Heidi Grant Halvorson published a great article on the Harvard Business Review called How to Become a Great Finisher. I found this article to be particularly relevant and accurate in my own life.

If we focus more on how far we have left to go, ‘To Go Thinking’, motivation is not only sustained, but it’s heightened.  However, if we focus on the how much we have accomplished so far, ‘To Date Thinking’, you actually undermine your motivation.

My standing desk

I’ve taken the plunge and am on the standing desk kick.  I have been asked about it no less than 30 times, so I’m putting it in writing.

For my health.  I’ve made a lot of lifestyle changes over the last year.  I’ve lost fifty pounds so far.  This is just another small step to make me a better me.  There seems to be a lot of research around this, and there are many benefits to standing.  When I’m in the office, I would normally sit for about 6 hours each day.  A Men’s Health article cited a study that people that sit for 6 hours a day are 68% more likely to be overweight.  Furthermore, the article indicated standing will burn an additional 60 calories per hour.  While that may not seem like a lot, every little bit will help me.

I just signed up as a volunteer photographer for Portraits of Love.  The Portraits of Love Project is an effort put on by the PhotoImaging Manufacturers and Distributors Association (PMDA) and Soldiers’ Angels, a non-profit group.  They have put out a call for photographers nationwide who are willing to volunteer their time to shoot family-portraits for deployed military personnel. The portraits will be delivered in time for the holidays to those in active duty.   If you know of anyone currently (or that will be) deployed, let me know and we’ll setup a time for a photo shoot.  For everyone outisde of my geographic area please direct them to this website to sign up to find a local volunteer photographer – http://www.pmdaportraitsoflove.com/

I have a relative getting of prison after serving quite a few years.  While he’s had occasional access to computers, he has not had access to the Internet.  No email, no web, no video, no social networking.  No connection.  He has never used the Internet.  He’s heard about, talked about, and has a general concept of what the Internet is.  He is familiar with computers, just not the Internet.  He has used older versions of Office and older versions of Windows.  In fact, he qualified to be a Microsoft Certified Trainer for the Office platform (though I think it was on 2003 version).  He started teaching the courses to other inmates and employees.  He does have computer skills – just no Internet experience.  So the question that I’m posing is a simple one: How do you teach someone the Internet?

I know that I live in a bubble.  I have a great job, and I have worked with computers and worked online in one fashion or another for my entire life (starting with a 300 baud modem).  I literally have trouble comprehending a life without connectivity, though I know that most of the world is still without Internet access.  According to http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm, nearly 3 out of 4 people on the planet do NOT have Internet access.   In the bubble I live in, everyone has Internet access.  Between my desktop, laptops, iPhone, and iPad, I am always connected.

I know quite a bit about the Internet, but this scenario got me thinking: how do you teach someone the Internet?  Where do you start?  Do you just point someone to Bing and walk away?  What is the ‘learn the Internet’ syllabus?  In typical ‘seven steps’ fashion, below is my basic list of acclimation to the insanity that is the web of 2010…

1. Get an email account.  Go to http://www.gmail.com or http://www.hotmail.com.  Click the link that says, “Create an account”.  You cannot exist online without an email address.  Sure you can lurk, but you can’t contribute.  You can’t join a site, place an order, or create an account for any site that I can think of.  I even considered just creating an email account for him but decided that it would be best to go through every miniscule step to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible.

2. Send me an email.  I provided my email address.  Having an email address without an understanding of the process of sending and receiving an email is like having a Ferrari without knowing how to start a car, or maybe not even understanding what a car is.  Once he understands how to send an email and check his email and read my response, he at least has remote tech support.

3. Google.  Enough said.  http://www.google.com.  Most of us take Google and Bing for granted, but it truly is a magical assistant.  Searching for content is a millennia-old task that individuals have dedicated their entire lives around.  Do you even remember having to learn the Dewey Decimal System?  Google has spoiled me.  I expect to type a single word or phrase into a text box and get back EXACTLY what I am looking for.  No Boolean operators.  No complex searches.  No.  Find what I am thinking about by looking at a single set of words.

4. Facebook.  Create a Facebook profile and reconnect with a variety of TRUSTED individuals.  Do not connect with the people that you don’t want to.  Be VERY selective of who you connect with.  Facebook has gone through a series of peaks and valleys of acceptance from most of the people that I know.  Initially, everyone was very skeptical and only accepted friend requests from people that they knew very well.  After this initial skepticism there was a period where everyone was trying to make anyone and everyone they have ever met in a grocery store checkout line a friend.  Based on the fact that everyone was everyone’s friend, most people were extremely modest in what they shared on FB.  That may be a good thing, that may be a bad thing.  Now Facebook has kind of stabilized.  I think that most people are more selective in choosing who they invite and accept as friends.  This allows a little more transparency and honesty in what is shared…  Facebook is one of the game changers on the web and has transformed how we connect.  It’s a must.

5. YouTube.  This one I was skeptical of…  Based upon the fact that 24 full hours of video are uploaded every 60 seconds, you can literally waste your entire life watching what is uploaded and NEVER catch up.  However, is there really a faster way to truly experience the full human condition of 2010 than to spend 1 hour clicking through today’s most popular vids on YouTube?

6. Amazon.  Product consumption has changed.  I don’t have to go to Kmart, Hills Department Store, Wal-mart, Sears, or even the grocery store.  I can order groceries, shoes (since they acquired Zappos), clothing, electronics, and books.  Books.  Funny that Books is the last thing I think of when I think of Amazon.  Books were the backbone of Amazon.  I’m a Kindle fanatic, yet Amazon to me means commerce and, oh yeah, books.  That said, I would recommend the Kindle Application on the laptop so that you have a reader and access to hundreds of FREE books.  Sure, purchase any books you want, but look through the free books before you start spending money on new books.

7.  Netflix.  For less than $10 a month, I can watch as many movies as I want.  YouTube is entertaining, but produced movies can be life changing and even inspiring.  Keep in mind, my relative has not seen any form of modern media for years.  Netflix doesn’t even require a laptop.  I can wait for the latest, greatest DVDs to cycle through the mail (which I do), but I can also watch hundreds of movies right now – directly on my laptop.  Even better, I can watch them on my iPad, but more about that later…

Of course, the millions of sites out there could be prioritized in any order, but other ones that I would at least highlight would be (in random order):

• Pandora
• MSN
• Wikipedia
• ebay
• Craigslist
• Twitter
• CNN

I’m curious to hear your thoughts and feedback.  What would you recommend?  What steps are missing?

Hills Department Store, Morgantown, WV.
Photo from http://www.hillsstores.com/hills_images.htm

It’s worse than everyone says.  Watching your child get hurt hurts you.  My wife, Kathleen, was brushing our 7 year old daughter’s hair this morning when Emma just fainted.  She fell slowly to the floor as my wife held her head and sort of helped her fall.  At first Kathleen thought she was messing around – which she is known to do – but then her eyes were sort of fluttering in the back of her head and her arms stiffened and straightened out in front of her.  She woke up nearly instantly (maybe 3 seconds), wondered why she was lying on the ground, and then grabbed her head like she had a headache.

I had been in the office on the desktop computer when I heard Kathleen say, “Emma!  Emma!”  I ran into the bedroom just in time to see Kathleen laying Emma on the floor.  I helped her lay Emma down, saw Emma’s eyes flitter once or twice, and then she seemed conscious, looking up trying to determine where she was.

It was quite scary.  Emma was okay, but very shaken afterwards.  I’m not sure if she was upset by what had happened or by seeing her mother acting frantic trying to hold her and make sure she was okay.  Regardless, we threw everyone into the minivan, and headed in to see the pediatrician.  I thought about the emergency room, but our pediatrician has Sunday emergency hours, and I was sure Emma would get more attention and better care from a doctor that knew her.

Emma is fine.  It took a couple of hours before her headache completely went away.  She was back to torturing her younger siblings about 3 hours later.  She seems perfectly fine tonight.  The doctor said that she should be fine.  “Completely normal”, he said.

It’s really strange though.  Something so simple that immediately strikes a chord of fear in your soul.  Everyone uses the word ‘faint’ lightly.  “I almost fainted”, “I could have fainted”, or “She looked like she could faint”.  Seeing my child faint snapped me back into the reality of just how fragile life is.  We should be spending more time on the important things – living, loving, and sharing.  It’s so easy to know this, but even easier to get caught up and forget it.

I’m trying to keep this in the forefront of my mind and live in the now for everyone that I interact with: my children, my wife, my colleagues, my friends, and, yes, myself.   I will be present.

My wife, Kathleen, was on Facebook last night looking at everyone’s photos and status updates when she saw someone that she was good friends with in college show up in the Chat utility.  She said hello, and they chatted for a few seconds when her friend invited her up to Pittsburgh to get together, have dinner, and catch up.  Kathleen accepted the invitation immediately.

I think that most people offer empty invitations, “We should meet for dinner and catch up some time!”  Her friend was a little surprised when Kathleen accepted and offered to meet her the following day, but she then insisted that Kathleen drive up, go to dinner, and even stay overnight in her guest room.  Kathleen agreed to it and is extremely excited!  Today she was running a few errands with the kids, and it hit her that she is going to go have dinner and drinks with an old friend that she hasn’t seen in quite a few years – and then stay overnight at her house.  Needless to say, she is a little nervous now.  Very excited – but nervous.

I actually went through a similar experience a few months ago.  I found an old college friend on Facebook.  We had chatted a few times online.  I travel pretty regularly, and we decided to meet up and catch up.  We got together for a few drinks and some dinner.  Overall, it was a great time.  It was a bit bizarre, though.  She had kept in contact with so many more of our mutual friends than I have, and I spent most of the evening listening to gossip about everyone else.  I was most interested in hearing about my friend that I went to have dinner with, but she really focused on talking about everyone else.  It’s kind of funny.  When she and I first reconnected on Facebook, we had quite a few comments and posts back and forth reliving old memories.  Since we’ve met in person the Facebook friendship has faded again…

I’m very curious to see how this reconnection works out for my wife.