Complete Fulfillment

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If you were reading my blog here, the blog has now moved.  I have relocated the blog to www.matthixson.me.  I am working on posting more regularly as there is a lot going on with me and I would like you get your opinions on them.  Please join me over there or you can click here to subscribe to the blog.    I am still experimenting on using Posterous for posting everyday pictures of things I find interesting, which seems to be what most people are using it for.   The content from www.completefulfillment.blogspot.com has been imported to my new blog at www.matthixson.me and will be discontinued.  This blog is being moved because I am now using the squarespace platform which is much easier to design and use than blogger. 

matt

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 I had the chance to attend Ignite Portland tonight.  What is that?  I really didn’t know walking into the event but a friend of my @geekygirldawn suggested it a good event so I tried it out.  Here is the deal.  There were 19 speakers on random topics that were chosen by a selection committee.  I ran into Dawn on the way in and asked what I was in for.  This is the deal - each presenter gets 5 minutes to present 20 slides.  The slides automatically advance every 15 seconds.  There is no MC.  When the speaker is done the next one comes up.  That is it.  The topics are  very diverse and the skill really being demonstrated is storytelling.  It was a great event and I'm glad to have discovered it.  It was at the Bagdad Theater which was cool by itself.  The next one in Portland is on March 3rd.  They are held all over the nation so find the one near you and check it out.  Sorry for the blurry pics but that is what you get with an iPhone in the dark.  They are also posting the video from the event on the Ignite Portland site.
 

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Today Google launched a preview of the Google Chrome OS.  What is that exactly?  Watch the video below to get a better understanding.  One of the most impressive things was they did not say cloud in the entire 3+ minutes of this video.  They drew a cloud but they never said it.  I think they did a great job of talking about this in a light an humorous way that can speak to everyone with a base of technical knowledge.  It would have been so easy for them to talk overly technical about it – and use the hottest word in IT.  Cloud.  But they didn’t – nice work Google.    

Things are lining up for an even more epic battle between Microsoft and Google.  Between MS Windows and Google Chrome OS to MS SharePoint and Google Wave to Office and Google Docs.  I love competition – it brings the best products to the surface.  

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I have been doing some work on some side projects lately.  One of these has been looking at how my kids schools can take advantage of the best assets they have which are the amazing Christian kids that go to that school.  I went over to YouTube for another project but I ran across this video by a 6th Grader for his science class.  The world has changed a ton since I was in 6th grade and the people running these schools need to get with it.  There are not just new technologies the paths of communication have radically changed.  This is a great example of if a teacher was aware of how to do some of these things it would greatly empower more kids to do amazing things.  I have found that new technology is scarry for people that don't understand what they are or how to use it properly.  I am working to change that in 2 small cases right now but I hope to free more people to do the same. 

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Balance is a tough thing for me.  That is why I started thinking and talking about Complete Fulfillment (part 1 & part 2).  As the week gets into full swing I get engaged at work and come home to not enough time to assess what I need to do there.  For years I have read and used all sorts of organization and productivity books and tools such as Franklin Covey and GTD.  I have settled on GTD for the past 4-5 years and have spent that time trying to implement it – over and over and over.  What I am really doing is trying to over compensate for my low prudence.

When I can make myself do it the weekly review is a great level set for me.  I spent the 2 hours on Sunday reviewing all of the projects that I have taken on and where they are.  As usual, my appetite for things to do and reality are probably not in line but this week I am trying something new.  I have taken each section of Complete Fulfillment and tried to pick one achievable item to get done by next Sunday when I do my next weekly review.  I have tried to pick most of these outside of work so I will need to go back and make sure that work is actually doable so that I am focused on the right things when I am there but work never seems to be the area lacking attention.

I am taking this approach in an attempt to make sure that there are not parts of my life that are left behind.  We will see how the week goes – I am tired of writing posts about how poorly this concept has gone for me.  Time for some progress.

