Overscheduled

One of the most interesting stresses that are self imposed is the famous personal schedule - or how you manage your time. Are you a planner - "Plan the Plan, and Work the Plan" or a the opposite.

What is the opposite of plan? The dictionary says - forget, ignore, neglect. I like the term ignore - because it is the most common cause of overscheduling (second is saying yes too much).

Calendar management is a learned skill and reflects the style and personality of the individual. It also relates to promptness, meeting management, route and travel habits, telephone management etc.

In the book "History of Time", I remember the cultural differences forcing others to wait extraordinarily long times for a meeting.

One thing I am certain of - when you overschedule yourself - you will be stressful. When you are around people who are overscheduled - you will be stressful.

Body Part Failure

At the Accenture ex-partner lunch, B.W. said "We are all just awaiting the failure of different body parts - we just don't know which ones and when".

My recent "hitch in the get-a-long" was the strained calf muscle from not warming up enough prior to Monday tennis. Hoping I was still a 20 year old expecting immediate recovery, B.W. reminded me that preventative care is but a minute compared to the recovery time in your 50's.

Yes my zeal to become more healthy by exercising (e.g. Tennis) had turned into a sport injury with pain, hobbling and cries for sympathy.

Wisdom arrives in the form of pain - and advice from individuals with their own painful body part failures.

Kind vs Good

Rev. Stover's sermon mentioned that the word "kind" is never used in the Bible. Immediately a line from Sondheim's "In the Woods" popped into my head. Susan and I saw "Into the Woods" in Chicago (or I should say we saw half of it - because we walked out at intermission - that's a long story).

When the wolf first introduced himself to Little Red Riding Hood he said to her suspicious reaction - "But I am Kind". Her response was "Kind does not mean Good". Very interesting ......

It is tempting to automatically connect kindness with being good. After all why wouldn't you trust that the only reason someone is being kind is to promote goodness in the world? Unfortunately we have too many situations where kindness is a ploy for selfish manipulative reasons.

So be Good - and let Kindness follow.

Wayne's Weekend

Wayne popped into my mind as the weekend approaches. Get prepared this may be a long blog - but was an important lesson to me.

In a very emotional time of my life, Wayne asked if I wanted to regularly golf on Sunday mornings at the Neumann public course on the west side. So we started the tradition. One of the Sunday mornings I was lamenting about my work schedule and started telling Wayne that I may need to eliminate Sunday golf so that I could work. Wayne responded: "Garen, you dumb ass! there are only 52 available weekends in the year and look what you've been doing for the last 10 years with those weekends."

Wayne had a way of simplifying things. He was right and like a bolt of lighting hitting the golfer - my light bulb was now fully illuminated. I resolved at that point in time (1987) that I would re-allocate my work time. I would work 24 hours (if necessary) during the week - but I made a covenant to never work on the weekend again. If my career was going to require that - then it was a career I didn't value. It was time to draw a line in the sand.

Fast forward 9 years later- 1996. Wayne had just arrived in Cincinnati from Las Vegas (his new residence) for his brother's wedding. I was knee deep in a high pressure job at Southern New England Telephone (SNET) in Connecticut - but back in Cincinnati for the weekend. Wayne stopped by for a visit at the Brill house and had dinner with Susan, Jenna and I, on Sunday evening - I'm sure I was lamenting again about the "deadline" I was facing for the project.

After a wonderful visit with Wayne, I was back on the plane to Connecticut - Monday morning. It was a tough week - the client was nervous, we were struggling to hit the deadline, and the politics were ugly - it was clear we were not going to make the date. The only alternative was to work the weekend - the first time in 9 years I would break the covenant. I would need to call Susan to let her know the bad news.

I got on the phone to tell Susan and as I was telling her my news she interrupted saying that Wayne had died - a heart attack on the plane as he was returning to Las Vegas.

I didn't work that weekend - I was in Las Vegas at Wayne's funeral on Saturday April 27, 1996.

Beginning and End of File

One principle I learned at Accenture in computer programming is the importance of the logic and code necessary for the first transaction and the last transaction being processed - Beginning and End of File.

Everything else becomes routine and with logical loops. Testing the logic at the beginning and end is essential for a sound program. I remember just opening the file was non-trivial code.

In life, the mystery of birth (beginning) continues to challenge scientists and death (ending) is a mystery for both the religious and secularist. So the middle part (Middle Earth) is what we know -what we routinely experience - day, night; consume, digest; start, stop; - seemingly endless cycles since we don't remember"beginning of file" and we await/expect and "end of file".

Unlike programming - we have no choice in the beginning, and the last transaction process is unknown. What we control are the logical loops in the middle.

Is it time to reprogram?

Hope vs Optimism

Dr. J.E. loves to educate me on the "Doctor" perspective. He said: "Hope is a feeling, a spiritual sense that anything can happen. A sense of the world that there are powers greater than ourselves that can intervene. Optimism is a mature feeling within the spectrum of what we know - a probability of some relative (and hopefully high) value."

In a quick google search - you find very interesting theories with conflicting premises about learned, emotion or not, inside your control etc:

(1) Hope and optimism differ in that hope is situation specific (specific condition) and contingent upon one's own abilities (internal condition). Optimism is an overall explanatory style (global condition) that positive things will occur independent of one's ability (external condition). http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/students/happy.htm

(2) Hope is distinct from optimism by being an emotion, representing more important but less likely outcomes, and by affording less personal control. Motivation and Emotion, 2005, Volume 29, Number 4, Pages 324-35


Are you hopeful but not optimistic --- or optimistic but not hopeful?

Live Beyond the Grave

I was meeting with M.M. hoping to recruit more Partners for SVP Cincinnati. We got on the subject of passion and he described his activities at CBMC ("Connecting Business Men with Christ") and that he was doing something that will "Live beyond the Grave".

The certainty of Death can be very grave - the feeling of finality. I've said that "the memory you create today, is - a touch of your eternal life" (or something close to that). I think the feeling of a legacy or doing meaningful stuff that will not be final is something that haunts the soul. Touching eternity is an interesting concept.

Or John Ortberg said it another way " Every human being you see is a cleverly disguised receptacle of Eternity".