Seeking Coastal Utopia

Something happened. Something got broken, something was ruined, something did not go as planned. Now what? “I have to hurry up and do this wrong!” photo by Christopher Johnson on  Unsplash Freak out! Nooo-oo. Can we just stop and give up? Again, no. Absolutely not! No, you cannot curl up into a fetal position and start sucking your thumb either. You need to get up, put on your big kid pants, and make a decision to move forward quickly, to recover. If anything, we gained wisdom. We now know something new! We are able to learn from that experience! We now know what NOT to do next time and we probably now know what we need to do next. Or maybe we really don’t? Your project has gone sideways and you are out of money and is significantly underwater. The staff has too many other competing priorities, is it freak out time? Certainly — but only a little. It is what it is. You cannot change what has happened. You can not change the past. Now what? Embrace ...

Wait, wait. This is all wrong. It is supposed to be ”…all work and no play…” and in the reality of life, I would agree with you. I would much rather spend my day mountain biking, running, swimming, climbing, playing sports, SCUBA diving, you name it — if I could be outside, sweating bullets, that is where I would rather be.  Yet unfortunately, it is a choice. I can choose to do those things I just described without receiving income, or I can choose to work and earn money to afford those things I want to do. The balance struggle begins. But I digress…. “why are you all swimming in circles? get to work!” photo by Pascal van de Vendel on  Unsplash We work because most of us need to. When we work, we are expected to carry out tasks and activities to be remunerated for our efforts through cash, stocks, bonds, or horse trading. So how do we complete those activities? Good old-fashioned labor. Nose to the grindstone . Get. Stuff. Done. Humans are social be...

What happened? You just looked at the clock and it is the end of the day, and you did not do what you intended to do. Although it was on your list of things to do, you talked about it, you made the plans, yet you never got to it. How is that possible? Retrace your steps during a typical working day. “what the hell happened?” by Jonathan Rados on  Unsplash Email. Facebook. Instant messaging Meeting Email Phone call. Meeting Another phone call. More (a metric buttload more) instant messages. Meeting. Email. . . . Huh, look at that at, the end of the day. And you did not do a single thing on your list. “person distracted by their stupid smartphone” by Erik Lucatero on  Unsplash Now let’s look at the weekend. The intent is to work on Halloween costumes or carve pumpkins, or . Coffee Email Web searches News Exercise Xbox Chores Grocery shopping. XBox Cleaning Dinner prep. Dinner Movie or TV Bedtime. Well...

Have you ever been to the circus or have you ever seen videos of the clown car? A bunch of clowns cramped inside, clambering out one after another. Yet you never really know who is driving. They had no purpose other than piing in with most likely no specific directions, no specific purpose other than being slightly silly? In case you are slightly analytical and curious about how they fit so many clowns into cars, Car and Driver devised some physics to justify the science behind clown car stuffing . “plenty of room in this beauty” photo by The Creative Exchange on  Unsplash When you think of the image of the clown car where multiple clowns cycle in and out of the vehicle, running in various directions, switching sides, changing locations, you lose track of who is where and which ones are in the show. The misdirection, constant change and people moving all over the place can cause you to lose track of who is doing what. Unfortunately, some organizations are much like cl...

What image does that title bring to mind? Boiling the ocean. What an immense feat! The level of effort that would be required to accomplish that task. The amount of work that would be required to boil the ocean. The immensity makes you wail internally with despair…. “a lot of water” photo by Giga Khurtsilava on  Unsplash This phrase is descriptive of a very difficult task, close to impossible . The project is massive in scope and scale, which may have been improperly scoped originally. It could be the type of project with an extremely ambitious goal which can potentially cause stress, frustration, and disappointment for those that are also involved because the project has an extremely low chance of success. So what do you do? Manage the scope. Scope is a life ring for the drowning person. In the case of a project that is out of control (or never in control), it is the tool that is used to ground everyone, in reality, providing a clear definition of the pro...

