Topics — Jonathan Nation

Two New Sailors – Babies Not Included

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[download MP3 - 6:00]

Today most of my family went out to a lake. It was great weather, but the best thing was the people who had not been sailing before.

The first new people in a boat were my babies. One seemed to do well & went off with one of my sisters. She wanted to stand up in the boat, but took the idea of sitting pretty well. The other went out with me and was upset before we even got into a boat. I’m not sure what it was, but when our two boats got close enough both babies ended up crying. They might not be sailors for life at this point, but at under the age of two there is still time.

Then the highlight for me — two new sailing people. Because of the light wind, and we really wanted stable boats, we decided to use some of the club Optimist’s (or Opti) which has basically two parts & is very hard to overturn. They enjoyed it.

That’s two new sailors for me. I think I’m going to see how many people I can get to sail a boat on their own this year. If you love sailing, I challenge you to do the same.

When introducing people to sailing, I like little boats. Boats that are simple where the individual can focus on two things:
- steering
- main sail

The opti is a good boat for this, and so is the Laser, my favorite boat. The instant feedback of adjusting the rudder, tiller, tiller extender, or mainsheet is great for picking up how sailing works. Then if you want to move to larger boats, you can learn about jibs, blocks, cranks, etc.

How many people do you expect to get sailing a boat on their own this year?

Just Writing – better society

there are times I just sit down and am inspired to write. I go until the train has run out of gas, sit back & see what happened.

Tonight was one of those times with the initial topic of “What does it take to have a better society?”. Your thoughts?

Attention Economy on SAHceo

It’s been a busy month, already. This morning I am thrilled that I had a flash of creativity & pounded out a short article for Stay At Home CEO.

Already this month we have traveled over 1,000 miles. One 8 hour of drive time turned into 12 hours door to door … in the driving rain. The other direction was 10.25 hours door to door.

Of the next few weeks of December we have more traveling & family coming in to stay with us. It’s all a wonderful time of the year, but many things are fighting for my money, energy, time, and attention.

I’m trying to be careful with it & in turn think about what others around me. They probably have just as many things fighting for their attention, time, energy, money, and other resources.

I’m pretty happy with how this post turned out & the artwork I managed to put together with it. Thanks for your attention & if you want to go a step farther comment or share this post with someone else who is trying to do too much.

Reflect, Thank; Dream, Plan – our process to success

My family has this process that we started the fall after my wife and I were first married. It stems from my frustration of Thanksgiving being overlooked & disdain for New Years Resolutions. Currently I am calling it Reflect, Thank; Dream, Plan.

Reflect

The first step is to look back on the past year, or longer, and see where you have come from. What all has happened?

Having twin one year olds this Thanksgiving, I can say that the year went by fast. We both have much to be thankful for, especially the growth in our babies and each other — both as individuals, as a couple, and family.

Thank

This part is simple, but important – be thankful & speak to people what you are thankful for. As a general practice I am trying to be encouraging more in the day to day, but there are still some specific people who have had an impact that I try to go out of my way to thank.

Dream

This moves from the past & present side to the future. Dreaming what the next year or longer should be. Currently I am thinking about a model based on relationships for viewing your world, so:
- Yourself – physical, mental, spiritual, capabilities
- Family – the special relationships around you
- Business – if you are an employee – you are a business hiring out your services to your employer. If you own or desire to one one, then you have a slightly different relationship
- Society – other people who are not in your business, or family.

So, what are the dreams for those four big areas? What about the subparts? Can you paint a picture that you are aiming for?

Plan

The practical steps you intend to take to make your dreams reality. Before you fully make plans you need to make goals. Goals are important because they are the measuring stick of how well your plans do, but doing the important work to write out the steps you are going to take to make the dream a reality is also vital.

My family is in the middle. We talked about reflecting and thanks recently. This week my wife and I will talk about our dreams for the next year – thinking in those four big fields. If you can have one dream for each & work on just four things over the course of a year – it will be amazing, as long as you take the steps of really making a good goal and then a plan.

testing syndication & tweaking systems

Today I am trying out a plan I’ve been thinking about off and on.

Two changes:
1. what is a status

2. syndication

1. what is a status

Been thinking about how I had things set up to update facebook when a post was marked a “status”, well a status is a status, but there are times that I want a non-status to go to facebook (or twitter, or linkedin, or in the future google pluse).

So, that brought me to #2.

2. syndication

Now I have a new type of category set up – send-to. Then sub categories, with each going to different social media networks. The idea is that I can write something up, put it in whatever categories I want & it goes out to the worlds.

Now a post like this morning about the great podcast I listened to might or might not be a status, but can still go the correct places.