The Trust Edge

I am thinking about writing a book called the 2 minute solution (or perhaps the 3 minute solution). Fill it with habits that take 2 minutes. Suggest people adopt only a few. So I am experimenting with some. For example, I never shower (and I like to shower daily) without doing 2 minutes of hard exercise first. This can be pushups (and I am sore after doing only 100 pushups for 3 days), lunges, squats, squat jumps(if I have no weights), or run 1/3 mile. I am not sure why but I am finding even that simple habit to be daunting.

Another 2 minute idea - write a list of what I am grateful for (and I know that would take way more than 2 minutes but ...).

Still thinking about it and for that matter I need to decide if writing a book is my best use of time. To a large extent, writing has been commodicized (and worse, some writers even make up words like commodicized). And I am too much of a business person to not look at where the value choke points are. I also do not want to contribute to the "noise" if I am not adding enough value.

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I am sure it will surprise everyone that I read a book.

The book was "The Trust Edge - How Top Leaders Gain Faster Results, Deeper Relationships and a Stronger Bottom Line" by David Horsager. I love the way the full titles of books these days describe the book. "Trust, not money, is the currency of business and life".

The gist of the message is leaders need trust and there is a lack of trust in the world today. Horsager cites numerous examples of low trust and explains the damage that causes. He also describes the value of having high trust. He goes on to explain how to gain trust.

I know that with trust, leaders can do great things and with low trust, nothing happens.

He talks about the 8 pillars of Trust. One I particularly liked was 3 - Character - People notice those who do what is right over what is easy.

There are sections in the book that echo those found in most self help books (like my Time Management book). It even has a section on time management and how to handle email more efficiently. He includes what he calls magnetic traits with corresponding repellant traits. Things like Grateful vs Thankless, Good Listener vs Talker, Optimistic vs Pessimistic, Honest/real vs Exaggerating. I can identify with each trait. I do not see them as black and white, rather they are all on a continuum.

I loved the many quotes throughout. Gives me many more to tweet. There was even another quote for me about habits by Charles Noble "First we make our habits, then our habits make us.

The book is well researched with 13 pages of footnotes.

Merry Christmas to all.