Monthly Archives: September 2011

The Top Ten easiest places to pause your day (beginnings and endings)

By Rob Fletcher | Published: September 30, 2011
I recently wrote about using strategic pauses to improve your work and life experience. Here are ten of the easiest places to take those pauses, natural breaks in your work. You’ll notice that they’re all either beginning or endings Just before the work day begins (definitely before you open your email account) At the end [...]
Posted in Purpose, Team Building | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Diana Nyad tries to swim to Florida again – revisiting the inspirational failure story

By Rob Fletcher | Published: September 29, 2011
A month ago, 62 year old Diana Nyad tried to swim from Cuba to Florida. She failed. This month she tried again…and failed again. After two years of training, this time she was thwarted by two successive days of getting stung by Portuguese Man o’ War jellyfish. She soldiered on after the first day, wearing [...]
Posted in Passion, Persistence, Quest Stories | Tagged , | Comments closed

Want to get better? – Pause to get to the next level

By Rob Fletcher | Published: September 28, 2011
In Quixote Consulting’s Team Collaboration Quest, our consultants focus on multi-round team building activities to help teams work better together. Teams are challenged to do something better, faster, more accurately. In between each performance round, the team has a chance to learn from their last try, to regroup, to focus on the big picture, on [...]
Posted in Purpose, Put It Together, Team Building | Tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze and listening to your dreams

By Rob Fletcher | Published: September 21, 2011
Jimi Hendrix’s biggest hit and most well-known song is Purple Haze. What’s that all about? What kinds of drugs was he taking? In a 1967 interview Jimi explained, “I dream a lot and I put a lot of my dreams down as songs. Purple Haze was all about a dream I had that I was [...]
Posted in Music, Play | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

What happens when you don’t have enough time – Jimi Hendrix and less than an hour

By Rob Fletcher | Published: September 20, 2011
The Wind Cries Mary, Stone Free, Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) and more – what do these Jimi Hendrix songs have in common? In the liner notes to Experience Hendrix (a Jimi Hendrix anthology) there’s a common theme. Before they were big, producer Chas Chandler sunk his savings into the band. He believed in them. However, [...]
Posted in Music, Training | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments closed

How Casey Larkin won the ‘Best Sideburns’ prize

By Rob Fletcher | Published: September 19, 2011
Casey Larkin, the proud leader of Quixote Consulting’s whiskey tasting team building party Team Bourbon Tasting, recently competed in Franklin County, MA’s 200 year anniversary ‘best beard’ contest. These kinds of events bring out some great moments, like a moustachioed little girl serving cookies to someone who looked like he stepped out of the Civil War, [...]
Posted in Play, Quest Stories | Comments closed

You can do a lot with only twenty minutes – just ask Jimi Hendrix

By Rob Fletcher | Published: September 15, 2011
Are you frustrated that you don’t have enough time in the day to do what you care about, what you love? And when you do take some time are you frustrated that it’s not enough? Some days I’ll spend a half hour playing the harmonica. And I’ll get frustrated – that’s all I get out [...]
Posted in Music, Persistence | Tagged , | Comments closed

Jimi Hendrix, Little Wing and the value of slowing things down

By Rob Fletcher | Published: September 14, 2011
“I dig writing slow songs, because it is easy to get more blues and feeling into them.” – Jimi Hendrix on writing Little Wing Outer life calls us to rush. Not the natural world of course, that says something different. But the outer life of people and work and commitments and modern culture says, “You’ll [...]
Posted in Music, Play | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

Oscar Peterson on the value of an opposing force

By Rob Fletcher | Published: September 13, 2011
Someone out there is hungry to do what you do, to have what you have. Someone else loves what you love with a fierceness that rivals yours. Scared yet? Perhaps, there’s nothing to be scared of – perhaps this can inspire you to live what you have more fully, appreciate your gifts and give them [...]
Posted in Purpose | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Laughing Corn by Carl Sandburg

By Rob Fletcher | Published: September 13, 2011
There was a high majestic fooling Day before yesterday in the yellow corn. And day after tomorrow in the yellow corn There will be high majestic fooling. The ears ripen in late summer And come on with a conquering laughter, Come on with a high and conquering laughter. The long-tailed blackbirds are hoarse. One of [...]
Posted in Pocket Poems | Tagged , , | Comments closed

  • Do you want to be at your best?

    At Your Best takes Rob Fletcher’s blend of strengths, music, fun and content that he uses to create high-performing teams and distills it into four clear, positive steps for your success: passion, play, purpose and persistence.

    At Your Best is the title of Rob Fletcher’s next book and you can read it here as he writes it, one post at a time.

    Rob Fletcher
    Rob Fletcher

  • Get help to be At Your Best via RSS or straight to your inbox

     Subscribe in a reader
    or
    Enter Your email address:
    Follow Me