Category: Follow Friday

“Obsess about the process, not the end results. You don’t get results by focusing on results, you get results by focusing on the actions that get results.”

Craig Groeschel

For those of you who know me or have been following me for a while, you know I’m a productivity nut. I have been studying productivity for close to 20 years. In teaching people about productivity, I have a handful of books that I typically recommend to people. I now have a new #1 book that I will be recommending, Atomic Habits by James Clear.

I have read The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and thought it was a good book, but it didn’t take things quite far enough for me. In Atomic Habits, James Clear acknowledges Duhigg’s contribution and makes it clear he intends to build on top of what Duhigg has already stated. The build on top of Duhigg’s work is what gives Atomic Habits the extra edge I have been looking for in a book on habits.

I don’t want to steal James’ thunder so I’m not going to go any further, however, what I will say is if you’re looking to make meaningful changes in your life, you need to get Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Follow James: Atomic Habits Book | Website | Twitter | Instagram

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

Note: some of the links provided in this blog post are what are called affiliate links meaning, if you click on them and proceed to purchase the item or subscribe to the service, I receive a small fee or potentially get SWAG from the vendor.

I don’t remember exactly when I received my first book by Terry Brooks. It had to be somewhere in the range of when I was 12 to 13 years old. I received a paperback copy of The Sword of Shannara as a gift from my parents because my parents knew I was into fantasy novels.

Since that first book, Terry has written over 30 more works in the realm of the Four Lands culminating in his final book The Fall of Shannara: The Last Druid published 43 years after the first book. For fans of The Lord of the Rings, The Sword of Shannara will seem very similar, but it is a different book and is the first entry into a broad world that Terry has taken readers through for 43 years. The series was also turned into a TV show called The Shannara Chronicles as well which was an adaptation/amalgamation of several of the Shannara books.

If you are looking for something to read and want to get sucked into a world of magic, elves, dwarves, & trolls, I would strongly encourage you to check out Terry Brooks, starting with The Sword of Shannara. Terry has a reading orders page on his website you can use to track your progress.

Follow Terry: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Reddit

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

The badge on my phone for the Pocket app currently sits at 5,132; I mentioned in my post earlier this week that I had a goal to process or read every single article I had saved to Pocket by the end of the year. I started at 5,412 and I’m on track to get through the list by the end of the year at my current pace (you know I would be tracking progress right 😁). What was interesting to me, was as I looked through my list of things I had saved, it reminded me partially of why that number was so high. At one point, I had gone through every single post on the Wait but Why website and saved every single article to Pocket.

I first heard about Wait but Why several years ago and was instantly intrigued. I like thinking deeply and Tim Urban does a great job of really digging into a subject and creating very thoughtful posts. One of the ones that has recently really made me think is a post titled The Tail End. I strongly encourage you to spend some time on the Wait but Why website and think deeply. It is one of the few websites I have an email subscription to and would strongly encourage my readers to follow suit.

Follow Tim: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | RSS Feed

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

So, today’s a big day, the season finale for Season 2 of The Mandalorian drops today. I’m super excited and decided to channel that excitement by letting my inner nerd out a little bit. Today’s Follow Friday post is about one of my favorite people in Hollywood, Jon Favreau [imdb].

When I think about all the things I geek out about, Jon Favreau [Wikipedia] is associated in some way. For those of you who are Marvel Cinematic Universe fans, you’ll recognize him as Happy Hogan, Tony Stark’s comedic right-hand man (he has also had his hand in several of the MCU movies as either director, executive producer, or both). If you know anything about Shannara, you’ll be happy to know he was one of the executive producers on the show The Shannara Chronicles [affiliate link]. Finally, If you’re a Star Wars fan, you love him because he is the creator of The Mandalorian. It was even rumored at one point that Jon would replace Kathleen Kennedy as the person in charge of everything Star Wars at Disney, something I would absolutely love to see.

I don’t typically get star struck, but if you were to ask me if there’s anyone in Hollywood I would geek out about spending time with, at the top of the list you’d find Jon. I can imagine there’s a lot of my inner geek that would be showing if I ended up in a conversation with him.

If you have even a hint of an inner nerd, you should follow Jon Favreau and keep track of what he’s doing!

Follow Jon: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

On a normal FollowFriday post, I would be pointing you to someone else that I follow as a way to encourage others and bring value to your life, referring you to someone who has impacted me in some way or another for the good. However, now that I have had some time to start rebuilding my blog, cleaning it up, posting a few new posts, and getting some of the features implemented that I feel are necessary I wanted to take a moment and explain where I’m coming from, effectively officially re-launching my blog and asking you to join me on this journey.

As I mentioned in my post last Friday, I have been queuing up post ideas for quite some time and have finally gotten to a point where during the course of 2021 I will be providing more than just FollowFriday posts, providing my followers with even more value. But first, I want to explain my philosophy behind why I blog, and second, explain the types of things you should expect to see on JeffMilesSays.com.

