If You’re Not Growing You’re

Many of you have heard me say “if you’re not growing your dying”. It might be the closest thing I have to a rally cry.  This mentality has always been at the core of who I am for as long as I can remember.  It drives me in both my personal and professional life and is a huge part of what elevated our leadership team.  The belief that everything requires practice and affirmative effort, or it will die is not unique.  It’s rooted in the natural order of life and is more formally known as entropy.  Which is just a fancy way to say that everything breaks down over time without significant effort to improve it.  The more the decay the more effort is required.

 

Left to their own devices, life will always become less structured.  Buildings crumble, cars rust, weeds take over gardens and sandcastles wash away.  Order is temporary and even artificial in nature.  Everything is irreversibly changing.

 

The phrase “if you’re not growing your dying” is a simplistic reminder to always put in the effort to counterbalance the natural order of decay.  As a leader and a high performer here are a few areas to focus on keeping your systems and organizations from excessive decaying over time.

 

 

Sales: If you don’t have a daily sales routine.  You need one.  You must proactively and affirmatively focus on growing your pipeline if you do not it will slowly die.  It’s like sourdough starter it needs to be fed daily 

 

Culture:  Culture is a moving average of your actions and your people’s actions over the last 90 days.  If you are not putting the effort in, I promise your culture is trending on a decline

 

Business: Like everything else in the universe, organizations, and teams decay over time.  If you are not putting sufficient effort to improve your relationships, resources, innovation, talent, revenue etc. and offset the natural decay it too will die. 

 

Money:  Maintenance on you spend is important.  Take a few minutes monthly and look over your spending habits you’d be surprised how things can get away from you.  This guys cancelled his unused subscriptions to pay for his Tesla https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/save-money-subscriptions-buy-tesla-6cbcff05?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

 

Health:

Food, activity, strength training, medical maintenance. As we get older, we gain often gain weight and loose muscle.  When we were young, we spent time outside running in the yard and building our strength. As the years pass, we need to put more effort into our routines to maintain a sufficient level of fitness. 

Relationships: whether it’s business relationships or personal relationships if you’re not growing, you’re dying. Give more than you take and be kind expecting nothing in return.  Put in the effort to grow your relationships with love and connection regularly if you don’t someone else will.

 

Your mind:  To offset mental decline you need to expose yourself to new experiences and challenges regularly.  Your brain needs purpose.  Grow your mind daily.   Read books, travel to new places, learn new languages, seek opposing opinions, eat unfamiliar foods.  All these things will grow your mind.  This will pay more dividends than you will be able to count.

 

Spirit: this one can be one of the easiest to ignore.  It’s not tangible and often can’t been seen.  But I promise if you ignore this area of your life, it’s decline will compound and effect every area of your life. If you don’t invest here, it will take down every other area of your life.  Mindset and spiritual health should be #1. 

 

Community:  After the pandemic it became easy to avoid church, functions, and group activities.  We are social beings and need community.  Don’t neglect it.

 

 

Notes that Resonated


  • You’re not stuck unless you stop:

  • You need to have a balance between data and instinct

  • New light appears in the shadow

  • The most powerful productivity tool ever invented is simply the word no (FS Brainfood)

  • Leadership is about making people better and making sure your impact outlasts your absence

 

Things to read



The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

Everything in life boils down to positive moments. They elevate us, change us, move us, and motivate us. This book is about why certain moments have so much power and how we can learn to create more extraordinary moments in our lives and the lives of others.

 

Productivity
USING NOTECARDS for Productivity


I recently started using index cards to manage my Big Rocks/ 12-week goals. It’s a simple system that helps me keep track of the big items (and a few subtasks of the big items) all on a simple note card. I have 4 notecards each with one big item I want to get done. It is binder clipped to my daily notebook and in plain sight for me to review and check in with every day. It’s been very helpful in minimizing distractions and keeping focused on what needs to get done today. Here are a few videos on cool ways to use notecards for your productivity routine.

Better than a vision board

To Do Deck

Variety of productivity uses

Index card planner

This one is a little more complicated then I would use but it has some interesting ideas that you can take a few ideas for your system. example at min 5:53 the passion road map, vision board card, affimation card, theme of the day card.

 

Top Quotes


  1. If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. MARY ENGELBREIT

  2. If you set your bar at amazing, it’s awfully difficult to start. - SETH GODIN

  3. Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same. - CARLOS CASTANEDA

 

Food & Drink


Sourdough discard biscuits  Sourdough Biscuits - Damn Delicious

These are delicious and easy to make. I added a little extra butter milk and some extra grated butter for more flavor, and it worked perfectly. Don’t over bake them. I had to cut my bake time to avoid them getting too crispy.

 



Cool Stuff


Travel adaptor for the plane and your wireless headphones:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BQZBMXD4?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_ZM6AKE1BHMWFQWPZFRJG

 

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Going Down with the Ship