Immaturity

After that last post, I think I'm really not mature enough to be an Elder. Thoughts?

Homophones

I'm an Elder at my church. This past Sunday morning, the Deacons, Elders and Ministers were conversing in the office a few minutes before the service began. As is the custom, the Minister asked me (one of the Elders) to say a quick prayer before entering the sanctuary.

The normal prayer template is:

Thank you for ___, ___, and _____
Please be with all those in this room and help us to create a meaningful worship service.
Amen.

Well, I have this thing about public prayer. It frightens me. Not the prayer so much, but the activity of praying aloud in front of others. I actually do better in front of the entire congregation than in a small group setting. To me, prayer is a personal thing. Anyway, I was all ready to go with the standard and customary prayer template and then said...

Thank you for the sun of the morning after the rain of the week.

(internally) What was that? A flourish of creativity? Shoot. That sounded ridiculous. Who talks like that? And then, I thought… Wait, do you think people understood what I meant? Maybe they thought I said:

Thank you for the son of the mourning after the reign of the weak.

I just used four homophones that have religious connotations. And then I laughed out loud. And then said Amen.

No one said anything (also sort of a custom -- you are going in to church after all), but my friend looked at me as if to say, "What was that?!?"

Balance

I ran across these comments by Seth Godin:

We get to make a choice. And we can remake that choice each day. It's never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. It only takes a moment -- just one second -- to decide.

Before you finish reading this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that's to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?

Lately, I'm alternating between this kind of optimism (opportunity is right in front of us!) and a sense of overwhelming negativity (poverty, environmental concerns, illiteracy, war, terrorism, process adoption, PPQA staffing -- some of these things are obviously more important than others). 

I guess the idea is to keep moving forward; keep taking that next step toward solving the goal. It just takes a second to make the decision to be optimistic or pessimistic. 

Unusual

From time to time (okay, near-daily), I receive some pretty funny emails about things in or around the office. These emails are not really about the work, but more about the place where we work. I think I'll share them as they appear.  I know it goes against the theme of this blog to share the short story only, when there is probably a great (or at least tediously long) story behind it. I'm growing. Maybe.

Unusual 1: Will the owners of the red Chevy Tahoe and the dark green GMC Sonoma parked in front of the dunk tank, please move them.

Temperature

Irons in the fire.

We all have too many things (Irons) to do and we try to keep them all going (Hot; in the fire).  I had a conversation last night with one of my friends/advisors. We decided that it is quite likely that many of these Irons are things that people don't care about now. At one time, they were critical -- Hot for the minute in the heat of the moment. Now, they are just taking up flame in our fire.

We've started categorizing projects and tasks using the terms "Hot Iron" or "Cold Iron". 

David Allen describes that annoying frustration that occurs when you have something on your TO DO list that isn't being done.  Remember that one time when you realized you wanted to clean the garage. You never intended to do it immediately.  Your mind didn't get that message, though, and it thought you should have started tidying 24/7 until the garage sparkled.  Every time you walk through the garage, your mind starts saying, "Hey, there is that dirty garage again! I think I saw a pile of broken-down cars over in the corner."  To counter this, we need to add Clean the Garage to our list, but put it on our Deferred list (David Allen calls it the Someday/Maybe list). Try this: Evaluate Garage Cleanliness on September 15.

For our work projects, I think we need to pick some of the Irons that are truly important and keep those Hot. All other Irons need to be categorized as Warm or Cold and then prioritized appropriately -- ignore the Cold Irons for now. When we complete one of our Hot Irons, we grab the next one in the warming oven (with gloves, of course). Then, periodically review the entire list to see if any of the Irons need to switch lists or move around in priority on the list.  I typically find that reviewing the list of Irons makes me think of something new.

I'm going back in the fire.

Enlightenment

My two favorite magazines are Fast Company and Dwell.  I eagerly await the arrival of the next issue, even when the last issue is not fully read. I'd rather be behind on a good thing.

The most recent issue of Fast Company has a great article by Charles Fishman about light bulbs, specifically compact fluorescent light bulbs. No, really -- it is an excellent article and provides a strong message, a call to action, and an easy next step. Please check it out here and then go buy some light bulbs. He suggests you replace one. I think you can do better than that. How else can such a small investment make a big difference (fiscally and environmentally). 

You might also check out this site on GE's efforts. And then go watch this movie.

Optimism

Think in terms of possibilities rather than limits.  Contribute to a culture of optimism, hope, and expectancy.