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Newsletter #75 - Battery levels, Willa Cather, and Inner-thighs

By Greg Chambers

June 20, 2017

Newsletter

Quick notes to help you get more done in less time. . . next week.

In this issue:

Techniques for FIT
Being Human
Random Stuff

Techniques for FIT

Check your people's battery levels next week. Are they feeling good? Get them to try something new and fail. Are they feeling low? Help them win before week end.
Humans try things that don't work. Robots don't.
Missing deadlines is rarely fatal. Tell your people to communicate it up front and to do the best they can. The sun will come up tomorrow.
If they're really stressed, try this one. "You know what they always say, it's always darkest before it all falls apart."

Being Human - Great fiction ------------------------------------------------------------

Novelist Willa Cather

I am between books having just finished Erik Larson's Thunderstruck, and Isaac's Storm. Both are historical non-fiction books and excellent, so I'm starving for a little fiction. As I've said before, great fiction gives excellent insight into being human. You can learn more about the business world from fiction than in reading best-selling business books.

The bookcase is holding a copy of Willa Cather's, A Lost Lady. I hate to admit that I've never read her books before. She's a Nebraska treasure and I used to live by the Willa Cather Library. I decided to give it a try.

That's when I run across one of her characters describe the importance of strategic vision, a topic near and dear to me. She does it through the voice of Captain Forrester, the old road builder.

“And why? That’s the interesting part of it,” his wife prompted him.

“Because,” he roused himself from his abstraction and looked at the company, “because a thing that is dreamed of in the way I mean, is already an accomplished fact.”

Thank you, Willa Cather. She captures why it's important to have a vision, while acknowledging that just having a vision isn't a guarantee that it comes true. Very human.

(and a wonderful little story)

Random Stuff

What did you send now?

I have a media consumption habit that needs to be kept in check, but occasionally I see things that make me laugh.

This week it was a WSJ article about power tools being modified and used by massage professionals.

Peter Roberts, coach and owner of Quantum CrossFit, where Mr. Whitfield first saw car-buffer massage, says the buffer is especially effective on the lower body, including inner-thigh muscles. “But if you accidentally hit your testicle, it doesn’t feel great,” he says. “I’ll just say that.”

Man, that's funny.

When I sent it to a friend, I saw this in the history. One of my favorite headlines ever: