Decide: Work Smarter, Reduce Your Stress, and Lead by Example by Steve McClatchy – A 27-min Summary

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decide

“Decide delivers: If you’re struggling to lead not just manage, if you’re frustrated that your? very best results are just beyond reach, or if you’re simply at war with your calendar, Steve McClatchy’s new book is for you. Decide is a rare fresh take at some of the thorny problems that block our best work. But don’t just take my word for it. Get your own copy, and you’ll soon be ordering copies for your team as well.”
—Marshall Goldsmith – America’s preeminent executive coach (Fast Company magazine)

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“In Decide, Steve McClatchy shows us that we can accomplish amazing things by aligning what we want to achieve with how we spend our time. Regardless of the industry or level of the reader, real benefits will be accomplished from Steve’s advice – an immensely practical guide!
—Valerie Sutton, Director of Career Services, Harvard Graduate School of Education

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“If your intention is to gain from your life, and not just prevent the pain that often comes with it, then Decide is the book for you. Steve McClatchy reminds us that in order to achieve something of significance we have to focus on things that matter. His new book is full of the practical wisdom that will enable you to end burnout and bring balance to your life—and to find a path worthy of being followed. I absolutely recommend this book.”
—Jim Kouzes, coauthor of The Leadership Challenge and Executive Fellow of Leadership, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University

Book details:

Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 27, 2014)
Publication Date: January 27, 2014
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc
Genre: Decision-Making & Problem Solving

Author

Steve McClatchy is the owner and Founder of Alleer Training & Consulting, a firm focused on helping companies and individuals improve performance and achieve outstanding results. Steve has been speaking for over a decade to high-level audiences on the topics of Leadership, Performance, Personal Growth, and Work/Life Engagement. His client list includes Pfizer, Microsoft, Disney, Comcast, Accenture, Super Bowl Champions Baltimore Ravens, DHL Europe, Tiffany’s, Wells Fargo, amongst many others. Steve is a frequent guest lecturer in the graduate programs at Harvard and Wharton and has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, WebMD Magazine, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and Investor’s Business Daily. Steve’s first book Decide: Work Smarter, Reduce Your Stress & Lead By Example is coming out with Wiley Publishing in February, 2014. Interesting to note, Steve is the eleventh of twelve children – nine boys and three girls. He often laughingly credits his success in Personal Leadership and Time Management to the craziness that surrounded his own childhood! Steve lives with his wife Lynn, and their four children outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Steve McClatchy | Appearance on ABC’s Let’s Talk LIve:

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Jan 22: Francis Bacon was born in 1561

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Francis_Bacon

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”
― Francis Bacon

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“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”
― Francis Bacon, The Advancement Of Learning

Wikipedia:

Born 22 January 1561
Strand, London, England
Died 9 April 1626 (aged 65)
Highgate, Middlesex, England
Nationality English
Alma mater University of Cambridge
Era English Renaissance, The Scientific Revolution
Region Western philosophy
School Renaissance Philosophy, Empiricism
Main interests
 Natural philosophy
Philosophical logic
Signature
Francis Bacon Signature.svg

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. After his death, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution.

Bacon has been called the father of empiricism. His works argued for the possibility of scientific knowledge based only uponinductive and careful observation of events in nature. Most importantly, he argued this could be achieved by use of a skeptical and methodical approach whereby scientists aim to avoid misleading themselves. While his own practical ideas about such a method, the Baconian method, did not have a long lasting influence, the general idea of the importance and possibility of a skeptical methodology makes Bacon the father of scientific method. This marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, the practical details of which are still central in debates about science and methodology today.

Bacon was generally neglected at court by Queen Elizabeth, but after the ascension of King James I in 1603, Bacon was knighted. He was later created Baron Verulam in 1618 and Viscount St. Alban in 1621. Because he had no heirs, both titles became extinct upon his death in 1626, at 65 years of age. Bacon died of pneumonia, with one account by John Aubrey stating that he had contracted the condition while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat.

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Will Durant—The Philosophy of Francis Bacon (audio – 1h 43m):

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Quotes

“Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.”
― Francis Bacon

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“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

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“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
― Francis Bacon

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“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

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“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.”
― Francis Bacon

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“Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.”
― Francis Bacon

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“Wonder is the seed of knowledge”
― Francis Bacon

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“Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.”
― Francis Bacon

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“It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.”
― Francis Bacon

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“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand–and melting like a snowflake…”
― Francis Bacon

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“Money is a great servant but a bad master.”
― Francis Bacon

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“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”
― Francis Bacon

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“In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.”
― Francis Bacon

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“Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.”
― Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon's statue at Gray's Inn, South Square, London
Francis Bacon’s statue at Gray’s Inn, South Square, London

October 25: Pablo Picasso was born in 1881

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Portrait_de_Picasso,_1908
Picasso in 1908

Everything you can imagine is real.
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There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence transform a yellow spot into a sun.

Wikipedia

Born Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso
25 October 1881
Málaga, Spain
Died 8 April 1973 (aged 91)
Mougins, France
Resting place Château of Vauvenargues
Nationality Spanish
Education José Ruiz y Blasco (father),
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
Known for Painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, stage design, writing
Notable work Les Demoiselles d’Avignon(1907)
Guernica (1937)
The Weeping Woman (1937)
Movement Cubism, Surrealism
Spouse(s) Olga Khokhlova (1918–55)
Jacqueline Roque (1961–73)

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Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. As one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the Bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period.

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

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Guernica:

ArtistPablo Picasso Year 1937 Type Oil on canvas Dimensions 349 cm × 776 cm (137.4 in × 305.5 in) Location Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Pablo Picasso
1937
Oil on canvas
Dimensions 349 cm × 776 cm
Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain

Videos

Modern Masters – Pablo Picasso

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★ Pablo Picasso Complete Documentary – The ★ Art Story

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Les Demoiselles d’Avignon:

Les_Demoiselles_d'Avignon
Pablo Picasso – 1907 – Oil on canvas – Dimensions 243.9 cm × 233.7 cm – Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Quotes

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

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Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

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Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

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Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

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Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.

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Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

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Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.

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The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.

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Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

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It takes a very long time to become young.

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I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

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The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.

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What do you think an artist is? …he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.

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Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.

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Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

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If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse… but surely you will see the wildness!

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There are only two types of women: goddesses and doormats.

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There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

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Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

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Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

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I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.

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God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.

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The world doesn’t make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

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We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

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It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

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If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.

Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler:

Picasso_Portrait_of_Daniel-Henry_Kahnweiler_1910
Pablo Picasso – 1910 – Oil on canvas – 100.5 cm × 73 cm – Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

October 15: Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844

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Friedrich Nietzsche

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

Wikipedia:

Born Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
15 October 1844
Röcken (near Lützen), Province of Saxony, Kingdom of Prussia
Died 25 August 1900 (aged 55)
Weimar, Saxony, German Empire
Residence Germany
Nationality German
Era 19th-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
Main interests
 Aesthetics · Ethics
Metaphysics · Nihilism
Psychology · Ontology
Poetry · Value theory
Voluntarism · Tragedy
Fact–value distinction
Anti-foundationalism
Philosophy of history
Notable ideas
 Apollonian and Dionysian
Übermensch  · Ressentiment
“Will to power”  · “The Death of God”
Eternal recurrence  · Amor fati
Herd instinct  · Tschandala
“Last Man”  · Perspectivism
Master–slave morality
Transvaluation of values
Nietzschean affirmation
Signature
Friedrich Nietzsche Signature.svg

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The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work – Shawn Achor

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From amazon.com:

Shawn Achor is the winner of over a dozen distinguished teaching awards at Harvard University, where he delivered lectures on positive psychology in the most popular class at Harvard. Today Shawn travels around the world giving talks on positive psychology to Fortune 500 companies, schools, and non-profit organizations. He has worked with doctors in California, executives in Hong Kong, teachers in South Africa, and bankers in Switzerland. Shawn graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and earned a Masters degree from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics. In 2006, he served as Head Teaching Fellow with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar of “Positive Psychology,” a class that enrolled 1 out of every 7 Harvard undergraduates. For seven years, Shawn also served as an Officer of Harvard, living in Harvard Yard and counseling students through the stresses of their first year. Though he now travels extensively for his work with Aspirant, Shawn continues to conduct original psychology research on happiness and organizational achievement.