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It is interesting watching people talk about social media, the social web or whatever they choose to refer to it as.  There seems to be this constant displeasure pop up about people referring to themselves as “experts” by some of the same people that consider themselves experts.  I am not claiming to be an expert but I can say that I love this stuff.  The social interactions that applications like Facebook and Twitter create are not just neat new technology but game changing platforms.  

In the context of Complete Fulfillment I am writing about this because as I have realized that this gets me excited.  I don’t know exactly what that means for me going forward but I want to make it part of what I do at work.  I am convicted that this changes the way people operate and most people don’t understand it even remotely.  This leaves the ability for growth and change wide open for the masses.  I will find a way to make this part of what I do every day.  To this point it is most days but it can get pushed aside by other duties.  

I came across this video this week that I enjoyed and wanted to pass along.

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I was going through my backlog of RSS feeds from the many blogs that I follow and I came across this TED talk about manspaces.  I was an only child growing up and moved around quite a bit.  As a result I am an introvert.  This might surprise some people that I know but I get my energy from spending time by myself.  That can be a tough thing to get anymore.  Work is just crazy all the time and when I get home we have three kids ages 5,3,<1.  

When I saw this talk today I was thinking that this was a great idea.  One of the issues we have is that we are not in the house we want to be in 5 years from now so I don’t want to invest in something we would leave.  We also don’t have enough space for this but I love the idea and something I will keep thinking about.

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Over my last vacation on the 4^th of July I came to the conclusion that my life was anything but balanced and I needed to fix that.  I had this revelation about Complete Fulfillment which I started to write about here.  Well that idea quickly got pushed aside by work – again – along with my blogging if you will notice the last date I posted.  I just took another vacation and did some reflecting and attempted some stress management and realized that I am no better off than I was 90 days ago and in many ways things are worse.  I’m not exactly sure how to get a handle on things but one thing that has worked somewhat in the past is protecting my personal time.  This means not multi talking but being present with the things I have decided to do at that time.

I have been working my ass off to get a new business off the ground and it has been a great experience but that great experience has come at a significant price.  The price has been eating bad, sleeping little, the most stress I have ever had, short with my kids, not being fully engaged with my kids, no prayer, no personal time and less time with my wife than ever.  There are a lot of pieces to life that are more significant than work and none of those are getting a fair shake in my life right now. 

This is the second vacation that my work has significantly interrupted my personal life.  I am admittedly one of those people that checks the iPhone multiple times and day and responds but these are on the level of someone freaking out to the point that it ruins my time with my kids.  And that is not ok with me.  I am more than willing to bust my ass for work - I have done that consistently for 10 years now.  I am not getting everything right in this current position but I am giving it everything I am equipped to give at this stage in my career.  From the ups and the downs I am learning every day and part of that learning is that I have to have the other parts of my life represented.  I know there will not always be perfect balance but no balance is not healthy and not acceptable to me.  I keep trying to balance my life based on my job being the one thing I can’t change and everything else balancing around it but maybe I have things backwards.

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Good thing that I realize complete fulfillment is a work in process because this week has been back to working all the time. I did work out this week and will do it again on Friday. I have been eating better. I need to start breaking out some more techniques to bAlance better. I will be working on one around finances this weekend. I will write more on it later. Night all.

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For some time now I have woken up feeling stiff and exhausted.  I just assumed that it was the long hours and stress but after a week of vacation I realized that there might be another factor.  For a long time I have bitched about our bed and how I thought it was no good.  Last week at the beach I slept on a AeroBed for the week.  This is basically a glorified air mattress but I felt better every morning than I did at home.  I was not sleeping any more but I sure felt a ton better.  So this weekend I did something about it.  I finally broke down and bought a new bed.  Bed shopping is about as bad as car shopping but the good thing is that they will deal with you.  I ended up buying a Tempur-pedic Rhapsody.  It was great and I know about 4 people at work that have these type of beds and love them – not just like them but love them.  This is a little piece of the health category that I am putting rocks in the jar for but probably taking some out around the finance piece.  The bed was $3800 – Yikes!! - the only reason I ended up buying it was because they gave me 3 years no interest which makes it about $100/month – which I can handle.  They deliver it tomorrow so let the sweet dreams begin.

