This Is Awesome

     A passage from Dumblittleman.com about complaining:

• Have a plan.
  I find it quite irritating when people complain about their job or people they work with or how they're bored with whatever it is they're doing at the moment. I find it even more irritating when people have no answer to the question "and what are you doing about it?" Some people have given it some thought and others just stare blankly as if to say "There's something I can do?" If you're unhappy with any situation make a plan on how you can change it. How are you going to take control and make your situation better?

Time

     One quick way to get me irritated is to say: "I wish I had time to do that" in response to someone's story about their interests or how they spend their time. We all have 24 hours in the day. Don't sleep nine hours a day. Don't run a farm that doesn't make you a nickel. Don't push your kids into hobbies that barely interest them and then consume both of your lives. You choose how to use up your time.
     I saw a great speech by Gary Vaynerchuk today on Youtube. It was all about chasing your passions in life. The gist of what he said is if you have to work nine to five then you do this in your other hours. Work nine to five,  come home, spend a couple of hours with the family and then seven to two are prime hours. Don't argue about the semantics of the time. Nine to two, ten to two, whatever. We all have time. He accentuated the point with an awesome quote: "You have time. Stop watching fucking Lost!"

Link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhqZ0RU95d4

Simplicity.

     I've been making a real effort of late to spend time with the people I know who are intelligent, who have new ideas, who add value. I'm a big believer in the concept that who you become and how you much you grow is based on who you spend your time with. The common denominator I notice among these people is the ability and desire to relentlessly simplify. A great ability to understand what they are being told and frame it back to the source in much simpler terms that make it clearer. Here's a quote I found tonight: “The great artist and thinker are the simplifiers.” — Henri Frederic Amiel. Next time you are faced with a problem make it simpler. Then make it simpler. Then make it simpler. Next time you are sending an e-mail find a portion that doesn't matter and remove it or find a way to rephrase it with less and shorter words. Simplicity. Try it. I think you'll like it.

Make It Easy For Me.....

    Yet another simple concept......You need to make the thing you want people to do, the easiest thing for them to do. I got a piece of paper from my childen's school that said: "Go Green, Go Paperless". The school was asking me to opt out of receiving the paper copy of the school's monthly newsletter.I was initially interested as I thought they were finally going to start e-mail communication. However that wasn't the case. They were suggesting that I could go every month to the website and look at the monthly newsletter. Asking me to move from having the newsletter pushed to me to having to pull the newsletter from the website is not going to entice many people. It isn't that difficult to create an e-mail group or even better to have me go to the website and sign up to receive the newsletter. Then there was a deadline I had to respond by if I wanted to do it. If you're committed to doing this to "save paper" (and the school money) you can probably deal with the few people that will submit their form after the artificial deadline.
     The point is......walk a mile in your customer's shoes. Yes I am a customer of the school. I pay for a service. In this situation you are trying to change my behavior to suit your needs. Fair enough but it needs to be a win/win. Think about what would make it easiest for me and offer me a compromise. Expecting me to embrace a concept that adds work to my side of the equation is not going to be widely accepted and probably will not result in you meeting your target, unless you set it very low.  

It Really Is Simple

     So the election has come and gone and I realize I broke my own mindset of keeping things simple. Sometimes you get close to a situation and become blinded to the reality. I met a guy who was running for council in a local ward and was really impressed by him. I agreed to lend a hand knocking on doors and generally helping out in the hopes of him getting elected to council.
     The candidate was about 40 years old with no previous experience in politics running in what amounts to a seniors' community. The opponent was a 76 year old woman who had previously been Mayor in two other areas and had a long track record of political experience. If someone else had explained this to me I would have told them that their guy didn't have a chance because people generally vote for people like them and an older generation in particular is going to put significant value on experience. However being personally involved and being impressed by my candidate's qualifications I let myself believe it wasn't that simple.
     On election night my guy lost by a margin of about two to one. I really believed that the people in the riding would support change and a new voice but in hindsight I complicated something that was simple. It was a great experience and I still think he was an excellent candidate but the loss would have been easier to take if I had properly analyzed the situation beforehand.
     Just another great example of how life really is simple but we insist on making it complicated.

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Great quote: "Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote." ~George Jean Nathan. The municipal election is Monday. I've seen a lot of discussion recently by people about how we need to get out and vote. This is true. However it's equally true that we need to vote with some degree of education about the candidates. There are many sources of information on the candidates in every race. Please take a few minutes and understand what the people you are voting for are all about. There are some amazing people running for office.....and there are some people who will do damage and clearly aren't fit to lead us. Please do your homework and understand the difference.

Letter To The Editor About The Election

http://www.madhunt.com/letter-holliday-20101021.html

I Can Accept It....

     One of the things that constantly amazes me is how people can have such different opinions. About anything.....politics, work, people you name it. However I can accept it. It puzzles me but I get that other people when presented with the exact same set of information can come to a different opinion. What I struggle with is why it's so hard for others to accept that? I'm amazed at how often people tell me: "you don't get it" or "you don't understand". Oh I get it. I'm a reasonably bright guy. I get it. I just don't agree with you. Why is that so hard for people to get?

It's Simple

     To me the company/employee relationship is simple. People like to make it complicated but like just about everything it's really simple. I have to listen to people at work everyday tell me the reasons why they are angry, bitter etc. at the place we work. To me they are angry at themselves for allowing themselves to be the victim. They may not know it but I think that's really why they are mad......because they realize at some level that they have some weakness which is preventing them from doing something about it.
     About a dozen years ago I sat across the table from people representing the company and they said we will give you X, Y and Z if you come here, follow the rules and work hard. So I follow the rules and work hard and they have given me far more than the X, Y and Z that were originally promised. There are some people who want to make it complicated and claim they are entitled to more or that it should be easy or some other way of blaming a faceless company for their unhappiness but in my opinion they're wrong.