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Incremental Excellence: Compounding Personal Growth through a Daily Drip

We all have active schedules and tasks that “must get done.” Throughout our careers and lives, twin Don and I have too often seen folks prioritize and let the day-to-day urgent matters overwhelm the opportunity to do the more important work of the long-term potential of investing in their personal development. Our quest is to shine the light on the disservice we all do to ourselves (and others) when we do not prioritize the important work of investing in ourselves.

“But what does Socrates say? “Just as one person delights in improving his farm, and another his horse, so I delight in attending to my own improvement day by day.””

—Epictetus, Discourses, 3.5.14

When we think of “investing,” the common thought turns to investing money or saving for our future. Taking care of our financial needs is another critical topic, but here, the emphasis is investing our resources into ourselves toward developing our best talent and potential. There are no shortcuts to improving ourselves. We must show up daily and persist in doing the work required to refine our talents. The excellent news is that daily small incremental investments in ourselves compound exponentially over time.

“Every small positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future.”

—Alice Walker

Seth Godin, in the blogs shared below, makes compelling observations:

Where are your assets?

“Do work and get paid once. Build an asset and get paid for as long as it lasts.“

The drip. In this post, Seth shares the magic of showing up and persisting to make real change.

“Change, real change, is the result of focused persistence.”

“The challenging part, and the reason that change doesn’t happen as often as it should is that we get distracted. Today’s urgent is more urgent than yesterday’s important.”

“Keep showing up. If it matters, keep showing up.”

Several benefits of prioritizing personal development include:

  1. Building an asset: As Seth notes, building an asset for ourselves is valuable and something you own.
  2. Leading by example: When we challenge ourselves to grow, we can inspire others to do the same.
  3. Help others: We are better positioned to help others as our skills increase. We must not lose sight of developing ourselves to contribute more to the world.
  4. Increased adaptability: Personal development enhances our ability to adapt to changing circumstances, making us more resilient to challenges.
  5. Enhanced self-awareness: By investing in personal growth, we gain a deeper understanding of our strengths, weaknesses, values, and motivations.
  6. Improved decision-making: As we develop ourselves, we refine our critical thinking skills and gain new perspectives, leading to better decision-making in various aspects of life.
  7. Greater sense of fulfillment: Pursuing personal growth often leads to a stronger sense of purpose and satisfaction in life.
  8. Better relationships: Personal development can improve our emotional intelligence, communication skills, and empathy, leading to healthier and more meaningful relationships.
  9. Increased productivity: By honing our skills and improving our habits, we become more efficient and effective in our daily tasks.
  10. Expanded opportunities: As we grow and develop new skills, we open ourselves to new career paths and life experiences.
  11. Continuous learning mindset: Embracing personal development fosters a lifelong love of learning, keeping our minds sharp and engaged.
  12. Increased self-confidence: Our self-confidence naturally grows as we overcome challenges and achieve personal goals.
  13. Enhanced creativity: Personal growth often involves exploring new ideas and perspectives, which can boost our creative thinking abilities.

Personal development is not just a luxury; it’s necessary for anyone seeking a fulfilling and impactful life. The benefits we’ve explored – from building valuable personal assets to enhancing our adaptability and creativity – demonstrate the profound impact that consistent self-improvement can have on our lives and those around us.

I hope my thoughts help inspire you to reflect on how dedicating time daily to personal development, learning, and growth can exponentially improve your day-to-day performance and provide you with much fulfillment. Remember, as Epictetus wisely noted, there’s a unique delight in attending to our improvement day by day. Keep showing up, stay persistent, and witness the small, daily investments in yourself compound into remarkable transformations over time. Choose the steady drip of daily personal development. Don’t say “one day” instead, make today “day one.” Your future self will thank you!

Continual Education – 5 Hour Rule (Compounding impact)
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Choose Possibility: How Small Shifts in Thinking Can Create Big Changes

Over the past five years, my daily reading of the Stoicism philosophy has often reflected the importance of managing our minds. How we think, interpret, and respond to external events.

Am I prioritizing my efforts to use the gift of my mind and the opportunity for rational thought? I contemplate this question daily as I strive to bring my best talents and abilities to the world.

In this post, I focus on shifting our mindset to one of possibility. Here are a few resources to inspire you to approach your life through a lens of possibility:

In his blog post, A Commitment to Possibility, Seth Godin notes:

“So many people to connect with, so many things to learn. Doors to open, helping hands to be offered.

The magic of our time is that forward motion multiplies and ideas can be shared like never before.”

The second resource comes from the twinz book recommendations – The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander. Read and share this book. Inspiration guaranteed!

Bill Tomoff with book The Art of Possibility

In this three-minute video, Ben shares examples of the power of possibility.

“You can choose one of two ways of being every single moment of your life. You can either be in what we call “the down spiral” or radiating possibility.”

“Radiating possibility is a discipline. It’s a rigorous discipline. That is why you have to practice, and practice, and practice, and practice. [Have people in your life who are open to possibility]”

James Clear, author of the book Atomic Habits, wrote this review of The Art of Possibility. Highlights I especially enjoyed:

  • Everything in life is based on your reference frame. Look at things in a new way and suddenly your problems fade away.
  • Instead of focusing on how you measure up, focus on how you contribute to the world around you. Contribution is not measured based on other people. It’s only measured based on what you put into the world around you. That’s it. If you add something, you contributed.
  • The conductor can lead the most powerful orchestra in the world, but does not make a sound. His or her only power is in getting the players to produce the beautiful sound they are capable of.
  • Rule #6: Don’t take yourself so damn seriously. [Bill and Don #TwinzTalk LOVE this rule!]
  • The more attention you shine on a subject, the more evidence of it you find. This is how downward spiral talk escalates into a reality.

As we navigate life’s challenges and opportunities, adopting a mindset of possibility can profoundly impact our experiences and outcomes. By embracing and practicing possibility, we open ourselves to a world of potential. Possibility is a practice, a discipline that requires consistent effort and mindfulness. By cultivating this mindset, we can enrich our lives and contribute to a more optimistic world. The choice is yours every second of every day: will you spiral downward or radiate possibility? Choose possibility!

Possibility Coffee Mug
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From Tasks to Transformation: Redefining Leadership in the Modern Workplace

“𝘿𝙤𝙣’𝙩 𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙠 𝙜𝙚𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙖𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙜𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨.”

Throughout our careers, Don Tomoff, MBA, and I have prioritized and felt responsible, as part of our leadership goals, for developing the people we work with daily. How can we help others grow through micro-moments of engaging in a learning opportunity and pausing for 5 or 10 minutes to slow down and talk through a challenge or difficult concept?

Over time, everyone becomes stronger as the learning moments compound and then build exponentially over the long haul. Too often, we rush through our days, exclaiming (unfortunately, often proudly), “I am busy! I have too much to do to allow the luxury of slowing down to prioritize learning.” This is shortsighted and a colossal mistake.

Seth Godin recently released a Udemy course, “This is Strategy with Seth Godin.” In Lesson 27, “Toward a Strategic Practice,” he challenges us to think about how we spend our professional time. “We only get today once. It is the asset that each of us gets to deploy once—today. Is it possible to develop a practice of being strategic?”

Seth argues that there are three choices for how we spend our time at work:

* 𝗧𝗮𝘀𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀 (most people) that can possibly be outsourced.

* 𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲. We can be writing specs and managing people who are following the specs (outsourcing possible – not done often enough).

* 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗿. “To confront resistance. To become incompetent in the face of learning.” When we lean into these moments (maybe 5 minutes a day), we are truly being strategic.

Exerting emotional labor is the most important work. This is the 5 or 10 minutes that Don and I frequently encourage and challenge others to embrace the discomfort of learning something new. 𝙄𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙛𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙍𝙐𝙉 𝙩𝙤𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙤𝙥𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙮. Pictured below is a moment of celebration of learning with a previous coworker. Helping others enhance their skills is very gratifying!

2019 – Don and Bill Tomoff with coworker celebrating a learning session!
Continual Education – 5 Hour Rule (Compounding impact)

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Beyond Publication: Embracing the True Value of Writing for Personal Growth

Why do I write?

An unexpected life-enhancing change occurred for me starting on June 8, 2020, when my wife Terri and I enrolled in a community of practice (Writing In Community) dedicated to writing a book over a six-month period. We committed to showing up daily for at least 15 minutes. The process took hold of us, and we both fell in love with writing, which helped us bring clarity to our world. Writing helps us make sense of our thoughts, and we both advocate for encouraging others to adopt regular writing practices!

In my blog post Discovering Myself Through Memoir: A Journey of Self-Reflection and Gratitude, I noted the gift of four unpublished memoirs I completed:

“My efforts have resulted in four unpublished memoirs that I have completed. I have gained tremendous enjoyment from writing these memoirs and fulfillment knowing the thoughts, appreciation, and memories I ultimately leave for my family. The four memoirs have now made it possible to think about and more clearly articulate my body of work through the blessing of my 65-plus years of life.”

Conveying the value that writing has brought to me is difficult to explain. I recently read a beautiful Substack post from Jennifer Loudon that resonated with me. In her post, It’s a Beautiful Thing So Many People Want to Write a Book (or anything for that matter), Jennifer notes:

“A few years ago I was at a dinner party and another woman went on a rant about how people who weren’t talented at writing and hadn’t been published by “real” publishers had no right to call themselves writers. All I could think as she blathered on was, “You poor thing. How badly you must want to write and how harsh someone must have been to you once upon a time.””

“When you use writing to pass what’s in your mind and heart to someone else’s mind and heart, that’s amazing. It’s magic as far as I’m concerned. When you carve meaning out of this chaotic cacophony of life, I applaud you. When you dare to be seen in your own writing, to be seen by you or someone else, what you believe, what you know, what you’ve experienced, that’s glorious. When you offer a hand made of words to another person or yourself, a hand that says, “Take this, use what you need. You are not alone,” that’s making a miracle.

Nobody gets to stop or judge your desire to write and create. And those that try are most likely like the woman at the party — terrified they will die without having declared their stories, their ideas, their spirit. Terrified by the ghosts of judges and gatekeepers and other stifled creatives into a silence that chokes.”

Writing isn’t just for published authors – it’s for everyone. It’s a gift you give yourself and others. So if you want to write anything, please write. You don’t need a published book to be a writer. You need only the courage to put words on a page.

Through writing, I found clarity I never knew I lacked. You, too, will uncover hidden depths within yourself, illuminating your thoughts and experiences in ways you never imagined. Whether you share your words with family and friends, on a blog, or in a book, you’re offering a precious gift.

As Jen beautifully puts it, “When you offer a hand made of words to another person or yourself, a hand that says, ‘Take this, use what you need. You are not alone,’ that’s making a miracle.”

Don’t let anyone discourage your dreams. Don’t let fear silence your voice. Write for yourself, for others, and the sheer joy of creation. Go now and start making your miracle. The world is waiting for your words.

December 2021 – Terri and Bill Tomoff with Books Written
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Beyond the Resume: Embracing the Whole Person in a Work-Life Integrated World

“Everyone has a story.”

There are differing thoughts on how much our personal and professional lives should be balanced. I have evolved through my career to firmly believe in “Work/life integration” vs. “Work/life balance.” The conversation and prevalence of integrating our work and personal lives have been more acutely discussed since the escalation of remote work resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic starting in 2020. In my life, work/life integration was the key to my survival. My son Ryan’s diagnosis of childhood cancer in 1996 demanded a personal commitment and an understanding from my employers and colleagues that is unthinkable in most professional environments. Yet, I was profoundly blessed to have the necessary professional support to survive personally and professionally.

A byproduct of the support I received was that In my leadership roles, I have always sought to understand that we all have stories and challenges in our lives that no one knows about. Caring about others and the macro-level demands they are facing in their lives is an intelligent business strategy, but more importantly, it is the right thing to do. We all are in this life together. In my in-person and social media interactions, I strive to understand the “complete person” regarding their interests, personality, and demands outside their professional roles. A resulting benefit is the building of more productive and genuine relationships. This is the world I want to live in.

As you will note in my blog posts, I fully embrace and share my life experiences. These experiences have shaped me into the person I am today, and they enhance my personal and professional lives.

Through my blog at BillTomoff (dot) com, I have written 71 blog posts from 2017 through July 1, 2024. I share personal and professional thoughts and am interested in helping others. The posts have been compiled in a PDF document, and then I collaborated with Claude AI to summarize “my story” based on my blog content. Anyone desiring to learn more about me could gain insight into my interests, expertise, and personal beliefs (i.e., let’s be kind to each other), and my style may resonate with others. These are the people I want in my tribe to engage and collaborate with!

#TwinzTalk Encouragement – Always be learning and do your best!

Below are my prompt and Claude AI’s [edited] response. Claude did an incredible job providing me with content to start working with. The summary shared is the essence of my life and beliefs, which I am dedicated to living and practicing for the rest of my life.

Prompt:

“Please read and review the attached PDF of blog posts. You are an expert ghostwriter, and I would like you to tell me what is important to the author based on his writing content. Take a deep breath and take your time responding.”

