Although summer comes around once a year and is the most exciting time--at least I believe so--this year has been a different summer experience. Having a more relaxed summer has allowed me to take a step back and devote myself to certain things. Over the summer we had to read two books of our choice; I chose two opposite style of books: The Best of Me and The Decision Book. I fell mentally in love with The Best of Me unlike The Decision Book which was more content based, but I'd never used a book so much to structure my life before. The Decision Book was somewhat a shorter length book which explained 50 models for strategic thinking and in what situations to apply each model in. I had never had the experience I had as when I read the The Decision Book; I reflected and took post-it notes relating each model of strategic thinking to something in my life, wether it was BlendZ, the IA, my IB courses, my organizational skill or my daily schedule. There are so many lessons left to be learned in life, and one of them is learning the correct way to organize yourself. As I'm not the most organized person, this book has allowed me to get my head straight and learn what is the best way for me to work myself.
One of my favorite sections of the book began with the quote above by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The strategic model was about working efficiently, and as a was reading I couldn't help but flashback to moments in my life where knowing this could have come to use.
As stated in one of my past blogs, I've always been told to eat the live frog first which means do the biggest most important task to do first, then do all the rest. But to be honest, most of us put live frogs aside because we have time to do them. But what we aren't thinking about is the long term effect. We spend our school days stressed because we are so busy getting all our smaller works done when we really should be getting our live frogs out of the way. When I look back on my years, I remember scrambling to get things done that I had set aside because "I had time" to do them. The future catches up fast and we must get through it by eating the live frog. Reading the quote made me sink back and think at times I did things just because they were quick and easy; as I was thinking back on those moments, I realized those were all the things I regret doing. Taking things the easy way out may seem like an alright thing to do at the start, because it's easy. But where is the challenge in that, where is the learning opportunities and the mistakes made, where is the pride in accomplishment... all these things are lost when doing the most urgent things instead of the important ones. they may seem important now, in the moment, but I'm sure that in the future they will become the forgotten and least important.
Although I may look back on my freshman and sophomore years and regret my ways of thinking and acting, there is only one way to move past it: learn and move on. It took me up until now to realize some of the mistakes I had committed three years ago, but it's always better late than never. Reading The Decision Book had brought me to realize many things in my life and has allowed me to think differently in certain aspects of structure, actions, and the creation businesses. The best books are always ones that when you turn the last page, you can't stop thinking about how many connections you've made and are thinking about how that book has impacted you.