Chelsi’s Number One Super Happy Fun Friday Link Time

Welcome to Chelsi’s Number One Super Happy Fun Link Time, a weekly collection of cool discoveries from around the Web. Most times they’re links that aim to get you thinking differently about communication, culture, and life in general. Other times, LOLCAT ATTACK! Submissions are welcome, and you can send them through one of the usual suspects.

If You Don’t Prioritize Your Life, Someone Else Will

Regardless of what we call it, work-life balance or work-live integration, the fact remains most of us are still struggling to navigate it. In this article, Greg McKeown, CEO of THIS Inc., bravely tells the story of how he left his wife and hours-old baby to attend a work meeting, and the lessons he learned afterward.

“…my colleague said, ‘The client will respect you for making the decision to be here.’ But the look on the clients’ faces mirrored how I felt. What was I doing there?!

“As it turned out, exactly nothing came of the client meeting. And even if the client had respected my choice, and key business opportunities had resulted, I would still have struck a fool’s bargain. My wife supported me and trusted me to make the right choice under the circumstances, and I had opted to deprioritize her and my child.

Stephen Covey: “You can have it all, but not all at once.”

We said a sad goodnight to Stephen Covey this week, but take some comfort in knowing that his timeless lessons will surely live on. In this article, Mark C. Thompson reflects on an intervew with Covey, highlighting a very important instructions for all of us:

“If you just had a short time to live, what one thing would you like to be respected, admired and valued for? Be proactive about that.”

Griff’s Graphs

Brendan Griffen is officially my graphing hero. His website, in his own words:

Welcome to the digital stomping ground of an individual trying to turn knowledge into pretty pictures. I’m exploring the graphing capabilities of relational information freely available on the web.

These graphs are easy to get lost in, and there’s one for just about everyone: beer, mathematics, philosophy (my personal favorite), and even social networking.

If you push too hard to prove a point, you’ll get eaten by a crocodile

Bird Box Studio teaches this lesson without people or even words which, sometimes, is the best way to go.

Meet Doug Pitt, the second most famous Pitt in his family

By day, Doug Pitt serves as a director at Worldserve International, a water sanitation and economic development group, as well as the Goodwill Ambassador for the United Republic of Tanzania. By night he is Doug Pitt, the way-less-famous brother of Brad Pitt, in Virgin Mobile Australia’s newest campaign: Fair Go Bro. By running against the usual celebrity endorsement with a celebrity sibling, Virgin does a brilliant — and hilarious — job of hopping onboard with an increasingly common marketing approach: it’s all about spotlighting the every day consumer.