Response:

“Based on a thorough review of the blog posts, here are some key themes and values that appear to be important to the author, Bill Tomoff:

  1. Personal Growth and Continuous Learning: The author emphasizes personal development, lifelong learning, and consistent dedication to improving oneself. He regularly encourages reading, attending courses, and seeking new knowledge.
  2. Family: Family is a central priority for the author. Many posts reference his wife Terri, son Ryan, daughter Olivia, and twin brother Don. His family’s journey through his son’s cancer diagnosis and five-time cancer battles and treatment has profoundly shaped his worldview.
  3. Resilience and Post-Traumatic Growth: The author often discusses the concept of growing stronger through adversity, particularly with his son’s cancer experience. He believes in the possibility of emerging from difficult experiences as an improved, kinder, and more compassionate person.
  4. Kindness and Compassion: Treating others with gentleness and kindness is a recurring theme. The author frequently encourages readers to be tolerant, patient, and understanding of others, as everyone is fighting their own battles.
  5. Gratitude: The author emphasizes the importance of a grateful outlook on life, even during challenging times.
  6. Time Management and Prioritization: Many posts discuss the importance of using time wisely, focusing on what truly matters, and learning to say no to less important commitments.
  7. Stoicism: The author frequently references Stoic philosophy and its principles, which he strives to apply to challenges in his daily life.
  8. Helping Others: There’s a strong emphasis on using one’s skills and experiences to benefit others, whether through professional work, volunteering, or everyday interactions. “We rise by lifting others.”
  9. Technology and Innovation: The author and his twin are passionate about leveraging technology to enhance personal and professional effectiveness and create a greater possibility of making a more significant contribution to the world.
  10. Health and Self-Care: Physical health and mental well-being are recurring themes, with the author emphasizing the importance of self-care practices.
  11. Professional Excellence: The author does not prioritize career over family but values doing one’s best work and continually improving professional skills.
  12. Community and Connection: The author values and encourages participation in supportive online and in-person communities (social media and communities of practice).
  13. Writing and Reflection: Writing itself is an important practice for the author, serving as a tool for processing experiences and sharing insights.

These themes interweave throughout the blog posts, painting a picture of an individual deeply committed to personal growth, family, kindness, and positively impacting the world around him.”

Through sharing my story in my blog posts, I’ve realized that our personal and professional lives are intricately intertwined. All of our experiences can bring more value to our lives and others. The experiences that have shaped me have profoundly influenced my approach to work and life. Being open about these experiences will inspire a world where we see each other as individuals with meaningful lives beyond our professional roles. We can create more genuine connections by embracing kindness, continuous learning, and a willingness to help others. As we move forward, let’s remember that everyone has a story – and by taking the time to understand these stories, we can build a more compassionate and integrated world, both in and out of the workplace.

What is your story?

2024-03-13 – Bill Tomoff with Four Memoirs Written
April 15, 2023 Family in London Attending Tottenham Spurs EPL Game
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The Power of No: Reclaiming Your Time Through Intentional Decision-Making

Let’s empower ourselves by recognizing the critical importance of our choices with the time we are blessed with. In my blog post, Time Wealth: Prioritizing Mental Bandwidth in the Knowledge Economy, I discussed my time crisis and the resulting awareness that my choices of priorities were essential to surviving my son Ryan’s battles with childhood cancer and beyond.

Shortly after, a Daily Stoic email resonated deeply with the core of my message. The post, titled ‘Do You Dominate the Battlespace?‘ by Ryan Holiday, echoes the importance of our mental battlespace. He urges us to take control. He explains:

“All of these things are vying for what military strategists today would call “the battlespace.” Our mind is a contested bit of territory, with many people seeking to control what we call “the empire between your ears” – Why? Because your brain, your attention, is valuable. People want you to think about certain things and not think about certain things–because it’s good for business, because it makes you easier to control.”

“So you must dominate this battlespace. It is you who must assert yourself over yourself.”

“We too must grab the reins of our mind, set up boundaries against distraction, push away intrusive thoughts, tune out nonsense and noise. That’s what Stoicism is, as we wrote recently, it’s the gladiator stepping out into the arena of the mind, dominating the battlespace, controlling their own mind…because the alternative–letting the enemy dominate, letting your mind be controlled by someone or something else–is just unthinkable.”

This passage sums up well that our mind is under our control. Yet, too often, we give away our time by allowing our minds to be engaged in meaningless or dangerous activities. This is why we must be aware and establish boundaries to protect our mental well-being.

