Personal Growth: 30 Days of Free Training for Getting Results in Work and Life

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Personal growth is one of the best ways to get more from life.   How do you achieve personal growth?    Well, one way is to take on big, hairy challenges.   Personal growth is what happens to you in the process of testing your skills and experience against the real world.

I like to think of personal growth as expanding your capabilities.  

You can grow deeper in a particular domain, or you can grow your cross-cutting abilities.  Sometimes, the best way to grow deeper in a domain, is to focus on cross-cutting concerns like focus, setting goals, motivation, productivity, time management, etc.    For example, when I was working in security, I had to do a lot of stakeholder management across teams.  It required a great deal of influence without authority.  I had to deal with extreme conflict, and negotiate for win-wins in a number of highly-competitive scenarios.  I had to practice emotional intelligence under high-stress scenarios.  I had to stay focused, and use goals to help drive the team forward.   I had to achieve our security goals, while making sure the team was highly productive.   I had to improve my own personal productivity.   All of these skills, helped me learn about security in a much broader way, from a much wider set of people, and in a way that was much more profound that if I simply focused on the principles, patterns, and practices of security.  It was through personal growth, that I expanded my abilities to be effective at driving security changes in a much wider range of scenarios and situations.

Personal growth is powerful.  It’s the backbone of personal empowerment.  For example, sometimes when you wonder what’s holding you back … it’s you.   Whether it’s limiting beliefs, or having a limited toolset, or simply having a limited perspective or experience.   The key is to expand your capabilities, along the journey of work and life.

My 30 Days of Free Training for Getting Results, is a collection of self-paced modules to help you achieve personal growth.   When I originally ran the self-paced training, I did it as a daily release for 30 days.  It was highly effective for many people because they liked the little daily actions, and the focus for the month.   Since that original series, I’ve made the 30 Days of Free Training for Getting Results available here:

It’s a highly-focused set of personal growth exercises at your finger tips.  It’s also a very simple system for time management.  I’ve tried to keep the layout as simple and as clean as possible.   If you’ve seen the earlier version, then this should be a marked improvement.   I put each day on the sidebar, so that you can easily hop around.  For convenience, I’ve listed the days below, and provided a link to each lesson.  This way you can get the bird’s-eye view and quickly explore any lessons that might interest you.  (Personally, if this is your first time, I would check out Day #27 – Do Something Great.)

30 Days of Getting Results

  1. Day 1 – Take a Tour of Getting Results the Agile Way
  2. Day 2 – Monday Vision – Use Three Stories to Drive Your Week
  3. Day 3 – Daily Outcomes – Use Three Stories to Drive Your Day
  4. Day 4 – Let Things Slough Off
  5. Day 5 – Hot Spots – Map Out What’s Important
  6. Day 6 – Friday Reflection – Identify Three Things Going Well and Three Things to Improve
  7. Day 7 – Setup Boundaries and Buffers
  8. Day 8 – Dump Your Brain to Free Your Mind
  9. Day 9 – Prioritize Your Day with MUST, SHOULD, and COULD
  10. Day 10 – Feel Strong All Week Long
  11. Day 11 – Reduce Friction and Create Glide Paths for Your Day
  12. Day 12 – Productivity Personas – Are You are a Starter or a Finisher?
  13. Day 13 – Triage Your Action Items with Skill
  14. Day 14 – Carve Out Time for What’s Important
  15. Day 15 – Achieve a Peaceful Calm State of Mind
  16. Day 16 – Use Metaphors to Find Your Motivation
  17. Day 17 – Add Power Hours to Your Week
  18. Day 18 – Add Creative Hours to Your Week
  19. Day 19 — Who are You Doing it For?
  20. Day 20 — Ask Better Questions, Get Better Results
  21. Day 21 – Carry the Good Forward, Let the Rest Go
  22. Day 22 – Design Your Day with Skill
  23. Day 23 — Design Your Week with Skill
  24. Day 24 – Bounce Back with Skill
  25. Day 25 – Fix Time. Flex Scope
  26. Day 26 – Solve Problems with Skill
  27. Day 27 – Do Something Great
  28. Day 28 – Find Your One Thing
  29. Day 29 – Find Your Arena for Your Best Results
  30. Day 30 – Take Agile Results to the Next Level

Note that just because it says 30 days, that doesn’t mean you can’t flip through at your own pace.   Find what works for you.   Explore the ideas that you find the most interesting.

If you experience a breakthrough, be sure to share it with others.   Even though this is free, it’s pretty intense.   Folks have told me about their amazing breakthroughs … somehow dots have connected, and they’ve gotten over hurdles they’ve faced for years.

Enjoy.

BTW – If you do start with Day 27 and decide to do something great, I’d love to hear about what it is.