The Baseball Natural that Never Was

October 19, 2015 //
2

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

How I Write a Blog Post

October 16, 2015 //
0

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that my blog posts are Monday, Wednesday, Friday things, relatively short and designed to be read in a couple of minutes.

I thought it would be useful to let you know how I write them. I use WordPress as my blog engine by the way.

First, the idea. I either come up with a series of posts based around an involved topic or I get a specific thought which prompts a standalone post. Then I pen the title and scribble some notes in the body. Then I click save draft. About 1 per cent of the time, I click publish by mistake, and since the default time is set to publish immediately, this results in a largely blank post being sent through social media and emailed to be subscribers :-(. Then I have to remove it. But let’s stay with the 99%.

My next task is to schedule the publication for a time in the future. I always set my time window between 7:30 and 8:30 in the morning Irish time, since for Irish and UK readers that’s a good time for them to be checking their social media. I then set the categories for the blog post and think about the tags that are relevant for this post. Then I click save draft.

Now I’m ready to write the post. I compose the post, staying on topic so I don’t mismanage the expectations of the reader and for SEO purposes, though I don’t use sub-headings since my posts are so short. I click save periodically, especially if I’m on the move and my wifi is flaky. I also insert outside links and links to other posts where I think they enhance the post, never for their own sake.

When I’m finished writing, I save the draft, then re-read the post carefully for spelling mistakes, typos, sentences that don’t make sense or that could be improved. I iterate, clicking save draft which each iteration. Then I click Schedule, before reviewing how the post will look to you the reader. I might further refine the post and then follow the same process.

Then I’m done! For a post that runs smoothly, it’s 15 to 20 minutes from start to finish. For a longer post or one that doesn’t flow as it might, it could be an hour. But that’s not an onerous responsibility for 3 times a week, at least in my view.

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Categories Communication, Customers

Writing a Book

October 14, 2015 //
0

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 //
0

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

The Benefit Corporation

October 9, 2015 //
0

Did you know that the crowd-funding site Kickstarter is now a benefit corporation? I didn’t either, until I got an email explaining what one was and why they decided to become one.

You see, Kickstarter found that being a for-profit corporation went against the ethos of what they were trying to do, namely be a force for social change. They go on to say:

“Companies that believe there are more important goals than maximizing shareholder value have been at odds with the expectation that for-profit companies must exist ultimately for profit above all.

“Benefit Corporations are different. Benefit Corporations are for-profit companies that are obligated to consider the impact of their decisions on society, not only shareholders. Radically, positive impact on society becomes part of a Benefit Corporation’s legally defined goals.”

What a fantastic concept, and an equally noble one at that. Sadly, only 0.01% of US organisations are currently benefit corporations, a statistic I feel will rapidly change.

If you’d like to read more, here’s Kickstarter’s benefit corporation charter. Fair play to them, as the Irish would say.

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Categories Customers, Strategy

Metal Staircases

October 7, 2015 //
0

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 //
1

‘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 //
2

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

Making the Departure the Destination

September 30, 2015 //
2

The other day I was celebrating a long weekend with my good lady, and we were in the process of using up our last day before an evening departure from the airport to get back home. We went to a cinema to see a film before driving back to the airport, filling up the hire car with fuel, returning it, and getting our flight home.

I realised after buying the tickets that the film was long, half an hour longer than I had planned. We had an hour’s journey back to the airport, in no traffic at normal speeds, except that this was going to be rush hour, in the driving rain, and on the London orbital motorway which is a complete lottery most times of the day. I like to check in for flights in good time. My wife likes to leave things to the last minute, I don’t know why. Hence the ensuing conflict. We got a refund for our tickets and got to the airport with loads of time to spare and no inclination to spend it in airy conversation.

For the record, I don’t think we would have made the flight if we’d stayed for the film. We might have, but it would have been an unpleasant journey for the guts of 2 hours. If we’d missed the flight, our kids would have had to stay another night with different families, and we would have had to take a hotel room and new flights for the following day, which were working days for us both.

Anyway, this is a recurrent marital theme that I don’t mean to bore you with, but out of this conflict emerged the following thought: why don’t airports make themselves a destination even when they’re a departure? Why don’t they market that we make a day of our departure? Why recommend we get there 2 hours before a flight when we could get their 6 hours before, take in a movie at the airport, or some bowling, or a water park, safe in the knowledge we’re already there, the car is jettisoned, the bags are checked, and we can have the holiday experience?

It’s OK to have a few shops at an airport, but surely a cinema or two or a gym wouldn’t hurt.

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Categories Customers, Marketing

Clever vs Smart

September 28, 2015 //
0

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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