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This post is in relation to the last post I did about categories.  You only have a finite amount of time and you can’t do everything in each category.



Remember – I would love to know your comments.

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In my last post I talked about the beginnings of Complete Fulfillment.  Once I had this concept in my head I was thinking about it all the time.  I realize that I had to actually figure out what the categories of my life I wanted to balance.  There are all sort of these out there ranging from simple to very complex.  I had to come up with something that fit my life.  I was discussing my thoughts on this with Karin and I was guessing at the categories just to get the broad point out there.  (Karin tends to be my sounding board for my crazy thoughts)  During that session she asked if I had looked at the Wheel of Life concept.  I had not so I looked it up and here is a version of what I found.

For the most part I like these categories but I added Spirituality or Faith.  I'm sure this fits into this model somewhere but it an important piece of my life that needs it's own category.  You will notice that there are points associated with each of these categories.  These are very judgemental which seems to me a guess at how you are feeling about each category.  That does not really work for me.  Below are the categories that I came up with and some subcategories.  This is important because of how I am choosing to look at the points each week.  I will explain that in my next post.  

Spirituality

• Faith
• Service
• Goodwill

Family/Friends

• Spouse
• Kids
• Extended Family
• Friends

Heath

• Diet
• Physical Fitness
• Mental

Personal Growth

• Intellectual/Knowledge
• Emotional Intelligence
• Self Actualization

Career

• Leadership
• Management
• Self Development

Finances

• Debt
• Savings
• House
• Retirement
• College

Physical Environment

• House
• Cars
• Yard

Romance

Fun & Recreation

• Activities with wife
• Activities with Kids
• Activities by myself
• Activities with friends

Note the lack of subcategories in Romance - if anyone out there has some suggestions about this or anything else I would love to hear.  One of the things I came to realize about his framework is that I wanted to make it something that anyone could adjust to fit their needs.  You will see this in the point system also.  As always please let me know your comments or feedback.

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There are so many thoughts going through my head this week it is tough to get them all down to get this blog rolling. One of the first things I want to do is to lay out the framework of what Complete Fulfillment means.  I work a lot and I take a ton on responsibility for what I do. I am currently running a startup within a larger company which has totally consumed me over the last 9 months. I would like to say that is not normal but taking on a ton has been a constant theme over my career.

As I mentioned in a previous post I had a very eye opening week at a class at Harvard recently.  Out of that for me came Complete Fulfillment.  I realized that I have long struggled with the balance of all the areas of my life but had never found a good way to really be better about getting them in balance.  They always tend to be 90% work and 10% everything else.  I have worked with an executive coach (one of the great resources I have at Tripwire).  Her name is Karin Kolodziejski - she has probably been the most impactful people on my professional career.  Many of the things we have chatted about have directly overlapped with my personal life.  As many conversations as we have had over the years I have still never been able to effectively balance things out over any period of time.  

The class I took at Harvard was on leadership with some of the top professors on the subject and the most surprising thing about the week for me was that they talked about soft skills most of the time.  What I realized was that for me to perform at the highest level at work and enjoy life to the fullest I needed to balance things out better.  

One of the concepts that helped my thoughts about this was something my wife and I tried with our kids.  I have two great daughters (and now a son) and as for most parents every day is a new challenge.  As parents, my wife and I try different techniques to see if they work. A while back we made jars with the girls names on them and we had a bunch of rocks.  The idea was when they did good things they would get a rock in the jar.  For example - when our 2 year old would go on the potty she would get a rock.  If they washed their hands without being told they would get a rock.  If they asked nicely and said please they would get a rock and so on.  If they did something bad they would get a rock or rocks taken out.  If they hit each other, threw a fit, etc. rocks would come out.  If they filled the jar to a certain level they would get to go to build a bear and get a new stuffed animal. 

What does this have to do with life balance?  A lot.  I started thinking about life in this same framework.  Each week you are given only so much time.  That is finite and you can't change it.  The objective is to spend the week filling up your jar with as many rocks as you can through positive experiences and minimize the number of rocks you have to take out from negative experiences.  If you can maximize this over time you can achieve Complete Fulfillment.  

When I applied this to myself I realized that I spend much of the week filling up my jar with rocks from work.  The problem is that also beat myself up because I am exhausted each night for my kids.  I eat like crap.  I don't work out.  I don't spend any time reading my bible or praying.  All of these other areas of life I neglect and they cause me stress because I feel like I should be doing them.  As a result I take rocks out of the jar.  Work is also stressful because of the shear mass of the project we are taking on and the amount of responsibility I put on myself about it.  Don't get me wrong about work - I like my job and vWire is very exciting but the net impact is that I don't fill up the jar very much.

The next few posts I will lay out some more of the concepts I have been mulling over the past month.  

- All rocks are not the same size.

- Rocks change size over time.

- Time is not variable.

- The categories of life.

- This is a game of math not judgement.

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Spending time at the beach hanging with the girls and having fun playing in the sand. Two parts of Complete Fulfillment.

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One of the great people I met at Harvard had a great technique for reducing stress and bringing yourself back to the present moment. It is very simple. Take a few seconds and recognize each of your senses in the place you are at that moment.
 
Sight - look around you and notice all the details. Look at the cracks in the wall. Look at the speck of dirt on the floor. Recognize the shadows and so on.
 
Sound - Focus on the details. A bird chirping, a baby talking and rolling in his bed, etc.
 
Smell - this one is hard for me as I don't seem to notice different smells. Things like food baking, people walking by, etc.
 
Taste - This is powerful if you are eating or drinking, otherwise it might be what is still in your mouth from earlier.
 
Touch - the best example for me on this was if you are standing feel how you feet touch the ground.
 
Most of the time we are thinking about was has happened or what is going to happen not what is happening. By doing so we rob ourselves of the present moments. This is one way to bring yourself back to the present.

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I recently had the opportunity to spend a week at Harvard in the High Potential Leaders Program – a week long Executive Education program. I have always had high expectations of Harvard but I really had no idea. I was blown away by the level of teaching, the facilities and the logistics of the entire program. The class was made up of 99 executives from around the world (65% non-US). We had about 10 cases to read prior to the program and no idea what to really expect beyond that. The program started on Sunday night and we went through a small case. That evening we meet with our group for the week. We lived in the executive housing with our group. We stayed on the same floor and each group shared a common area that was as good as any conference room we had at work in addition to a kitchen and TV area. You can see my pictures from the trip here.

The next day we went through some more cases and I remember thinking – this lady sure knows a ton about this case. I soon realized that Linda Hill (one of our instructors) wrote the case. While the rest of the country’s MBA programs are teaching the Harvard case study method using Harvard cases, there is no substitute for learning from the best minds in business academics who also wrote the case. 

The next day we spent with an acting group. Our living groups worked with one actor all day. It was an amazing experience that was a big hit with everyone. The intent was to make us better presenters and give us some skills that we may not have had. An amazing day.

The next day was spent with John Kotter. He is basically the godfather of leadership. I was not sure what to expect. I thought he might be a little full of himself and stuffy but boy was I wrong. If Linda was a 9-10 as a professor – Kotter was a 12. He was really amazing. His ability to teach through storytelling was something else. He was the most engaging and friendly teacher I have ever been around. After that day everyone walked around by themselves trying to absorb what just happened. It was a very powerful day.

Thursday we went through some more cases and one on Friday morning. It was such an intense week that I did not have time to reflect on it until the 6 hour plane ride home. When I did I had one of those ah-ha moments that happen very few times. I have long struggled with balancing all the priorities of my life and the way I actually live my life. I have a very strong ambition that drives me to work hard and neglect other areas. I came up with this concept that I call Complete Fulfillment. I have decided to use this blog to write about my thoughts on this subject and as a way to detail my journy in balancing my life and honing this principle.  More to come on exactly what that means.  I am also experimenting on using Posterous - my stream is at matthixson.posterous.com

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The other day I saw the update Did You Know Video and the main stat that stuck out to me was this.

Years it took to reach a market audience of 50 Million.

