Randy Pausch (1960-2008) is one of my most favorite people who lived. I have learned so many life lessons from his “Last Lecture” book. If you have not heard of Randy, take the time to look him up, listen to the “Last Lecture” on YouTube, and read his book.

You will be motivated and inspired to live your life to it’s fullest. Today I thought I would share a few of Randy’s quotes on how to improve your life.

Happy Friday and have a wonderful weekend!

Randy Pausch Quotes on How to Improve Your Life

PERSONALITY

1. Don’t compare your life to others’. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

2. Don’t overdo; keep your limits

3. Don’t have negative thoughts of things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment

4. Don’t take yourself so seriously; no one else does

5. Dream more while you are awake

6. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

7. Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip

8. Forget issues of the past. Don’t remind your partner of his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.

9. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don’t hate others.

10. Make peace with your past so it won’t spoil the present

11. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.

12. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.

13. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

14. Smile and laugh more

15. Don’t complain; just work harder.

Who is Randy Pasch?

Despite the efforts of a good manager, there are times when an employee’s performance falls below the acceptable line.

When this happens it is important to address the issue sooner than later. Based on personal experience, I can tell you that this is true.  I have waited too long and it just makes the situation harder to address and correct.

Just trying to encourage an employee to do a better job rarely fixes any problems that may exist.

Managers need to find out what the problem is and why the employee lacks the understanding of what their job performance should be. Once this is accomplished the manager can began to help the employee get back on track.

There are four main steps to take when addressing an employee’s inadequate performance. It is important that you set up a time to talk to the employee in private and let them know that you want to discuss their job performance.

Make sure you have everything you will need to address these four points written down so you can stick to the facts and not be distracted.

1. Define to the employee what acceptable performance at work is and looks like. Make sure you are clear on all aspects of their position. Give examples and ask open-ended questions so you can make sure the employee understands what you are saying. Ask them to give you examples of what acceptable performance in their position would be.

2. Tell the employee what you have observed in their performance that is unacceptable. Be detailed so that they know exactly what they should not be doing. Do not say things like “I don’t like the way you handle customers over the phone.” That statement tells them nothing of their performance. Describe to them what it is about the way they talk to customers that is unacceptable. Remember details, facts and examples.

3. Set goals and establish an action plan for the employee to learn and improve their skills. Let the employee make up the plan with you.  In this way if they do not accomplish their goals, it was what they set and agreed to accomplish.

4. At the end of the meeting set up a follow-up meeting to check on their progress. By setting the follow-up meeting time the employee knows how much time they have been given to make improvements.

What other ways have you heard of handling inadequate employee performance?

Having a conversation about time management will not do any good to change the time issues you may face.  Taking action on managing your time is what you need to do to master it.

Do you ever tell yourself on a Sunday afternoon “If I just had one more day, I could catch up on the things I need to do.”  Realistically would that one more day make that big of a difference?  What would happen when the next Sunday came along?

With our blackberrys, iPhones, and the many other organizational tools that we have access to, you would think we would have this time thing under control.

The light finally came on when I realized that time management is really not about having 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Managing time is really about what I do and how I utilize every minute and hour of each day.

Mastering how to use your time to the best of your advantage in whatever area you are working will maximize your potential to be more successful and have a better work and home life.  Sounds nice, but is it that easy?  Here are a few things you can do to jump-start a Time Management/Self Management plan:

1. Have a priority list for work and home.  Keep it simple, you can always add to it. It is always better to complete your list and be successful than to make your list so long that you fail.

2. At work, keep distractions down, focus on what can be realistically done each hour from your priority list.

3. Don’t over book yourself, this leads to stress.

4. The night before, plan your day for work and at home.  Thinking about it and planning ahead of time will make you more successful at completing it.  This has been proven to be true.

5. Have just one calendar and use it.

6. Establish routines for yourself in the morning and at night.

7. This is important..”Be flexible.”

8. This is the most important one…schedule “me” time, so that you can regroup, relax and have a better positive mental attitude to carry on.

