Tag: coaching

Review: Everything is Figureoutable

Everything is Figureoutable

Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo.

My Goodreads rating: 4 of 5 stars.

This is a powerful, pragmatic, and motivational reference that I’ll revisit again each year.

The basic premise throughout is that any problem, dream, goal, or task are figureoutable. Meaning that if I break it down into achievable steps, face my fears about starting it, and truly want to say “yes” to it — and then take full responsibility for failing and learning from the experience — I can and will “win” because I learn and grow.

All you need is one core meta belief, a master key that unlocks every imaginable door in the castle of your consciousness. It’s like throwing a switch that instantly illuminates a field of infinite potential. If you haven’t yet guessed, the whole purpose of this book is to inspire you to adopt the supremely powerful belief that everything is figureoutable!

Marie Forleo

The book is full of coaching tips, motivational stories, and testimonials from people who follow Marie’s teachings on MarieTV and her B-School course for entrepreneurs.

Read on Kindle, free from my local library.

View all my book reviews, and see my books on Goodreads.

Lance Willett: My altMBA Roundup

I took part in the 20th altMBA group, April–May 2018. A wonderful experience! I highly recommend it for folks looking to challenge themselves, grow into leadership, and meet motivated folks with a similar mindset.

Screenshot from the altMBA info page.

The altMBA is an intensive, 4-week online workshop designed by Seth Godin for high-performing individuals who want to level up and lead.

AltMBA website

I found the course a larger time commitment than expected, much more than 2-3 nights a week and all day Sunday. Ended up being every day for me, at least a few hours of homework, if not more. The main task of the smaller group you’re assigned is to review each others’ work—three to four homework assignments a week. My altMBA experience, like many things in life, gave me back much more when I put in more.

What I didn’t expect was that shipping my homework wasn’t all; I also reviewed and commented on my group members’ work, then had two more steps for each assignment: rewrite mine again based on the feedback, and then publish it publicly.

The small group cohort style and tools are familiar to those working remotely at a company like Automattic: Zoom, Slack, WordPress. There are coaches that help out at various times, but most of it is self-study or a small group effort. The altMBA team sends you a box of books ahead, and if I had to do it over, I’d read them more carefully. I referenced them a ton during the coursework and group sessions—and have continued to use many of the books as a reference.

Overall, the course was worth the investment in my case. I still keep in touch with my small group, including on the alumni website, and made a few great friends there. People still connect with me on LinkedIn to share stories, ask for advice, and check in on the work I shared—much of which related to taking bigger steps in my career. Indeed, the “forced” growth via the exercises and homework became essential to taking a bigger leap at work last year. I’m grateful.

My shipped projects are on Medium: medium.com/@lancewillett — the platform and format were required; otherwise I’d prefer publishing on WordPress. Here’s an article that made it back to this blog: A Napkin Sketch is Enough.