Lean and Wasteful

I have always loved the word lean because it personifies a very important feature of a creator.  The word means so much more than ‘efficient’.  To say someone is efficient means that they can do something quickly.  To say someone is lean means that they are fit for the purpose, resilient, robust, and value focused.  An efficient person is well trained for their task.  A lean person is forged by fire for success. 

Creators are lean and consumers are wasteful as we see in the Creator and Consumer Wheels.  So, as a creator, where do you reside? Are you lean or wasteful?  If you want to know, take a look at how you deal with stress.

I began working on my master’s degree while my wife and I worked full time and raised our young daughter.  The program provided DVDs of the class lectures, I had to emailed my homework in, and had to go to a local school to have all of my exams proctored.  It wasn’t long before I realized that even when I completely stopped exercising, stopped spending time with my family, and stopped all hobbies or anything else not school or work related, I was running out of day long before I ran out of school work.  I’m sure you’ve found yourself at your rope’s end like I did.  Maybe you’re there now.

When we hit this point the consumer in us is screaming:

“Let’s just eat out more this week to save time.”

“This is really stressful.  Let’s go blow off some steam with some online shopping.”

“This is an unhealthy work-life balance.  Let’s just take a break from this program for a while.”

None of these options, by the way, would have helped me in any way.  The consumer deals with the stressful schedule by somehow getting more wasteful?!?

But you are a creator!  You refuse to circle the proverbial bowl of waste, debt, and apathy.

So what did I do when the consumer’s words entered my head?  I got creative!

Since the school I was working through was in the southeast, the professors, although brilliant world leaders in their field, tended to speak with a slow southern drawl.  I found a piece of software where I could speed the audio up by 30% and, believe it or not, the lecturers began to speak with the dialect and cadence that I was more accustomed to living in the northeast! I threw on my headphones and pounded through two hour lectures in under an hour and a half while on my elliptical.  I would joke with my wife that I was at 2.3 places at once. The increase in exercise gave me more energy to be even more lean and productive the next day.  I didn't need to read a book on healthy living.  I found that I had to eat healthy because fatty foods would make me sluggish and wasteful.  And thus, I saw a compounding creator growth instead of a spiraling consumerism slump.

Not all of my stories end with this level creator success, but this was one that I happened to get right.  I’m also proud to say that I’m looking at that diploma on my wall now as I type.

If you choose the life of the creator, you will be exponentially more proactive, creative, passionate, and grateful than your consumer brethren.  How will you fit all this awesomeness into an already packed and stressful life?  Get creative! Be a problem solver! When the going gets tough, the creator gets more lean, responsible, and disciplined while the consumer gets more wasteful, victimized, and negligent.

 Have a success story you’d like to share?  A choice you wish you could take back?  Join the conversation!