 

This was a  pretty amazing stat.  I am just truly learning about social media and it’s power over the last few months .  I just got my Facebook account set up about 3 months ago.  I now am getting addicted to Twitter – once the tools get better I sure it will be hard for me to find anything else to do.  The power of social media is apparent to me so the stat does not seem unreal to me but it still made me think – Why?

The interesting thing about this list is that they are all technologies.  They are all technologies that enable communication.  They are all technologies that enable human behavior they don’t really create it.  So I had to ask the question what would be on the list before radio?  Before the radio technology gets pretty weak.  I am not a marketer by trade but it would seem the most powerful form of marketing is word of mouth and before Radio that was the main form of communication.

Mayberry

Did you ever watch the Andy Griffith show?   It was small town USA – made for television of course – but what it showed was how things happened in small communities back in the day.  People found out about things from people in their community.  People would use something and not matter what the result others heard the review from the people they knew and that was powerful.  This could have also been spread by letters via snail mail but the real impact was how things were spread at the barber shop, at the diner or on the street.  But over time all that changed.

Madison Ave.

Along came Radio and then Television.  They did not come along at the same time but had roughly the same result.  People could now broadcast out the message they wanted to spread to anyone with a receiving piece of technology on the other end.  This message did not care who you were or your relationship to the person on the other end.  It was designed to reach as many eyes and ears as possible.  The birth of true mass media.  For years we have lived in this space.  It has gotten much more complex over the years.  Brand experts have made a science and an art out of building brands.  For years the public has been told what to think about brands and how that brand should be perceived.  But times are changing…

Social Media

In many ways Social media takes us back to the days of Mayberry.  We can now hear from the people that we know and trust about things that we care about – or they care about – or no one cares about – ?  But the point is that now in an instant on Twitter I can learn about someone's experience with something or something they find of interest – via word of mouth or tweet.

The difference now is that I am not restricted to the people in Mayberry.  I can find interesting people all over the globe that have something to say that I want to hear.  The tools on how to find these people, how you interact and filter the noise are still maturing but these are rule changing times.  I’m sure that brand managers are starting to figure out, if they have not already, that things are moving in a new direction.  The powerful thing is that Joe Public has no real idea what is coming.  People on Twitter and Friendfeed and all the like may not realize this but the average person has no idea what all this is.

The next few years are going to be very interesting because as the data at the beginning of this post shows things are moving fast.  The infrastructure is there – no longer do you have to buy a radio or TV or wait for the infrastructure to be built.  It is here – many people have internet access and millions more every year.  Developers now just layer the software on what is there already. 

So what do you think?  Are you ready?  Do you realize the power you have?

I started this blog on June 22, 2007.  Not exactly early to the game of blogging but I was after what many early blogger were after – understanding.  I was not early to blogging as a technology but blogging was in its early stages to me.  My objective was to learn, as it is today with all of the emerging social tools – this time I am not as behind the curve. 

I decided that my blog was to be about finding my passion.  I had no idea what it was.  At the time I was the Director of Finance at Tripwire in Portland, Oregon.  I was bored with my job and was searching for my passion.  I had no idea what it was so I decided this blog would be about whatever I felt like at the time.   The name was derived from my search of my passion which is explained in my second post.  I was not concerned about readers as I figured my only regulars would be my Mom, Dad and a few others.  That assumption has turned out to be mostly true which has resulted in sporadic readership which is most likely because of my lack of focus. 

Over the past year I have graduated from an MBA program and started working in Business Development.  This has been a great switch for me.  My job has evolved at breakneck pace over the past 5 months and has lead me to social media.  I have always found interest in two main things over the years – people/relationships and technology.  I realized over the past few months that this revolution is taking place around technologies like Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed.  The exciting part to me is that these technologies are not even close to fleshed out and are still evolving.

Because of the emergence of all these things in my life I have decided that this blog will be focused around social media and how it is where relationships and technology meet.  With this focus and the desire to start developing a regular group of readers on this site I am working through the rest of the site redesign and an abbreviation to the name – so stay tuned.  This is a step in the direction of my riddle.