Sticks and Stones

At one point in my life, when I was trying to figure out who I am, what I'm about, and what I wanted to do, I wrote with a Sharpie marker on a wall next to my desk at home, so the writing would be hard to erase:

WHEN IN DOUBT, ACCOMPLISH

Accomplish is a very powerful word to me. It is immune from gossip, because gossip is just talk and doesn't really get anything done. Everyone can talk about me, what they think I am, what they think I'm capable of, but once I accomplish something, no one can take that away. No one can dispute that I've done it, and no one can doubt my skills regarding that task.

Accomplish has a goal. It forces me not to procrastinate, and prevents me from endlessly surfing the Internet without a purpose. If I'm on the Net with a goal, I accomplish that goal and move on. Period. That leaves me more time to get other things done. The more things I accomplish, the more things I can check off my to-do list, and the better I feel about myself.

Accomplish is allergic to "idle." Think about how many times somebody did something stupid because he was bored. And I've never heard anyone complain about a person who got things done. Of course, Accomplish is guaranteed to get me tired, but resting is that much sweeter because I have already been rewarded.

Accomplish is what makes each of my promises complete.

Something peculiar that I've noticed is that the more I get done, the less time I have to brag about it, because I'm too busy doing the next thing on my list. It's a good type of snowball effect. By focusing on accomplishing and not bragging about it, I'm building up my humility points as well.

The title of this blog is "Sticks and Stones," as in "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." The same thing goes for accomplishments. They can call you every name in the book, but if you've accomplished something substantial, the name calling will slide right off of you. Better yet, because you're too busy getting things done, you'll probably never even have time to pay attention to them.

But enough talk. I think I got my point across, and I have a lot of work to do.