In the pre-dawn hour, I sit with a cup of coffee and 3 pads: my iPad, a sketch pad and a legal pad.  After listening and pondering a text from the Bible, hearing Garrison Keillor’s daily 5:12 Writers Almanac podcast and checking Seth Godin’s daily post, I put down the iPad and pick up the two tablets. I find my mind awakening to a post-dreaming yet pre-analytical state. Some call it “flow.”  It’s the closest we can get to dreaming while being awake. I call it the mind of the morning. From home to work to relationships and projects, ideas, interesting thoughts and colliding possibilities illuminate my mind into a state of powerful creativity. I follow them like a kid chasing butterflys and though impossible to capture, I jot descriptions of them on the sketch pad. As one thought leads to another so my pen moves to another part of the unlined page now littered with lines, arrows and shapes.   No analysis. I enjoy the pure joy of creative flow. After this time comes to a close, usually 20 to 30 minutes, I put the date at the top of the page. Picking up the legal pad, I look back over the mind-map of ideas and jot down practical actions an idea inspires. Some of the thoughts inspire immediate action while others may incubate in the sketch pad for months. I can flip through the pages of that sketch pad anywhere and anytime and find instant pathways into creative thinking. I can flip through the legal pad and be drawn into an unburdened accountability.

Reflecting on the practice yields at least two insights. The sketch pad inspires me to dream. In fact, it demonstrates the reality that ideas come to those who are ready for them. The legal pad calls me to do. The former inspires visionary thinking; the latter, tatical strategy. Without the yellow legal pad nothing ever gets done. Without the sketch pad nothing that gets done ever really matters.

How do you do it?

What if you could get to every document, presentation, slideshow, spreadsheet, photo, movie and more no matter where you happened to be? What if (unlike Google Docs) the files actually existed on your home desktop computer and on your laptop and somewhere in-between in interstellar internet space (i.e. the cloud)? And what if anywhere you edited any of those files also updated or synced to every other place those filed existed? (In other words, let’s say I’m on vacation with no computer devices and I need to access and edit a document. Get me on the web and I can download, edit and upload and it syncs everywhere else to that same document.) (I know– I shouldn’t be doing such things on vacation.)

Yes, what if you could even edit the files on your iPad and have those files seamlessly synced in to the rest of your system? And what if you could actually read the documents on your iPhone? What if when you accidentally deleted a file from your computer and it deleted it everywhere else you could actually go to the web and restore the file from the last version saved? What if, in fact, every version ever revised still existed in its pre-revision form on the internet?  And what if you could share entire folders with other collaborators and they could view or edit the files based on whatever permissions you gave to them? Would you be interested?

If so check this out. It’s all true. And it’s free.

I know a lot of “busy” people. Staring at their so-called smart phone they constantly check email, send texts, make and take calls and generally fill up their calendars with things to do. These people love productivity books and apps and tips. All of their incoming voice mails begin with, “I know your busy, but…”  Most of the time I feel like a busy person.

I know a lot of lazy people too. They don’t return calls or emails very well. They constantly run late for meetings. Deadlines mean little. They may keep a to do list, but they probably don’t check it regularly. They tend to rely on their personality or social skills to get by.  Sometimes I think I’m a lazy person.

So what’s the difference between busy people and lazy people? Busy people are afraid of failure. Lazy people are insecure about not being liked. Busy people tend to stand on their accomplishments and rely on their credentials. Lazy people tend to stand on their personality and rely on their relationships. Here’s where they are the same: they are both, in a quite different way, undisciplined.

There is a third kind of person. I don’t know as  many of them. It’s the kind of person I want to be. I call them “savvy.” Busy people call savvy people lazy. Lazy people call savvy people lucky. Savvy people don’t really care what busy people and lazy people say about them because they already have a solid sense of who they are. At the same time they know their limitations. They find themselves at the right place at the right time doing the right things. They are smart but their intelligence goes past knowledge into skill. If I had to characterize their life with a word it would be “wise.”  These are the people who really impress me.

Know any?