We cannot add anymore time to the 24 hours in a day, but we can learn to master ourselves in what we do with those 24 hours.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Playing the balancing game of life can be pretty difficult.  We want to give our all at work and at home.  If it were just these two areas that we needed to keep in balance it might not be so difficult.

There are four areas in life that we need to keep in balance in order to be successful and achieve living the life we desire.

The term “The Four Pillars of Life” refers to;

1. Work

2. Relationships/family/home life

3. Spiritual Life (whatever that means to you)

4. Health/Self

Think of yourself as a table and each of the legs as one of the pillars.  If the legs are all equal the table stands firm.  If one leg is shorter or longer the table becomes unbalanced.

It is the same with our lives, if we spend too much time on our work, we are short-changing ourselves in another pillar’s area.

Most often we end up short in the pillar of Health/Self, and this should be the one pillar that we take care of first.  If we do allow time for self, we will not be able to do the best we can in the other three pillars of our life.

Putting Health and Self first allows us to move forward.  We cannot create a positive mental attitude (PMA) if we do not take care of ourselves.

Keeping these for pillars standing firm and equal can prove to be quite a feat.  We all know on occasion we may invest in one area more than another. It becomes a problem if that is the norm.  Such as spending too much time invested in work and short-changing our home and family pillar.

Continually making yourself aware of how your table is standing is a wise thing to do.  Are all of your legs even?  If you were to set a glass of water on your table would it stay in the middle or would it slide to one edge?

Last week I was in Pittsburgh speaking at a Practice Management Seminar.  It is always so exciting to see people who want to learn more about how they can make their business or job position better.

One of the difficult things about going to seminars is that you usually end up with a long list of things that you want to change right away and become overwhelmed as to where to begin.

Throughout the seminar I heard several of the speakers address this very problem.  Their suggestion was to just take the top two or three items on your list and begin with the first one. The rest of the list will still be there when you are ready to move on.

If you try to change too many things at once, you either will lose your drive or drive yourself crazy.  Either way, most likely, you will fail at completing any change successfully.

Another precaution that was given to attendees; was to realize when they returned to work on Monday all pumped up, that there was a good chance that life and work would get in the way of beginning their list and they would become disappointed or feel down because they did not get to move forward as they had expected.

One way to beat these blues is to write those first three changes down on a card and keep it with you to look at often.  There is something about writing them down and looking at them that keeps you moving in the right direction toward beginning and completing them.  You do not want to lose sight of the changes you want to make.

Seminars are great to stir up the coals that may be burning out with your job.  Being realistic about accomplishing the changes in appropriate time frames is the key to moving forward with them.

How do you feel when you have returned to work after a great workshop or seminar?  How do you implement the changes you wish to accomplish?

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” – Joshua J. Marine

Happy Friday to all of you.  We have so much to be grateful for. Let us count our blessings as we move throughout our day!

When my children were young I had the privilege of being a stay at home mom, until I became a working from home mom. Even with one parent at home, my children missed their father while he was at work.

To make Dad’s going to work a more positive experience for them, here are a few things that we did that really helped.

1. We would visit Dad’s work every now and then, bringing a lunch that we all could share. We also would take goodies for his co-workers.

2. We got to know some of Dad’s work team and had a few of them and their families over for dinner.

3. In the evening Dad would share stories of his day, maybe an interesting customer or some mishap that happened. The children loved hearing these stories.

4. Dad would make time to take the children on a tour, explaining how the business ran.

5. Dad always talked positive about his job in front of the children.

As a result of doing these things two of our children, as they became work age, were able to get part time jobs at Dad’s work. By that time they knew a lot about the business and knew several of the people who worked there.

There are many things parents can do to make the connection for their children with their places of work to make them feel better about them being gone. Here are a few others that I found.

