Attention Might be Overrated

Clive Thompson’s recent article in Wired magazine encourages us to let our minds idle or wander. In fact, he cites research that says we can’t keep our attention from wandering. Our minds drift away from the task at hand one third of the time. Brain scientists now believe that time spent daydreaming is used by our brains to process long term memories and tackle problem solving tasks.

Now I didn’t need any (probably tax funded) scientific research to recognize the benefit of daydreaming and mind wandering. I’m an expert at it. I long ago abandoned the idea that it is in my best interest to attempt to multi-task. I like to focus really hard on a single thing, but for just a brief amount of time. It turns out that’s what the folks who think they are good multi-taskers are really doing. They’ve just mastered the time slicing better than the rest of us. I still think they lose some productivity.

I focus for that short period of time — measured in minutes more often than hours — then I take a break and let my brain do whatever it thinks it needs to do before I throw the next item of attention at it. The process keeps me fresh, although it tends to annoy those around me who still believe that idle time is wasteful time, or even evil time.

Here’s my suggestion for those of you who grind away hour after hour trying to whittle away at your To-Do list: Take a break! Walk around the block. Have a snack. Chit chat with a co-worker, even if that means interrupting his attempt to focus too. In the end, you’ll get just as much done and you’ll have more fun doing it. You might even solve that problem that has been perplexing you for a while.

I Get to Decide How I Feel

I’m sitting in a restaurant alone right now. I was invited here by an associate so he could tell me how his new employer can help me be successful. It turns out he isn’t joining me.

In earlier days, I’d be popping a gasket about this. Today I’m ordering a BBQ chicken pizza and enjoying a quiet lunch alone. How’s that for finding my center? I don’t know if it’s the result of becoming an empty nester or getting older or the cumulative impact of all those self-help pop psychology books, but my attitude toward the things that happen around me is dramatically different. It’s more Zen-like than ever before.

The beauty of it is that I’m a lot happier and the results are not much different than back in the days when my response was ranting and raving. Mind you I’m not discouraging ranting and raving. It always provided a quick hit of better feeling. I’ve just found lately that my conscious choice to be content seems better in the long term.

Perhaps some other event today will illicit the rage I used to have. If so, it will have been my choice to react that way. I’ve taken that control away from the universe.

Too Much of Anything

I’ve always been a portable gadget geek. I carried a PDA before there were enough devices on the market for them to be called PDAs. I have a box at work that is filled with devices, like the Palm V and the Apple Newton, that I believe were just too far ahead of their time and will return in a reincarnated form that will amaze everybody but me. I expect it. I also keep the local electronics recycler busy with digital cameras, voice recorders, ebook readers, and a host of other devices that sounded more cool than they turned out to be.

As each new gadget arrives, I immediately start rationalizing why I MUST have one. “Of course I need the new whatchamacallit because it will save me time, space, money, etc.” I’ve used this argument to buy electronic book readers, tablet PCs, PDAs, smart phones, GPS units, heart rate monitors, bigger flash drives, cameras, and all manner of other devices. When I’m buying them for work I can add the excuse that I need to experiment with it so I can report to my small business computer outsourcing customers.

One excuse I’ve never used is that the device will let me play my favorite game of the day while I’m sitting around in waiting rooms and airports or my living room while my wife is watching a TV show that makes my brain disolve. I don’t use that excuse because it won’t fly. However, one of the first things I check is whether I can get a version of my current favorite time waster on it. For a long time that meant it had to play Bejeweled.

I can’t count the number of times Susie asked me to “put that thing down and spend some time with me!” I always responded that “I am spending time with you.”

I didn’t get it until she got an iPhone and became so hooked on Bejeweled that I had to give it up. I knew that the monster I saw her becoming was the monster I had been for a long time. I also saw that she would soon surpass my high scores. I have found suitable replacements that rob my family of my attention and cause me to lose track of time until hunger pangs remind me how long it’s been since I last ate even though I’m still sitting at the table. Sometimes it takes the low battery notice to get me to stop.

