David A. Pancost

The Most Important Skill You Must Develop

Have you ever sat next to a true bore at a dinner party? Have you ever, perhaps, even been the bore at a dinner party?

Stop and think about the last time you spent a few moments in the presence of a boring person. Even though it might have been only a few moments, it felt like an eternity, didn’t it?

Why do you think that was? What feature comes to mind when you remember that encounter? Chances are that you were in the presence of a person who talked non-stop. A person who clearly demonstrated that he or she was far more interested in what they were saying than in actually having a back and forth conversation.

You know the kind of encounter I’m talking about. The kind where the person you are engaging with never quite hears what you say because they are too focused on what they are going to say next.

Have you noticed that those people are rarely successful at achieving the things they truly want in life? They are always talking about their goals and dreams, but hardly ever experience them.

I believe the reason for this is that they lack a vital skill. One we all could stand to develop more of. One that, if missing, practically guarantees losing out on achieving your dreams.

That skill is…

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Twitter, TweetDeck, and TweetChats, Oh My!

This post is going to be a little bit different than the others. It’s kind of a public service announcement to those who are part of the “Lead from Within” tweet chat family. To those of you who are not part of that family, stick with me. I’ll be back to my regular posts next Tuesday.

For the uninitiated the #leadfromwithin tweet chat takes place on Tuesday evenings at 8:00 Eastern and 5:00 Pacific time. Each chat covers a single topic centered around personal and business leadership. We’ve covered topics like communication, empathy, vision, setting boundaries, etc. I’ve been participating for a few months now and never fail to learn something new or be inspired to take action and better myself. I highly recommend it.

It’s easy to join, just go to http://tweetchat.com and log in using your twitter account. Type #leadfromwithin into the chat room box at the very top of the page and you’ll automatically be joined to the chat. As long you’re logged in to the site every tweet you send out will have the #leadfromwithin hash tag automatically appended to your tweet and all participants will see your tweet whether they follow you or not.

I’ll have more to say about #leadfromwithin in a future post, but for now I wanted to address a solution to a problem we experienced last Tuesday during the chat.

I don’t really know why, but last Tuesday the tweetchat.com site was extremely slow at updating the page and many participants missed questions and discussion because of it. This happens on rare occasions because of possible issues going on with Tweetchat.com or even with Twitter itself.

As a result I switched from Tweetchat.com to a software program called TweetDeck.

I won’t go into a lot of detail about this because my #leadfromwithin friend Chris Edmonds (@scedmonds) turned me on to a tutorial that covers everything you need to know to effectively use TweetDeck as an alternative to Tweetchat.com.

Here’s the link:

http://thedesktoptutor.com/blog/tools/tweetchat-too-slow-using-tweetdeck-as-a-work-around

Here’s another source of TweetDeck links that might be of interest:

http://support.tweetdeck.com/forums/126043-desktop-video-tutorials

Anyway, I thought I’d just let you know that TweetDeck is an awesome alternative when Tweetchat.com is having issues. It’s also a great tool to use for regular Tweeting as well.

Hope these links help, and I hope you all have a great weekend.

Regular posting resumes on Tuesday.

Patience Is More Than Just A Virtue

As some of you know I’ve recently taken on a project that has me learning iPhone programming. Not only iPhone programming but programming a game for the iPhone.

This little adventure has me thinking in new directions, learning new skills, and getting excited about programming all over again.

Along with the excitement of learning new things comes the challenge of being stretched in areas that have long lied dormant in my life. I’m being exposed to concepts that are completely foreign to me and having to dig to find answers that sometimes leave me more confused than before I asked the question.

I’m often guilty of repeating “This is hard. I’m not stupid. I will learn. I will defeat this challenge. I will win.” In fact, I mumble that little mantra several times a day.

Yesterday I discovered a particular nasty error in a routine I wrote that really threw me for a loop because I couldn’t figure out what was triggering the error. Finally, after about an hour and a half of reading, poking around in the debugger and general bug hunting, I found the cause of the error and was able to fix it.

“Patience is a virtue,” popped into my head, once I was able to run the routine error free. A sentiment with which I must agree.

As I thought about it, though, I came to the conclusion that patience is much more than a virtue. Patience can be an extremely powerful tool you can use in your journey toward success.

Here’s what I mean:

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A Good Place to Start

I was in a conversation with a friend a few days ago in which we were discussing the desire we both had to “upgrade” our lives.

We both expressed how we felt a dissatisfaction with the current quality of our lives. We wanted better and knew deep-down that we could have better.

It was quite an enjoyable conversation that confirmed much for me. It got me to thinking deeper about the whole process of self-growth and personal evolutionary progress.

But the question “Where do you start?” kept popping into my head as I thought about the things we both said. There is a lot in my life that needs to change if I want to get where I dream of going. Looking at the “mountain of change” required in my life, things can get fairly overwhelming rather quickly.