* Take your children’s artwork to the office, pin it up and take a picture for them to see. Also take pictures of their workplace if their children cannot visit it.

* Tell them about a work project and when it is completed celebrate with them.

* Call them from work at the same time each day.

* If you travel, send an email or text with a picture of you wherever you are. You can even hold a sign telling them you love them.

* Mail them something from work, maybe a note on letterhead, sent in a business envelope. They will be so excited to receive mail from you.

* If you travel extensively, buy a map and have push pins with different color heads and mark on the map where you will be. This not only shows them where you are, but they will learn a bit about geography.

It is very important to make a parents work “a positive” for children.

Anyway you can connect them will help to do this. This is also true for spouses and extended family; they want to know more about where we are each day.

What ways have you been able to connect your family with your work?

A common complaint among managers, no matter type of business they are in, is lack of employee cooperation to complete their job tasks.

When I hear this from managers I will ask them “if this employee has been hired for a particular job, do they know and understand what that job is?”  If they say “yes” then I ask “how do you manage them?”

I usually will get some pretty interesting looks.  Management styles play a big part in how employees will perform and respond to their managers.

Managers need to remember that their staff are human just like they are.  They need to ask themselves “how would I like to be treated by my manager?”

Successful managers have three secret managerial skills that they practice.  They learn how to delegate effectively to their staff members, which makes a huge difference in how they respond.

1. They delegate tasks without abdicating their responsibility.

2.  They explain the why, but never dictate the how.

3. They give instructions, not orders.

Employees respect and respond to managers who treat them respectfully when delegating tasks.  Employers respect and respond to managers who accept the ultimate responsibility of what they have delegated to their staff to complete.

Do you have other successful delegation tips to share?

“Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower

“To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three people, two of whom are absent.” ~ Robert Copeland

Being assigned to a committee at work or an organization that you belong to can be a scary thing.

Often committees are not very successful at completing their goals because the people who are on them do not really know what they are to do.

What usually ends up happening, is that old 80/20 rule, where 20 percent of the people on the committee do the work and basically the other 80% of the committee are totally forgotten about.

I have been assigned to committees before and never assigned to do any particular task, Only to find out that the purpose of the committee had either been completed or fallen apart and I was clueless as to what had taken place.

Committees can be very useful when they are set up correctly. These five steps are crucial for a committee to be successful in completing their project.

1. Define the committee’s purpose. Details are necessary and all committee members need to understand them.

2. Establish the committee leader. This must be someone who can delegate, instruct and follow-up with committee members to insure goal success.

3. Define each committee member’s role and task. Make sure these are detailed or the committee leader will not know if the member has done their job. Make sure that the member understands what they are to do.

4. Develop a timeline and check points for committee member’s tasks and then keep on schedule.

5. Evaluate the results of the committee’s project. What worked, what did not. Give the information to all committee members so that everyone can learn from the experience.

Committees can work, but they take work and commitment by those who are on them.

What experiences have you had working on committees that worked or did not?

Putting off thinking about projects, deadlines or commitments can be very draining to your mind and cause you to become unproductive in other areas.  The reason for this is that your subconscious mind knows those things are there and not being dealt with yet.

Take a few minutes during your most productive time of the day and give each item some thought.  It doesn’t have to be a lot of time.  By thinking about them you are easing your mind that they are going to be taken care of.

People who are list makers have found that if they review the top things that they want to accomplish the next day, the night before, they are more likely to complete them.

By periodically reviewing your projects, maybe daily or weekly, you will be figuring out in your mind how to complete them or what the next step will be.  When it comes time to actually do the task a lot of the thinking process that it will take to complete it has already been done.

Becoming more disciplined and structured in your thinking time will cause you to become more productive and inspired to think about possibilities that you did not think you would ever have time for.

Time to put on your thinking cap and get going!

For more information on thinking smarter you might want to take a look at David Allen, author of “Ready for Anything” website.

David Allen