Smiling is Sexy

What does it take to reinvent oneself?

Take a look at who you were five years ago. Take a look at yourself today. See a difference? I certainly hope so. Reflection is an important part of reinvention and personal evolution.

Now, close your eyes and imagine the person you'd like to be. This is likely a mashup of changes inspired by your experiences seasoned with concepts borrowed from heroes and idols. This is your future projection of yourself.

Reflecting on the past you and current you, are you closer to your future self? How do you begin this change, or how do you continue it more efficiently?

JOURNAL

Wether you prefer writing or speaking, record your thoughts frequently. Start by journaling a few times a week. Work on increasing the frequency to daily. Why? Journaling gives you a change to think about your choices throughout the day more analytically. It helps you see and make sense of things. It allows you to track your progress, to see where you have failed and where you have succeeded. By journaling, you train yourself to be more self-observant. This enhances your ability to analyze situations so that you can begin to apply this skill to real-time self observation.

Homework: Your homework for the next three weeks is to journal at least three times a week. Think about your day, what happened, how you responded, how you could have responded more appropriately. Ask yourself tough, detailed questions. Admit to failures. Appreciate your successes. 

Final Notes: Our future selves are who we are meant to be. It is important that your future self be not a mirror of a hero or an idol but a better version of yourself enhanced with the best attributes of what your heroes and idols have to offer. Long-term change requires constant reflection and persistence. Who you are is determined by the choices you make. Observe yourself so that you may make the right choices. Be not a product of your environment but a crafting of your own design.

I adore my MX Revolution. Here's how I have my buttons mapped in order to remain fluid and productive.

Don't stomp on Goomba!

I've spent the last hour or so trying to determine an ideal solution for syncing RSS feeds between the iPad and Mac. Unfortunately, they're aren't a lot of good solutions.

That's okay. Upon reflection, I've realized that I've become obsessed with syncing, having my data with me at all times. Yet is this really that important?

I use MobileMe to remotely access files when needed. This has worked well, and I have been unable to connect to my home Mac on only a few occasions. These few hiccups have never been a show-stopper. Previously I took this obsession further, putting all of my company files on iDisk in case I needed them. This only took up valuable space and caused syncing headaches. Task management: same story. Now it's RSS.

I worry too much over future-proofing my solutions "just in case." Yet any time something hasn't worked out, I've been fine. My new perspective is domain specific: utilize each device for what it does best. Do I really need to track my location in a book so that I can resume reading it on the computer? No. Do I really need to have all of my feeds and read states synced across my iMac, MacBook Air, and iPad? No. Sure, it's convenient, but the overhead isn't worth it. Where syncing is useful is with email, but email is a general purpose task in which we have standards such as IMAP to provide syncing solutions.

To attempt to have the same experience on every platform voids the given platforms of their unique expressions. Taking advantage of a platform's unique abilities is something I have preached fervently, yet I now catch myself disobeying it.

No more.

I am now using the iPad as my primary source for reading books, feeds, and for its unique multitouch capabilities and applications. I believe that the iPad has opened up a new age in computing. We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg, and apps like iBooks and Pulse on the iPad completely replace their computer counterparts with a much better experience. If I'm not near my iPad to read feeds or books, tough. I'll find something else to do. Besides, do I really need to read a feed as soon as it's updated, from anywhere at anytime?

I think not.

"You will travel far, my little Kal-El, but we will never leave you -- even in the face of our deaths. You will make my strength your own. You will see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father. And the father, the son." ~ Jor-El

"They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son." ~ Jor-El

My favorite definition of diligence that I keep as a digital sticky: 

DILIGENCE is a learnable skill which combines: creative persistence, a smart-working effort rightly planned and rightly performed in a timely, efficient and effective manner to attain a result that is pure and of the highest quality of excellence.

We have all heard, used, and believed stereotypes. Some have made us laugh. Others have made us wince. Yet there is a stereotype that is being lived out everyday on TV and in politics. It is sad and pathetic.