In addition to maintaining healthy boundaries around where we are willing to apply our precious time and minds, we must strive to continually learn and grow in ways that permit us to maximize the use of our time and mental bandwidth.

I have discovered several posts that resonate with the importance of managing our minds and being judicious about where we prioritize our time. Rajesh Setty is a favorite follow on my LinkedIn. This post, “One Approach to Cultivate a Beautiful Mind Garden,” was inspiring and thought-provoking. I encourage you to follow Rajesh and read his entire post, but consider this insight he shared:

“A beautiful garden has good plants and trees that bear fruits and flowers. It also lacks weeds that grow easily on their own. Removing weeds takes effort. If you don’t maintain the garden, weeds will grow, requiring more time to remove them. This means less time for nurturing the beautiful parts of the garden.

The same goes for the mind. Information doesn’t come with nutrition labels. When information enters your mind through news, ideas, conversations, projects, and work, there’s usually no filter. Your mind will use it’s previous capacity to process this unfiltered information even to determine the nature (good, bad, relevant, irrelevant etc.) of it. In the world where both people and machines are creating content at breathtaking speed, you can easily get carried away in one or the other content rabbit holes.

To make a beautiful garden of the mind, use the power of curation. In my life, I prioritize curation highly. I don’t watch news or read newspapers unless someone points out something relevant to the projects I am involved and something that’s within my sphere of influence. Occasionally, I let my mind wander by design to ensure that there is room for some surprise and serendipity.”

In addition to remaining aware and informed of our choices to prioritize our mind share, we should filter what we dedicate our time and energies to as best as possible. Here are a few steps to quickly help in assessing choices:

  1. Do I need to be involved? Eliminating unnecessary involvement of your energy is the number one time hack.
  2. If I need to be involved, how can I maximize my impact with the least mental energy and time commitment?
  3. Will my involvement allow me to grow and help others in the future? Note that having opinions, being judgemental, and expending energy toward gossip and mainstream news are time sucks, taking away from making a meaningful contribution to ourselves and others.
  4. Once I dedicate my time, am I prepared to make the best use of it, or am I doing something I love, like spending time with family and hobbies? Think of the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule.

A few additional resources that have resonated with me:

A Learning a Day blog shared two concepts that are worth understanding. For many decisions, we must be aware of the time we commit and contemplate, “What is the minimum viable information I need to get moving and get comfortable with a decision?“

Directional Answers and Precise Answers

“I use a simple rule of thumb for the difference between attempting to convert a directional answer into a precise answer—10x+ time investment.”

In our lives and with our #TwinzTalk initiative, Don and I have given ourselves a disproportionate advantage by seeking directional answers to get us moving forward. Technology testing and adoption have always started with a vision of the potential rather than a precise answer to the ultimate benefit. Seeking directional insight vs. [often unattainable] precision, we can reach more learning opportunities and possibilities to leverage technology.

Tanmay Vora Sketchnote – Move and the Way Appears

Satisficers and Maximizers

“Barry Schwartz’s research showed that people tend to fall into one of two groups when making decisions – he called these groups satisficers and maximizers. Maximizers desire the best possible result, while satisficers desire a result that is good enough to meet some criterion. That doesn’t necessarily mean satisficers settle for crap. Their criteria could be lofty – but, as long as it meets that criteria, they don’t care about it being the best.

Barry Schwartz argues that satisficers tend to be happier than maximizers as maximizers spend a lot of time and energy on many decisions that just don’t matter as much.”

Don and I both share the satisficer tendency. We have saved ourselves time and energy, while also being content with our decisions. Talk about a win-win!

Maximizing everything is time-consuming. The number of choices available to us is overwhelming. Settling on “good enough” is a gift we can give ourselves. If you have yet to see Barry Schwartz’s TED Talk, The Paradox of Choice, prioritize time to watch it. I guarantee a few laughs and several “aha” moments.

In today’s world, where information is everywhere and everything moves fast, managing what we think about and focus on is important. By understanding how valuable our time and attention are, setting clear limits on what we let in, and being careful about what we think, we can live a more focused life, get more done, and feel more satisfied. The secret is making smart choices on purpose. Our most valuable thing isn’t money or material possessions – it’s our limited time and brain power. If we focus on what’s really important and let go of the rest, we can build “time-wealth.” This means we have time to grow, do good things for the world, and live happier lives. We all have the power to control what goes on in our minds – so let’s make wise choices.