There are moments in life that grab us, shock us, move us to tears because of the awe and wonder or the pure horror. Times that cause us to ask more questions and times that leave us speechless. This picture evoked one of those moments for me. What will come of this moment I’m not sure, most likely very little if anything at all and that reality leaves me speechless again…

Picture from “The Big Picture”

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you need a file and you don’t have a usb key on you, or you forgot to email yourself ahead of time?

I love having information and files at my fingertips. I also love having my files backed up, and I want it all for free.So, who can do this all?

Introducing dropbox.com

Here’s what I love about this simple service.

• Free (you get 2 GB free initially)
• Great for backing up files
• Super easy to use. (This is a big deal, because a lot of online backup tools are not so user friendly)
• *This is awesome — keeps a history of all file changes (30 days) so that you can undo “mistakes”
• Refer your friends and get additional storage space (its free for them too)
• Love the service and need lots of storage space fast (they offer paid upgrades)
• Ability to share your dropbox folder across your network(great for shared resources in a home or office setting)
• Replaces the need to email files to yourself, use a usb key, rename files so that you keep copies of older versions, etc, etc.
• Works on Mac! (works on windows + Linux as well)
• Web access and iphone app accessibility.

Check out the video tutorial below to see how simple this truly is!

Action Step:

• Sign Up Today and benefit from this free service
• Sign Up Today and help me get some additional storage space (Update: I am now capped in additional free space, but you should still sign up!)

Malcolm Gladwell is by far one of my favorite authors. He recently released his new book, What the Dog Saw.

Besides being a very insightful researcher and author, he is also one of the few authors to have all four of his books on the Best Seller list. Incredible considering his first book came out over 9 years ago.

As a speaker he is just as insightful. C-Span recently did an hour long interview with him. So, if you have some time and like Gladwell, you will enjoy the interview.

Recently I  finished reading Makoto Fujimura’s book “Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art and Culture.”

It reminded me how much I love to be moved by some kind of medium. For instance, I love minor, somewhat mystical, cautious music. For the classical lovers, “A Night on Bald Mountain” by Mussorgsky would fit that genre for me.

Fujimura reminded me how much Art, in its various forms really inspires me on some visceral level.

For instance, I have never been able to get enough of Bateman’s “Midnight Wolf”

"Midnight - Black Wolf"

While reading and finishing Fujimura’s book I was left wondering if i spend enough time being inspired. Somehow I don’t think so.

So, what inspires you? Do you spend time allowing yourself to be inspired?

Just something I’m pondering

dh

PS. If you love pictures that capture the rawness and beauty of life. “The Big Picture” is one of my favorite sites.

I am always on the search for new ideas, information, innovation, creativity, etc. I have a couple problems.

1. I very often forget my “great idea.”

2. I very often forget important things I have read, seen or heard.

3. When I do remember to write my ideas down they are often on random pieces of paper, my smart phone, emails, napkins and even toilet paper.  All of which leaves a very unorganized mess. the reality was that I rarely re-visited my ideas, or discoveries because either I couldn’t find my notes, or couldn’t understand what I wrote, or had too many notes that took too long to search through.

Welcome EVERNOTE!

Evernote.com has become the most important tool that I use. It has become integral to my work and personal life. That is high praise, because I love technology and use a lot of different apps and services. But none have come close to helping me organize and save my thoughts as good as Evernote does. For me this means increased productivity, greater innovation (I now remember everything I think is important to remember) and its extremely efficient. (I run evernote at home, work,on my Mac, PC, and blackberry & they all sync together).

This new video from Evernote explains it better than I could.

I can’t recommend Evernote enough. I love it!

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Feeling a little lazy? Some things that I absolutely love are technology, researching/learning from others and being efficient. Twitter comes pretty close, but I still need to do all the manual searching, checking hash tags, trending topics, etc, etc. While I love finding out new information about many things it can be very time consuming and, frankly, I don’t have a ton of time to do that.

