Just sat through a teaching session with Ps Dave Sumrall. I’ve never heard him speak before although I’ve certainly heard of him. My friend Al Furey speaks at his church from time to time.
The Sumralls lead a very large church in Manilla. And by large we are talking over 30,000 people.

He spoke on pastoring and shared probably one of the most profound messages I’ve ever heard. It should be on the c3churchglobal.com website in a few weeks. Anyone that feels God calling them to pastoring needs to hear this message. All church planters need to hear it.

By the way, check out all the messages on the website from the conference.

We live in an era of sound bites and 140 characters. Here’s a few that influence me. I don’t remember where I heard most of them, but if you know the source pop me a note and I’ll attribute them correctly.

• Live in the moment
• How you do anything is how you do everything
• Motivation is the key
• If you are always early, you are never late. @philpringle
• life makes you hard, Jesus makes you tough @markkelsey
• play to your strengths
• provision follows vision
• money is just a concept
• believing is seeing

It would be kinda cool if you could add some of the one liners that influence you. Maybe a tweet that really motivated you. Add them in the comments below and I’ll update the post. TIA.

Begbie Falls ©Dave Olson

Since I actually got my new boots on Father’s day, I’ve been wearing them as often as I can. Full grain leather boots probably need to be broken in a little more than your average synthetic footwear. The boots feel pretty solid and support my ankle well. My one complaint was one lacing hook was a bit tight and wore on the lace until I expanded the hook with a screwdriver.

My first real outing with the boots was an 8km or so hike into Begbie Falls and back. I loaded up my daypack with 5 litres of water (a platypus big zip and a couple of water bottles), a couple of books and my camera. The trail was pretty diverse with plenty of roots, rocks and fairly steep grade to test drive. The weather even through in a bit of rain so I could check out the traction too.

The boots performed really well. Despite the wet rocks and mud, I didn’t slip at all. The boots

felt very secure and solid. My feet felt well protected and my ankles had great support.

When I picked up the boots at Universal Footwear, I opted for a slightly larger size than I originally tried on. I’m glad I did. I suspect that the smaller size would have been torment. Even on a long decline, my toes didn’t feel crammed into the toe box and there was no discomfort. A couple of times, I felt a small amount of pain in the balls of my feet, but that went away almost immediately.

After spending around three hours walking, my feet didn’t hurt but were a bit fatigued. Even though I opted for a pair of Superfeet insoles, there may not be quite enough padding for what I was doing. I’m not sure what the solution is for that but maybe a bit more break in time will solve the problem.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with how these boots perform and I expect they will get better over time.

And the best thing of all was the beautiful scenery and the falls.

[quote]As jobs turn into projects, the leaders we need are those that relish the project, that jump at the chance to push themselves harder than any coach ever could. via Seth’s Blog: Dependency on external motivation.[/quote]

This little statement has got me thinking.

In the ‘job’ world, instead of thinking careers or jobs, should we be thinking projects? Is this concept more in keeping with our present economic situation?

Or maybe that’s just how entrepreneurs think and that separates them from the rest of the ‘job seekers’.

Either way, its food for thought and I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Lately I’ve been working through an hypothesis of mine.

I realize that I spend a lot of time trying to get things just right. For instance, I probably spent four hours trying to work out the new design on this webpage. I also spent at least three hours the other night designing a flowchart to give to a programmer. My reasoning is that I want it done right.

Now I know that doing things right is a bit of a strength/weakness of my melancholic personality. I can get so caught up in the details or mechanics of something so it never gets completed. In the quest for getting things right, things don’t get done.

So my new theory is that if I can convince myself to accept ‘good enough‘ then I will actually get more done and be more productive. Even now, I’m resisting the temptation to explain myself more fully so that I can do a better job of getting you to understand what I’m talking about.

Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers has some thought-provoking stats on what good enough really is.

Update: After I posted this article, I came across Seth Godin’s thoughts on the same subject.

So there’s my theory. It’s not complete, but it’s good enough. I’ve decided that ‘okay’ is better than incomplete. What do you think?

I have periodically mentioned that becoming a grandparent was a real emotional rollercoaster for me. I know many men who have happily become grandparents without a single hiccup but that’s not my story.

Something about moving into another generational tier really freaked me out. I just can’t explain it but it set me off. Really bad!

It was tearfully that I asked my daughter-in-law Sarah (@sarah_ash) if there was anyway this newest disruptor of my emotional wellbeing could call me something, anything other than GRANDPA. We settled on Papa!

Now three, almost four granddaughters later, I still hate being a grandparent, but I love my granddaughters. Kim hates it when the first person they run to is me, but it’s a great boast to my ego.

Yesterday I tweeted that one of the benefits of being a grandparent was being able to build a tree-condo for the girls. It’s funny because I never quite finished any of the tree houses I started for my own kids. Maybe you have experienced something similar. I don’t know if it’s that I have more experience building now than when my kids were this age. Or maybe I’m just more motivated. What do you think?

Either way, I’m regularly told that I’m doing things for my grandkids that I never did for my kids. I have to plead guilty to that charge. It’s not an issue of how much I love them, it’s just that life is different at this tier than the one before.

Why do you think that grandparents seem to do more for their grandkids than they did for their own? Or maybe that’s not what you see. Let’s chat in the comments or on Twitter.

Okay, I admit it. I’ve gone crazy in love with Mint.com

This little web app is the financial management tool I’ve always wished for and never quite had.

Until I found Mint, I had a ten sheet Numbers spreadsheet that kept me on top of my finances. At least it did when I remembered to update the information. And therein lies the problem with my financial summary and I suspect most people’s attempts at understanding their overall financial picture. You have to constantly update the information.

Mint makes that easy with its ability to extract information from nearly every financial institution that allows online banking. In my case, I have accounts at four banks and credit cards from four or five providers. Mint is able to (with my permission) download all my data into one central place. From there it automatically combines the information and categorizes it for me. It even starts me off with a suggested budget based on my historical spending. I have two accounts that are not available online. One is a mortgage and the other is my LIRA with Investors Group. I am able to manually enter those amounts as well as other assets like my house value and automobiles.

If that’s not enough to make you do cartwheels and jump up and down, Mint even helps you stay on budget by sending alerts. These alerts can be customized for everything from a low balance in an account to more spending than normal in a category. Used strategically, the alerts alone are worth the price of getting Mint. Additionally these features are available in their own iPhone app. I love it!

Speaking of price…. there isn’t one. Mint is free. I’m not sure yet how they make their money but I suspect it has something to do with the credit card, insurance and other financial offers that are suggested from time to time. Of course only products that will save me money ever come up in the suggestion box. I have noticed though that most of the suggestions are from only one or two sources. There’s probably some sort of commission in there.

Mint.com is not limited to just providing a framework for managing your money, their blog is full of very useful information. Taking the time to read it along with using their service provides the best combination possible.

But it doesn’t matter because Mint.com is my new financial best friend and should be yours too. If you haven’t already, check it out and come back here and tell me how much you love it. Of course a tweet or two would be great as well.

I don’t know how many of you have watched hockey lately. There’s a bit of a big final going on now. My apologies if you live in a country where people don’t go absolutely crazy over adult men dressing up in funny costumes with padding in all the right places. These adults (sic) strap metal blades to the bottom of their feet and race around on ice chasing a small rubber disc with curved sticks. I know, it makes about as much sense to you as the Indian commentator during the World Cup cricket final does to me.

Anyway…. my team at least for the playoffs are the Canucks. They would be my team the rest of the year but I only watch hockey during the playoffs. It’s a deal I made with my wife when we first got married. Long story…

So last night the Canucks got roasted by the Bruins. They lost 8 to 1. A dreadful showing. However, that’s not the main thing. In the Stanley Cup finals, the winner is the team who wins the most games, not gets the most goals. A small but incredibly important distinction. The Bruins could win the game 100 to 1 and still not win the cup if they don’t win the most games. Goals only count in one game.

To me that raises an important question about life. How often do we focus on the wrong score?

I remember hearing a story about a young couple and their son riding his swing in the back yard. Every time, he swung over the ground he would drag his feet and tear a little of the grass. His dad was pushing, the son was laughing and they were enjoying the moment. All of a sudden mom yelled at the boy to lift his feet because he was ruining the grass. The dad stopped for a moment, walked over to his wife and held her in his arms. He whispered in her ear, ‘sweetheart, we’re not raising grass, we’re raising a son’. Perspective strikes again!

We all probably realize that winning is important, but you’ve gotta win at the things that count. How does that play out in your life? I know that I have to remind myself that somethings just aren’t that important. I almost always win when I shrug off the unimportant concessions so I can focus on the important battles. Is there a time when you focussed on the wrong thing and lost? How about a time when realizing what was important made you a winner?

As always comments are open below and on Twitter

No complaint here, but if you go into a big box store that is part of a chain, don’t you expect them to have the same policies? I mean, isn’t that part of what makes a chain a… chain?

It would seem to me that one of the key things a chain store does is offer a consistent user experience. If it doesn’t do that, then it fails in a very important area. Now I’m not talking about policies that reflect significant differences in the country of operation. I’m actually talking about different policies in two stores that were only 45km apart. Not significant enough in my mind to justify a difference in a financial policy.

It seems like a legitimate thought for any small business with more than one site. If you’re going to grow big, then your organization must be scalable. One way that happens is thinking about whether your policies (systems, processes, etc.) apply in all locations. Consistency is crucial if you want to grow.

Maybe it’s just me. What do you think? Should you be able to expect the same policies in two stores in the same chain? Is it even necessary? Comment below or tweet your response.

In my opinion, there’s is only one piece of must have software for every Mac. It’s called Quicksilver. It used to be from BlackTree Software, but my recent search of their website seems to indicate that it has gone completely open source.

It’s hard to really describe this particular gem. The Quicksilver wiki says:

Quicksilver doesn’t let you do much that you can’t do already, but it allows you to do it a whole lot faster.

And that my friends is the real secret to Quicksilver. It allows you to do things… well… quick!

You can launch programs, write emails, search files, run scripts and so much more. You might think of it as Spotlight on steroids but that would be only a part of the story. Spotlight helps you find things, but Quicksilver helps you find the things you need and then do something with them.

The power of Quicksilver is in the keyboard shortcuts and the plugins. I have Quicksilver set up so a simple two key shortcut lets me launch any program by typing in the first couple of letters. The software even learns my habits so the programs I regularly use are found with one or two letters instead of typing the whole name.

I have to run a windows only accounting program on my computer so I have set up my Mac to use bootcamp. With Quicksilver I have a keyboard shortcut that gets me into Windows faster than anyone should need to.

If you run a Mac, you need to get Quicksilver. You’ll thank me for it.