Or are you wrestling with a chrome squirrel? Are you comfortable with producing work that has no end? Are you comfortable not finishing a job and letting it continue until the end of time? You need to have a bias for action! You need to accept the work as it stands, stop fussing with that thing you are doing, realize that it is good enough to ship.  Go! Ship it . take my work — photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on  Unsplash Constraints are our friends . Constraints help us find solutions when we were not looking. Forcing a time constraint, even if it is artificial, will urge us to produce work on time and allow us to deliver.  What are you waiting for? Ship it already! oooo, shiny…squirrel! Too often we let things distract us from what is most important. A shiny squirrel sitting over in the corner begging for your attention, chittering away. Screeching for your attention. It has called you with that siren song… I’m a problem over here you want to...

“photography of brown nuts” by Tom Hermans on  Unsplash Peanuts are a wonder food. So much so that peanut oil was considered a treatment for polio in the 1930s. George Washington Carver was a brilliant man who had many ideas and inventions that were recognized around peanuts, yet he performed many studies around the cultivation of plants and botany — peanuts just happen to be the association forever linked to his name. Carver created more than one hundred ways to use peanuts , however, peanut butter was not one of them. One important fact of Carver’s accomplishments was to help introduce the use of peanut plantings as a great farming crop to help fight soil depletion from cotton and tobacco farming methods. In honor of George Washington Carver, we need to integrate peanuts, even peanut butter, into our work whenever possible. Let’s investigate a couple of ways we can use peanuts in business today — aside from pay (mwuah mwuah — too punny). The simplest version of peanu...

Check your ego at the door!  Or better yet, bring your ego with you, only if you can keep it in check! Why do we think that we have to do everything? Perfectly, every time? Do we honestly believe we have answers for everything that is presented to us? That we have to answer every person that comes to us with a deep, meaningful response, solving their problem for them — because we can (or think we can)? Is it because of ego? Is it because we do not want to be seen in a position of weakness? Or do we want to be seen as superior to others around us? Ego? Check! “woman carrying sack of hay on back while holding stick” by Graham Covington on  Unsplash When you are struggling under a heavy load, what do you do? Do you continue to struggle under the heavy load slogging through it trying to complete it yourself? Killing yourself to get the work finished? Then running out of energy and not getting it complete? Do you think that it would be faster for you to do the w...

We have all heard the adage there is an elephant in the room. Heck, we are probably all sick of hearing about the elephant in the room, even when we try to ignore it. The elephant in the room is the biggest thing in the room that everyone wants to ignore, but someone invariably brings it up. “elephant during daytime” by James Hammond on  Unsplash …ahem, excuse me. I want to bring up the elephant in the room… Dude, shut up! I really do not want to ignore elephants anymore, I think we should eat them! And then the following adage is how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! I think I am going to vomit, not because of too many elephants, but because of too many euphemisms. Stop it already. People freak out when they are presented with a massive undertaking, the large jobs, the elephant size jobs. The ones with a seemingly impossible action (note — there is no such thing as impossible) and the mountain of work looming in front of you is massive. You ca...

Are you a giver or are you a taker? Do you try to share everything that you have or do you try to keep things close so that no one can steal it? How do you get those around you to level up? You should share your ideas and share your concepts. Always. Often. Why? “Do Something Great neon sign” by Clark Tibbs on  Unsplash It allows you to leverage the ideas and thoughts of a different worldview . Someone else’s perspective will help you build on those dreams. Ego check. The reason why you do this is that you are not an expert in everything. Seriously. You may be an expert in photography . Or one that can articulate and present engineering development in a rich and impactful manner. Or in helping others see their full, true potential , and teach others to be more empathetic in their actions, but you too can use the help. The help you need to level up . You can certainly be the one that comes up with all the ideas, the creator. You can be the one that’s driven to pus...

“aerial view of bridge with cars crossing” by Fahrul Azmi on  Unsplash I love generalities because it makes it easier for the simple human mind to focus and work on items when they are categorized in nice boxes. Make the math easier. Makes it easier to eat elephants. Recognize that now you are reading through this, your filter is going to show the rule of threes to you everywhere. You will also find that these “rules” will make things easier, flow better, and even provide results sooner. The Rule of Threes happens to be my favorite guideline for all things, for all time. The Rule of Threes shows up everywhere — in work and life. Most certainly because my mental filter is set to find those patterns, yet nevertheless, it works and makes better sense of the world. The Rule of Threes makes it easier to get stuff accomplished by helping understand the ratios of requirements for different subjects or how to approach work. You can use it for estimations, allocations, resource ...