The Boundless Leader No. 3: Leaders write stuff down
McKeel Hagerty
CEO & Chairman of Hagerty (NYSE: HGTY). Also, past YPO Board Chairman, great idea hunter and car lover.
I learned that truism by reading the great Jim Loehr, the renowned sports psychologist, author and founder of The Human Performance Institute. If you’re not familiar with Jim, he’s this inspirational, ram-rod straight, 80+-year-old guy with incredible energy who has worked with champion athletes for decades.
He’s known for having the people he works with keep a journal of how they want to speak to themselves at times of difficulty during their sport. The idea is literally to script our life every day. And to reflect on this script in written form. As I heard him say once, he has never seen a champion change their life and performance without writing it down first.
That’s pretty astute. And it’s not just for athletes. It works for anyone, including me. For a long time now, I spend a little bit of time each morning and each evening writing stuff down about my life, my day, my thinking, my goals. It takes just a few minutes. It’s not fine literature. It’s hard to read sometimes. But it is calming and aligning and slows me down.
Most of the truly successful people and leaders I’ve met in my life do some form of journaling that helps them see themselves better and self-correct.
Journaling, in a sense, is really just the first draft of your future success.?
McKeel Hagerty is CEO of Hagerty (HGTY). For more, visit his?website.
Chief Information Officer
2 年McKeel Hagerty, this is such a powerful practice and makes an indelible impact on one's ability to rationalize one's thoughts, formulate novel ideas, and convey them in a meaningful way such that others can understand, rally behind, and execute. Closely related to this practice is one that links what I consider the trinity of innovation: reading, writing & thinking. I'm speaking of commonplacing and the keeping of a commonplace book. Foundations of this practice can be found in Aristotle's methods of argumentation and peak throughout the Renaissance and early industrial age. By categorizing key topics or themes, creating an indexing method and associative references, the author is able to continuously make new connections and build upon ideas. Darwin, Locke, Milton, Jefferson, Thoreau, et al were all practitioners of commonplacing. It is also noteworthy that modern computational ontologies and semantic frameworks are rooted in analogous principals. So, both human knowledge and artificial intelligence benefit from these practices. Thank you for opening the topic - Great stuff!
CEO/Owner, VP Demand Creation Services, Inc.; President, The Graphic Source, LLC
2 年McKeel, I found in college that if I hand-write a speech I can deliver that speech without reference to the notes. I’m not sure of the indelible power of thoughts and details passing through my hand, but this delivers permanence. I’m not sure why, but this is a really important habit.
I carry a personal journal with me for writing down personal reflections and then a separate business journal where I capture client, vendor, and employee conversations. The personal journal has helped formulate ideas and the business journal has helped with accountability, pricing negotiations, and even once resolved a lawsuit. I had notes of what had been discussed in each meeting and the other party had nothing but their memory, you can guess how well that works.
Leader and Developer of Leaders
2 年Sometimes the most elegant solutions are also the most impactful. Thanks for a great reminder to script positive thinking and actions beforehand, McKeel.