If everybody had their own life coach, we’d all hear important annoying things like:
“The path to any success starts with goals and knowing what you want”
Knowing WHAT WE WANT…
… gives meaning to what we do
… makes decisions easier
… means fewer missed opportunities and regrets
… maybe most importantly, lets us appreciate when we have it.
Everybody has a right to know what they want. Hi, I’m an Oliver and a lifelong process improvement enthusiast who has helped over 100 metric tons of people in a wide range of industries including aerospace, sales, manufacturing, healthcare, colleges, and horse breeding. Situations were unique, but there were common revelations that could benefit anyone, so it only seems right to try and share them universally and freely with everyone. The most common revelation and biggest barrier to improvement, by far, was being clear and staying clear on what we want.
Orange Gnu City is a reminder to pull over once in a while to remember what it is we want and what’s most important to us. This website will be an ever-expanding hot mess of ideas, experiences, lessons learned and things I find amusing. The ultimate goal would be for everybody to find renewed sense of purpose and direction to make the world a happier place. If not, then at least the content is free.
Disclaimer: What we want is a very important, but also very personal, which makes it hard to write about without sounding presumptuous at times, so I’ll apologize up front. Sorry if/when I come across presumptuous, or pretentious, or preposterous, or any other word that starts with pre- and ends with -ous, except precious. I have no apology at this time for sounding precious. Maybe later.
The better we can explain what we want to ourselves and to others, the more likely we are to get it and hold on to it. Since there are an infinite number of things we could want, it’s really about knowing our priorities so we aren’t unintentionally sacrificing something we really want for something less important. Sometimes we may choose to sacrifice one want for another, that should be a choice and not an oversight.
To help think through what we could want, the infinite possibilities can be sorted into the finite categories below, each with a link to some more detailed explanation.
The name “Orange Gnu City” comes from a questionable rhyme in a book I was working on with my daughter. It reminded me that making time for family is more important than working 70+ hours every week. That may sound like a no-brainer to many, even before mentioning that I was on a fixed salary with no overtime pay for the last 10 years, but changing the behaviour, established long before having kids, wasn’t easy.
I created Orange Gnu City (OGC) primarily to support two (2) re-prioritized wants:
