artistry, General, Goals, Growth / Learning, Life, Mistakes, Positive Thinking, Personal Development, Power / Speed / Flexiblity, Self-Awareness, Simplicity, Time, and Truth.

Art / Artistry

• Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.
• Art is the way to the absolute and to the essence of human life. The aim of art is not the one-sided promotion of spirit, soul and senses, but the opening of all human capacities - thought, feeling, will - to the life rhythm of the world of nature. So will the voiceless voice be heard and the self be brought into harmony with it.
• The second-hand artist blindly following his sensei or sifu accepts his pattern. As a result, his action is and , more importantly, his thinking become mechanical. His responses become automatic, according to set patterns, making him narrow and limited.

General

• It’s not what you give, it’s the way you give it.
• Know the difference between a catastrophe and an inconvenience. — To realize that it’s just an inconvenience, that it is not a catastrophe, but just an unpleasantness, is part of coming into your own, part of waking up.
• Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.
• Obey the principles without being bound by them.
  Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.
• Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
• Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.
• “What is” is more important than “what should be.” Too many people are looking at “what is” from a position of thinking “what should be.”

Goals

• A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.
• If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.
  Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.

Growth / Learning

• A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.
• As you think, so shall you become.
• A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
• Don’t fear failure.  Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.
• Empty your mind; be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
• Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.
• I am not teaching you anything. I just help you to explore yourself.
• If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.
• If you want to learn to swim jump into the water. On dry land no frame of mind is ever going to help you.
• In order to taste my cup of water you must first empty your cup.
• Knowing is not enough, you must apply; willing is not enough, you must do.
• The knowledge and skills you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.

Life

• Life is better lived than conceptualized. — This writing can be less demanding should I allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I’ve come to understand that life is best to be lived — not to be conceptualized. If you have to think, you still do not understand.
• Life is never stagnation. It is constant movement, unrhythmic movement, as we as constant change. Things live by moving and gain strength as they go.
• Life is wide, limitless. There is no border, no frontier.
• Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.
• Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.
• Real living is living for others.
• Reality is apparent when one ceases to compare. — There is “what is” only when there is no comparison at all, and to live with what is, is to be peaceful.
• The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

Mistakes

• Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.
• The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to be thinking of whether it ends in victory or defeat. Let nature take its course, and your tools will strike at the right moment.

Positive Thinking

• Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.
• If you think a thing is impossible, you’ll make it impossible.
• To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.

Personal Development

• Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.
• Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.
• I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.
• I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.
• The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.
• What you habitually think largely determines what you will ultimately become.

Power / Speed / Flexibility

• A powerful athlete is not a strong athlete, but one who can exert his strength quickly. Since power equals force times speed, if the athlete learns to make faster movements he increases his power, even though the contractile pulling strength of his muscles remains unchanged. Thus, a smaller man who can swing faster may hit as hard or as far as the heavier man who swings slowly.
• Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but being flexible. It is being “wholly” and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.
• Endurance is lost rapidly if one ceases to work at its maximum.
• I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
• Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.
• One should be in harmony with, not in opposition to, the strength and force of the opposition. This means that one should do nothing that is not natural or spontaneous; the important thing is not to strain in any way
• The athlete who is building muscles though weight training should be very sure to work adequately on speed and flexibility at the same time. In combat, without the prior attributes, a strong man will be like the bull with its colossal strength futilely pursuing the matador or like a low-geared truck chasing a rabbit.
• The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.
• When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, he can fit in with any style.

Self-Awareness

• After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge.
• Fear comes from uncertainty; we can eliminate the fear within us when we know ourselves better. As the great Sun Tzu said: “When you know yourself and your opponent, you will win every time. When you know yourself but not your opponent, you will win one and lose one. However, when you do not know yourself or your opponent, you will be imperiled every time.”
• Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.
• The biggest adversary in our life is ourselves. We are what we are, in a sense, because of the dominating thoughts we allow to gather in our head. All concepts of self-improvement, all actions and paths we take, relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. Life is limited only by how we really see ourselves and feel about our being. A great deal of pure self-knowledge and inner understanding allows us to lay an all-important foundation for the structure of our life from which we can perceive and take the right avenues.
• To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
• To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.
• Understanding comes about through feeling, from moment to moment in the mirror of relationship.
• When we hold to the core, the opposite sides are the same if they are seen from the center of the moving circle. I do not experience; I am experience. I am not the subject of experience; I am that experience. I am awareness. Nothing else can be I or can exist.

Simplicity

• It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.
• Simplicity is the key to brilliance.
• To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to spend or waste, and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever.
• When there is freedom from mechanical conditioning, there is simplicity. The classical man is just a bundle of routine, ideas and tradition. If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow - you are not understanding yourself.

Time

• Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and nothing is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.
• If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.
• The moment is freedom. — I couldn’t live by a rigid schedule. I try to live freely from moment to moment, letting things happen and adjusting to them.
• The timeless moment. — The “moment” has no yesterday or tomorrow. It is not the result of thought and therefore has no time.

Truth

• All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.
• Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.

Where to Go From Here?
While there are countless resources on the Web, and you can always check out his movies, my favorite book on Bruce Lee, is by Bruce Lee.

It’s Tao of Jeet Kune Do .  Aside from the fact that it’s written by the master himself, I like the fact that Bruce wrote it while he was bedridden for six months.  You can just imagine how Bruce, the warrior, put everything he could into sharing the best of what he knew, while dealing with a pretty traumatic point in his life.  I also like the simple sketches throughout the book which show how he borrowed the best of the best, such as the boxer’s hands or a wrestler’s grappling moves.

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In my previous post, I talked about Vital Behaviors, which I learned about in my Influencer Training.  I’m elaborating here on Crucial Moments because they are one of the key ways to help you find Vital Behaviors.  A Crucial Moment is the point in time where you have a critical choice to make.  It’s the event or trigger where, depending on how you respond, you can positively or negatively impact results in a significant way.  For example, a critical moment is when your alarm goes off in the morning.  You can do your workout routine or you can hit the snooze alarm and put it off another day.  It’s the moment of temptation when you wonder whether to take the off ramp and spiral down, or take the on ramp and accelerate toward your results.

The Power of Crucial Moments
Crucial Moments are powerful because if you do the right behaviors, you can prevent a host of downstream issues.  They mark the beginning of a domino effect.  They are critical choice points where your actions will shape the outcomes either positively or negatively.  They help you find and test Vital Behaviors because you can find the root cause of the results you’re getting.  Changing the actions at Crucial Moments changes your results.

Finding Crucial Moments
Here are a few ways to find Crucial Moments:

• Walk the process or flow and find where the key decisions are.
• Identify events or triggers that start a chain of events.
• Work backwards from a result and trace the actions that got you there.  Note the key decision points along the way.

Example of Crucial Moments in a Project Cycle
Here is an example we used during our training.  It’s a list of crucial moments for a project cycle:

1. Fact-free planning - planning without all the stakeholders present.
2. Leaders pretend to involve others.
3. Leaders propose an impossible plan.
4. Team members face conflicting priorities.

In each of these situations, you can imagine how actions influence the outcome.  I’ve seen many projects fail because of  failure to push back on fact-free planning or impossible plans.  When leaders pretend to involve others, they lose trust and credibility.  If you don’t resolve conflicting priorities, projects can die a slow death, or succeed only through heroic efforts.  In each of these cases, you can identify the Vital Behaviors for these Crucial Moments that lead toward successful outcomes.

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Photo by Smiles Are Free.

One of my favorite take aways from my Influencer Training is Vital Behaviors.  Vital behaviors are the smallest set of actions that lead to the results you want.  They are the few high-leverage actions that if you keep doing, produce the outcomes you’re after.  Vital Behaviors are key to change efforts whether you are trying to change yourself or something larger (your team, your organization, or the world.)  In fact, change efforts often fail because they either focus on the results but don’t identify the specific actions to get there, or they spend time and energy on a bunch of actions that are good ideas, but aren’t the vital few.

I like to think of the vital behaviors as the MUST actions vs. the SHOULD or COULD.  For example, if I want to get my body in fighting shape, I need to workout 4 times per week.  If I want to write a book, I need to write and edit daily.  I can do a bunch of other supportive behaviors, but if I don’t do these vital behaviors, I don’t get the results I want.  Vital Behaviors cut to the chase.

Key Points
During training, we learned the following points on Vital Behaviors:

• Behaviors are actions, not results.
• Behaviors are actions, not qualities.
• Ask what behaviors would demonstrate that a particular value is being lived.
• If it isn’t actionable, it isn’t a behavior. If you can’t go and “do it”, it’s not a behavior.
• Just because it’s a behavior doesn’t make it vital.
• Look for the fewest behaviors that lead to change.

Vital behaviors depend on context, so while some may be reusable or generic (such as a pattern or proven practice), others will vary from individual to individual or from project to project or from situation to situation.  The key is to test what works.

How To Find Vital Behaviors with Larger Projects
We learned a few ways to find Vital Behaviors with larger projects:

• Check with local experts.
• Scan the best and most-cited articles and research.
• Search the Internet for most-cited experts.

How To Find Vital Behaviors with Smaller Projects
We learned a few ways to find Vital Behaviors with smaller projects:

• Determine your crucial moments.
• Find the behaviors in those moments that affect your results.
• Conduct mini-experiments.

Testing for Vital Behaviors
You can test whether you identified Vital Behaviors by asking yourself the following:

• Can you go and “do it”?
• Do they stop self-defeating and escalating behaviors?
• Do they start a reaction that leads to good results? (the domino effect)

Examples
During our training, we got to see some simple examples of Vital Behaviors:

3 Vital Behaviors for Weight Loss
What are the 3 Vital Behaviors for losing 40 lbs and keeping it off?

1. Weight yourself daily.
2. Eat breakfast.
3. Workout at home.

3 Vital Behaviors for Diabetes
What are the 3 Vital Behaviors to successfully manage Diabetes?

1. Improve diet.
2. Exercise.
3. Monitor.

Knowing the Vital Behaviors improves your focus and your results.  You can maximize your impact by spending your time and energy doing the right actions that lead to the results you want to produce.

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Photo by Malkav.

Who doesn’t want more time?  We all want more time to do the things we want to do.  The reality is, we have to make the most of the time we’ve got.  The real problem is we spend time on the wrong things, we do things the least efficient way, or we simply let time expand to fill its container (see Parkinson’s Law.)    The real key to improving time management is first changing how you think about your time and taking steps to own how you spend it.

In the book, The 80/20 Individual: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less-The Nine Essentials o , Richard Koch teaches us that there is no shortage of time.

Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

• Time is a part of everything.  It’s not a separate thing that you can just get more of or less of.  Time is  a fundamental part of everything you do.
• Make the very best use of your time.  It’s not the time you’ve got, it’s how you use it.  Instead of telling yourself there aren’t enough hours in the day, optimize the time you’re already spending.  For example, focus is a powerful tool for improving how you spend your time.
• Work less, accomplish more.  Focus on unique value.    You could work a 2 day week and achieve 60 percent more.  This assumption is based on the idea that you cut out the activities that are least effective, and you spend your time on your 20 percent spike.

Really it comes down to consistently spending your time where you get your greatest return.  I’ve gradually learned to spend more time where it counts, by being mindful, setting boundaries and time budgets, playing to my strengths, and improving my techniques and skills.

Time is Not “Other”
Time is not “other.”  It’s a part of everything we do.  We should think of product-time and service-time.  Koch writes:

First, in business as in the rest of life, time is not “other.”  It is part of the physical things we make and provide to customers.  It is part of our products, part of our services, part of our raw material, part of our output.  Therefore, we should not think of what we do for customers as separate from the time we take to do it.  We should not think of products or services on the one-hand, and time on the other.  We should think of “product-time” and “service-time.”  Time is part of what we add or subtract.  Providing an existing product or service in a much faster way could change its economics and offer you a terrific new business opportunity.

Time if Not Finite and Short
Time is a part of what we do and who we are.  Koch writes:

Second, time is not finite and short, nor is it our enemy or a commodity in extremely short supply.  Time is an integral part of what we do and who we are.  Time is a dimension where, like space, we can express ourselves and create value for others, and therefore ourselves.  People living in a free society rarely say, “I don’t have enough physical room to express myself; there is not enough space in my life.”  But people often do say, “I don’t have enough time to express myself; I don’t have enough time to do what I want.”  It sounds more plausible; it makes as little sense.

The Problem is Our Use of Time
It’s not our lack of time.  It’s how we use it.  Koch writes:

By combining the theories of Einstein and Pareto, you’ll discover that if 80 percent of the wealth (or anything else desirable) is created in less than 20 percent of the time available, then there is no shortage of time.  For individuals and business alike, there is no shortage of time.  The problem is our trivial use of time, not time itself.  We use our time most productively for only a small part of our existence; most of what we do matters little.  In other words, our problem is triviality itself, few people achieve their full potential, or anywhere close to it.

Achieve More with Less
You could work a 2 day week and achieve 60 percent more.  This is about what you focus on and whether you spend your time where it makes the biggest difference.  Koch writes:

Any venture or person could achieve much more while using much less time.  The 80/20 individual principle suggests that you could work a two-day week and still achieve 60 percent more than you do now.

The Very Best Use of Our Time Must Define Our Business and Make it Unique
Whatever is the best possible way you can spend your time, can help you define your business and make it unique.  It’s really about spending your time on your 20 percent spike.  Koch writes:

Einstein’s theory reinforces the idea of the 20 percent spike and redefines it in terms of time.  In other words, the activities that make the very best use of our time must define our business and make it unique.

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One of my mentors shared a lesson with me from the book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable . His lesson was this: If you miss the train, don’t chase it.  Catch the next one. Missing a train is only painful if you run after it.

It’s such a simple point, but it’s sticky.  I do a self-check now and ask whether I’m chasing after a train or getting ready for the next one.  The key here is to get ready for your next chance, rather than beat yourself up over missed opportunity.  Cut your losses and move on.

I think there is a related lesson.  Don’t keep missing the same trains.  Set up your own train stations for results.  For example, I set up a rhythm of daily, weekly, and monthly results.  When I lose the day, I make the most of the next one.  When my week doesn’t go as planned, I make the most of the next, and so on.
Photo by wili hybrid.

I was listening to a Tony Robbins Power Talk the other day about guarding your mind.  In it, he mentioned a simple formula: (I) X (F) = Personal Reality.  I is information and F is focus.  In other words, your personal reality is based on the information you focus on.  I think the simplest thing to remember is just like you are what you eat, you are the information you feed on.
Information Shapes Your Experience
You get to choose what channels you watch, what stations you listen to, what Web pages you browse, what people you listen to, what friends you hang out with, what books you read, and what feeds you subscribe to.  It’s easy to get locked into hype or react to buzz.  It’s easy to have how you feel, shaped by the media.  Tony points out that media, such as newspapers can be a problem, for a couple of reasons.  For one thing, pain sells more than pleasure.  If you pass a newspaper and it looks like blue skies ahead, you walk on by.  If you see that there is a big storming coming, you’re going to stop and read it.  The other issue is that media has to simplify and generalize for the masses.  I’ve started to pay a lot more attention to the sources I draw from and what I fill my mind with.  I used to passively take in information from all sorts of sources.  Now I more proactively tune into smart people, smart books, and other smart sources of insight.  Some are timeless, others are timely, and I measure the information using a simple ART test (is the information accurate, relevant, and timely?)

Focus Changes Everything
Two people can have the information, but focus on different things.  For example, in an economic downturn, one person might focus on loss, while the other might focus on ask the opportunity.  You can tell the focus by the questions they might be asking.  While one person asks “why me?”, the other person might be asking, “how can I thrive?” … or “what are my best plays for this scenario?”  I periodically check the questions I’m asking myself to make sure that 1) I’m focusing on the positive 2) I’m focusing on the future and 3) I’m focusing on things that give me energy.  Sure it’s fun to moan, groan, gripe, and whine, but a key to sustainable results and thriving versus surviving is focusing on the right things.

One of my favorite questions to ask people is what information sources they regularly draw from.  For example, I like Ted Talks, Charlie Rose, and Dilbert.   So then, what are your favorite information sources?

Photo by basheem.

The six sources of influence model is a powerful model for change. I first learned about the Six Sources of Influence from my Influencer Training at Microsoft. The Influencer Training is based on the book, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything , by  Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. The more I walk through the model, the more I appreciate it.

One of the main things I like about the model is that it’s easy to remember and it’s easy to whiteboard. When I whiteboard it for people, I simply make a 2-column table. The one column is motivation and the other is ability. I then slice the table into 3 rows: personal, social, and structural. That’s it. That’s all it takes to frame out and analyze your worst problems that you want to change.

The model scales up and down from changing yourself to changing the world. I’ve included an example of using the Six Sources of Influence to lose weight at the end of this post to help show the model in action. Keep in mind I’m still learning and testing the model, and the best thing is always test things for yourself. You can just use me as a springboard

Six Sources of Influence
Here is a tickler list for thinking about the six sources of influence:

• Source 1 – Personal Motivation – whether you want to do it.
• Source 2 – Personal Ability – whether you can do it.
• Source 3 – Social Motivation – whether other people encourage the right behaviors.
• Source 4 – Social Ability – whether other people provide help, information or resources.
• Source 5 – Structural Motivation – whether the environment encourages the right behaviors.
• Source 6 – Structural Ability – whether the environment supports the right behaviors.

Key Strategies
Here is a tickler list of the key strategies organized by each of the Six Sources of Influence:

You can find out more on the strategies from my earlier notes on Influencer Training Day 2.

Analyze and Execute
Before you make an action plan, you can analyze the Six Sources of Influence.  To do so, you simply walk each source and ask relevant questions.  Similarly you can execute against each source.  This table summarizes how to analyze and execute against the Six Sources of Influence:

Example - Losing Weight with Six Sources of Influence
Here is a quick example of analyzing losing weight using the Six Sources of Influence.

I hope this example helps you see the power of the Six Sources of Influence.  You can substitute whatever resistant or persistent problem you want to change.  Walking the frame will help you quickly see where you can get your best leverage or where you might be stuck the most.  The more you leverage multiple sources the more you set yourself up for success.

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• Influencer Training Day 2
• Is Will a Skill?

Sources of Insight is 10 months old!  She’s growing up so fast.  (If you ask me, I don’t think she looks a day past 6 months.)  What started out as my practice blog is turning out to be my real blog.  Anyway, it’s time for a quick check in on results.  This is actually a good time for a check in since it’s review time at Microsoft and I’m already reflecting on performance.

Lessons Learned
I’ve learned a lot, but here are a few key lessons:

• Slow growth beats no growth.  While I’ve always been inspired by Def Leopard’s infinite wisdom “it’s better to burn out … than fade away,”, apparently, slow and steady wins the race.  My accountant is a fan of get rich slowly and he’s taught me to stick with things for the long haul.  That’s a good thing because my growth just isn’t what I expected.  Then again, I can’t complain.  I’ve gone from 1,800 visitors a month to ~20,000 and it seems to be accelerating.  Any growth seems good in a down economy.
• It’s the difference that makes the difference.  This is where I struggle.  What makes my blog any different from the bazillion other personal development blogs?  I’m not sure yet.  It might be my focus on patterns and practices.  It might be the way I stand on the shoulders of giants, drawing from books, people, and quotes.  It might be my unique experience building teams and running projects at Microsoft.  Either way, I think differentiation is important.  I think of the blogosphere as one big connected system and I think it’s important to bring at least some unique value to the table.  I do focus a lot on expert techniques, but I’m not sure that’s the key.  I need to think more on this.
• It’s about raving fans.  Not only do my raving fans make it worth it, they help spread Sources of Insight through word-of-mouth marketing.  I’ve seen it in action several times.   This is a good thing since I really haven’t done my marketing homework yet.

Highlights and Lowlights
I’m a fan of the old “3 things going well” and “3 things to improve” model we use to have in our reviews.  It helps balance out the good with the bad.  I’ll go ahead use that format here for my blog.

Here are 3 things going well …

1. 1,000 raving fans.  Last week I hit my 1,005th subscriber.  I had a mini-goal of a 1000 raving fans within the first year, so I’m happy.
2. Books, People and Quotes.  I really like drawing insight from books, people, and quotes.   It compliments what I can share from my direct experiences and it helps provide me with more material to test and put into practice.
3. Featured Guests.  This is a big part of how I live my mantra “stand on the shoulders of giants”.  My featured guests range from best-selling authors to unsung heroes.   If you’re wondering how I pick my guests, it’s based on finding the best-of-the-best for certain categories.  For example, I think Dr. K’s superpower is interpersonal skills.  I think Jim Kousez’s superpower is leadership.  I think Michael Michalko’s super power is creative thinking.  I let the authors choose whether to write about their superpower or simply their life lessons.  For example, Michael Michalko shared his life lesson in his guest post, Choice.

If I could pick another thing, I’d have to say it’s hot spots for life.  I really like having a defined set of hot spots to help scope what I focus on.  Life hot spots include: mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships and fun.  I try to find the best patterns and practices for those categories.   These are great categories for personal development or skilled living.

Here are 3 things I need to improve …

1. SEO.  I messed up here in so many ways it’s not funny. Live and learn.  I’m sure I still have mistakes, but I’m slowly correcting key things.    I finally took some time to sweep my tags and categories.  I also started to map out
2. Impact.  To amplify my impact, I have work to do both inside my blog and outside.  Mostly outside.  I hear time and again that you make more impact on your blog, by what you do outside of your blog, such as guest posts and social media sites.  I’m going to test this soon.
3. Benefits and Features.   I don’t think I’ve made my benefits and features “pop” yet.  They’re in there, but I find it takes a bit of hand holding.  I’ve tried to rework the sidebar to make some things simpler to get to, including a “Getting Started” as well as quick access to book nuggets, experts, and quotes.  I’ll need to get more feedback and ideas here to take it to the next level.  I should probably start considering creating a forum or community and a newsletter.  A newsletter would be a simple way for me to share some more prescriptive guidance.  Perhaps an “Insights and Actions” newsletter?

Highlights and lowlights aside, the cool thing for me is when real people stop by or email me about how something I’ve shared helped them get results.

Stats at a Glance

OK, enough with the mushy stuff … what about the data?   The data doesn’t really tell the story, but it at least tells me I’m trending on an upward path.  Here are the key stats at a glance:

My page rank seems stuck.  I probably don’t have enough incoming links from the right places yet.  More homework for me to do.

Top 10 Pages
Purely from a data standpoint, the top 10 posts on Sources of Insight are:

• SourcesOfInsight.com (Home page)
• The Zen of Results Free E-Book
• The 10 Best Ways to Persuade
• The Top Ten Leadership Lessons
• 13 Motivation Techniques
• Rituals for Results
• Personal Development Books
• Motivation Quotes
• Finding Your Key Strengths
• 10 Distorted Thinking Patterns

If you have feedback on what you’d like to see more of or ideas on how I should improve my blog, feel free to either leave them in the comments or use the contact form and you can send to me directly.

My Related Posts

• Sources of Insight is 6 Months Old
• Sources of Insight is 1 Month Old

Photo by Sarah G …

I’m going to give you a hat.  Whenever you need it, simply put it on.  This hat will help you get the best results in your life.

When triggers happen that cause you to react, add a pause, and put on your metaphorical hat of effectiveness.  When you put this hat on, you’re shifting gears.  You’re shifting from reacting to responding.

How To Put On Your Hat of Effectiveness
Here are the key steps:

1. Decide what your goal is on exploring the most effective response (your next best move or your best play for the situation.)
2. Boil the problem down to a simple one-liner statement (e.g. how to get the car at the price you want.)  This gives you clarity and makes it easier for you to state the problem if you need to ask for help.
3. Ask yourself, what do you want to accomplish? (This is both what you want and don’t want.)
4. Ask yourself, what 3 potential responses might be? (this is your chance to play out potential solutions.)
5. Ask yourself, what would Edward de Bono do? (or fill in your favorite hero for the situation.)
6. Choose the most effective response.

Measure Against Effectiveness
If you aren’t sure what your best responses are, make it a point to ask the right people for input. The most important thing is to keep clarity on what you want to accomplish, avoid, or minimize. You then measure yourself against effectiveness. If you fail, you ask, “what’s the lesson,” and you carry the lesson forward.  If you accomplish the goal, great … what did you learn?  So it’s a path of learning and growth measured against effectiveness.

A Lot of Power in a Simple Hat
It’s a powerful hat.  It will serve you well.  It’s probably the best hat that I wear for any challenging situation.
It combine the power of the pause, the ability to stay out of fight-or-flight mode (which screws up your thinking), it allows you to cycle through potential solutions, while asking solution-focused or forward moving questions, it keeps you unstuck, and it keeps you learning.

Changing Questions Changes Focus
I think the real power of this hat is that it combines several effective thinking techniques, plus NLP …

• Changing state (without having to use real anchors/triggers.)
• Changing questions changes focus changes results.
• Changing state helps keeps you out of primal mind / fight-or-flight … so more prefrontal for your best thinking.

When You Don’t Know, Ask
The hat can’t help you pattern match, if you don’t have the right patterns to begin with.  If you’re up against a problem that you don’t have the right experience for, then ask your network for help.  You can also supplement  with the Six Thinking Hats technique and by asking experts for their input.  That’s why asking THE right question is so key.  If you’re not getting the right answers, you might not be asking the right questions.  You might also be asking the wrong people.  At work, I have to constantly check myself, “am I asking the right person?”

Take care of this hat.  It’s the hat that truly does make the difference.

My Related Posts

• The Power of the Pause
• Is Will a Skill?
• Solution-Focused Questions
• Changing Focus

Photo by Bazule.

At Microsoft, we use the term “frame” or “framing a problem” in the context of project management.  You might hear somebody ask, “what’s the frame?” or “how have you framed the problem?”  A Frame is simply a way to partition a problem.  The heart of a frame is coming up with a context to understand the dimensions that matter and figure out how to prioritize and scope.   I use frames a lot here on Sources of Insight to chunk bigger problems down, as well as to organize and share information.  It’s a lens.

What’s a Frame
My favorite definition of framing is from our EE (Engineering Excellence) team at Microsoft:

The unlimited potential of software makes program management an incredibly exciting job.  The unlimited potential of software also makes program management an incredibly important job.  At every milestone of every product cycle, feature teams face an essentially infinite set of possibilities.  They can build almost anything they dream up.  But to succeed, the team has to make smart choices about where to focus and what to build.  In the face of endless possibility, how do feature teams make these choices?
Framing is the art of identifying what is truly important and separating the “could” from the “should.”  Early in the planning stages of a project, program managers work with customers, planners, and other team members to define this frame and ensure that every member of the team understands and internalizes it.

Why Frame the Space?
According to our EE team, framing is a critical exercise:

The answers to these questions paint a landscape in which a product and its features will be built. The purpose of a frame is to narrow the focus on a clear and compelling vision that fits within this landscape.  This link between vision and landscape is critical.  A vision without this context if fragile and fails to provide teams with the basis for making the myriad of day to day decisions they inevitably face.

Creating Frames
According to our EE team, to create the frame, the program manager starts by asking some broad questions:

• What are the customers and what are their needs and priorities?
• What is happening in the marketing place? What are competitors doing and what are our options for responding and differentiating?
• How is technology changing and what possibilities does it offer our customers?
• What are the priorities for our business?

Example Frames
Here are some of the example frames I’ve created to help create, find, organize and share information:

• The Change Frame - how to know whether to change yourself or the situation.
• The Improvement Frame - how to gauge progress for yourself.
• Life Frame - how to spend your time on the right things in life.
• Hot Spots - how to organize and prioritize where you put focus.
• Hot Spots for Life - how to invest in key areas for skilled living.

If you’re overwhelmed by information overload or trying to learn a new area, consider creating frames to make it easier to deal with.

Photo by Victor Bezrukov.