Wednesday Weblog for February 2, 2022 |
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Failing to plan is planning to fail. - Alan Lakein |
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Congratulations to the Cincinnati Bengals for making it to the Super Bowl. Having lived for more than a decade in that area, I know a lot of great people, and great fans who have suffered for a long time without a championship team and my whole family is very happy for all of them.
We have friends in the town who watch the games on television or from the stands, from the suites and from the aisles as ushers. There is no other team I'd rather have win than the Bengals, except for the Patriots, because of how many people I know are happy when they win. Who dey!
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What is ‘Who Dey Bengals’?
Who Dey is a synonymous chant with the Bengals that encapsulates a whole city and fan base. It is a calling card and victory yell that brings people together and gives Bengals fans a sense of shared identity. Fans often sing the chant to rile opponents while simultaneously lifting the morale and spirit of their own team. The entire chant actually goes: “Who dey, who dey, who dey think gonna beat dem Bengals?” The answer “nobody” is then screamed in unison. Who Dey is very much part of the fabric of the organization – so much so the team’s mascot, a Bengal tiger, is called Who Dey?
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A new feature of the Weblog, thanks to some wise readers. There are two categories of advice, PERSONAL and PROFESSIONAL. To submit your advice, in either category or for both, simply reply to this email and send it in. There is no guarantee it will be published, but I'll do my best to get the best ideas included. Even if it is not published right away, keep looking for it.
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Professional Advice
Submitted By: Dave from Worcester, MA
“It’s good to be nervous”
In a business world that prioritizes and praises those who exude confidence & strength, being nervous as you prep for the largest presentations of your life really helps you to focus and keeps you humble. I’ve been handed a microphone in front of thousands of people, and I’ve had the red light of the live television camera start blinking incessantly in my eyes. I’ve been asked to script awards ceremonies, write speeches (like the one I gave at my high school graduation), give toasts at functions, serve as a Justice of the Peace for a cousin’s wedding, and put together compelling Powerpoint presentations to try to convince a room full of business-people to spend money with my company.
Someday I’m sure I’ll be asked to give a eulogy at a funeral for a loved one. In each instance, when someone asked me to do it, there was an initial surge of butterflies in my stomach as I envisioned the manner in which I would have to deliver “the performance.” The initial bout of sweaty palms, goosebumps, trembling hands and tossing and turning in my bed has always provided me with more focus to make the presentation the best it can possibly be. Being nervous makes you reread sentences as you check for grammatical errors. It makes you pick out your outfit the night before. It causes you to plan your day around one particular event and choreograph the timeline of your day while you are lying in bed or standing in the shower. It causes you to hyper-focus on the elements you can control and anticipate problems before they occur. It leaves you talking to yourself as you drive your car to work while practicing your lines.
Being nervous eliminates surprises. I think people often feel the need to respond, “No way,” or “Nah,” when others ask them before a big moment if they’re nervous. I say, “why cover it up?” If I ever get to a point in my life in which I’m not nervous as I prep for a speech in front of thousands of people, find me a new career because I’m sure I’ll screw up the current one.
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Personal Advice
Submitted By: Rwanda from Toronto
Be a duck!
Yup, to be resilient and continue to move forward, sometimes you need to let water roll down your back, so it doesn’t impede your forward motion
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In 1974, as I was about to become a restaurant manager for the first time, I became nervous about my ability to get everything done. Like most twenty somethings, I had never been in a corporate seminar on managing my time, nor had there ever been such a discussion in college or high school.
I had no idea if I was good at managing my time, average or poor, and, until that moment, it did not occur to me that I needed to be effective with my time. Let me rephrase: I did not realize until that time that my effectiveness and success might depend on my time management.
So, I bought a book, I think the first one I saw in a bookstore. It was a paperback called “How to Control Your Time and Your Life” by Alan Lakein. If you have worked with me, the title and author are familiar because for decades I have not only preached about the principles in the book, but those who know me well know that I also practice the principles. Practice what you preach? Interesting concept.
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Immediately after digesting the book and putting key principles into practice, I started sharing the concepts with co-workers and direct reports. It was not long before I turned the concepts into a training class. I have been delivering the core concepts of that original class to this day. It now has a fancy title ‘TimeWorks’ and it is offered in person or virtually, but at its core are concepts that are almost 50 years old, or in other words, tried and true.
Right after I started teaching the principles, a video on the book came out, I quickly got my own copy, and supplemented my inspiring classroom presentations with a better presentation, one that is still available on the internet. The link is here. And although it was filmed before email and other distractions were created, it is still a timeless piece of wisdom.
There is a definition of Time Management that I believe I am semi-famous in my own little world for promoting. One that is so simple and so easy to remember and practice, that once you hear it you will instantly know it is true and will be able to internalize it.
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TIME + MANAGEMENT = ??
It starts with individually defining the words ‘Time’ and ‘Management.’
Time is defined as a series of events.
You know, like the Beatles said, ‘get up, get out of bed, drag a comb across my head.’ You dress, eat breakfast, drive to work or not, log on, or log off, etc. All the things that happen to you in any day are ‘events’ of some kind, many small, that come in a series.
What constitutes an event? A meeting, a phone call, watching a tv show or a football game, getting gas and so forth.
Management, for this definition, is defined as exercising control.
You manage your finances, you control them. You manage the two-year-old screaming in the supermarket (or not). You manage your direct reports, you manage your budget, you manage fill-in-the-blank by exercising control.
If Time is a series of events, and Management is exercising control, then Time Management is: Controlling Events.
