Managing the Beforehand - Breathing Space Blog

During the closing days of my senior year of high school, I rounded up some of the items on the bulletin board that I thought would make great memento. I had a roster of all the letter winners who were invited to the awards dinner last week. I also had the daily absentee list of the senior class, several of the school's monthly news letters, and various other announcements and memos.

Over the years, moving from Connecticut to Washington, DC to North Carolina, these items remained in a slim folder of other school items such as report cards, progress reports, and college acceptance letters.

For many reasons, my high school class did not have a five or ten of fifteen year reunion. They had one eighteen year reunion which I heard about afterwards and then another at thirty which, thankfully, I did learn about in time to attend. In preparation for attending the thirtieth reunion, I carefully copied all my artifacts from my high school days, left the copies at home, and brought the originals with me.

When I dispensed them to the class secretary and other officers, it blew them away. They made announcements during the evening of the artifacts I had so carefully preserved over the last thirty years.

One of my friends, Greg, thought I was nuts. Actually, what I had been doing was practicing the art of managing the beforehand, long before I even had defined it. It just occurred to me that someday what represented every day kinds of documents in way back when would be highly noteworthy 30 years later.

Brave New World is Here - Breathing Space Blog

"People never are alone now... We make them hate solitude, and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have it." --Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932

To Capture Your Great Ideas - Breathing Space Blog

The late author, songwriter, and comedian Steve Allen was among the most prolific talent in broadcasting history. He wrote more than 9,000 songs, including "This Could Be the Start of Something Big," which is still often played at New Year's Eve galas. Not bad for someone who played by ear. He wrote TV scripts, gags, jokes. He also managed to write 50 books: first mysteries; then on show business; then self-help topics like presenting, speaking, and humor; and then later on social issues before passing away early this century.

Like many others in TV, Allen's career began in radio where, as a young DJ, he once announced a Harvard vs. William & Mary football score as "Harvard 14, William 10, Mary 7." His interests extended beyond show business as well. A tireless advocate, Allen was instrumental in the airlines' smoking ban.

I met Steve Allen in the 1990s at the American Bookseller's Convention in Los Angeles. It was rumored that he never traveled without a pocket tape recorder and when I asked him if this was true, he took out his pocket tape recorder and showed me. Allen once explained that although he was thought of as extraordinarily productive, he figured he owed his high output to "Not letting good ideas get away." He recalled that even back in the 1950s, when tape recorders were bulky and expensive, he had one in each room of his house, even the bathroom!

You Cannot Control Much - Breathing Space Blog

A reader comments; “I could be more responsible regarding use of my time but certainly there are some things that are out of my control...”

Yes, for one thing your productive work life is finite. You will only be able to work for so many years at such and such a pace. One day that will no longer be possible. The big absolute, of course, is that life is finite and death is guaranteed, so far. If you are in your thirties, you have about 12,000 to 14,000 days and that's it.

Day to day, change is out of your control – it is guaranteed that how you used to do it or what worked yesterday will have less and less value with each passing day. You certainly want some stability in your life particularly in the areas of values and relationships, but don't fear change or close yourself off to it.

Increasing Job Security - Breathing Space Blog

Are you concerned about long term job security? Ever feel like you lack the time and energy to compete? There are many things you can do that don't take too much time and help you to secure and enhance your position:

* Take a few minutes to actually read your organization's annual and quarterly reports, bulletins, press releases, and memos. Read between the lines to determine real needs and what you can do to make a positive difference.

* Look for small tasks that others pass over. Your willingness to help out in little ways, can payoff in big ways.

* If you're good at writing persuasive sales letters or conducting an effective meeting, volunteer for assignments where you can display your talents and play to your strengths.

* Become the resident 'expert' in what the competition is doing, and thus automatically become more valuable to your own organization.

Regardless of where you work, there are always ways to demonstrate to others within the organization, the supreme advantage of retaining your services.

Your Online Activity is Monitored - Breathing Space Blog

Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters by Bill Tancer is a scary book! Published in 2008, it "guides the reader through the search patterns among 10 million Internet users, challenging myths and making new discoveries about the psychology of consumers, illustrating that clicks speak louder than words and can reveal unspoken truths about individual drives that are not expressed via other forms of media."

In short, the book explains how your online activity can be captured by experts who can then determine your identity as well as nearly everything else about you! No Breathing Space for extensive web surfers.

116 Years Ago: A Simpler Time? - Breathing Space Blog

Here's a peak at the World in 1904:

* The tallest structure in the world is the Eiffel Tower!

* The average wage is .22/hr. The average worker earns between $200 and $400 per year. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $ 4,000 per year. A mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

* More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home. Ninety percent of all U.S. physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard."

* Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

* And, about our neighbors to the north: Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason.