Five months ago I bought a Kindle. It was novel and fun. People next to me on airplanes asked about it because they hadn’t seen one before. I read lots of books with it and I loved it.

I received my iPad yesterday. Within three hours I put my Kindle up for sale on eBay. Here’s the link. Amazon makes a free Kindle app for the iPad, giving me access to all my Kindle books on my new device. And the iPad can do a zillion things my Kindle can’t. (I’m writing this on my iPad.)

I have never felt the pace of change so whiplash fast before. What a challenge for technology companies, and for all of us, to succeed in a world of change at breakneck speed. I actually feel bad for Amazon and Jeff Bezos today. I think Kindle took longer to develop than it took to get seriously trumped. But the iPad will be trumped soon enough too. There is no pause button on this race.

I believe in accepting reality. Reality is, the pace of technological and economic change is faster than ever and it’s only going to get faster still.

To some degree this reality re-sorts the skills needed to succeed. Willingness to risk, to fail, to change on purpose, to end things and start new ones are all valuable skills in a change-dominated economy.

Change is scary. I think there are rewards to those leaders who embrace the pace in spite of the fear.

To make wise decisions as a leader you must zoom out and view the big picture. Here are three types of bigger picture to keep in mind.

1. Zoom out from ideas to emotions. Be aware of feelings (yours and others) that affect the situation.
2. Zoom out from accounting cost to opportunity cost. Accounting cost is the direct cost of choosing a particular course of action. Opportunity cost is the value you are giving up in the best course of action you chose not to take.
3. Zoom out from the present to the long term. Henry Cloud says “play the whole movie”. Stephen Covey says “begin with the end in mind”. Don’t just look at what will happen tomorrow or next quarter if you choose A vs. B. Look at what will happen all the way down the line.

This book is about perseverance, and quitting. Everything worth doing goes through a “dip” of being difficult, during which perseverance is required. But, some things not worth doing also go through a dip, and some things not worth doing aren’t even difficult at all. So this book is about the virtue of perseverance when it’s worth it, and the virtue of quitting when it’s not. It takes a stab at the question of how to tell the difference. It’s really all about the long term.

It’s a quick read and it will probably make you think about what you should quit and what you might gain by starting something difficult. I recommend it.

P.S. Seth Godin is taking a speaking road trip this summer. I’ll be attending his Chicago stop on September 16th. If you’re going let me know so we can hang out.

I’ve been thinking over Jesus’ story of the shrewd manager in Luke chapter 16, and talking to friends about it. I think that story means something worth sharing:

The most basic resources we have are time and energy. These are the cards we hold in our hand at the beginning of the game. Life is a constant barrage of opportunities and choices about what we will trade our time and energy for. We can work an hourly job, trading for money. We can spend our time and energy talking to someone, trading for relationship. Very often we trade money for many other things we need and want.

Most of us will have over 600,000 hours of time and energy in our lives. We will choose to trade every one of them for something. And what we receive for those trades, (money, possessions, knowledge, etc.) we can go on to trade again for something else. We are all constant traders on the giant eBay of life.

One of life’s great, redemptive realities is the universal opportunity and freedom to trade what we have for what we value more. We are not confined to merely trading money for money, or stuff for stuff. We have the opportunity to trade up. We can trade for smiles, for learning, for friendship, for love, for worship, for things of greater and longer-lasting value than the time or money it cost us. Given the compounding effect of day after day of trading up, what an incredible and powerful opportunity a lifetime of trades is.

Last night my wife and I had a wonderful dinner at a great restaurant with new friends. We traded time and money for the treasures of conversation and relationship.

Each month I spend three days, tuition, and travel to attend a leadership coaching program, trading for the treasure of personal character growth.

Too often I trade my time and money for things of little to no value at all.

So what do you value more than the time, energy, and money you currently have available to trade? What will you trade for today? At the end of your life, after all your trades are done, what will you have transformed your lifetime of time and energy into? What do you want to be holding in your hand at the end?

In my role as CEO, I often ask myself “What’s really important right now?”. I try to think long-term, and about what’s really vital, not just urgent.

I’ve noticed that my instinctive response to “what’s important” usually has to do with the biggest potential problems I see facing us. And there are always plenty of problems. But if I spend most of my strategic energy on what is not going well, and leave what is going well on cruise control, what happens? I may turn potential strikeouts into base hits, but what about my potential home runs?

I think there’s a gut-level reason for my tendency to emphasize problem-solving over opportunity-seeking. Strikeouts don’t feel good, so I want to avoid them. They feel like failure and they just aren’t fun. Problems threaten to undermine the success we already have, and that’s scary. Home runs are fun, but on an emotional level I’m fine with going home knowing I made nice steady base hits every day. I don’t feel so good on the days I strike out.

Of course reality is that opportunity-seeking is vital to the long-term success of any business. A proactive rather than defensive posture is key to success. Staying optimistic and proactive in frightening economic times is easier said than done, for sure.

So I’m trying to deliberately ask myself not only “What are our worst problems?” but also “What are our best opportunities?”. Doing that I’ve been surprised at how many great opportunities we really do have in front of us, and I’m feeling more optimistic and energized about what’s possible.

What questions do you ask yourself when you’re working on the big picture?