30 Aug 2010, Posted by Josh Allan Dykstra in Life, 3 Comments

The Selfishness Of Helping ‘The World’

We have this idea that to put too much attention on what drives and motivates us is somehow selfish. This is a lie. What the world really needs is exactly one thing: more you.

17 Aug 2010, Posted by Josh Allan Dykstra in Life, 3 Comments

How To Discover Your Strengths

“Live a strong life.” That sounds great, and we all want to do it, but… how? Discovering your strengths and rocking your career can be boiled down to a focus on three things: 1) Talent, 2) Life Experience, and 3) Passion. This is how to find your area of strength…

20 Jun 2010, Posted by Josh Allan Dykstra in Legacy, Life, 0 Comments

We Are What We Choose (2010 Princeton Baccalaureate Remarks by Jeff Bezos)

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, encourages the Princeton Class of 2010 to remember the difference between cleverness and kindness — and that we become the choices we make.

05 May 2010, Posted by Josh Allan Dykstra in Leadership, Legacy, Life, 1 Comments

Age Has Nothing To Do With How Old You Are

If age isn’t really about age, what is it about? (And why should we care…!?)

07 Dec 2009, Posted by Josh Allan Dykstra in Leadership, Life, 1 Comments

American Idol & My Nonexistent NBA Career

I’m sure our collective parents all collectively meant well when they collectively told us that we could “be anything we wanted to be” when we grew up.

Unfortunately, this is a lie.

05 Nov 2009, Posted by Josh Allan Dykstra in Leadership, Legacy, 0 Comments

People: Your LEAST Important Asset

Once upon a time, in the thick of the American industrial revolution, a highly respected and influential leader is said to have exclaimed:

Why is it that I always get the whole person when what I really want is a pair of hands?

That leader was Henry Ford…

12 Oct 2009, Posted by Josh Allan Dykstra in Leadership, 3 Comments

Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

I’ve experienced this firsthand, as likely have you. How many times have we seen a “great idea” for our organization get buried… somehow, mysteriously, and at the end reflect back on the process only to realize we have no idea how exactly it died?

Short answer: the culture killed it.

09 Oct 2009, Posted by Josh Allan Dykstra in Leadership, Legacy, 3 Comments

How To Stop Sucking

It seems like the right thing is to focus more time on making our weaknesses better. After all, this is what we are taught our whole lives in school–if I suck at math, I spend the most time working on that subject.

But we are wrong. Focusing on our weaknesses is usually completely futile.

Let’s accept it: we all suck at something. And even more, what we suck at sucks the life out of us. So why do we keep doing these things!? How can we stop sucking?

31 May 2009, Posted by Josh Allan Dykstra in Life, 0 Comments

Genius & The Weight Of Creativity

I just watched an incredible and insightful video on the oft-impossible weight of creativity from Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) at TED this year.

If you consider yourself to be a creative person, or know someone who does, please take 20 minutes to watch this video.

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06 May 2009, Posted by Josh Allan Dykstra in Life, 0 Comments

Incorporate Yourself

I’m working on writing another book. It started as an idea for a project I had to create for my MBA program and has morphed into a giant opus that is consuming my life.

OK, that last part isn’t really true, but it does feel like a pretty daunting task sometimes.

This morning I decided to set aside a couple hours to just write. As a completely freelance independent contractor, I’m trying to have more personal discipline with the things I do, starting by setting aside blocks of time to work on a specific thing: Finance Homework, 9a-noon; Book/Writing, noon-3p, that kind of thing. It doesn’t always work (I’m not sure if you’re aware but there are a LOT of interesting things on the internet), but I think the self-control of a regimen is really great.

I’m all about viewing ourselves as a “brand,” as an “enterprise.” YOU are the business. Even if you get paid as an employee, think of yourself as a contractor: lending your talents to the project at hand.

Incorporate yourself.

The benefits to this way of thinking are astronomical. I’ll explore this concept more in future posts, but in a nutshell it’s simply more empowering. It’s one thing to say, “This is what I do, and this how I can bring value to your company if we partner together.” It’s another thing altogether to be sending out resumes all day, getting, or feeling, rejected one after the other. (If you’ve ever been unemployed you know exactly what I’m talking about; it’s literally inhumane.)

It’s not easy to think of ourselves in this new way, though. There’s a lot of sociological baggage we’ve got to ditch (our culture focuses primarily on weaknesses over strengths, for example), and good time management is a really tough skill to learn. Also, we’re taught that a 60 hour work week is what it takes to be successful. But some very prosperous people don’t do that. We’re told that we get out of something what we put into it. But due to things like the concept of leverage and the Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule), we know that’s not really true either. We’ll talk more on that another day.

There’s usually a lot of re-training that has to happen before we can learn how to build a better personal leadership brand.

For today, I think we start with simply questioning the assumptions. Does your work have to be done the way it’s always been done? Do you have to live the way you’ve been living?

There’s a cool moment at the end of a film with two brothers sitting on the beach talking about recent frustrating circumstances, and one says to the other: “This is your life. Right now. It doesn’t wait for you to get back on your feet.”

I’ll leave you with some thoughts from the principles of Kaizen (Japanese for “improvement”):

1. Get rid of old assumptions; ask “Why?” five times to get to the root cause.
2. Don’t look for excuses, look for ways to make things happen.
3. Say “NO” to the status quo.
4. Don’t worry about being perfect—even if you only get it half right, start now.
5. If something is wrong, fix it on the spot.

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