There is a magnificent scene in the television show "The Office" where somebody poops in Michael Scott's office. He is very upset, and refers to it as a hate crime. Somebody enlightens him on the critical elements to reaching hate crime status, and he responds with "Well, I hated it".
This morning I walked into my office. Went through the entire Monday morning pointlessness which exists in, what appears to be, every corporate office in these sunny United States of America. We all talked about our numbers, rubbed the cheeks and smiled softly at the people who hit their numbers and solemnly discussed how we promised next week would be better when numbers weren't hit.
This I'm fine with. Not fine with in the sense that it has any redeeming quality or brings value to single person. No, fine with as in I'm fine with the sitting in traffic when their is a car accident, it's just one of the painful things in life that happens sometimes but you can't control.
No, the poop I found on the floor of my email inbox was what I was not fine with.
I hated it.
There was an email, from our compliance officer, about training for licensed employees, that was due last week and was now overdue. This brings me stress. I don't like continuing education to start with, and then when it is not completed on time it can cause your license's to be interrupted and that is how we get paid.
The actual header read "compliance training - OVER DUE". That is a piece of poop.
I opened it up and there was three our four paragraphs about how late this training was, then finally in the bottom there was a list of people who needed to complete it, and I was not on that list.
Once you poop in someones office you can take the poop out, but the smell is going to hang around for a while. The stress and negativity that was unloaded on me today was only for one reason: laziness.
The person who sent it was too lazy to sit down and edit their mass mailer to who it was relevant too. They were too lazy to do five minutes of work that would save hundreds of people a few minutes of reading through and email and preemptively stop the poop smell from hitting their office on Monday morning.
Think twice when you are working, prospecting, selling, teaching and generally milling about in life. Sometimes we have to deliver poop. But if you have to deliver poop, think first, because otherwise you are committing a hate crime on somebody.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Time is not Money
Time is money, as the saying goes, and if you have money then you can control your time (that is where we have taken the thought process).
This thinking is supposedly against the culture of working 40 hours a week for a paycheck. It is what cool kids say when they are talking about running their own business or breaking free from the man, man. But it's garbage, and it's a little dangerous.
If you have enough money you don't have to work to pay for necessities, that is true. So then you've earned your freedom right. Well, unless you are sick. Steve Jobs had all the money in the world and he couldn't control his time. A living dog is better then a dead lion I read somewhere. So somebody working as a slave for forty hours a week and has evenings free and weekends off is far richer than Steve in his currently dead situation.
People always hear this argument and say "well, of course, you have to be alive... but if your alive then time is money". But my whole point here is that money can literally take your life.
Money is dangerous.
Most people get more money and become less free. They realize how to earn money and then want to earn more of it. They set some aside and then realize how much more they really need now that they have some. Or they start to earn a lot of it and realize how it feels. Then they NEED to earn more and more, not for the money but for the need, the feeling.
And lastly, most of us have started to earn a little or a lot and turn wants into needs. Somebody may have a need for 25k a year when they are earning 35k a year, and then they get an amazing new job and are making twice as much, but their "need" is now 60k a year.
Because once you have owned two cars, that is now a need. Once you have taken your wife out for a date and eaten sushi and looked into her eyes that becomes a need. Once you have sent your kids to private school and seen how well their friends are behaved that has become a need.
Needs are like beliefs, most people have them but could not name them and have never taken the time to sit down and asked why. Why do I believe that? Why is that a need?
What are your beliefs? What do you believe you need?
This thinking is supposedly against the culture of working 40 hours a week for a paycheck. It is what cool kids say when they are talking about running their own business or breaking free from the man, man. But it's garbage, and it's a little dangerous.
If you have enough money you don't have to work to pay for necessities, that is true. So then you've earned your freedom right. Well, unless you are sick. Steve Jobs had all the money in the world and he couldn't control his time. A living dog is better then a dead lion I read somewhere. So somebody working as a slave for forty hours a week and has evenings free and weekends off is far richer than Steve in his currently dead situation.
People always hear this argument and say "well, of course, you have to be alive... but if your alive then time is money". But my whole point here is that money can literally take your life.
Money is dangerous.
Most people get more money and become less free. They realize how to earn money and then want to earn more of it. They set some aside and then realize how much more they really need now that they have some. Or they start to earn a lot of it and realize how it feels. Then they NEED to earn more and more, not for the money but for the need, the feeling.
And lastly, most of us have started to earn a little or a lot and turn wants into needs. Somebody may have a need for 25k a year when they are earning 35k a year, and then they get an amazing new job and are making twice as much, but their "need" is now 60k a year.
Because once you have owned two cars, that is now a need. Once you have taken your wife out for a date and eaten sushi and looked into her eyes that becomes a need. Once you have sent your kids to private school and seen how well their friends are behaved that has become a need.
Needs are like beliefs, most people have them but could not name them and have never taken the time to sit down and asked why. Why do I believe that? Why is that a need?
What are your beliefs? What do you believe you need?
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
the universe and perspective
The universe is pretty big. But that doesn't really matter at all.
Mel Brooks once said that a comedy is a man who is walking through a field. An old well is covered up by weeds and he mistakenly steps into it. Falling to the bottom he breaks both of his legs. He then dies in the bottom of that well. A tragedy on the other hand, is when I get a paper cut on my finger.
The universe, under current rough assumptions is thirteen billion light years to the edge. A billion seconds is thirty years, to put a billion into perspective. The moon is one light second away. I don't know what equation I just created there, but it's so big that big is the wrong word.
But who really cares, when I got into work I got a paper cut on my finger.
Mel Brooks once said that a comedy is a man who is walking through a field. An old well is covered up by weeds and he mistakenly steps into it. Falling to the bottom he breaks both of his legs. He then dies in the bottom of that well. A tragedy on the other hand, is when I get a paper cut on my finger.
The universe, under current rough assumptions is thirteen billion light years to the edge. A billion seconds is thirty years, to put a billion into perspective. The moon is one light second away. I don't know what equation I just created there, but it's so big that big is the wrong word.
But who really cares, when I got into work I got a paper cut on my finger.
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