http://www.Gtdagenda.com

You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
A Vision Wall (inspiring images attached to yor goals) is available too.
Works also on mobile.

The task isn’t really about what people are actually going to say about you when your dead or even caring what people are going to say about you when you’re dead. It’s just an exercise in imagination, a chance to think about how you want to live your life. It’s about thinking about how you want your life to go and therefore the kinds of changes you need to make to get there.

But if you don’t dig it, no sweat. To each his own.

I just don’t get it.

On a related note, I recently attended a person where the person we were remembering actually did write his own eulogy (sort of…it wasn’t a true eulogy, but it was similar). He knew that he was dying well in advance, because he had cancer, so he took the time to write a reflection on his life and it was included in his memorial service.

It was interesting and, in a way, I hope that I have the foresight to do the same if I’m aware that I’m going to die before it happens.

While I agree on the whole, “I’ll be dead I won’t care” thing, think of this exercise as an extension of making a bucket list or another long term goal exercise.

I think the idea is to get what you can out of the process of writing rather than the writing itself.

I’m dead! What would I possibly care what people say about me? Those that know me know the truth, so what difference does it make?

Planning for my family’s finances – that makes all the sense in the world.

Having an obit prepared? As far as I am concerned, it’s a non-issue.

Well, I took the advice of the Art of Manliness and wrote my Dad a letter for Father’s Day. It was good for me, and my Dad loved it. Well, today’s tip on the 30 days to a better man program said to write your own Eulogy. Funny, it said be brief. In any event, here goes.

Bradley L. Drell, was born in New Orleans, LA, but grew up and ultimately lived his life, outside of his education, in Alexandria, LA. While he never felt he really fit in to Alexandria, it was home. He was educated at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, true to the Anglican/Episcopal tradition that was so much a part of his life, from which he received so much joy and yet so much pain because he loved his church, and, more importantly, the people in it, so very much.

Brad grew up thinking he would be an Episcopal priest, then a psychologist, but discovered in college he was simply to take up the family business that traces back to his great-grandfather – law, and so he went to LSU Law School.

He had an above average academic career; nothing particularly spectacular, although he spent his life learning. Brad was a big picture sort of guy; he hated having to learn all the pieces, but, once learned them, he could put them all together and very quickly. He was at his happiest practicing law when he worked with others who gifts complimented his to accomplish great things. He tried some important cases, but solved so many others without fanfare. He had a knack for getting things resolved, one way or another. He was a go to guy.

He married the love of his life, Carrie, when he was a mere 21 years old. Carrie loved him and knew him back when, and was chairman of his humility committee. He quested for her love, affection, and approval his whole life, and he was a better man for it. He loved his children, and his greatest gift was talking to them in his study or the kitchen where he would teach them about the world, help them to find the answers to life’s tough questions, and just hang out and have fun with them. He worked hard to support his family, but the most important gift he gave them was his time.

He and Carrie had three daughters, Sarah, Caroline, and Elizabeth, and it has never been lost on his friends and family the irony there, but that was just perfect for Brad. Even in his work, he practiced law mostly with women. While Brad had many close male friends with whom he would bond – his primary ministry was to men in prison, he was President of his fraternity – he had a heart that loved the women in his life – his wife, his daughters, his mother and mother in law, his friends. One of his close friends who always looked at Brad as the son she wish she had said that he knew the hearts of women. Thank God, he did, because he was surrounded by them and lived in a sorority house for most of his life.

Below a very together exterior was the heart of a truly caring man whose only yearning was to be appreciated and who felt that, during many parts of his life, his cheese was about to fall off the cracker. Friends, family and clients would bring their problems to Brad – sometimes to solve them, but often just for comfort, and people never left a conversation with Brad about a problem without the feeling that things would ultimately be okay. Not because of false consolation, but through practical advice, optimism, faith, or just having been listened to.

Brad loved music; while he played oboe, drums and guitar, he’d rather listen and sing along than take the time to really become a good musician. Music fed his heart, but he never had the patience to make the music he wanted himself. A performer who just wouldn’t rehearse.

Brad was an extrovert; he loved people, and he could barely process a single thought or feeling without talking to somebody. He could barely stand being alone, unless he was waist deep in Pensacola Bay with a fishing pole in his hand or writing. His father always said he had three or four books inside of him that he could write – a great American novel, a commentary on church politics, maybe some others. However, Brad was always too busy living those books to ever write them all down. He also began to learn in mid-life to say less, but mean it more, in an attempt to tame his verbosity, but he always was too verbose.

Yet, the words he would say and write would provoke passion, thought, action, love, healing, hurt, resentment, whatever. Brad never left anyone just feeling neutral about what he said. As his father always joked, “Gee, Brad, tell us how you really feel!” Everyone knew Brad’s heart. It was always just right out there. You always knew where you stood with him, because he would tell you, without hesitation, exactly where he was. Frankly, he just couldn’t do any different.

Brad was larger than life; he was a leader. He had friends of so many different generations that he would convince, at one time or another, to do something – people sitting at a Kairos team meeting realizing they were going to do prison ministry and got Drelled into it; people on the other side of the negotiating table who thought the differences couldn’t be bridged, and yet they were; people who would count him as an unlikely friend because of economic, social, or age differences but who were disarmed by his warmth, genuiness, and loyalty. Brad’s greatest interpersonal skill was empathy. He would seek to understand and affirm others his whole life, largely because he wanted golden rule treatment, and to be understood and affirmed himself.

Brad will be missed by the world because he loved, largely because he couldn’t stand the thought of anyone feeling unloved. We will all miss him, but if Brad were here, I know what he would say to us all – sit down, have a drink (preferably good bourbon or scotch), talk about it, have a hug, and it will all be okay.

Remember that and your life will be fine…

Now, they’ll always look at me very oddly when I ask, but I simply explain to them I have very specific reasons for asking, which will be explained when they answer my question. It may take a day, it may take a week, but I’ve never had anyone I ask not answer me.

Once they answer, I explain to them that this is their “mission statement” for their life. I ask them what they’ve been doing to achieve this, and what they think they might do in the future to ensure that they are viewed in this manner.

Not had the privilege of watching my labor bear fruit, but I’m still young (relatively). We shall see.

TO FOLLOW YOU IS NOT MY INTENT, UNTIL I KNOW WHICH WAY YOU WENT!!!!!