I know it’s out of control, just like my gadget buying habit. (How do I justify a new Droid?) I can’t stop myself most of the time. I even have studies on aging and brain function that I can use to justify my marathon casual gaming. I don’t care if the research is spotty or flaky. I can use it to justify the behavior I want to continue. I’ve done similar things to validate my high cholesterol and my daily alcohol consumption. Even my chocolate obsession is supported by tax funded university research.

So I can’t wait for whatever is next. I’m probably going to buy it with a solid reason that doesn’t hint of addiction.

The Best Phase of Child Rearing so Far

I have enjoyed every phase of raising our children. I still remember Susie and I eating and sleeping in shifts during our first few days at home with Kimberley. I got immense pleasure in seeing Alex take the field in his first soccer game, or watching Christopher ride his bike solo the first time.

All of the phases of my children growing up have seemed to be the phase I was ready for when it arrived. None has been as incredibly enjoyable as our current phase: Empty Nesters.

Don’t misunderstand me. It’s true that having the house to ourselves is nice for me and Susie, but what’s good about this phase is that we have adult children who like us, for the most part. And we like them. I no longer have the role of disciplinarian. My kids don’t need my approval to do things. It’s nice that they still ask my advice sometimes. It’s also nice that we just hang out as friends – peers – most of the time.

I realize that this probably isn’t the last phase. I’m still hoping to be a grandpa one day. I can see that my role as a grandparent will change the relationship I currently enjoy with my children. I hope I’m ready for that phase when it comes.

On Staying Calm

I spent thispast weekend in New York with my son. We were celebrating his 21st birthday. I flew in from Indy and be flew from DC. The weekend didn’t start very well. Alex went to the wrong airport so he missed his flight. He got on another only to have the plane return to Dulles after about a half hour in the air. Our original plan was to be at LaGuardia together by 10:00. It was after 2:30 when we finally loaded into a cab. I had spent the day in one airport while he spent it in another. Then it rained – Friday afternoon and all day Saturday.

On Sunday evening we returned to LaGuardia to head home. I gave Alex the last of my cash when we separated. He’s a starving college student afterall. When I picked up my boarding pass, it didn’t have a seat assignment. That’s right. The flight was oversold. I found myself stranded in New York with no cash.

There were times earlier in my life when these events would have had me so twisted up that my weekend would have been ruined. Not this trip. Alex and I had many more things that didn’t go as expected. We just went with the flow and enjoyed being together. The memories of bad service, overpriced food, lost reservations, and all the other crummy things will be gone long before our memories of the good time we had. Just staying calm and enjoying the good stuff makes a bigger difference. Alex and I had a blast!

Why are We Afraid of Risk

One of the biggest impediments to forward progress is fear of risk. We continually overestimate the risk of change while underestimating the risk of the status quo. Every so often, someone manages to make the rounds on television or talk radio from pointing out this strange non-symmetric way that we deal with risk. The reality is that we just feel safer with the evil we know, even when we know that it is pretty evil.

I, on the other hand, take the opposite approach. Discoveries, new things, novel approaches come from taking chances. Besides, as real estate mogul Trammel Crow once said, “There’s as much risk in doing nothing as in doing something.” With that in mind, I’m always willing to take a risk. The risks that catch us up are the ones we don’t even know we’re taking so I don’t worry that the risks I take are “calculated” or not. If I know about them, I probably don’t need to worry about them.

My seemingly cavalier attitude toward risk is disconcerting to many people in my life. Over time, my family and friends have come to understand that my risky behavior isn’t as dangerous as it might seem. I don’t put life and limb at risk very often. I’m just excited by the chance to do something new or to do something old differently.

What Do You Really Do?

We know what we do for a living. Most of us have our 30 second elevator speech and our 25, 50, and 100 word descriptions of our businesses. But what do we really do? Why do you do what you describe in your elevator speech?

My friend Rhoda Israelov, who is now a ghost blogger, once told me that she has always been a teacher. During a successful career as a financial planner, she collected new clients by conducting educational seminars and writing informational columns that taught people about their personal finances.  Now, she helps her customers teach others about their businesses thru blogging. Sure they hire her to get them search results, but she teaches because that’s what she does.

My wife, Susie, is a caretaker. She has worked in banking, finance, and legal occupations, but in whatever position she holds, she is taking care of her customers, clients, and co-workers. It’s what she does. If she started working tomorrow as a bouncer in a bar, she’d be the most care-giving bouncer in the world.

I found out recently that I’m a coach. Others have known it for a while I imagine, but it just hit me as I came to the end of my middle schoolers’ Cross Country season the other day. I have one of the worst teams in the city. They complain about practice every day. They feign sickness and injury to avoid running in a meet. Yet in spite of themselves, they’ve come to appreciate running in the few weeks our season lasted. In fact, many have surprised themselves with their increased capacity for running. They still have a long way to go before they are contenders for ribbons, medals, and trophies, but these kids surpassed their beliefs in themselves. It’s the most thrilling thing I get to do.

But, like Rhoda and Susie, I coach wherever I go and whatever I do. It’s how I work with my customers and my staff. It’s how I raised my children and how I interact with my friends.

What do you really do? If you peel back all the titles and job descriptions, what’s left that carries thru all that you’ve done. Find that single thing and do more of it in whatever you do. The world will be a better place.

Susie is a nurturer.

Reuniting with the Past

Over two consecutive weekends I attended my wife’s 30 year high school reunion and my 25 year college reunion. These are interesting events. First, there is little worse than being the spouse at a 30 year reunion. I was lucky enough to know about a dozen of my wife’s classmates or spouses (the ones she stayed in touch with over the years). For the most part, I watched people with whom I had little in common try to pretend as if they really missed these people that they hardly knew when they walked the same hallways together 30 years ago. After a while, people drop the pretense and start to collect into the same cliques that existed when they were in high school. They even gossip about the people in the other cliques. Apparently the purpose of the earlier attempts to reconnect was to gather intelligence for the gossip mill that is the bulk of the event.

My high school class hasn’t had a reunion since its tenth, nor has my college class. I noticed that while the cliques and gossip still remain, at 25 years, much of the pettiness is gone. People can no longer pretend they aren’t middle aged. They have become more content with their lot in life. I liked that so much better than the one-upmanship that continued to permeate those earlier reunions.

I told my classmates at our tenth reunion that if they waited for me to plan another one, our tenth would also be our last. As my 30th high school anniversary approaches next year, I’m beginning to soften on that stance. I think I’d be willing to try again somewhere around our 50th. I figure by then those of us who have survived will be completely at ease with who we are and who the people around us seem to be. We’ll really be able to have a good time then.

Filling Your Jar

A friend recently sent me the story about the college philosophy professor who presents his class with a jar filled with golf balls and asks them if the jar is full. After they all agree, he adds pebbles to the jar and shakes it up so that they settle into the gaps. Again, he asks if the jar is full and again the class heartily agrees. So he adds sand and shakes it around so it settles into the gaps. Once more he asks the class if the jar is full and once more they are convinced that it is. Now here’s the twist in my friend’s version. The professor pulls out two cans of beer and pours them into the jar where they soak into the sand.

Instead of asking if the jar is full, the professor makes his point. The jar is our life. The golf balls, he says, are the important things in your life. The pebbles are the other things that matter. The sand is all the rest – the small stuff. If we start filling our lives with the small stuff, there will never be room for the things that matter, much less the truly important things.

At this point a student asks, “What about the beer?”

“I’m glad you asked”, replied the professor. “That’s to demonstrate that no matter how full your life is, there’s always room for a couple of beers with a friend.”

Cheers!

Putting your Job on a Diet

An amazing thing about Americans: the more we try to lose weight the more weight we find we need to lose. As the size of the weight loss industry increases, so do our waistlines. We all know why, but we don’t want to admit it. The simple fact is that it requires hard work and discipline to lose weight while it is incredibly easy and satisfying to gain more of it.

