Lessons in Life

Written By Regina Brett, 90 years old, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio

To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me.  It is the most-requested column I’ve ever written.
My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:

1.       Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
2.       When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3.       Life is too short to waste time hating anyone…
4.       Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick.  Your friends and parents will.  Stay in touch.
5.       Pay off your credit cards every month.
6.       You don’t have to win every argument.  Agree to disagree.
7.       Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.
8.       It’s OK to get angry with God.  He can take it.
9.       Save for retirement starting with your first pay cheque.
10.     When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11.     Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.
12.     It’s OK to let your children see you cry.
13.     Don’t compare your life to others.  You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14.     If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.
15.     Everything can change in the blink of an eye.  But don’t worry; God never blinks.
16.     Take a deep breath.  It calms the mind.
17.     Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
18.     Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.
19.     It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.  But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20.     When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.
21.     Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie.  Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
2 2.     Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23.     Be eccentric now.  Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.
24.     The most important sex organ is the brain.
25.     No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26.     Frame every so-called disaster with these words ‘In five years, will this matter?’
27.     Always choose life.
28.     Forgive everyone everything.
29.     What other people think of you is none of your business.
30.     Time heals almost everything.  Give time.
31.     However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32.     Don’t take yourself so seriously.  No one else does.
33.     Believe in miracles.
34.     God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.
35.     Don’t audit life.  Show up and make the most of it now.
36.     Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.
37.     Your children get only one childhood.
38.     All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39.     Get outside every day.  Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40.     If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.
41.     Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42.     The best is yet to come.
43.     No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44.     Yield.
45.     Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.”

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Rob Horlock specialises in helping the commercial side of businesses to review and map processes, manage projects and improve individual and team working efficiencies. This also includes improving the effectiveness of emarketing, particularly aimed at marketing managers who use digital agencies. If you would like to find out more, see http://www.ef-ef.co.uk or email: rob@ef-ef.co.uk

Looking for your next job? www.mynextrole.co.uk

Why bother to document processes and briefs?

In nature, life carries on ‘by instinct’. Birds and animals migrate vast distances – usually twice a year. Salmon cross the Atlantic Ocean to spawn. House Martins build their nests under the eaves of the same houses in Northern Europe every year, having visited the plains of Africa in the meantime. Spiders spin complex webs. Bats fly ‘blind’ without hitting anything. Foxes try to find a way in to the chicken run … They aren’t shown what to do, they just know how to do it; it’s all in their heads.

The same might be said of many employees who manage pieces of work, or ‘projects’. Not much written down in the way of a process – everything they need to know is in their heads. Which may (or may not) be fine until information is needed by another person (or a system). The other person may want a status update, they may want some guidance on what to do next, they may want to review the plan following changes that they’ve recently been told about. And so on.

Having the detail in your head is great for you but not so convenient for everyone else in the process or working on the project. Sales and Marketing people tend (as a huge generalisation) to work like this. They know what they’re doing, what needs to be done and what’s been completed down to the nth detail. They know the budget status (from the excel spreadsheet on the personal drive of their laptop), they know the project status (because they had a discussion about it with key people earlier in the week) and they know what needs to be done next. But very little is documented in a collaborative environment in which information can be shared, everyone involved can update their own parts of the project for everyone else to see and where the status of Issues and Risks can be easily reviewed by all concerned. And why worry about providing a written brief to the agency when a phone call will do?

Do you recognise this view of life in your office?

If you do, then think about the benefits of better documentation. It may add some time up front to a project but will undoubtedly save more time further down the line. You will always have information in your head which doesn’t need to be shared. You will also have information that should be shared and understanding where the line is drawn is very important. Which information to share, how to share it and where to share it should be considered when reviewing business processes and when setting up a new project.

Your company will have a collaborative working environment. It may be a shared system drive (usually called the ‘J’ drive), it may be Lotus Notes, Microsoft Sharepoint, a company Intranet or other similar environments. If you are not using your collaborative environment to manage your projects, ask your IT team to demonstrate the benefits to you. It will be time well spent and you will spend a lot less of your time answering your colleagues’ questions. Oh, and your projects are more likely to be completed on time and less likely to bust the budget!

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Puns:

• Two vultures board an airplane, each carrying two dead raccoons. The
  stewardess looks at them and says, “I’m sorry, gentlemen, only one carrion
  item allowed per passenger.”
  
• Two boll weevils grew up in South Carolina. One went to Hollywood and
  became a famous actor. The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and
  never amounted to much. The second one, naturally, became known as the
  lesser of two weevils.  
• Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire int he craft, it sank proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it, too.
• A three-legged dog walks into a saloon in the Old West. He slides up to
  the bar and announces: “I’m looking for the man who shot my paw.”
  


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  Rob Horlock specialises in helping the commercial side of businesses to review and map processes, manage projects ands improve individual and team working efficiencies. This also includes improving the effectiveness of your emarketing, particularly in the area of turning prospects into customers. If you would like to find out more, see http://www.ef-ef.co.uk or email: rob@ef-ef.co.uk