What’s In Your Attic?
One of my favourite books is Steinbeck’s “The Winter of our Discontent”. In it, he writes “So many old and lovely things are stored in the world’s attic because we don’t want them around us and we don’t dare throw them out.” I love this sentiment. It can be applied at a personal level, organizational level, institutional / societal level or at almost any abstraction one cares to apply it to. These lovelies in the attic could be ways of doing...
Read MoreThe Goodness of Blisters
Being someone who works in an office environment, I have office-worker hands. It doesn’t take much in the way of manual labour to lead to the inevitable and annoying blister. I’m not a big gardener, but fall leaf raking thing sometimes produces them. I also love splitting wood for our fireplace and that activity always leads to blisters when I have any kind of splitting volume to get through. A couple of weeks back, as I was happily hacking my way through some maple from a neighbour’s...
Read MoreThe Struggle to Read…Books
I used to read a lot. As a young person, I read novels, biographies, historical stuff. Nothing that would put me in the league of intellectuals but a mix of escapism content and substance. However, as I took stock of my habits the end of this past year, I realized it has been a long time since I’ve read much in the way of books. I read a handful each year, but not more than that. Some years less. Perhaps I am just another data point in the universe of short-burst communications that...
Read MoreSharpening the Saw
One of the benefits of being a free agent / contractor is that between contracts, you get to wipe the slate clean and start over. Downtime between gigs provides the opportunity to evaluate what worked and what didn’t in your last engagement and in general, assess and document what you learned. It also affords you the opportunity to overlay your last engagement with all your prior experiences. It’s quite interesting to see what similarities you find (in people, company cultures,...
Read MoreMotivational Graffiti
I saw this graffiti painted on a wall of a utility building while running on the Iron Horse Trail in Kitchener a couple of months back. I liked it so much, I went back a few days later and snapped this picture. For some reason, it really resonated with me. I equated it with the old saying “What have you done for me lately?” or “You’re only as good as your last game”. However, this has a more upbeat feel to it. It has a classic message that is a call to dust...
Read MorePractise
Baseball great Pete Rose was once asked what part of his game preparation set him apart from other players. His response was that he practiced much different than other players. He observed that good hitters tended to practice hitting more than other elements of their game. Good outfielders liked to have fly balls hit to them for long periods so they could hone their abilities taking fungos off the wall. He viewed this as flawed because these were the skills these players were already good at....
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