Being effective at our jobs is similar. Filling each workday is easy, and often satisfying in the short run. However, days filled with the unimportant or unnecessary soon begin to create a bulge around our desks. Important work starts to pile up. People start calling to check on things we promised long ago. At some point guilt creeps in and we start to practice the best avoidance techniques we know. “Give me a break”, we scream. “I’m working as hard as I can.”

The problem is the same as dieting. It doesn’t help to order the diet Coke if it is accompanying the super-sized value meal. Staying busy with tasks that don’t impact the success of your organization is like ordering that diet Coke. It’s nothing more than a gesture that you will use later as an excuse. Stop trying to trick yourself because it won’t work.

If you want to succeed at work, abandon the diet mentality and make the permanent changes that are required to be successful. Start with basic stuff like keeping a list of things you must get done with due dates. Look at that list first thing every day and last thing every day. This is the dieter’s equivalent of getting on the scales daily. The act of getting on won’t lead to weight loss, but the awareness of how you’re doing will force you to think about the commitment you’ve made. Oftentimes, that is all that is necessary for miraculous change.

An amazing thing about Americans: the more we try to lose weight the more weight we find we need to lose. As the size of the weight loss industry increases, so do our waistlines. We all know why, but we don’t want to admit it. The simple fact is that it requires hard work and discipline to lose weight while it is incredibly easy and satisfying to gain more of it.

Being effective at our jobs is similar. Filling each workday is easy, and often satisfying in the short run. However, days filled with the unimportant or unnecessary soon begin to create a bulge around our desks. Important work starts to pile up. People start calling to check on things we promised long ago. At some point guilt creeps in and we start to practice the best avoidance techniques we know. “Give me a break”, we scream. “I’m working as hard as I can.”

The problem is the same as dieting. It doesn’t help to order the diet Coke if it is accompanying the super-sized value meal. Staying busy with tasks that don’t impact the success of your organization is like ordering that diet Coke. It’s nothing more than a gesture that you will use later as an excuse. Stop trying to trick yourself because it won’t work.

If you want to succeed at work, abandon the diet mentality and make the permanent changes that are required to be successful. Start with basic stuff like keeping a list of things you must get done with due dates. Look at that list first thing every day and last thing every day. This is the dieter’s equivalent of getting on the scales daily. The act of getting on won’t lead to weight loss, but the awareness of how you’re doing will force you to think about the commitment you’ve made. Oftentimes, that is all that is necessary for miraculous change.

Doing the Things I Love

When the Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School opened several years ago, I became the coach of their Boys and Girls Cross Country teams. I spent four years coaxing these kids, who thought a long run was from one end of the basketball court to the other, into traipsing thru a 5K run. At times I wondered aloud why I was putting myself thru so much grief. The kids didn’t seem to care. Parents didn’t seem to care. The school didn’t even seem to care. So I quit. I stayed until the freshmen I started with graduated and that seemed like a reasonable point for me to leave.

The next year, I could not believe how much I missed running with “The Bad News Bears” of Cross Country. What’s more, many of the kids would see me in the halls of the school and tell me how much they missed me coaching them. After one year off, I returned this fall.

I still have runners that seem to be more interested in whining than running. We still manage to bring up the rear at meets. But now I know that the time I spend with these kids makes them better. It makes me better too. I love being out there on a Saturday morning trying to encourage my kids to run instead of walking as they fall farther behind. For all the whining (and walking) they do, these children keep coming back to practice, and they keep getting better.

So do I.

We’re All Frugal Somewhere

My brother is a wine geek. He travels the country visiting wineries and buying very expensive bottles of wine. Most of his picks taste like Alka-Seltzer to me, but he’s quite pleased with them. While many of us in the family think his wine expenditures are beyond extravagant and would never consider spending that kind of money for alcohol, we also find him to be so penny-pinching tight in other areas that it makes us nuts. At one Thanksgiving gathering, he became so upset with my brother-in-law for purchasing name brand egg nog instead of the generic that he demanded we all participate in a blind taste test to see if we could tell the difference, thus proving what a waste of money it was to buy the name brand.

These two spending examples demonstrate how many of us have radically different money values when it comes to the stuff in our lives. For me, it’s the little things we use every day. I can’t stand to throw away that last sliver of soap or the tube of toothpaste that seems empty, yet I have no problem buying the quality cut of meat or the cool car. It makes no sense.