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Never Stop Experimenting

The other day I tweeted out a post titled “How to Write a Twelve Minute Blog Post.” As a result a brief twitter exchange occurred between the author, Becky Robinson, and me.

During the exchange she asked me what I thought about the post and if I thought it would work as a consistent thing.

My response was that it probably wouldn’t work for me, but for others it probably would work well. At the time I was thinking along a different track, but later in the day I began to re-think my original answer to her. I realized that I completely wrote off the idea for me as un-workable, but I hadn’t even tried to write a twelve minute post — ever. So how did I know it wouldn’t work for me?

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Choices: What Do We Do With Them?

So I’m still thinking a lot about choices.

I believe that the ability to choose is a very good thing. It allows us to build our lives as we see fit. It empowers. With it we can learn, expand, grow and ultimately we can become better human beings.

However, the blessings of choice do not come without a cost.

If I choose one option over another, then the one I didn’t choose ceases to exist. What if I make the wrong choice? What if the choice I make turns out to have consequences I didn’t foresee? What if I discover that there was a better choice that I somehow missed?

When I make a choice, I become responsible for that choice. That fact can, at times, be overwhelming and downright terrifying.

So what do we do when faced with one of those choices that strike terror in our hearts? How do we handle the overwhelming realization that we have the power to choose and within that power lies both the potential for glory and the potential for destruction?

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Choices: We all Have Them

A few days a go while following a link someone tweeted, I tripped across a blog post that got me to thinking about the choices we make.

The article was written by an artist. We’ll call her Maggie. I don’t really want to promote her because I don’t know her. I only want to focus on the content of her article.

The article centered around the fact that Facebook shut down her account.

Apparently she posted a nude photograph of herself and a female model in a sexual embrace. She said that it was a photo she had taken for reference purposes for a painting she was going to do.

The article was respectful, well written, and avoided any kind of rant. It was, however, an attempt to both complain about Facebook’s action and rationalize her decision to post the photo, even though she was aware of Facebook’s terms of service against posting nudity on their site.

What stimulated my thoughts, though, was not so much her post, but the comments at the end of her post.

As you can guess, they were split. Her defenders were outraged at Facebook’s action and accused Facebook of censoring her work. Some ranted, some even used “fascist” to describe the action of suspending her account.

Her detractors, on the other hand, raged about her audacity at posting a nude photo containing lesbian content.

She rationalized her action stating that it was her responsibility as an artist to always “push the envelope” and so she posted the photo in order to do so.

Now, let me be clear. Personally, I could care less about any of the controversy. It’s none of my business, and I won’t comment on the rightness or wrongness of any of it.

What I do want to comment on is what the whole business reveals about life and what we must pay attention to, if we are going to live well.

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Learning: the Key to Effective Personal Growth

Right now I’m buried in computer code, books and articles about how to program the Mac, iPhone and iPad.

I’ve been programming in the Windows world for a number of years. I know C, C++ and a number of scripting languages. I’ve been quite comfortable with my programming knowledge, but most all of my experience has been database and business related. So when I took on a project with a friend of mine to program an iPhone game, I was surprised at the amount of things I didn’t know and had to learn.

Things like programming for animation, collision detection, sprites and sprite sheets, game design, the use of sound, changing game conditions as the player gains experience, etc.

This has been quite a challenge and has stretched me a lot as a programmer and, believe it or not, as a person. I’ve had to think in new directions, take on new information, integrate it with existing knowledge, and acquire new skills.

It’s actually been quite fun.

Which brings me to my point. Learning new things can be one of the most effective ways to grow as a person.

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How to Build Renewal Time into Your Life

OK. So you agree that you need to take time in your life for renewal. You want to take time in your life for renewal. But you look at your life and in frustration, throw up your hands and say, “When?”

I get that. You have family obligations, work obligations, personal obligations, and a lot of chaos demanding your attention all the time.

You may not be able to take a whole day out of your schedule for renewal. That’s alright. Start with an hour. Do something. Because if you do not take care of yourself, then you will rapidly run out of the energy needed to take care your other obligations.

You need to make time for renewal a priority.

The question is, how do you do that when you are surrounded by chaos?

Here’s a few suggestions:

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Unplugging and the Need to Renew

If you follow me on Twitter (@dapancost), you’ve probably noticed that I don’t do a lot of tweeting on Saturdays and Sundays.

Saturdays I reserve for handling weekly chores and other necessities, while Sunday I reserve for doing absolutely nothing but what I want to do. Sunday is my day of renewal.

From ancient times the Jewish people honored a Sabbath day where no work was done and it was considered a day to honor God and to rest.

Other cultures have periods of time when rest is given ultimate priority. Mexican siestas might come to mind.

The concept of renewal and rest is one that is vital to a healthy, happy life. Yet in this day and age, in our consumerist driven culture, it is a concept that is often ignored to our ultimate detriment.

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