While I’ve been sanding and varnishing this week on our volunteer building project, I’ve had a lot of time to think, and I wanted to share with you something that’s been on my mind ever since Max Kaizen spoke with me about the idea of unleashing your genius by having “good taste in problems.” My flip batteries were low, so the recording cut out a few times towards the end, and finally gave up the ghost as I finished the last word (which was “genius”). It might be a bit scrappy, but the gist of it is there!

So here we go…

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One of my favorite, favorite things about the Bottom-line Bookclub is that I get to interview a bunch of my favorite authors, and I have to say that this month was a bumper month when I got to interview New York Times Best-selling author, Daniel Pink, about his latest book, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.” Not only is he a compelling writer - he’s a compelling speaker too, so I thought I’d share a clip from our interview, for you all to enjoy.

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This is just a quickie, because I’m about to hop in our big old (with the emphasis on old!) Landcruiser with Andy and head off up the East Coast of South Africa to Zithulele Hospital, for our building project. We’ll take 2 days to drive up there, picking up our good friends, Anth and Karen (flying in from Singapore) and spending Christmas day with them at Addo elephant Park, on the way up. And over the next few days, the rest of our team will assemble: Jamie and Teak flying in from London UK, and Jan and Karlien and their two children (6 and 8 years old), who are also coming up from Cape Town. We’re all incredibly excited now (the smack talk started two weeks ago!) and looking forward to two weeks of hard work, sweat, reflection, and bonding.

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Over the past few posts, I’ve been exploring the topic of goal-setting and whether it’s still a relevant success strategy in our high-change, fast-paced, opportunity-abundant world. Here are the posts in the series so far:

• Is Traditional Goal-Setting Broken? (video post)
• Call Recording: How to Create the Framework to Get the Results You Want in Life, With Michele Woodward
• What Other Coaches and Bloggers Are Saying About Goal-Setting
• A Model For Using Your Whole Mind to Problem-Solve And Negotiate Change

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Here’s a quick roundup of what I’ve been up to and sharing over the past few months… scan it and see if there are any posts you’ve missed that could help you with something you’re trying to figure out right now…

At Mine Your Resources

• 15 Dec: A Model For Using Your Whole Mind To Problem-Solve And Negotiate Change
• 11 Dec: 10 of the Best Years of My Life
• 10 Dec: Call Recording: How to Create the Framework To Get The Results You Want With Michele Woodward
• 8 Dec: What Other Coaches And Bloggers Are Saying About Goal-Setting
• 7 Dec: Why I’m a Christmas Holiday Grouch
• 1 Dec: Is Traditional Goal-Setting Broken?
• 24 Nov: Martha Beck’s Top Tips on How to unleash Your Genius
• 20 Nov: Call Recording: How to Unleash your Genius with Max Kaizen
• 17 Nov: Extreme African Adventures And How to Create More Meaning in Your Life
• 10 Nov: How to Do Effective Self-Directed Learning
• 3 Nov: Agile Living Blog Carnival: November Roundup

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In an earlier video post I explained a few of my reasons why I think that traditional goal-setting is broken. One of the central reasons is that it’s such a linear, left-brain-directed process, and while this may have suited a more stable, predictable world, in these high-change times, I think we need a more agile approach.

I still have a lot of questions and gaps in my model, but I’ve been experimenting in my own life and with my clients and I’ve started to develop a new paradigm that’s serving us well, and I’m going to share it with you over the next while. I’d love you to banter with me, tell me where you think I’ve got it wrong, and add your own questions and ideas, and let’s see where it takes us…

This is quite a long post, and not really one to skim… I’ve pulled together some of my thoughts on the goal-setting process and why some freedom and lack of structure seems really useful sometimes while lots of structure in your thinking can seem really useful at other times. And I think it might also explain the diversity in the perspectives on goal-setting that coaches and personal development bloggers shared in a recent post.

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