Dan Coughlin's Acceleration Blog

Pausing to Write a Book

Hope you're doing well.

I've put writing in my blog on hold while I write the 70,000 manuscript for my next book. The manuscript is due on October 1st to my publisher, AMACOM. When it's done, I'll be back.

In the meantime, I encourage to read some terrific books I've read lately:

1. Inside Steve's Brain. It's a fabulous book about Steve Jobs.

2. The Last Lecture. Brilliant insights from Randy Pausch. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

3. The Autobiography of Enzo Ferrari. If you can get a copy of this very old classic, I encourage you to read it.

My next book on my list is about Pixar, that amazingly creative digtial animation company.

Have a great summer.

Dan

Drive Fast Slowly

In doing research for my next book, I've been studying the world of professional motorsport racing.

Michael Schumacher is perhaps the greatest race car driver in history. He won 7 Formula One Grand Prix World Championships. But at his very first race he started too fast and his car stopped. His first race lasted about two seconds. He had to learn to drive fast slowly.

In other words, he had to slow down his efforts in order to get the car to reach and sustain incredibly fast speeds.

If you want to achieve incredible results faster and in a sustainable way, then slow down your mind, pause, reflect, make solid decisions, communicate those decisions clearly, and move forward into action. By making your efforts more effortless, you will move your career and your organization ahead faster.

The Law of Attraction

A friend, Kevin Wade, lent me some CDs called "The Law of Attraction" by Esther and Jerry Hicks. I didn't really know what to expect.

The best way to describe these CDs is "very practical advice delivered in a very funky manner." There are five CDs and they cover a few very powerful concepts:

1. We attract to ourselves what we think about.

2. Consequently, we need to solely focus our thoughts on what we really want.

3. For each item that we really want we need to take the time to think about why we really want it. If we don't have very good reasons for wanting it, we probably won't sustain our focus on it.

4. For each item that we really want, we need to identify why we expect to have it. What are the actual reasons why we believe it will become a reality.

5. We need to allow ourselves to be successful. In other words, we need to be ok with actually having the items on our list. (And "items" could be relationships, opportunities, financial wealth, physical health, and so on.)

6. We need to allow other people to pursue the life they want to live.

7. We need to live in short time segments. In other words, as we go through the day we need to continually resharpen our focus on what we want and then consciously stay focused in the next 30-90 minutes to make sure we are doing the activities and making the decisions that support what we really want.

Very, very good advice from a very, very funky delivery. I think you will enjoy it, but stay open-minded and listen to all five CDs.

Keep the Learning Going

My brother, Mick, pointed out I've missed a few blog entries. Ok, ok, more than a few.

One thing I do like about traveling so much is the opportunity to learn. In the past three weeks, I've been to the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, IL; the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC; and the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta.

When you get a chance, carve out part of a busy day and go learn something. And if you don't happen to travel, you can alway order great books. Here are two short, powerful books I picked up on my journeys:

The Measure of a Man by Martin Luther King. This book should be called The Measure of a Person, but other than that, it has two great essays in it about the completeness of a person. He writes about the length and the depth and breadth of a truly great life.

Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness by Thomas Jefferson. This is a compilation of carefully edited remarks from 50 years of his writings, and it is really magnificent.

The thing that was interesting to me is that these two books are really great examples of regular blogging, or in those days, of keeping a journal. These disparate ideas can be merged together into powerful documents.

I encourage you not only to read, but also to keep a diary, or a blog, if for no other reason than to capture your thoughts.

"It's good to do good."

I had a speech today in Atlanta so yesterday I went down early and spent three hours at the Martin Luther King Center. Martin Luther King is one of my American Idols. To me, he is the greatest American leader. I was enchanted watching films on him and reading details I didn't know about.

But the highlight of the day was the taxi ride to the MLK Center. The driver asked if he could stop to get some gasoline. I said that would be no problem. When he went in to pay for the gas, he found out a person's car battery had gone dead. He asked if he could take a few minutes to give the person a jump on his battery. I said of course he could.

Then, under his breath, he said, "It's good to do good."

I'll never forget that moment. Here was a cab driver who only made money when the meter was running, who had a customer in his car, and who took the time to jump someone else's battery. "It's good to do good." What a simple and powerful example of the ordinary, daily good in the world.

