Archives for posts with tag: time
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In Praise of the Dishwasher

December 11, 2019 //
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I like reading interviews with well known people when they’re asked the question: what is the best invention ever?

For me, the greatest invention of all time, as far as it impacts on my daily life, is the dishwasher. It’s a massive time-saver, time spent on that most tedious of chores.

I’m reminded of this every time my mother hosts a dinner in her apartment, because she doesn’t have one of these magical appliances. My mother would not be shy in using implements in the creation of one of her masterpieces. It’s not unheard of for one of her boys to come from the washing up into the living room to say: Look Mum, I found something in the kitchen you didn’t use!

I’ve briefly touched on the satisfaction of using this appliance before. You stack your dirty stuff, throw in a tab, set the program and close that sucker up. Return a couple of hours later and it’s all done, ready for you or an offspring to load the shelves and cupboards. You can also get cute and stack your dirty things in a way that makes it easier to put the clean stuff back. Awesome.

I realise that this is not the most earth-shattering or uplifting answer to the best invention question, but for me it’s one I’m thankful for every single day. Now if they could figure out a machine that will allow you to wash everything…

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Categories Customers, General

The Paradox of Time

December 9, 2019 //
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I’m often going on about time, what a precious resource it is, how it seems to bend with our mood or what we’re doing, so much so that I’m not going to link a few of my posts on it, since you’re probably finding the topic a little wearisome. Stay with me for a minute though.

I think we’re all conscious of the fact that time flies and our lives go past in a blur, a blur which accelerates as we age. If you think back to a thousand years ago, the year 1019, it seems an impossibly long time ago. That depends, though, on how you frame it. Think about your parents and your grandparents. Then think back another 28 or 38 generations, which doesn’t sound much. It’s not that far back, is it? Even though there are probably only 50 people on the planet who know their ancestors that far back, and they probably wear crowns in their day job, 30 to 40 generations feels like a short span to me.

It’s only when you work back in time and compare the paltry millennium to the creation of the solar system and the planets that you realise how mind-bogglingly massive the dimension is. One million years is about 40,000 generations ago, an incomparably vast amount of time. Trillions and trillions of seconds gone by, trillions more to come, each one elapsing in the blink of an eye.

We’re getting into the area of the infiniteness and indivisibility of time here, which usually starts to make my brain hurt, but my point here is that length of time and speed of time are indelibly coloured by our own experiences and perception of them. And that for me, is, if not quite a paradox, certainly interesting. Making a mental note to get out more…

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Categories Customers

Does It Matter?

October 18, 2019 //
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We live in a world where scarcity prevails. There’s not enough resources to go round. There’s not enough time in the day. We don’t have enough money to do everything we want to do. Fact.

So it is with how we organise our own time, how we prioritise, and how we marshal our own resources. We can’t get to everything, not even close.

This is how I deal with everyday questions and how I approach a lot of things, in life and in work. I ask myself, does it matter? If it matters, do it, if it doesn’t, chances are you don’t need to bother with it.

I’ll give you a mundane example: cooking. You find a recipe you like, but it lists a lot of ingredients, and one or two of them you don’t have or can’t get. Ask yourself if it matters that you don’t have coriander, but you have some oregano. Probably not. What if it calls for 350g of this and 150ml of that. Does it matter if you’ve not used the exact amount the recipe calls for? Probably not, it’s near enough ‘as makes no odds’ as my northern English pals would say. Now, with something like baking, or so I’m told, it does benefit you to use the exact ingredients and the exact measurements, in which case, yes it does matter.

When it comes to navigating the resources and time at my disposal, and the myriad tiny questions that might crop up in the course of the day, I use ‘does it matter?’ as my guide. Quicker decisions, less agonising, mental paralysis and hand-wringing.

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Categories Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

When the High Street Closes at 5:15pm

October 9, 2019 //
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I was visiting my mother the other day. She lives in a small town on the edge of Bristol in England, with a lovely high street of the usual shops and cafes you might expect to find.

At about 5pm on the Saturday I decided I would wander 5 or 10 minutes up to the high street to get a card and small gift. I know I was leaving it late, but I figured that they would close at 5:30 so I would be fine.

The shop I had my eye on closed at 5:15pm, according to the sign. What kind of shop closes at 5:15? It’s neither one thing nor the other. I reasoned that they probably said 5:15pm so they serve their straggling customers by 5:30 and close at the ‘normal’ time.

