“The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world. The tweaker inherits things as they are, and has to push and pull them toward some more nearly perfect solution. That is not a lesser task.”

Read more here.

Seth Godin talks about how shipping – the art of getting something out the door and into the real world - separates the “ok” from the great.

And it’s true. We need to take pride in what we do. We need to thrash around, work to make something perfect, and work hard at it. But the best approach is often to get the idea out there, into the real world, and refine it as it grows.

Example One – Check out this early version of Twitter:

Example Two – The first iPhone had no App options. Steve Jobs didn’t think they were needed and risked messing up the user experience (Instead developers could build pages that worked for the Safari browser already installed on the phone). Later, he changed his mind and the iPhone went from no apps to “there’s an app for that.”

Example Three – Almost any event I’ve seen repeated from year to year in a department with a consistent staff dedicated to growing or improving it. At our school, ResLife does some “fencepost” events that we are known for. It’s been amazing to see the improvements from year-to-year as Residence Directors brainstorm how to streamline processes and build in new, creative, energizing ideas.

Clearly defining our core values is one of the most difficult and most important things we can do. We’re going to make decisions daily. We can either make them with pre-established guidelines that reflect what we truly value, or we can make them in the moment, trusting that our emotions and the sway of what’s urgent and reacting to what gets placed before us.

So defining our values is proactive. Responding based on the moment is reactive.

National Community Church in Washington D.C. has a unique set of core values. Very “un-church-like.” They’re sticky. They represent a set of beliefs, but they’re phrased in a way that helps people remember and understand them.

When someone hits a situation in their day-to-day life to which one of the values relates, there’s a good chance they’ll remember it. When the church (which meets in movie theaters across D.C. and runs a coffee shop as one of their venues) comes across a new opportunity that means change in how they’re doing things, values like “Playing it safe is risky” and “Irrelevance is irreverence” help them filter the decision through values that speak to the importance of change and relevance. When a person in the church finds personal change and growth hard, a value like “It’s never too late to be who you might have been” inspires them to take steps toward growth.

When we worked to build our developmental model for Residence Life, we realized there are a lot of great, well-researched models out there. But most are in researcher-talk. For something to stick – to influence behavior – it has to be written in a way that connects to the people it’s meant to impact. RAs must “get it” enough to share it or program with it. So we boiled it down to seven core values and tried to name them in ways that would stick. We’re always working to improve things, but so far, they seem to have worked better than anything else we’ve tried.

Core values can be prescriptive and descriptive. They both help simplify decisions by making clear where you stand and what you’re about. But they also show others who you are from the outset.

What about you? Do you have some clear values that drive where you work? Do you have clear personal values that help you filter decisions and actions?

“The tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long. You’re coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes long…I realized about a year ago that I couldn’t have a complete thought anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn’t write a song.”

It’s something worth thinking about for everyone. What’s your main thing? Where should your energy go? Some things like Facebook and Twitter can connect us and even make us feel productive, but if it’s robbing us of the core/central thing (if it becomes our main instrument), it may need to be cut back.

I know people in Student Affairs who have used Twitter to connect with colleagues in amazing ways – to learn, to find support, and to share ideas. But for every person who finds #SAChat conversations and a new circle for professional growth, there may be five more who just use it as an escape for the real work of connection, creativity, and getting things done.

So what about you? How has Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Pinterest/Whatever helped you do what you do? What are the temptations that distract you from the main things you do?

• This TED presentation by Salman Kahn, founder and teacher for the Kahn Academy, deserves a post of its own. The implications for how we teach and learn are huge. But for now, just watch the video and see what they’re doing.
• Sometimes it’s hard to get rid of “stuff” (read: clutter) in our lives because it means something (read: sentimental). But Unclutterer has a few good mantras to help us remember to focus on living, not preserving.
• Environments matter. Look what happens when you put a coffee table at a bus stop.
• I’ll admit, I usually love every post Seth Godin writes, so I try to avoid linking to every. single. one. But you’ve got to read this one about embracing constraints because now, more than ever, it’s timely and true. “When we fight constraints and eliminate them, we often gain access to new insights, new productivity and new solutions. It also makes it easier to compete against people who don’t have those constraints.”
• And finally, just for fun, go to snailmailmyemail.org before August 15, type a letter to anyone, add the address, and someone will write it out, add an illustration, stick it in an envelope, and mail it to whoever you request. Free of charge. Really!

Sometimes when we’re feeling behind and overwhelmed we need to SIMPLIFY, not work harder to catch up.

Look at what you’re doing – is it worth it? Is the time you’re spending on that thing (whatever it is) worth what you’re getting from it? Does it align with your values? Does it make sense?

At home – are you happy with the amount of time you have to spend cleaning and organizing your stuff? Or would it be better to get rid of some of the excess and have more time for life? *

Is the time you spend catching up after a day of busy activities worth it? What would it look like to do fewer things, invest in them, and have a little margin in your life at the end of the day?

Even simpler – When you’re doing dishes, is the stuff you use most often the most accessible? Or are you wasting minutes every day with an inefficient setup?

Or at your job – is the paperwork you do (or require others to do) helpful? Or is it taking up more time than it’s worth?

How do you track your budget? Could you do a better job with more tracking? Less tracking? A simpler method?

Most people slow down a little over the summer. Why not use that time to examine your values and the default systems and habits you live by? Do they support those values?

Sometimes we create busyness for ourselves because it feels good. It feels like we’re productive. It’s easier to be busy than to make the tough decisions and do the things we really value.

Take some time to write out the things you really care about – the areas of life that you value. And list a few goals or dreams for each of those areas. It could be family, relationships, health, your job, and your broader mission or platform. Your list will look different. Where are you right now? Where do you want to be?

It’s worth centering our actions around deeply held values, not reactionary impulses.

Maybe it means doing less stuff so we can do the right things. Or maybe being ok with the dishes staying dirty a little while longer so we can connect with a friend. Or maybe it’s getting the junk out of the sink so you can cook a real meal and sit down for quality time with your family.

It looks different for each person. But we all feel it inside. We know where those areas of change are for us. Where are yours?

*Yes – this may be a little autobiographical.

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“He explained that I should start working on a project as soon as it was assigned. An hour or so would do fine, he told me. He told me to come back to the project every day for at least a little bit and make progress on it slowly over time. I asked him why that was better than cramming at the very end (as I was doing during the conversation).

He explained that once your brain starts working on a problem, it doesn’t stop. If you get your mind wrapped around a problem with a fair bit of time left to solve it, the brain will solve the problem subconsciously over time and one day you’ll sit down to do some more work on it and the answer will be right in front of you.”

I know this works for me when I actually do it. We’re in the process of moving right now, and I’m amazed how my mind is working on different ways to arrange our stuff and charting our moving day plans as I’m doing things like making dinner or sleeping.

(Via SwissMiss)