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The Double Edged Sword of Holidays

October 28, 2015 //
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Holidays are great. There’s the chance to unwind, spend some quality time with family and generally not think too much about work.

These days, however, we often can’t rely on somebody to cover for us while we’re on holiday and do the work that we would do if we were not on holiday. So what we sometimes find ourselves doing is working ourselves to a frazzle in order to clear the desk for the holiday, and then returning, somewhat refreshed, to face a backlog and the mountain of work to be done simply to get back up to speed.

When you add the fact that it sometimes takes two or three days to unwind, and two or three days to gear ourselves up for the return to work, it sometimes feels like a week’s holiday is simply not worth the time or investment. Perhaps you’re one of these people who can instantly slip out of work mode and leave all your troubles behind you. If so, you are a lucky person indeed.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for work hard and play hard. I need to work harder, however, to enjoy my holidays and make sure that the seams between the work hard and play hard periods are shorter so that they almost end up being seamless.

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Categories Customers, General

Escaping the Blackness

October 23, 2015 //
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About once a year – and I know I’m really lucky and grateful it’s only once a year – I have one of those dark days when I’m really down in the dumps, as we Brits would say, upset even. The feeling of blackness when you’re staring into the abyss. Note that I’m not talking about the phenomenon known as the booze blues here, where you feel a bit paranoid and / or sorry for yourself, through no fault of anyone’s except your own.

Note that I’m not talking about manic depressive psychosis or bipolar disorder here, proper illnesses where the crushing depression, feelings of hopelessness and inner demons must be unimaginably unbearable.

On these days I find it really hard to struggle through a working day. What I try to do on these days is attempt to do a sideways reality shift, in order to escape the blackness. I have a word with myself and I consider how lucky I am and compare my current situation to another that could be a lot worse. I have my health, a roof over my head, and my family are healthy. So how bad is my current situation, really? What’s the worst that could happen to me because of this mindset I have allowed myself to slip into?

This forced comparison of perspective is generally all that’s needed to get me out of that funk. The issue is how long I’m down in the dumps for before I can remember to have a word myself.

I find from both a personal and corporate social responsibility standpoint that a day like this is enough to remind me of the charitable efforts I should be making to those who suffer these feeling or circumstances much, much more often than I do.

 

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Categories General

Music While You Work

October 21, 2015 //
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When I was a school and college student, I never had music to accompany me when I was working. I preferred complete silence so that I could concentrate. As I’ve got older, I occasionally let music intrude, but it’s still pretty rare and it depends on the kind of work I’m doing.

If I have to concentrate really hard on something, maybe a tricky spreadsheet or comparing red-lined documents, no music for me, silence is better. I realise of course that there are many people who couldn’t imagine working – even the concentration-heavy stuff – without music. The contrary works pretty well for them.

There’s the good and bad of music. On the good side, it lifts the spirits and provides diversion from manual or repetitive jobs – or when you’re plain ticked off. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to pick up an accent when someone sings? It’s always fascinated me how that works, something to do with the vocal chords resonating in a different, unifying way when we sing, perhaps.

Time flies when you listen to music, and sometimes that’s a good thing.

On the negative side, music can provide too much of a distraction, damage productivity and sometimes – when you hear a song that calls to mind a certain period or event – can make you plain cross or upset. It’s unbelievably evocative, and that’s its charm and its menace.

Music while you work – good or bad? It depends, of course.

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Categories General

The Baseball Natural that Never Was

October 19, 2015 //
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The unwritten human history is littered with people who would have been truly great at something, except that either they never knew or they never got the chance. It’s the 3-way accident of birth, time and place.

This is my theory with me and America’s pastime, otherwise known as baseball. Born and raised in Europe, I was schooled in my early childhood in rounders and into my teens in cricket, soccer and rugby. I wasn’t great at any of them, but I wasn’t horrendous.

I lived in the US a couple of times but never tried baseball. I played softball a few times in Dublin, and I was in a hitting pen once, but that’s it. A number of things, though, tell me that I coulda been somebody on or around the diamond. First, I’m small, and size seems less of a barrier in this sport compared with the way many other sports have gone. Second, I have good hand-eye co-ordination from a lifetime of racket sports, golf and cricket. Third, I have a big throwing arm (I’m right-handed). Fourthly, and perhaps most bizarrely, I can’t close my left eye.

What I mean by this is the following. I can close both of my eyes at the same time – in other words do the sleepy thing – and I can close my right eye, but I can’t close my left eye, otherwise known as winking. This has led me to be particularly left-eye dominant, which means that I catch really, really well with my left hand. It makes me rubbish at shooting right-handed, which is another useful by-product.

Good right arm, hand-eye co-ordination, speed round the bases, great catching arm. OK, so the US colleges may not hand out 4-year scholarships on that evidence alone, but I think it’s compelling, or would have been if I was born in a baseball-playing country. It’s the sheer serendipity of life, the glorious what might have been.

The moral of this story is this: always be looking for something else, something new to try, because until you’ve found something you’re truly great at, you have to keep looking. You won’t know til you’ve found it. The same goes with your kids and getting them to try different things.

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Categories General

Writing a Book

October 14, 2015 //
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I’ve decided that writing a book is hard, really hard.

I’ve been working on one for a good while. For a couple of months when I didn’t have too many commitments I made some excellent progress and got at least half of it done. Then I took on more work and also significantly expanded my portfolio of voluntary activities and the book started to gather the electronic equivalent of dust.