I tried the door. I was exactly 5:12pm on my phone. It was closed, and 2 prissy ladies were beavering away at the till. I knocked on the window. ‘Closed’, they signed. I pointed at my phone and their sign and walked off in disgust.

It drives me mad, that kind of thing. If you say you’re closing at 5:15, don’t close early. I went to my second choice shop, told them all about my experience – they closed at 5:30pm – spent my money there.

No wonder the high street is dying a slow death. Still focused on itself, and not us.

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Categories Communication, General, Marketing, Sales

Short on Time, Short on Money

September 18, 2019 //
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Most people are either short on time and long on money, or they’re short on money and long on time.

If you’re the former, it’s because you’re busy and / or important, and while you have plenty of disposable income you don’t have much time to dispose of it.

If you’re the latter, you’ve bags of time on your hands but your lack of money limits what you can do with that time. Both scenarios seem to me to be deeply ironic yet are classic examples of what life is like in the real world of limited resources.

The holy grail is of course to be long on time and long on money. I’m reliably informed that this is known as a financially comfortable and healthy retirement, a concept that feels very distant and remote to me. Then there’s winning the lottery or a similar kind of windfall, which is the short cut, at a distance and remoteness that tends to zero probability. And yet we play it, eh!

Unfortunately, I seem to be spending a good bit of my time in the lower quartile, the bottom left box of your management consultant’s two-by-two matrix. Yes, that’s the short on time, short on money variety. Dashing around the place developing business, creating projects, getting things off the ground, doing good things, for no money.

Yes, I’m happy, and lucky, I know. But a bit more of both wouldn’t go amiss, I promise.

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Categories General, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

Six Blogging Years

September 2, 2019 //
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If you’re reading this post on the day of its publication, I’ve been blogging for exactly six years, to the day. If you subscribe and you’re reading this post at the moment of publication, then I’m asleep, or at least blurry-eyed and limp-tailed at the end of a rather tiring music festival in central Ireland.

Six blogging years. Six bloody years you’re probably thinking, or six blasted years if you’re slightly more polite. Six years ago today I published my first post. 941 blog posts later and here is post number 942. A moment ago I cast my eye over previous blogging milestones and I’ve been rather tearing the seat out of this theme. My ‘sixth blogging year’, ‘my seventh blogging year’ – from a calendar point of view, four years blogging, and so on. I’ve been milking every anniversary and many ’round number’ posts since I started this 3-times-a-week blog.

I promise there won’t be any fanfare for blog post 950, since that’s barely a fortnight away and not really an important enough round number. It is, however, perilously close – 58 posts or less than 20 weeks – to a rather large monument, which is 1,000 posts.

At previous milestones I’ve introduced the idea, more to myself as I think out loud, that I might quit at 1,000. I think as the closer I get there, the more likely that is. Maybe that’s a symptom of me running out of things to say, though since the tagline of this blog is ‘Musings on stuff I come into contact with’, that seems an unlikely reason, unless I lose 3 or more of my senses. Maybe I’ll get to 1,000 and, rather like Forrest Gump running across America for the umpteenth time, stop.

Anyway, I hope you’ve been able to take something from the musings of the last six blogging years. Happy Monday!

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Categories Communication, Customers, General

Early and Late

August 26, 2019 //
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Culture, practice and customs seem to highly sway the concept of punctuality. In some cultures it’s considered bad form to be late; in others, it’s considered the norm.

Context is another aspect to punctuality. There’s no point turning up fashionably late for a train, a flight or a show, but in many cultures it’s advised for things like parties. Perhaps that’s why the rather helpful ‘7:30 for 8’ invitation works so well. Don’t turn up any earlier than 7:30, but the important thing starts at 8 so come and have a chat or nibbles and don’t be later than 8. A 30-window is enough for the top 90% of organised people.

Which got me thinking: speaking for my culture, punctuality is one thing, but being early is often as inconvenient to your host or the person you’re picking up as it is being late. If someone says they’ll pick you up in 40 minutes, which gives you enough time to pack, shower and get ready, and then they turn up 20 minutes later, when you’re in the shower, you get a rushed and stressed start to your day.

There always has to be the first people to arrive at a party, but have you ever got the time wrong and arrived early? Misread or misremembered an 8 til late as a 7 til late? It’s a major pain, for you and your host.