Exercising any kind of control over any kind of event is time management.
Repeat: exercising any kind of control, over any kind of event is time management.
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You may have also heard of the word ‘frustration?’
Frustration is a result of lack of control. It is hard to be frustrated when you are in control. It is only when you are not in control that frustration sets in. Here are some examples of lack of control over mundane events in your life:
- Waiting in line at the pharmacy drive thru can be frustrating and is not controlling events. Nothing you can do to control the experience, except leave. In fact, it does not matter which drive thru you are using or what they are offering, you are clearly not in control. You are frustrated because you are not in control of your trip.
- Having an important meeting scheduled by a senior executive during a time you already had something important planned. Nothing you can do to control the event unless you want to quit or get fired. You are clearly not in control. You are frustrated because you are not in charge of your schedule.
- Your water heater leaking on the coldest Sunday of the year. You had nothing to do with it, and you cannot control the service time or the cost of the repair. You are frustrated because circumstances have taken control of your day away from you.
I think you get the picture: time management is controlling events. Exercising any kind of control over any kind of event is managing your time and when you don't exercise control, you are definitely not controlling events.
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Most people do not think about or realize how exercising a little bit of control is time management. Here are some examples of controlling events, just a little bit:
- When you are in the supermarket and you are eyeballing the various lines for the shortest or the one with the shoppers with the fewest items, you are trying to exercise control. If you guess right, you controlled the event of checking out, a little bit.
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When you use a GPS to go from point A to point B, you are exercising control over the event of driving between the points, especially if your GPS allows you a choice, even if it is only a minute faster a certain way.
- When you DVR your favorite TV show to watch at another time, you are controlling the event of when you watch. Maybe The Bachelor is not on at a convenient time for you? No problem: control the event by recording the show. A lot less frustration than missing it, right?
- When you drive eighty miles per hour, or roll through a stop sign, or change lanes in heavy traffic, guest what? You are exercising control over the event of driving to your destination.
Part of managing your time, or controlling events, is making sure you are not your own worst enemy. In my experience, people create work for themselves, or to rephrase in the language of this message, people give away control of events without even thinking about it, when if they exercised even a little control it would be beneficial.
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For example, every single time you call someone and leave a message to return the call, you are creating a future ‘event’, the return call, that you have absolutely no control over. You are creating a future interruption at a bad time. How does that make sense?
It’s like leaving the following message:
“Hey, this is Ed, sorry I missed you, could you call me back at the most inconvenient time for me? You know, call back when I am in the middle of something, or just started a meeting, or I am heading to the bathroom. I am looking for a good interruption to change my train of thought or momentum. Also, when you call back, can you please remind me what I called about? My mind will be on something else, and it will take me a minute to change gears. Thanks.”
Rather than leave that kind of message, mostly unspoken, when you miss someone, leave a message that says either when you will call back or gives them a window to call you. The equivalent of “Please call back between 1 and 2 pm when I will be sitting around doing nothing waiting for the phone to ring.”
Our lack of control over events, also extends to email exchanges. Think about it. You wake up and open your email mailbox and only a tiny fraction of emails in there were ones you requested or were expecting. The others arrived and you had no control over them, you had no control over the event of someone sending you an email that needs your response.
In fact, it needs your damn response before you get to what you identified as important. That's right, as a matter of course we deal with someone else’s C priorities before we deal with our own A priorities. Strange habit.
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So, what can you do? Here are several suggestions.
- End emails with the phrase, ‘no reply is needed’ to prevent the dribble of ‘ok’ or ‘thank you’ that fill up your inbox. You control the event of a reply.
- Use the magic phrase, which controls the event of the email exchange: ‘quick question.’ Not only will the email be opened by almost everyone, but a quick question also generally gets a quick answer, saving your time.
- Delay emails. There is an option in Outlook and most other mail programs that allows you to write an email and delay sending it until a time when you are better prepared to respond, meaning you are controlling the event of when you’ll need to respond.
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If you cut your own outgoing email by 50%, guess what? You’ll automatically reduce the size of your inbox by a healthy percentage. Some of us are old enough to remember a time before email was invented and somehow things worked ok then.
- Exercise control over meetings and connections. If you are already busy or committed during a specific time and someone wants to meet, suggest another time as better. Don’t doctors do that all the time? Speaking of controlling the event of an appointment.
- Set up ‘blocks’ of time for distractions or to drop meetings or projects into. For example, I will block off a day for meetings in Boston, and then when I reach out to make connections, I’ll suggest that date. Controlling events. Further, if I have an appointment in Boston for example at 9 am, I'll try to schedule a lunch meeting that same day close by and then an afternoon meeting. Controlling the event of being stuck on the Mass Pike?
This space isn’t long enough for me to write out the entire workshop, but I think you get the picture. Time management is controlling events and exercising any kind of control over any kind of event is managing your time.
No one really objects to controlling their time and their life, now do they? (Rhymes with Who Dey)
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If you think that you or your organization would benefit from TimeWorks, with more tips on controlling events and understanding the process of time, please reach out and we’ll schedule a time to connect, that is convenient for me, because I try to control events, and you, because you try to control events. Exercising any kind of control, over any kind of event, is Time Management. |
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Surprise Photo at the End |
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Joe's Positive Post of the Week |
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The Roll Call of states and countries where readers reside: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Washington DC, Wisconsin plus Canada, Spain, Conch Republic, Australia and the United Kingdom |
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Ed Doherty
774-479-8831
www.ambroselanden.com
ed-doherty@outlook.com
Forgive any typos please.
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