It’s not a question of discipline or commitment. I take a disciplined approach to my blogging, but it comes easy because I write about what I see and a lot of it is stream of consciousness. I’m committed to almost everything I do, otherwise there seems little point doing it. With a book, though, you need a plan and you need to write to that plan, and that takes more time. Time to research, time to create.

Time is what I don’t have. Certainly, I could spend less time with the family, I could do without some of the 8 hours sleep I know my body needs on a regular basis, or I could drop some of the other things I’m doing. But I don’t want to do that, because I’m naturally drawn to the portfolio career and a diversity of activities.

Writing a book is essentially a selfish, specialist activity in order to get it done. You need to put yourself first, and sacrifice things that are important to other people, things that they’re relying on you to help with. Generalists find this tough.

That’s why writing is book is hard, really hard.

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Categories Communication, General, Planning

Time Flees

October 12, 2015 //
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Those of you who follow or stumble upon this blog from time to time – future pun intended – will know that I’m often going on about what a precious resource time is. The most precious resource there is in my opinion. Here is a previous post on the subject.

Even two thousand years ago when the pace of life must have been a little slower, despite the drastically shorter life expectancy, those Romans knew a thing or two when they said ‘tempus fugit.’ We generally translate this as ‘time flies’.

Except that the truer translation is actually ‘time flees’, which gives a much better sense of how the resource disappears. It escapes, it runs away from us. It can’t get away fast enough.

That’s why we must work hard to make the most of it, not to waste it. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy some free time. Far from it in fact. Ever noticed how much faster time seems to pass when you’re having fun? Do you want to be miserable so it goes slower?

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Categories General

Metal Staircases

October 7, 2015 //
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Metal staircases create a rotten first impression. They tell you that either they can’t be bothered to properly dress this part of a building, or that they can’t be bothered to create a good first impression with you.

I was staying at a hotel the other day. It was nearly impossible to find the stairs, which would be a worry if a fire alert precluded use of the abundant lifts. We had to ask a member of the cleaning staff to show us where they were. And they were horrid, as if the hotel wouldn’t dream of their valued guests ever wanting or needing to take the stairs.

Then there’s London Gatwick airport. When you come in from Ireland off the plane they take you through a different terminal entrance. I think the purpose of this is that you avoid having to show your passport, which is a useful micro-efficiency, but to get there you go through two flights of hideous metal staircases that wouldn’t look out of place in the staff stair well of a 1970’s hospital. It’s not a great first impression or airport welcome.

To my mind it’s really important you plan the literal journey your customer is going take to your home, office, town, or country. Do you want to make a good impression or a poor one? Do you care either way? Actually, you don’t have to tell us, because we’ll know.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General

Micro-efficiencies and Toes

October 5, 2015 //
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‘Take care of the pennies,’ they used to say, ‘and the pounds will take care of themselves.’ Small positive differences add up to make large important ones.

It’s not just with monetary gains; it’s the same with time-based gains too.

I love the little tips or glimpses of the inside track that I get from people to help me be more productive during my day. It might be a computer keyboard short cut, or it might be something completely different.

Take the gaps between toes for example. Yes, you read that right. We’re all supposed to dry between our toes after a shower, yet sometimes when all our time is tightly accounted for from the moment we wake to the time we go to bed, it seems like it’s one of those things not worth doing, in the rush to get dressed and onto the day. We neglect these important areas at our peril, since such a devil-may-care approach to our hygiene can lead to athlete’s foot, which can be a devil to shift.

Sometimes I can’t be bothered to bend down and do it properly, and sometimes I forget and can’t be bothered to head back to the bathroom to complete this most mundane of tasks.

My good lady has a great save for this, which I shall start doing immediately. She ‘flosses’ the gaps with her socks before she puts them on. Simple, yet brilliant, since people generally sit to put socks on and stand to towel off. It’s therefore a natural step, and a micro-efficient one of genius too.

I’m sure there are lots of other micro-efficiencies that simply don’t get propagated through the population. Next time you floss between your toes after a shower, remember you read it here first :-).

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Categories General

Clean vs Tidy

October 2, 2015 //
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Continuing what has turned into a slightly spousal series of posts recently, I would say that in general I’m a tidy person. Things tend to be in the right place, even if they could occasionally benefit from a well placed duster. My wife, on the other hand, is a clean person. She cleans things regularly, and properly. There’s nothing slap dash about her cleaning.

My cleaning, however, is sporadic, perfunctory and only semi-thorough. But I think I’m the tidier of the 2.

Is it a gross generalisation to argue that in the main men are tidy whereas women are clean? Does a regular person with both skills exist? Can you be both?

Of course, we should all be both, or a combination of both. So what’s the right combination, the right balance? It’s the same dilemma with our working lives as well as our domestic ones. For example, from the tidy person’s perspective our emails might be filed beautifully, but how often do we clean out the old stuff, the stuff we simply will never need again? Our Linked connection invites and responses may be up to date, but how often do we prune the network and remove the people we can’t even remember?

As with many things, it’s a question of finding out the right balance to give you what you need in terms of creativity and productivity.

 

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Categories General

Clever vs Smart

September 28, 2015 //
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I’m supposed to be clever. At least that’s what my academic results tell me, and what people occasionally mention.

My wife is smart. Street-wise. She has lots of ‘cop on’, as the Irish would say. I think it’s better to be smart. Being clever, or having intelligence, is an absolute thing, measurable on a scale. You can’t do that much with it on its own.

Being smart is applying intelligence, putting a degree of cleverness to use. Being smart is seeing the importance of a pattern, not simply the pattern itself. Being smart is the ability to see through a problem and find a solution quickly.

I should have figured this out sooner, but I’m not that smart…

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Categories General, Language
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