Category: Personal Development
This site was originally a blog dedicated to personal development. These posts date back to that era (though I still post the odd note on personal development here and there).
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Know This: Motivating Yourself Can Be Difficult
Questions often asked of me by people who frequent ToVa include: How do I find the time? How do I maintain the energy? How can I be so organized? Confession: it’s not as easy as I try to make it look. I started taking personal development seriously nearly three years ago. I’ve always chased opportunities […]
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It’s Not Your Job To Hold Down The Score
Football season is upon us once again! Sport offers no end of inspiration and lessons in preparation and success, so why not look toward America’s favorite sport for a little Wednesday inspiration? … It’s not my job to hold down the score – that’s your job. This was legendary college football coach Bobby Bowden’s response […]
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I Am Groot
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy stole a lot of hearts over this year’s blockbuster season (I would say “summer”, but it’s winter here in Australia!), including my own. As you know, I love finding lessons in non-traditional places and there were lessons aplenty in this comedic space western. Spoiler alert: engaged. Establishing Your Personal Brand Ain’t […]
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Sometimes Your To-Do List Is Best Left Unfinished
On Monday we discussed using context and prioritization to better organize our to-do lists. Keeping the highest priority items at the top of our lists ensures that we’re getting the right things done in order to make real progress toward achieving our goals. Less important tasks get relegated to the bottom of the list and naturally […]
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Prioritize And Contextualize Your To-Do List
An integral part of whatever productivity system you decide to establish is a mechanism for managing all of the tasks that you’ll have on your plate at any one time. Some will call this ‘task management’ and employ any number of synced apps or custom systems to stay across everything. Others will go the pen-and-notecard […]
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Make A Habit Of Passion, Learn From Kids, Be Inspired
The weekend is here again! Rituals were the theme of the week, which happens to coincide with the first weekend link about making a habit of pursuing your passion projects. Kids pervade the other two links by showing us how to channel our inner nine-year-old and allowing for a little inspiration after a disappointing loss […]
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Use Rituals To Engineer Your Perfect Day
A powerful way to start living the life you want to live while making progress toward your grandest goals is to map out what your average perfect day would look like (via). Not your fantasy perfect day, but a perfect day that you can engineer out of the raw material of reality. Naturally this perfect day […]
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Convert Routines Into Rituals For Meaningful Progress
You might not think that you’re a creature of routine but consider the course of your average day for a few seconds. Maybe you always have a cup of coffee in the morning and try to wait until noon before having another. You iron your shirt for the next work day just before you go […]
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Self-Awareness, Being Provocative, Shaking Up The NFL
An unintentional theme developed as I compiled the links for this weekend: moving confidently forward and shaking things up. The first link shows us how to establish a foundation for development before the second challenges us to not just question the status quo but to take action toward changing it. A piece on Chip Kelly, […]
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‘Create’ Free Time By Being Early
Here’s a great way to develop a positive trait and steal back some precious free moments all in one move: get comfortable with waiting. Punctuality is never looked upon poorly, no matter what your fashionably late friends may try to tell you. However, being early can leave you in the awkward position of having nothing […]