Citizen Coughlin

Seems to me we get two ways to add value to the U.S. just by being a U.S. citizen.

First, we get the opportunity to vote. When I was younger, I used to say, "I don't know enough about the candidates to vote, and besides what's one vote going to matter." I no longer think that way. I get the OPPORTUNITY to vote. That's a very big deal. That affects the future of a country, a state, or a community. It takes maybe 30 minutes out of one day to vote, maybe an hour.

The other opportunity we get is to serve on a jury. The whole judicial system is based on evidence being presented to a jury of 12 people to make a unanimous decision or to say, "We just couldn't agree." I served on a jury last week. It was very intense and very exhausting. There had been a murder. We deliberated for eight hours. Every person in the room was mentally exhausted at the end of our four days of serving jury duty. In the end I know we did our very best to make the best decision we could with what we were given.

Serve on a jury. Don't try to get out. Don't try to think of someone you know that will cause you not to get selected. Serve on the jury and do the best you can.

Go to the voting booth and do the best you can.

If we want our country to accelerate, we need to all take a role in adding the value we can in the opportunities we are given.

Democratizing Great Performance

When I was a high school teacher back in my 20s and early 30s, I told the students on the first day of class that my goal was for every student to get an A. I never graded on a bell curve. Over the ten years I was a teacher I had 42 classes of between 25 and 35 students in each class. I had four or five classes where more than five students received Fs and almost no students received As. I had other classes where there were something like 20 As and 12 Bs and nothing lower than a B. Same teacher, same books, same types of questions on the tests, and yet the results were all over the board.

One of the things I learned from those ten years is that great performance is neither guaranteed nor rare. You can have a group with no great performers and you can have a group with a vast majority of great performers.

Don't ever think great performance is reserved for just a few people. I believe everyone is capable of great performance in life, particularly since every person can choose an area of life to concentrate on that allows him or her to use their specific strengths and passions.

Unlike my math students who had to be in the classroom, life provides every individual electives to choose from that he or she can excel within. What is needed for a great performance is an understanding of what it takes to achieve a great performance and the selection of a specific performance area that the person has a passion and strength within.

My life's work is about trying to hone and explain practical processes anyone can use to deliver a great performance within the specific area he or she has chosen to focus on.

Reward Yourself in Rewarding Ways

A tough lesson I learned that took a lot of time to learn was that the way I reward myself is critically important. Two of my important goals are to be in better physical and financial condition.

However, when I did something well and wanted to reward myself I spent money and ate poorly. I would buy a book or a music CD or eat chicken wings or a huge dessert. In other words, I was creating short-term solutions to long-term problems. My "rewards" were taking me away from my desired outcomes. Consequently, the more I "achieved" the farther I got away from my desired achievements.

Has that ever happened to you?

Find Rewards with Positive After Effects

Now I try to reward myself doing free things that are good for me like taking time to relax, watch a movie, read a book, listen to music, go for a walk, or play with my kids in the backyard. Those are real "rewards" that have positive after effects.

How Technology Fuels Greatness

I used to think "technology" meant "electronics, computers, and software." That's not what it means at all.

The definition of technology in Webster's dictionary is "science applied in a practical way."

"Science" means "knowledge gained by systematic study or a skill, especially reflecting a precise application of facts or principles."

Here are some people who systematically studied a particular field and then applied their learnings in a precise and practical way:

Tiger Woods, golf

Walt Disney, story-telling

Michael Jordan, basketball

Jonathan Ive, chief designer of the iPod

Johnny Carson, entertaining conversations

Oprah Winfrey, insightful conversations

If you want to be truly great at something, study the underlying principles in a systematic manner and then apply them in a practical manner.

Generational Differences

I gave a keynote presentation yesterday at Boeing. At the end, a young lady came up to me and said she didn't have a business card, but that she would send me an e-mail. She said, "It's probably a generational thing. People in my generation don't usually carry a business card."

Then she realized she had basically just called me OLLLDDD, and quickly said, "Although you're probably not much older than me." Nice try, I thought, considering I'm probably twenty years older at least.

I said, "You know, I really don't buy into the generational differences that much. I think people are people."

She said something like, "Well, when we webex someone the control-c usually means you're mad so it was confusing to receive that idea."

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. She said, "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?" I said, "No, but I now believe in generational differences."