Did you know that was your last kiss?

by: Jameson Douglas - November 15th, 2011   Filed under: Resilience Add Comment

Sure, you likely knew things were changing, that the luster was wearing off the romance, but when did it finally change from decline to the end?  Change, all change both good and bad, is a slow incremental process.  You don’t just wake up one morning and find that you’re 30-pounds lighter (or heavier).

It is the realization that change has actually occurred that usually is abrupt, and that realization is always after the fact.

Some of us spend far too much time trying to measure our progress and the result it most often frustrating.  Even worse, some of us lack confidence and need every minute scrap of achievement to fuel our perseverance.  To these unfortunate souls, a minor setback or lack of measureable results can rob them of their momentum.

3 hour work day?

by: Jameson Douglas - October 27th, 2011   Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Myths Exposed Add Comment

Yesterday, I explored how much the speed of our world has change, in what is really a short period of time.  When I came across the passage in Howard Mansfield’s, Turn & Jump; How Time & Place Fell Apart, detail how little time a Colonial American merchant actually spent working on business matters—just three hours per day—I was floored.  Since writing the first posting, I’ve begun to think about what the implications of his slower time versus our current speed of life and commerce.

The colonial merchant had to pick his words, directives and actions carefully.  It would take months, not minutes to issue a new set of directives.  Today, many of us can be caught up in the silly details; we can redirect, realign and second-guess at will.  A little detail comes to mind, we send a quick email.  “Hey what about the status of what I asked you about yesterday?”

Do we really spend more time accomplishing things than our colonial forefathers?  Sure, we’re busier; some of us have dozens if not hundreds of correspondence per day, compared to his three to six, but are we actually accomplishing more?  Or are we just doing more?

These are the men that built are country, somewhat important in the overall scheme of America’s economic history.  Did the slow speed of communication really hinder them in creating the foundations of the American economy we so love to hate today?

For that matter, how much do most of us really accomplish each day and how many of our actions are just noise?  Noise in the form of communications, for the sake of communication, just because we can.  Read More

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Did your ancestors work harder than us?

by: - October 27th, 2011   Filed under: Alternatives Add Comment

Sometimes I think we forget just how much our world has changed in what, in the history of mankind, is just a blink of an eye.  The forty-hour workweek, blackberries and our bosses disrupting our vacations are all recent inventions.  Take a moment to think about the life of busy merchant in colonial times.  These men were the mover and shakers of their days, 18th century Donald Trumps and Warren Buffets.

They must have been working their fingers to the bone.  Or did they?

“The average Colonial American merchant in a thriving port spent only three hours a day on business, leaving many hours free to spend in the tavern or at church.  A busy merchant, trading overseas, might handle about thirty transactions a day, dispatch four to six letters a week, and receive two or three letters.  It took four months to exchange letters between Boston and London.  Sailing ships crossed the Atlantic only when fully loaded and in good weather.  A three-month layover in port was common; it could take a month just to load a ship.”

By Howard Mansfield, author of Turn & Jump; How Time & Place Fell Apart

Time moved slower, there was no email or overnight shipping.  Things not only actually could wait, more-often-than-not, they had to.  Are we better off now?

I truly love indoor plumbing, antibiotics and that I can expect my children to live to adulthood; however, the slower pace of life does have its appeal.

Email, voice mail, collaborative work platforms such as BaseCamp and SkyDrive actually have the potential of allowing us to slow down our lives, rather than uncontrollably speed them up.  Emails don’t expire, project don’t always need to unfold sequential.  Just perhaps we could learn something from our colonial forefather.  Communications was far too precious and time consuming to waste on the superfluous—what if we began to treat communications with the same care?

Just a thought.

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Sometimes it’s hard…

by: Jameson Douglas - October 26th, 2011   Filed under: Mindset Add Comment

Sometimes it is hard to keep doing the what you know you need to do when no one recognizes that you are actually doing it.

It doesn’t matter,  you know it’s what you need to be doing, so keep doing it. Hopefully they will say something…eventually.

If they don’t, it still doesn’t mean that you’re wrong. Though you might be, but that is another story all together.

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What did you really just say?

by: Jameson Douglas - October 15th, 2011   Filed under: Clarity & Confusion Add Comment

I was born on was born on 10/5/1968 and Thom York, lead singer of the band Radiohead, was born on 7/10/1968, we both celebrated our 43rd birthdays last week.  I’m two days older.

No Thom was not born on July 10th 1968, rather the British chose to write dates—day, month, year.  Confusing?  Seven, October 1968 is two days after October 5th 1968.

So, what’s the big deal? First, Radiohead is cool, and since Thom and I are same age, there is at least anj outside possibility that I also be cool.  Secondly, and almost as importantly, what about the words that we use every day.  We use words such as: success, failure, resiliency, mediocrity, etc…, do these words mean the same thing to those we’re speaking with?

One of my favorite quotes of all time is:

“The problem with communications is the illusion that it has occurred” (Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw).

When someone agrees or disagrees with us, are we even talking about the same thing?  Have you ever found yourself arguing with someone only to discover that you were actually agreeing with each other? A slight misunderstanding or subtle different shading of a word or concepts meaning, especially early on, can be devastating to effective communication.

For that matter, do we even know what some the words we regularly use truly mean to us, or is our own definitions somewhat fuzzy?

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Less is really more…really

by: Jameson Douglas - October 8th, 2011   Filed under: Pop Psychology Add Comment

I’m about 50 pages into Cathy N. Davidson’s, Now You See It: How the brain science of attention will transform the way we live, work and learn, it has been a hard read so far, however, I just renewed it for another week.  Her examples are long and so far too long; however, on more than one occasion just as I’m about to set the book down for good, she gets to the point, and the points has been worth the pain.

Here is one of these points: A newborn baby has 40% more neurons than an adult brain, and it is the paring down of these neurons, as we learn to select what to pay attention to, that allows us to function effectively as adults.

So, here is some actually scientific proof that less is actually more.  Could it actually be that it’s not about how many things you’re trying to accomplish, but rather, what you actually accomplish, that two completed objectives are better than ten partially competed ones?

Even in simpler times, trying to process all the information and stimuli we experience would be overwhelming and exhausting. What we need is a way to efficiently sort through all this information.

Step 1 is selective attention that reduces the volume of information.

Step 2 is grouping the remaining information and tasks into workable patterns and groups. Read More

Are Our Ideas So Fragile?

by: Jameson Douglas - October 4th, 2011   Filed under: Mental Roadblocks Add Comment

There is a military saying that no plan survives contact with the enemy

Our opinions, beliefs and ideas are much like military battle plans, they seldom remain intact when exposed to the outside world.  Many of us fall in love with our ideas and opinions, and lose sight of our actual goal, going to extraordinary measures to protect them from the hard cruel world.

The sound of these pontifications and steadfastly held diatribes are the background noise at coffee shops, water coolers and family picnics.  It’s been my observation that the further someone is from the actually decision making the more steadfast and inflexible their views.  People who have never managed eighteen working class women, made a payroll or run a multimillion-dollar company, are the ones that are sure they know what “really” needs to be done.

Are your ideas and opinions really that fragile?  Is it that important to be right or to hold onto particular political point of view or opinion, or is it more important to achieve your goals?

Seeing a distinction between goals and plans is a characteristic of effective and successful people.  When faced with an unexpected reality, these people are capable adjusting their plan while not letting go of their goals.  These are the entrepreneurs and even the occasional politician or general who are actually getting the job done.

Excuses vs. Explanations

by: Jameson Douglas - October 1st, 2011   Filed under: Clarity & Confusion, Mental Roadblocks Add Comment

Do you know the difference between an excuse and an explanation?

If you know that you do, you certainly don’t.  If you think that you do, you might buts it’s unlikely.  If you have no idea, you’re probably right; however, you might just have a chance of figuring it out.

Sure, there were times when I knew I was spinning an excuse, and there were other times where it couldn’t be an excuse because it was justifiable.  It was only after I finally took real responsibility for something that I realized that most of the time I had been making excuses.

Taking responsibility is internal; the outside world can’t see it or quantify it, though it can be sensed like confidence or charisma.

Is an explanation always doomed to be an excuse?  I don’t think so, though I think that it usually is going to be.  It’s kind of like a pretty girl, who when looked at objectively shouldn’t be pretty, but still is.

Am I through making excuses?  I doubt it, however, now at least I have something to measure my excuses against, and perhaps there are few excuses in my future.

A Wngman’s Perspective

by: Jameson Douglas - October 1st, 2011   Filed under: Clarity & Confusion 1 Comment

“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” – Plutarch

This past Fathers Day, my wife and daughters took me to the New England Air Museum for open cockpit day.  Open cockpit day rocks! I got to sit the cockpit of a WW2 P-47 Thunderbolt fighter, a Vietnam area Huey Gunship and a F-100 Super Saber fighter jet.  Did I mention that this was awesome?  Even better, my six-year-old daughter couldn’t get enough of it (daughters aren’t just about Barbies and hair clips!).

Sitting in the P-47 Thunderbolt, the largest single engine fighter plane of WW2, I realized two things (1) just how small the pilots were back then; I had to contort my 5’10” frame so that the canopy could close (2) how poor the visibility out of the cockpit window was.    Read More

April vs. October-Who Wilts Under Pressure

by: Jameson Douglas - September 29th, 2011   Filed under: Motivation, Pop Psychology Add Comment

Yesterday, I abused the baseball metaphor that the ability of consistently repeat ones delivery  being the key difference between being in the major rather than the minor pitcher.  Today I’d like to explore what separates the good from the great, and in honor of my Boston Red Sox historic collapse last night, I figured that might as well beat the baseball metaphor completely into the ground (baseball is dead to me…at least until spring training).

When the media interviewed a “great” pitcher after he wins a tough game, the pitcher often say things like, “I made the pitches I need to make”, or “I was just focused on making my pitches”.  The greats, in baseball, golf and business, have a plan and they execute their plan without regard to how important the outcome.  If a batter has trouble hitting an inside fastball, a great pitcher sets him up for a swing third strike on a inside fastball, whether it’s game seven of the World Series or his third start in April is irrelevant.  Read More