Your problem is not a lack of ideas, it’s acting on them!

How many of you have been doing something routine — commuting to the office, going for a run or maybe walking the dog — and an idea comes to you? It’s a great idea, and the more you think about it, the bigger it gets and the faster your heart beats because there is something about this this idea that not only sounds right, but feels right too. The idea is like a shiny red balloon that you keep filling up with great big, creative air — and the more you focus on your idea, the bigger your shiny red balloon becomes.

“I should write this down,” you think. “I should really do something with this.”

But you don’t. Instead, you move onto the next routine action in your day — and that shiny red balloon slowly deflates and withers away into some universe of spontaneous creativity where it started.

Imagine, for a moment, if some of our greatest inventors had let their balloon deflate. What if Alexander Graham Bell decided that the idea of transmitting sound via electricity wasn’t an idea worth pursuing? What if Alexander Fleming didn’t make the effort to grow some extra mold in his laboratory in 1928?

Thanks to Fleming, we have antibiotics that successfully combat infectious diseases across the globe. And 131 years after Bell’s invention of the telephone, Steve Jobs brought his vision for a touchscreen smartphone to life, and introduced the iPhone to the world.

Every invention, innovation and movement that changes the world starts with one thing: an idea. And here’s the best part about that one idea: it doesn’t have to be fully baked for you to get started. Maybe your idea isn’t clearly defined. That’s okay. Keep putting pen to paper until it starts to look like something that is. Maybe your idea is a side gig. That’s okay too, as long as it’s a side gig that reinvigorates your creativity and dares you to stop running on autopilot.

See what I’m getting at here? For most of us, our problem is not a lack of ideas, it’s acting on those ideas. Big ideas often have small beginnings. You simply have to begin! It’s blowing up your balloon and then letting it go out into the world to see what’s possible. What about you? What’s your shiny, red balloon? What first step could you take now to make your idea come to life?

Timelines - how to understand what yours is telling you

Last week, I was hiking with a good friend. We were catching up on our families and our jobs, dreaming aloud about the lives we’re trying to create for ourselves, and others, now and in the future — and the transitions we’ve already made or will make on our journeys to get there. We’ve all experienced transitions of some kind: from school to the workforce; job to job; adjusting to life and work with a new baby; becoming an empty nester; retirement. There are so many crossroads in life that we navigate; it becomes easy to just let them happen without paying much attention to the process. But if we really want to purposefully and deliberately create our lives, how do we actively participate in the process of these continual life transitions?

As my friend and I were hiking and asking these questions, I recalled a quiet morning about five years ago when I found myself in a hotel lobby reading about 'timelining', an exercise that helps you gain insight into what you truly want in your life by capturing insights from past experiences to shape future actions. That morning, I had the urge to dive into this exercise, and I asked the concierge for a scrap of paper and got to work. The timeline I created that morning on my little piece of paper in a hotel lobby was so helpful and meaningful to me that I actually still have it. Now I want to share the exercise with you.

You can create your timeline from the beginning of your career, or you can expedite the process, and just think about the past five years. It works like this. Take a piece of paper, and draw a horizontal line across it. Moving left to right, begin writing events or endeavors in your career, drawing a line upward for positive developments, down for lowlights. Place events you view positively — accomplishments, moments where your talents and gifts stood out or were acknowledged — at the top of the time line. Take the moments where you failed (or perceived that you failed), ran into obstacles or even felt dissatisfied at the bottom.

If you’re like most people I know, you’re focusing on your failures right about now. That’s fine — get them out of the way, because once you acknowledge those curveballs, we can get to the good nugget of this exercise, which is to glean insight about the events that preceded the positive developments in your career and life. What events and personal circumstances precipitated these highlights? What was your frame of mind? What was the culture or environment like? What kind of people did you work with and surround yourself with, and how did they contribute to these events?

Here’s what my scrap-paper timeline helped me discover: what enabled my success in the past was not a guarantee for my future. I could also see that I had my greatest bursts of energy and launched my best projects after periods of reflection. In addition, I also realized that I became discontent when I failed to prioritize personal and family time.

What does your time line look like, and what is it telling you? Can you see themes or patterns? Can you gather clues about your success or setbacks and the circumstances that contributed? At this point, I bet you can see how much you’ve accomplished. Just knowing that should be a big pick-me-up right now.

Now, take a moment, flip over your timeline and draw a T-Chart. Write “Works Well” on the top of one side, “Avoid” on the other side. Now that you’ve reflected on your timeline, capture a running list of what has worked well for you over time. This will help you see what it is that you need more of in future endeavors — or what you should avoid.

My hope is that your timeline offered a big picture for you — one that revealed both the stumbling blocks and the successes along your journey, and a vision to purposefully and deliberately create the next steps to you want in your life and career.

If you create a timeline today, let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear about your experiences!

Connection 101

I’ve come to learn in my career that the world is a smaller place than we tend to think it is. People are paying attention not just to the work you produce, but also to the person you are. To recent grads, you may not know it yet, but you are constantly being evaluated for roles that may not even exist today, but could be a next step — or even your dream job — tomorrow. Here's an example: a few years ago, I was given the news that I had to close a business that I had poured my heart and soul into. But that very night, a CEO in my industry invited me to dinner to discuss what was next for me. That dinner resulted in me taking on a new role, one that continues to be a career highlight.

Every vendor, every colleague, every customer could someday be someone you may be working with, or working for. Make every effort to really connect with people, and recognize that the sales rep calling on you today may turn out to be the account executive you hire a few years from now to help scale your business (which happened to me) — or the CEO who wants to hire you. The Golden Rule applies in life and at work; treat others the way you want to be treated, with respect. You don’t know how your career may progress and could unfold unforeseen opportunities with friends or former vendors and colleagues.

I was inspired to write this post because of this recent photo taken of me with my colleague, Tony Marques. Over the years, Tony and I have worked together, within different organizations, both directly and indirectly. There's a mutual respect we have for one another, and as team members within the same global parent company, it was fun to run into one another and still want to ask each other, “What can I do for you?”.