First off, what’s my philosophy? I’ve alluded to it in a previous post, but my intention is to add value. Not by regurgitating articles you can find in other places on the internet, but by bringing my thoughts to relevant topics (more on that below) and offering my perspective on what’s going on in this world and how we can be better members of this big blue ball circling the sun, enriching each other’s lives.

From a content perspective, there are 5 pillars of what I will talk about on my blog. You see them in the title of the site, but I will explain each below.

Faith – My faith is the foundation for everything in my life. It influences how I conduct myself and relate to others, raise my children, and conduct my daily affairs. For too long, Christians have been known for what they’re against, I will show you what I’m for (your good) in how and what I write. I plan to offer a fresh, faith-based perspective on the world around me. From time-to-time, I will quote Scripture. It will be quoted to help you understand my perspective, but never to beat you over the head. It will be quoted to you from a basis of love and understanding, to encourage you to be better, never to tear you down.

Family – Second only to my faith is my family. As a family man, I want to offer a perspective that hopefully builds up marriages and families based on what I find in Scripture and what I’ve experienced in the nearly 15 years of marriage and parenting I’ve lived. From a qualification standpoint, I am not a counselor and I would encourage you to take what I say as a perspective to add to your bag, not Gospel truth (unless I’m quoting Scripture obviously 😀).

Fitness – I am not a fitness professional. Let me say that again, I am not a fitness professional. I am a banged up, former football player turned desk jockey trying to make sure I don’t keel over at my desk and am around to walk my daughters down the aisle and love on my grandbabies (and great-grandbabies). Any fitness opinions I give will be just that, opinions based on my own experience and from my research because fitness is something I enjoy and is absolutely necessary to lead a healthy and productive life.

Fun – Life has enough to bring you down, from time-to-time, my posts will just be for fun. In my weekly team meetings, I currently have a section called Monday Funday where I try to bring something I found in the previous week to include that made me laugh for one reason or another and I intend to, from time to time, include things on my blog just to make you laugh, but my intent is never to be offensive or crude.

Functions – In your life, you wear many hats. I’m no different. I’m a husband, father, computer programmer, book lover, people leader, moviegoer, and workout junky. Posts in the Functions space (it’s a little light right now but it will grow) will be used to help you be more productive with the different hats you wear. Sometimes they will contain code snippets, other times they may be leadership principles for your work, your home, or even both. You never know what you’re going to get in this section.

I will try to keep my posts in logical sections, but sometimes, life just isn’t logical so I may come at you with something completely out of leftfield (I’m writing this at the end of 2020, the least logical year I think all of us have ever experienced). Just bear with me and we’ll get through this.

As I hope I have made clear to this point, my intention is always to build you up, leaving you better, never to tear you down. However, if tearing you down is necessary, it will never be to harm you (I will never leave you there) but to remove harmful beliefs and perspectives holding you back only to replace them with ones that will hopefully help you become a better person.

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Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

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Those that have worked with me, especially those that know me from Phillips 66, know that I’m a big productivity nut. (I founded a group called Productivity@Work as a way to help the folks at Phillips 66 be more productive in their daily lives). One of these days if it makes sense I will share productivity tips on this blog, but as I said in my previous Tuesday TechTip post, I’m not going to rehash things that you can easily find in other places on the internet. One thing that shocks people sometimes is the fact that the person I email most frequently is myself. Different things work for different people but, especially since the advent of the smartphone, for me, if I want a quick reminder, my best bet is to fire off a quick email to myself. I have several different email accounts for different purposes, one of which is used for this blog. The other night I was cleaning out my blog inbox, transferring all the blog post ideas I had sent myself to my note-taking software, and it became very clear who my next Follow Friday post should be about.

I don’t know exactly when I started following Seth, but it has been at least 5 years, but I would guess it is actually closer to a decade if not more. The earliest case of me emailing to myself a Seth Godin blog post as something that encouraged me to think more deeply or differently was back in 2015 but I’m almost certain it was in the early-2000’s timeframe that I found Seth and started my subscription to his blog (to give you an anchor point, on November 6, 2017, he wrote a post titled This is post 7,000, which if you do the math means he started blogging in the late 1990s since he blogs daily).

A lot of people will look at my background and look at what Seth does and wonder how I even started following him in the first place. With my background being in software development and technology and Seth’s being in marketing, it doesn’t look like a very natural match, but what I’ve found is that on a daily basis, Seth’s blog makes me think about things in a different way than what I would normally think about them even though I couldn’t actually tell you how I found his blog in the first place. All I know is his thought-provoking posts have been a daily read of mine for as long as I can remember.

As I continue to clean up and prepare my blog for more in-depth content posts I will continue to post Follow Friday posts but I really look forward to sharing some of the things that have come from thinking deeply about Seth’s posts so please stay tuned.

In the meantime, use the links below and scattered throughout this post to get connected to Seth and his content.

Follow Seth Godin: Website| Blog | Medium | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Wikipedia

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.