Same rules apply in business and work, methinks…

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales

What a Waste

July 26, 2019 //
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I’ve blogged on the concept of waste before. In fact I’ve done it here and here.

I’m not a big fan of waste. You observe it everywhere. Food waste, materials waste, packaging waste, energy waste, resources waste, and wastes of time.

What about cut flowers? They look lovely, but their lives are literally cut short for personal pleasure rather than longer pleasure that benefits the wider community. In fact, anything we use for something that doesn’t last long enough – and we all make a judgement on the enough part – or doesn’t create anything new, is not a good return. It’s a waste.

Of course, time is the greatest waste of all. It’s what I feel most keenly when someone dies before their time, if you pardon the clumsy pun. Even if it’s someone I don’t know. The lost potential, the lost possibility for them to further touch and improve the lives of others. We’ll never get that back.

Which is why the exclamation ‘what a waste’, for the smallest detail like a missed shot on goal, or to express the biggest ideas, is probably the biggest criticism we can make. It’s a huge, damning insult.

So, calling someone a time-waster is a deep criticism to level at someone. They’ve wasted your time, and the time of others, and that is indeed a heinous sin.

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Categories General

Looking Back

June 7, 2019 //
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People often say that you have to look back in order to look forward. This can apply on both personal and work contexts, but obviously has certain limitations.

Past performance, as we’re reminded by companies looking to separate us from some of our money, is no guarantee of nor indeed guide to future performance. It can provide a pattern that might be useful in our future endeavours, but it can’t predict things. Economics, after all, is very handy for explaining what happened and how it happened, but not so great for saying what will happen. Look too at consumer polls over the last few years, and their record with the last US Presidential election and UK referendum; 2016 – the annus horribilis for the polling industry.

I’m not a huge fan of looking back, personally speaking, and in a personal context. I’m not one for nostalgia. I’m happy to reminisce about certain episodes in my past, but I don’t look back on it with fondness or envy. I think I’m afraid to. It’s done, it can’t be changed. What’s the point of going back to a time when we were younger. We’re the age we are right now and there’s nothing else we can influence except the present and future – unless we’re crazed historical revisionists of some crackpot empire.

The other day her Ladyship lent me a novel to read called ‘A Started for 10‘. I hadn’t heard of it, and I later discovered it was made into a film, which I have never seen. It was set in 1980’s university, and revolved around growing up and answering quiz questions. I thought I would love it.

I read it quite quickly, as it’s a well told story, but after a very enjoyable first third I only enjoyed it a little. It was really well observed, but too close to the bone, reminding me of a time when I knew so little about anything, far less than the modest amount of knowledge I have amassed some 30 years later. It was so accurate, and I didn’t want to revisit that level of detail from that time.

I understand that if we don’t look back, we can sometimes take a headlong accelerated journey into what’s around the next corner, and risk wishing away the present. But, looking back for any amount of time, and to any depth, well that’s not for me. I’m not sure it works in work either, as the set of circumstances and factors we deal with changes all the time.

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Categories General

Creative Commons Image Attribution

May 1, 2019 //
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"Streets Clock Acrylic Orange 2" by Individual Design is licensed under CC BY 2.0

“Streets Clock Acrylic Orange 2” by Individual Design is licensed under CC BY 2.0

When you’re publishing something, or thinking about publishing something, it’s great to have images to lift and amplify the message. Better still are those copyright-free images you can use without having to go to the photo stock library vultures.

If you’re getting an image that’s in the public domain or is free to use, you want to be able to attribute it properly. After all, some generous soul is putting out their creativity for you to use gratis, so the least you can do is to give them the proper thanks via the proper shout out. This can be tricky to do:

  • You have to find the image
  • You have to check the copyright or licensing for it, to make sure it’s OK to use for your purposes
  • If it fits your requirements you have to collect the name of the image, the author and the type of creative commons license it falls under

This is fiddly, especially if you’re sourcing a lot of images. Enter the Creative Commons automated image attribution feature. You can access it here. As I write this it’s in beta, and it hangs and falls over a fair bit, but who cares? It’s invaluable. You search for your image, click on the one you like and the entire attribution text is pulled together for you in 3 different format options, like in this example.

A massive time-saver. Genius.

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Categories Communication, Marketing, Planning, Sales
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