I was hyper-productive 10 years ago without any them, but oh how I’ve come to rely on them now…

1. Moleskine notebook(s)

I’ve got three. A large black Moleskine for work notes – every conversation, every meeting gets jotted down in that sucker. A large red Moleskine for entrepreneurial thoughts – potential partnerships, variations on competitors’ products and services, it’s all in here. And a large black Evernote version I’m just now testing out.

I love #2 on my list of “things I carry”, but nothing beats scribbling and sketching on real paper when I’ve got to get an idea down quickly. And no, I don’t literally carry all three at the same time.

2. iPhone 4S

Okay, maybe the iPhone 5 is faster and has more screen real estate. I don’t care. Mine is more than sufficient. I’m on Verizon, and the lack of ability to do the whole data/call-at-the-same-time bugs me, but I can live. I don’t want a behemoth screen, and I don’t want my phone any thicker than this since I often go dangerously case-less.

3. iPad Mini

It’s the perfect size and weight. I grab my ORIGINAL iPad occasionally – the one I’ve cast off as a gaming device for my kids – and holy smokes that one feels like it weighs as much as a pregnant watermelon. First world problems, I know. Screen resolution is perfectly adequate, and the speed is unreal on wifi.

Alright…here’s the meat of this post. Between my iPhone and iPad, here are the apps that I use nearly every single day, beyond the standard social network apps: Box, Drafts, Dropbox, Evernote, Feedly, Flipboard, Gospel Library, Keynote, Kindle, Mailbox, Pocket, Skitch (buggy, but still useful), and Wunderlist (oh how I love thee, Wunderlist, though it was hard to part with Orchestra and its awesome emailing-in-a-todo feature).

4. Diet Coke

Don’t lecture me. I need to some day wean myself off. But that day is not today.

What do you carry?

Late night 1:1 sessions at the high school.

If I were smart, I’d follow the example of my 15-year-old son, Conner.

He knows something about overcoming adversity. He knows from experience that you can “not succeed” (I didn’t say “fail”), but come back a second time and win in the end.

After choosing to not play baseball from nine years old to 13 (four crucial years developmentally), Conner wanted back in about two years ago.

He’s got raw talent, but sometimes lacks self-discipline to stick to something until he fully masters it. And yet he wanted to play.

As a dad who played and loves baseball, I was all for it in my heart and excited to watch him.

As a guy who understands how much Conner missed out on as far as technique, speed of the game, and baseball smarts over those four years, I was nervous about how he’d fare.

His first couple of teams helped a little. Simple guidance that got him back in the flow of the game, but not a whole lot of formal instruction in technique. And Conner struggled. Rock-solid in the outfield; pretty sketchy at the plate.

Conner’s bedroom whiteboard. Click to enlarge.

There were times when we’d come home with him in tears after going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in a game. There were other times we’d come home with him elated that he had nearly crushed one out of the park to left-centerfield. It was hit and miss.

The much-younger Conner, the 5-year-old Conner who once was so shy that he sat down and hid while standing on the risers at his kindergarten graduation ceremony, fearful of the onlooking adults, would have just quit.

He would have crumpled underneath the weight of the very possibility of disappointment.

There’s something different about this Conner.

He finished one baseball season (it’s California, we play multiple “seasons” per year) and was immediately anxious to start the next. Honestly, it was just as rocky. Soaring drives into the gaps for doubles or triples might be followed by three strikeouts or eight strikeouts over the course of three games.

But after that second season, he was anxious to try out for the freshman team at Great Oak High School. I’m not one to trounce on dreams, so there was no way I was going to stand in the way despite his hot and cold play.

Well, suffice it to say he didn’t make the team. Twenty-seven kids tried out. A core group that had a history of playing together on travel ball made it, along with a few others.

Conner was deflated.

But the story doesn’t end there. (It can’t be about overcoming adversity and end there, can it?)

Conner loves his hitting coach, Rich Krzysiak.

Undeterred, Conner played another season of baseball and picked up a referral for private hitting and pitching coaches. Rich Krzysiak and Dan Dwyer. Every week, he was at Dan’s house with one of those guys.

Never once did they discourage him. Never once did they tell him the odds were stacked against him. Oh they pushed. They prodded. Gave him unbelievable praise when he needed it (“You’ve got to have one of the best swings in Temecula”), specific and constructive criticism when he needed that. For four months.

Junior varsity tryouts came. He made the first round of cuts, but had to sweat out the second round of cuts when the basketball players finished their season and varsity sent some kids down. Great Oak is the #1 varsity team around, so there are plenty of kids on that junior varsity team who could be playing varsity-level ball elsewhere. And this is California.

You know how this story ends. He made the team.

It was only after he made it that his hitting coach Rich Kryzsiak admitted he’s only seen this happen twice in ten years. And now Conner can’t attend a hitting session with Rich without him pointing Conner out to the younger kids as proof of what can happen when you stick to the process:

Put the time in on your own. Practice the right things. Work hard.

Conner’s got those three things nailed down. But he’s now got an intangible, too, and you can see it by reading between the lines on that whiteboard above.

He’s just not going to be held back anymore.

He won’t let a momentary setback define who he is or whether he’s “good enough”.

He won’t let a blip of adversity stop him.

I want to learn from that.

Conner’s one of my heroes.

I think what I like most about this one, though, is that it was never meant to be a “motivational quote”. It was crafted by a man whose mother died when he was three years old; whose father died when he was seven years old due to injuries incurred while off in the woods; but a man who ultimately went on to graduate from Boston University, followed by Harvard University, and became an M.D.

If that man can have some “right thinking” about adversity given what he went through, I think most of the rest of us can do the same in our lives and careers.

Michael Corleone said it to Sonny in Godfather II:

The thing is, we all the think the same thing when the bad guy says that. It IS personal. 

If you’re on the negative side of a firing, for instance, it becomes vividly personal, very quickly. If you’re a manager and a crucial member of your team quits, it becomes urgently, painfully personal. But you shouldn’t need adversity to make work personal.

Showing pride in your work is making work personal.

Striving for excellence is making work personal.

Being honest at all times — and wearing your values at the office every day — is making work personal.

Showing respect for yourself and others by providing more value than your employer pays you for is making work personal.

It’s okay to do these things. It’s encouraged. Forget that movie line. Put your heart and soul into things. Be who you are and care about it enough that you leave it all on the table. If you get critical feedback during a performance review, suck it up and go after improving that area — don’t waste time debating.

The world needs more people who are fully committed to what they’re doing. They’re locked-in. Salespeople need to believe — or get out, for instance. There’s just no room for people not ready for prime time.

Your employer can require a lot from you: time, travel, the use of specific skills and talents, etc. The one thing they can’t mandate, but can only hope for, is your heart. They can hope, even expect, that you’re self-motivated enough to give everything you’ve got.

But if giving everything you’ve got is in doubt, well, then, Heaven help you.

Don’t be “that guy” or “that gal” who could have been something if only they’d work with a little more zest, a little more passion, a little more energy. By making work personal — by taking things personally — you aren’t throwing your whole work/life balance out of whack, trust me. You’re extending who you really are into work. And doesn’t it make sense to be THAT person.

I thought you’d agree.

Now, make it that way every day.

In our never-ending request to feel important, and credible, and seem awesome to current or future employers, we seek out endorsements.

It’s not a bad idea on its own. A third-party endorsement or recommendation that you know what you’re doing — that you’re super-good at your job — can make a career. It can open doors. It can make sales happen. It can clinch partnerships.

But those endorsements you seek need to have some oomph behind them. Your coworker may have that kind of clout and killer connections that give her credibility. OR SHE MAY NOT. If she’s really just a coworker, and I mean that in a nice way, DON’T dilute your LinkedIn profile with her endorsement. Future employers aren’t going to give it a lot of credence.

If you need recommendations, do the work that will earn them from the people whose recommendations matter most: your boss, your CEO, your clients.

The Harvard Business Review Blog Network just pushed out a little ditty from Amy Gallo, entitled How to Master a New Skill. In it she quotes Joseph Weintraub:

There’s a certain something about having people on your team who can do more than The Main Thing for which they were hired.

• The salesperson who also “gets” SEO — and not because he or she sells SEO services.
• The programmer who understands how customers think and can present to them.
• The operations manager who can articulate the company’s marketing strategy persuasively.
• The marketing coordinator who can edit HTML and CSS…maybe even PHP.
• The business development manager who can analyze and manipulate data through pivot tables in Excel.
• The credit and collections manager who can offer product advice to a customer.
• The account director who knows how and why to “view source” on a web page for any number of reasons.

The list goes on.

I’ve bullet-pointed a handful of roles above and simple tasks, but I think it’s particular true for those of us in sales and client services. You can’t JUST be good in front of customers. You can’t JUST smile, network well, or be “on the ball”. Nor can you can’t JUST do well with behind-the-scenes project management or creative work.

You’ve got to have multiple skills, folks. You’ve got to have extended expertise.

The client service professionals, for example, who make a difference for customers are those who deliver value, not those who — as one of my highly skilled, high-performing professionals was told recently — merely have cute voices. It’s true for those of you in other roles as well.

Do more. Be more. Stretch yourself. Be an credible expert in areas beyond your primary job.

Jeff Haden, writing for Inc. magazine, says remarkable employees ignore job descriptions. Saying it is easier than doing it, true that. But doing it matters enough that it’s worth it.

When you go overboard with “insider” jargon, your own company’s acronyms, product technical specifications not  relevant to me, all of these things make me as a customer feel stupid. Or at least uncomfortable, and not in a good way.

There was a time when you could dazzle customers with your intellect and savvy and sway me to your way of thinking. When you could just drop names like crazy, overwhelm us with your personality and style, let stats and features roll of your tongue with flair. Salespeople and marketers could get away with this because we couldn’t do the same degree and depth of research as easily as we can today. We were more prone to the hype and ceremony of selling.

That time has passed. Making us feel stupid so that we think we need you is not the road to go.

Connect with me first. Relate.

Draw me in by understanding me and my situation. Stay on my level.

Take listening seriously. Pay careful attention to the words I use.

Stay calm and don’t get too ahead of yourself (or me).

And there’s a better chance I’ll buy.

But shaming me or making me feel stupid? Not gonna work.

Before you go running around blaming the world, take stock. Look in the mirror.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s you. Maybe your resume — which you wrote — doesn’t adequately summarize your talents. Maybe you came across as too casual in the interviews…or too intense…or you didn’t even look the other person in the eye. Maybe you walked into a meeting (if you’re currently employed) or an interview (if you’re seeking) with nary a piece of paper in your hand, nothing to jot down notes with, no questions prepared, no data to backup anything you say.

You gotta think through these things. Don’t be too quick to say your boss or the recruiter is the idiot. I’m not saying you’re the “idiot” here, either, but I AM saying you’ve got to be self-aware.

Prepare for how you engage with your senior executives, even your boss, if he or she is lower-level than that. Have your stuff together.

And if it still doesn’t go your way, be big enough to recognize it might be you.

I’m an iPhone fan. I’m even an app fan. But I’ve got a series of questions based on this simple, < 140-character tweet:

• There are APPS that help kids brush their teeth?
• There are MORE than FIVE apps that do this? It’s a crowded category?
• There’s such a universe of apps that do this that someone CAN select a TOP FIVE?
• Forget “someone can select a top five”…someone DID categorize and evaluate each to create a top five?

This post isn’t really about dental hygiene, though. It’s about whether there always needs to be an app for that. I mean, can everyone restaurant have an app? Sure. Should every restaurant have one? No.

Can every company have an app? Uh huh. Should they? Nope.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. It doesn’t make sense to put an app in the App Store that will only be found and downloaded if YOU put tremendous resources behind marketing it.

Mobile website? Totally. Get on that one. Facebook page? Yep. Twitter account? Sure thing. Interact with your customers via text? Take a look at that, yeah.

App? Not so much.

Even the most uber of iPhone users has a limit to the number of apps he or she will install. And simple human habit suggests that there are only a certain number of apps even the most uber of uber-users will actually use regularly.

Your customers are not going to install an app for EVERY store they visit regularly, even if yours is super-cool. It’s just too much to deal with.

So think through what you really want to accomplish with your business before signing up with Company X and its industry-specific mobile apps package for just $59 per month.

In the film, Archie Graham (played by Frank Whaley) is a young baseball player whom Kevin Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella, picks up on the side of the road (after having met the 72-year-old version of him the previous day). The kid is super-anxious to play ball.

And once Archie’s at the field, he’s mesmerized by the legends he’s playing with — at least for a spell.

The problem is, once he’s at-bat, that awe transforms into a bit too much swagger, as he winks at the pitcher before he delivers the pitch. The result? Archie gets a fastball headed straight for his ear, which he narrowly dodges.

Demeanor, babe.

Sloppy dress. Rolled eyes. Slouched posture. Fidgetiness. Over-casual attire. Unwarranted cockiness. A ho-hum manner about you. Having a “realist’s” response to everyone else’s opinions and ideas. Constantly regaling others with stories highlighting your own cleverness, superior intellect, refined skillset, decisive judgment, or breathtaking achievements.

These are just a few of the ways your demeanor can undermine you. Memo: No one has time for it. And, brother, it can derail your career.

While you may feel you’re all dialed-in with killer sales numbers, or stunning graphic design chops, or stellar results in managing the supply chain, people can’t stand these other, less welcomed contributions you make.

Demeanor matters. It’s more than attitude. And it’s not simply your level of self-confidence. It’s who you are and how you conduct yourself, with or without achievements, and whether or not you agree with whatever anyone else says or does.

It’s important to believe in yourself. It’s crucial to have a track record. But seriously…

My advice to you is this: Life will throw you enough curveballs as it is. The best way to avoid fastballs aimed purposely at your head, however, possibly even thrown by your own co-workers, is to check that demeanor.