What I have never quite yet found is an application or software that does all that for me so that I can be efficient. Until now that is

Introducing LAZY FEED. So far I love it. (Time will tell how relevant the searches are but so far so good) In a nutshell, you enter in your search terms and it will work 24/7 for you cataloguing any articles, blogs, tweets, video and pictures that relate to your topic. I can now login at night (when I write most of this blog) and review the daily highlights of my chosen topics of interest and feel “caught up.” Literally I can do this all in under 10 minutes. I have about 10 topics that I consistently keep tabs on. Anything useful I save to Evernote for future reference and I’m good to go.

You currently need an invitation code to sign up which you can get from @lazyfeed on Twitter.

Any tools, apps, services that are crucial to how you research, etc?

You should follow me on Twitter here

I am a huge fan of knowing and using your strengths. Not your physical muscles but the intangible things that make you who you are. There are countless surveys, assessments and personality tests one can take. I have listed two of my favorites that I use and have my teams use.

1. Strength Finder:In my opinion this is one of the best tools and assessments you can take. When you purchase the book “Now Discover your Strengths” you receive a code that can be used for the Clifton Strength Finder assessment. If you are at all wondering how to best find out some of your strengths and how to start using them read the book and take the assessment. I sue this with all staff and volunteers that work with me. In my opinion this is a must use.

My top 5 Strengths Are: Competition, Analytical, Activator, Command and Significance. View a description of these strengths by clicking here.

2. APEST: Not only are your strengths important but also understanding your spiritual gifts and the often over looked ministry style of the five fold ministry found in Ephesians 4. The APEST assessment is a profiling instrument designed to assist you in finding your ministry style in relation to the philosophy of the fivefold ministry of Ephesians 4 (Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds, Teachers). Put another way APEST is an online, formative, self-assessment designed to measures an individual’s current ministry motivation and expression in ministry settings. As a result, APEST leads one to new areas of learning and integration for increased ministry engagement. APEST provides a quantified result to identify one’s current place for influence within a larger community. They even offer a 360 assessment to do with your team. You can read an article by @Alan Hirschon this assessment tool and leadership here

My APEST Percentage Score is: Prophetic (44%) Apostolic (33%) Teaching (28%) Evangelistic (17%) Shepherding (7%)

My APEST 360 Review Came Out as: Prophetic(34%) Apostolic (33%) Evangelistic (24%) Teaching (21%) Shepherding (14%)

View my APEST definitions summary by clicking here.

So, what are your strengths? Care to share?  I find this fascinating and think its a great tool to use.

As a side note, I believe that strengths based hiring is often overlooked in favour of ability and skill.  While skills are obviously important, they can also be taught. In my opinion, many openings would be better filled if first we ask, “What strengths do we need for this position?”

Thoughts?

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I love researching and finding tools and resources that add value to my life. That means, for me at least they, they make life easier, more efficient, add value to some area, or just plain old more enjoyable.

So my first post in the “Things I Use” section is about Quicken Online. While not a super new tool it is one that is often overlooked.  I am always on the lookout for good financial software that makes budgeting and tracking of finances easy.  Finding “easy” in personal finance is tough. As smart and intuitive they say software is suppose to be it really isn’t.  In the US they have a great online tool in Mint.com.  However as many US tools go, this doesn’t work for us Canadians.  However Quicken Online does work.

Here are some quick highlights on why I use it:        Oh it’s also FREE!

#1 Canadians can use it. (just put in a fake ZIP code when signing up. I used “12345″

#2 It integrates extremely easy.

#3 It’s online. I know this makes some nervous. I am completely comfortable and at ease with their security measures and love that I can access this wherever I go.

#4 They even have an iphone app to track things via your mobile phone.

#5 It is very intuitive. Personally, behind being compatible for Canadians, this is the biggest reason I like this service.

#6 Simply tracks trends so that you can very easily see where you are spending, or over spending as is often the case.

#7 Quicken has done a great job at making the whole experience easy with very minimal setup. (To open an account takes approx. 5 minutes. To initially go through your downloaded transactions may take an hour. After that it more or less runs on automatic as it learns very quickly where you spend your money)

Tracking your finances is, in my opinion, very important. Not only does it help identify where we overspend, but on a deeper life issue it can very quickly identify priorities and values we hold. These of course can be great and not so great. Since I’m all about personal growth I think you will find this tool helpful in more was than one.

If you use other tools, please share. The more resources people can have on this the better.

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