A Time For Everything

Image courtesy of IMGBIN.

While I'm not quite swimming in gold coins yet, January was filled with some abundance:

• time
• energy
• productivity
• wealth

Are you wondering how? Well, certainly not in the way you would expect. But let's see...

I certainly wasn't pleased about getting woken up a full hour before my alarm went off several mornings from mid-month onward, but I got up and put that time to good use. I also found myself with small pockets of time to do random things.

For example--I took the "pre-lit" lights off my Christmas tree. They all died over the course of the last two Christmases, but the tree itself is still perfectly fine.

So before I put the tree into storage for the year, I decided to remove the dead strings of lights.

There were several days where I had time to kill, so I started in on those lights. I figured out the pattern of how the lights were strung and then gleefully took some sharp cutters and started snipping wires. It's not as tedious as I imagined, but it is mindless, so I just put on some TV and got several branches done in 45-minute increments.

Despite the early mornings and occasional later nights, my energy levels have been good. That one I can't entirely explain right now other than to say good sleep, good food, some exercise, and good productive days make you feel good and it's a self-perpetuating cycle.

As for productivity...well, the lists and the planners and the chore chart all helped, but so did the extra time, which fed the feel-good vibes from getting stuff done, which feeds the energy levels, which makes you want to cross more stuff off that to-do list and well, it's a self-perpetuating cycle...

And the literal wealth...well, that's kinda separate. We started a new investment program, which I won't go into detail about right now, but suffice to say, the value of our portfolio has increased. Which tickles me pink, which cycles that good energy back into the other things.

But this all needed a catalyst, right?

I think I figured out what it was. And it may cycle back to...

If you said Personality Strengths, you'd be correct. :0)

A couple of weeks ago, I received a newsletter from Chief Strengths guru, Becca, and she does a thing called "Dear Becca." People who are a part of her Strengths family, at any level, can send her questions and she'll answer the really impactful one or the mass-applicable ones in the newsletter.

Someone asked if particular Strengths, especially ones that are lower in the top-ten lineup can be more hungry than higher ranked Strengths. The question-asker said that she'd doubled her reading volume and, as a result, her writing output rose by 30% and asked if that tracked since input for her was "only 9th" and she had all those other really dominant Strengths at the top. The specific Strength she asked about was Input, which ranks 9th for her and which ranks 8th for me. We shared two other Strengths in the top ten...

Anyway, both the question and the answer really hit home for me. The answer was basically yes.

Now, Input as a Strength manifests itself in just the way you might think--it wants input. TV, radio, pod casts, books, articles, movies, etc...

I tend to read a lot and I listen to a lot of pod casts and I read a lot of hockey-related articles. And lately, I've been Inputting a lot more than I have in a while and certainly more than I was able to last year. Not only that, but my head space is clearer now. I can better absorb the information I'm taking in as well.

As a result, I'm feeling more energetic and more myself, which feeds the productivity, which feeds the feeling of well-being, which feeds the...

Well, you get my drift. :0)

I really need to get to those Strengths books I have lined up to read, don't I?

Have a great weekend. Catch you Monday.