Dear Goliaths on the path to self-organize,
In the past 18 months I have been connecting the dots of my first book in English – Self-organize Your Personal Life (working title). Most of the topics covered in the book will already be familiar to my blog readers. I am writing this post now, mostly to set a deadline for myself to actually publish. Many writers say that writing the text is actually the easiest step of the process. I tend to believe that.
In the following lines I will share with you my journey so far and I will create the structure that I will send to publishers pitching my book. As always, I welcome any feedback, comments, suggestions.
Big thanks to those of you that already read the very early draft. Thank you for your feedback and the tons of useful suggestions!
Best regards,
Tin Mayer
Pitch
The real-life journey of an Eastern European gnome to become a Big Tech goliath and the lessons that everybody can use on their own journey.
Summary
Building successful career and personal life is an overwhelming and challenging adventure. You start with self-awareness, mindfulness, creativity, stillness, and humility. You listen to your inner voice, uncover your values, and define what success means to you, which usually does not happen overnight. Then, you need willpower, determination, and ambition to make yourself take step after step and set yourself on the desired track. You need perseverance, persistence, discipline, and belief to keep following your path, usually for months and years. But also bravery, wisdom, and an open mind to change your path when you yourself have changed. And finally, you churn, churn, churn, examine the result, and make changes.
In this book I share my journey from a gnome in Eastern Europe at the turn of the century to a goliath in Big Tech two decades later. Nobody can take such an adventure alone, but needs an army of helpers. This is why I also list my influencers along the way. I distill my success into several tips per section, usually quoting the wisdom of other books, people, or experience.
As a result, I give you the pillars for self-organizing your life. It starts when you organize your self (emotions, thoughts). Then self-organize your present (days, weeks, months, years). And finally, self-organize your future (roles in life, vision, and mission statements).
Self-organize Life
My working title has always been “Self-organize Life”, but I think that I will end up choosing it as my subtitle. I am still debating the actual title, but I will have to decide pretty soon.
I am open to any suggestions.
Self-organize topics
I have divided the book into seven parts:
Self-organize your self
I believe that all processes and changes start from within. The very first step is to obtain self-awareness. This is the skill to know yourself in different situations, which will help you self-organize your emotions. Then, you will explore and self-organize your thoughts. You learn how to be mindful of the present and not get lost in the past or in the future.
Self-organize your day
While I believe in long-term planning and goals, I think that great success is achieved one day at a time. I believe that by making your days and weeks rock, you will achieve an avalanche effect on your life. You do that by setting goals for yourself and defining a daily routine that will make you actually work on these goals and stay productive.
Self-organize your week
You cannot advance in the direction in which you want to advance unless you actually do something. This part is about defining your short-term goals and making sure you act on them by putting them on your calendar.
Self-organize your month
In order to make sure that you are still on the right path, you hit the pause button every now and then (e.g. each month). You reflect on what you have accomplished and set new (or modify existing) mid-term goals (i.e. more audacious, more daring) to keep walking along your path.
Self-organize your year
While most people feel depressed (around New Years Eve), you schedule some time to review your whole year and celebrate your successes. You pat yourself on the back and use the time to set your next long-term goals (i.e. the game changers, the big rocks).
Self-organize your life
This part cuts through the others horizontally. In this part you will learn to identify the roles that you play in your life (e.g. Son, Sibling, Husband, Manager, Worker, etc.). You define your principles and start using them when you make decisions. You also learn to seek, strive for, and find the right balance between them.
Self-organize your future
Finally, you learn how to define mission and vision statements for each of your Life roles. This will enable you to define the legacy that you want to leave behind you and actually achieve it.
Intertwined in all these parts is my personal story of growth and discovery that has lead me from where I was in the past to where I am now. I have also tried to add as many inspirational personal stories and anecdotes that I could uncover.
Who should read this book?
My target audience comes from one brief realization. I wish I had such kind of book when I was starting my journey of self-discovery and self-improvement. Don’t get me wrong, I read a lot of books to get to where I am none, but there was no book that laid the foundations of the path forward. I was putting the pieces together and there were some phenomenal books on the way. But I wish there was one book that you can take to give me a framework.
So my first target group is “people in their twenties”. People who are thinking about which college or university to choose. People who are studying at the moment and are not sure which direction to go. And of course, people who have just graduated and are starting their professional journey. Yes, I know that my generation (Millennials) is quite different from the current generation (Generation Z). And surely completely different from the next generation (Generation Alpha). This is why I try to generalize as much as possible without changing the message.
This book is also for people who want to change their professional direction. Such a change can be a very difficult endeavor.
And finally, this book is for people who did not have the chance to experience large scale change and did not have the time to learn the skills.
How should you read this book?
There are three ways to read this book. First of all, like a good student, you can start from the beginning and sequentially read every chapter. This would be the best approach for novices without much experience setting goals for themselves and completing them. You will gradually build one block on top of the other and by the end you should be comfortable self-organizing your entire life toward the end-goals that you want to achieve.
The second way to read this book is when you are relatively advanced in goal-setting, but you want to introduce a major change in your life. You could skim over section 1 to refresh your knowledge. And you can jump to section 6 to review, update, or define your Life Roles. Continue with section 7 to review, update, or define your vision and mission statement for the role that you want to change. Then read sections 5, 4, 3, and 2 in that order to define the funnel of tasks starting with your long-term goal (or the change that you want to introduce).
And the final way to read this book is selectively. When the time for you yearly review comes, you could go back to section 5 and refresh you memory. If you want to do a monthly review, you go back directly to chapter 8 and follow the steps.
When will the book be available?
I plan to finish publishing the book by December 2020.
What are the next steps to continue the self-organize process?
After I successfully publish the book, I will start working on a one-day seminar with practical exercises closely following the book.