His point was that he doesn't get out of bed in the morning thinking about his Vision... he's thinking about his To Dos.

And those to do's are a looooong list that doesn't feel productive. They feel like they're just constantly moving stuff from 'needs to get done' to 'done' or 'sigh, still needs to get done.' Like a To Do Train constantly heading down the tracks, pausing in stations to let off some To Dos and just having more hop on board.

No matter how much he'd been getting done, he felt utterly stalled. And it showed. His shoulders were tense, and so was his face and his speech.

I shared an article with Dan that I've been moving from one corner of my desk to another... I first read it on the treadmill at the gym and the guy next to me thought I was a nut case as I kept jumping off the belt and onto the sides so I could write in black marker all over it. The guys in the club are getting used to it - I'm always using articles to open my clients' thinking about things.

Wendy Kopp didn't imagine herself founding a business that would become one of the largest non-profit hirers of college seniors. When she was a senior at Princeton she had an idea of a Peace Corps-like program to teach in troubled schools. As she stepped into it, and discovered her own passion for reforming public education, she shaped the world around her.

She helped organize a conference on the topic and wrote her senior thesis on it, failed to get a job at graduation and decided to launch the corps herself. You can read the details about it in Fortune Magazine. But the key is that each two steps forward lead to steep success and equally to failures.

And to stunning Success! Today Teach America accepts only 2,400 of the 19,000 applicants and gets students who turn down offers from Goldman Sachs to join Wendy and make a difference in schools across the USA.

She wasn't born with that Vision, any more than Dan needed to be born with his. She had failures that triggered new ideas, new pursuits, new actions. Loss of funding that required the concept be redesigned. Relationships built with the Mega-corporations of America that led in new directions. They coalesced into a vibrant program influencing 100s of 1,000s of lives every year.

Wendy's Vision took shape in reaction to her life's experiences. As a result of a life of involved living,

So, too, with Dan. We systematically talked through the elements that jazz him in life. What he wishes were different in the world and the piece of it that he'd like to commit himself to.

We expanded that discussion to include what he's like to overhear being said about him in 20 years, what signs he'd love to see on the wall describing what had been accomplished.

The result?

By naming his passion and the Vision he wanted to set in front of himself and focus on, Dan was able to sort through his entire To Do list and take every single task and assign it on the Daily 4-in-1 sheet.

And he easily moved 38% of his list (he did the math) straight off the To Dos - not even into the "Delegate It" or the "Someday" categories. Gone! All that attention recaptured to put into the stuff that he cares about.

His shoulders relaxed, his eyes perked up, and he looked like he regained 10 years of his life.

Now that's a nice way to get on the Vision Train!

Copyright (c) 2008 Linda Feinholz