Keeping Good Customers

When I graduated from college in 1984 I was already enlisted in the US Air Force and on my way to Officer Training School in San Antonio, Texas. The first thing they did when I arrived (besides shaving my head) was to issue me a set of uniforms. For the first four years after getting out of school I wore blue pants, blue shirt, black shoes, and sometimes a blue jacket and blue tie.

It wasn’t until I started working at Indiana Bell in late 88 that I had to start buying “grown folks” clothes. Having never done this before, I cruised a local mall looking for help. I found it at a Bachrach store. I can’t recall the person who waited on me, but he was kind and caring and sold me a lot of shirts, pants, and ties as a result. More than that, he had my loyalty. I shopped almost exclusively at Bachrach’s for the three years I worked at the phone company.

When I started Port-to-Port Consulting, I didn’t want to have to wear suits and ties so my connection to Bachrach’s lessened. By the time I decided that it would be cheaper for me to wear nice dress pants instead of casual pants (my homage to growing up), I had to go in search of a new place to buy pants. Without hessitation, I headed for Bachrach’s, where a nice young man helped me to pick out several pairs and marked them for hemming. The first time I wore the black pants, I noticed a V cut into the waist in the middle of the back. I thought they had made some kind of error while taking in the waist. I took them back to be told that the pants were intentionally made that way. I told them I didn’t want them and they told me too bad.

I can’t remember how many years ago that was, but I know I haven’t been in a Bachrach’s since, even though they still send me junk mail. I’ve purchased many pants since then, from many places. Each time I buy pants I wonder why Bachrach’s didn’t do something to make things right for me about those pants. They would have sold me thousands of dollars worth of clothing since then.

General Patton said, “Don’t fight a battle if you don’t gain anything by winning.” The store won the battle over the V notched pants, and lost all of my future business. I won because they forced me to look elsewhere for clothes. Although I am neither, I do my dress clothes shopping at the Style Store for Big and Tall, owned by Joe Zuckerberg. Everyone there treats me superbly. I’ll continue to shop there as long as they do.

Just the Right Touch

Hands

A recent study conducted ad Depauw University describes how people convey emotions thru touch. In the study, blindfolded subjects were touched by people who were told to try to express a particular emotion (anger, fear, happiness, sadness, disgust, love, gratitude or sympathy). No words were exchanged. Subjects were as accurate at determining the emotion conveyed thru touch as is generally true for similar facial expression experiments.

I think this is great. I’ve always been a touchy person. Human contact is in short supply in our overly litigious society. We need to have more physical contact with one another. Now that researchers are demonstrating the communicative power of touch, perhaps people will lighten up a bit and become more physically expressive.

I’m ready to hug somebody right now.

Radical Difference from Changing One Thing

Zombie

Ever since George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead debuted in 1968, there have been standards for what zombies can and cannot do. For nearly 40 years, everybody who knew anything about zombies learned it from Romero. Until Danny Boyle came along in 2007 with 28 Days Later. In this genre cracking film, Boyle changed just one thing about the zombies. He made them capable of running!

If that seems insignificant, watch Night of the Living Dead (or any of it’s sequels or knock-offs), then watch 28 Days Later. How much more scary is a running zombie?

It’s amazing how often we can make an enormous difference by changing one element of common thinking. Before 28 Days, everyone was content to have zombies that wandered haphazardly around yet still somehow managed to catch and kill most of the sentient humans in their path. Now that image will no longer be acceptable. Zombies need to run!

What’s true for zombies is true for many of the things that we assume are immutable facts about our environment. If you look closely at a problem, you may find that changing one element makes a radical difference. Finding that one element is what makes some of us more creative than others. Cultivate the ability to recognize the element that should change and people will constantly seek your counsel. Start by recognizing that there is more than one answer. Boyle could have given his zombies the ability to communicate, or made them cunning. Heck, it’s sci-fi. He could have made them fly.

Often the change isn’t as important as the fact that you change something.