TOC

Part One: Positive Psychology at Work

  • Introduction
  • Discovering the Happiness Advantage
  • The Happiness Advantage at Work
  • Change is Possible

Part Two: Seven Priciples

  • Principle #1: The Happiness Advantage
  • Principle #2: The Fulcrum and The Lever
  • Principle #3: The Tetris Effect
  • Principle #4: Falling Up
  • Principle #5: The Zorro Circle
  • Principle #6: The 20-second Rule
  • Principle #7: Social Investment

Part Three: The Ripple Effect

  • Spreading The Happiness Advantage at Work, at Home, and Beyond

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Short Summary

Part1 – Positive Psychology at Work

  •  we now know that happiness is the precursor to success, not merely the result. And that happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement
  • in 200 studies on 275,000 people worldwide:  happiness leads to success in nearly every domain, including work, health, friendship, sociability, creativity, and energy.

Part 2: Seven Priciples

Principle #1: The Happiness Advantage
  • When we are happy—when our mindset and mood are positive—we are smarter, more motivated, and thus more successful. Happiness is the center, and success revolves around it.
  • Happiness boosters: meditation, looking forward to something, commit conscious acts of kindness, exercise, Spend money (but NOT on Stuff), exercise a Signature Strength, ..
Principle #2: The Fulcrum & The Lever
Changing your Peformance by changing your Mindset
  • Happiness is not about lying to ourselves, or turning a blind eye to the negative, but about adjusting our brain so that we see the ways to rise above our circumstances.
  • The mental construction of our daily activities, more than the activity itself, defines our reality.
  • The heart of the challenge is to stop thinking of the world as fixed when reality is, in truth, relative.
Principle #3 – The Tetris Effect
Training Your Brain to Capitalize on Possibility
  • Train your brain to scan the world for the opportunities and ideas that allow our success rate to grow.
  • The best way to kick-start this is to start making a daily list of the good things in your job, your career, and your life.
Principle #4 – Falling Up
Capitalizing on the downs to build Upward Momentum
  • Study after study shows that if we are able to conceive of a failure as an opportunity for growth, we are all the more likely to experience that growth
  • It’s about using that downward momentum to propel ourselves in the opposite direction. It’s about capitalizing on setbacks and adversity to become even happier, even more motivated, and even more successful. It’s not falling down, it’s falling up.
Principle #5 – The Zorro Circle
How Limiting Your Focus to Small, Manageable Goals Can Expand Your Sphere of Power
  • Feeling that we are in control, that we are masters of our own fate at work and at home, is one of the strongest drivers of both well-being and performance.
  • Happiness, and health have less to do with how much control we actually have and more with how much control we think we have.
  • No matter what you may have heard from motivational speakers, coaches, and the like, reaching for the stars is a recipe for failure.
  • As Harvard Business School professor Peter Bregman advises, “Don’t write a book, write a page.
Principle #6 – The 20-Second Rule
How to Turn Bad Habits into Good Ones by minimizing Barriers to Change
  • Common sense is not common action….
    That’s why even though doctors know better than anyone the importance of exercise and diet, 44 percent of them are overweight.
  • Our willpower weakens the more we use it.
  • The key to creating these habits is ritual, repeated practice, until the actions become ingrained in your brain’s neural chemistry. And the key to daily practice is to put your desired actions as close to the path of least resistance as humanly possible.
Priciple #7 – Social Investment
Why Social support is your single Greatest asset
  • social relationships are the single greatest investment you can make in the Happiness Advantage.

3. The Ripple effect

  • Each one of us is like that butterfly (re: the butterfly effect). And each tiny move towards a more positive mindset can send ripples of positivity through our organizations, our families, and our communities.
  • Emotions are highly contagious… both negative emotions & positive emotions

 

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