There are people in this world who perpetually turn discussions into debates. If you are one of those, you need to stop it, now.
Discussions are a conversation about any given topic. Debates are an argument about the topic. Discussions warm and engaging. Debates agitated and antagonistic. Discussions inclusive and free-flowing. Debates belligerent and competitive.
Do you see now?
Goal setting is vital to long-term success. Nobody can dispute this and any who do will base their arguments on philosophical nonsense. If you don't know where you are going, you'll never get there.
Targets are not the same thing as goals. Goals contain a measure of optimism and ambition. Targets, on the other hand, imply a requirement. A requirement is to be considered done before it is even done. It is not an option.
Implementing targets to complete goals is a useful tool which will work every time and in all circumstances, personal and professional.
“When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck…”– Paul Virilio
The sayings intention is to convey that all inventions have both positive and negative effects. But, it applies equally well to the idea of “nothing ventured nothing gained.” Every ship ever produced did not end up at the bottom of the ocean of regret.
Each of your failures could just as well have been a success. Failed attempts should never be a reason for not trying. Instead, it should become a chapter in your textbook of prosperity. Something you learn from, draw knowledge from and use to improve your next version.
Rile against laziness.
We are all innately lazy. Even those of us who proclaim to be otherwise. We aim to work harder, longer, better, and sometimes this might actually be more than just what we tell ourselves. We believe ourselves to be ahead, or even above the rest because we have earned it through hard work and dedication. But, given the opportunity, we will divert to our default and do less. As little as possible.
More work does not equal more enjoyment. If we were as energetic as we'd like to be, we would enjoy the tasks more. Instead, they are chores. It's OK to admit this. The key lies within consistency. Consistency is what breeds success. If we are constantly fighting off laziness, then accomplishments will follow.
What's your job? No matter your answer, you are wrong. You're a factory worker, we all are. Working on a production line, exactly as they did in the factories of Henry Ford and the thousands who followed.
Our screens are the conveyors. Conveyors which rob us of introspection, observance, and individuality. We have neither the time nor the means to express our own unique flavor because the next “thing” is already here – and now it is gone. We need to pay attention or we'll miss it.
For all we tell ourselves about creativity, teamwork and innovation, there is nothing to be said. If you are removed tomorrow, the next factory worker just slides into place and the process continues. You would not be missed because the attention is elsewhere, it is on the conveyor.
Christmas is a time of joy, happiness, family, blah blah blah. We have to love it and anyone who doesn't is a “Scrooge,” weirdo, or must clearly have something wrong with them. It is precisely this way with picnics.
The much-coveted picnic is basically packing a bunch of food from your fridge into little containers from your cupboard, adding utensils, plates, cups and the like, from your cupboard, a blanket, and any other paraphernalia I've neglected to mention, from your cupboard, into a basket. You then load up all this crap into the car, abandoning the comfort of your home, where there are chairs, tables, refrigerators and countertops. You drive to a spot where hopefully you will not be stung by bees, bitten by ants, or burned to a husk by the son. Next, you unpack all the shit you just packed, from the cupboards and comfort of home, proceed to struggle with the simplest of tasks, such as buttering some bread, throw your back out reaching for a nip of cheese, all the while commenting on how “wonderful this all is.” When you're done, which is basically dictated by the loss of feeling in your lower extremities, you'll proceed to mop the sweat from your brow, pack all the shit you brought from the comfort and cupboards of your home back in the basket (this time you more or less just create a shit-pile) and haul it all back home to the comfort and cupboards from which they came. Oh wait, you have to wash all the containers first.
Picnics are dumb.
Yesterday one of my sites went down. While not the first time for me, and happily, a so far unimportant site, I am reminded of just how little in control of the system we are. By this I mean, we know who we are paying to store and or display our product, but that is about the end of the line for most of us.
Over the years I've been able to teach myself more than the average Joe about back-end hosting, data storage, and even data centres to a degree. I'm able to create reroutes, CNAME and A-records, upload files directly and a lot of other useful things. I'd go as far as to say, a support call with me is far less of a game of Marco Polo than with many others.
Of course, the support call remains a sore spot. First, it takes far too long to get someone on the line. Second, it takes far too long to explain the issue, partly because you are assumed an idiot and partly because many support centre call staff are bottom of their craft (they are very likely idiots too). When the game of “who's an idiot” is finally over, only then can we get down to the problem which is 100% of the time magically inexplicable and will require time to rectify.
The point here is this, while we believe we are in control of what we know, what we create and so own, we are very far from it. We are but one magical moment from total darkness. A sobering thought.
Everyone has to start somewhere.
Everything must have a beginning. Every venture, adventure and journey has a day one. Even the biggest corporations were once upon a time just an idea, probably by one single person.
Always remember this when the fear of the unknown kicks into high gear. When your “yes but” mentality rears its head. When the curve slows and things get trickier than you remember them being in a while. Just like everything has a beginning, so too does it have an ebb and flow.
If they say it was easy, they're lying.
An easy way, which is at least mostly true, to remember the use of assumption versus presumption is implied negativity. Presumption being the negative version.
We live in a presumptuous society.
All day people jump to conclusions, often based on no information at all, about others. I doubt this is intentional. It may be an evolutionary trait, designed to filter out “unnecessary information.” A world based on written as a posed to spoken communication doesn't help. It is notoriously difficult to read emotions in text.
Either way, it is dangerous and often leads to a confrontation in some cases, and regression in others.
In the same vein, if you believe someone else to be presumptuous, for whatever reason, best you pause and check your own reactions, chances are you too are behaving presumptively.
According to the web, the happy birthday song is in its 125th year this year. That is a lot of happy birthdays. It's supposedly the most sung English song in the world. Nevermind it is sung in many languages across the world (the internet is American it seems).
Point is this, have you ever met a single soul who doesn't absolutely hate it? We hate being sung for and maybe hate singing it even more, it's a close call. How the hell then is it so popular and why is there always one dreaded twit who insist on everyone singing it? More than this, why do we all, always agree?
Occasionally we receive videos of the kiddie’s parties at my son's school. Everyone is always having a whale of a time until the infernal “let's all sing happy birthday” time! If they hate it as early as 3 why can't we get off it already?
Accept it sucks and move on.