Categories
motivation

Cranky + Caffeine = Comforting Cheer

Illustration of a man with his coffee. His cat is sitting atop his head.

Yesterday, I read an article about my favorite hot beverage, or at least the prime drug that is in my favorite beverage; caffeine. It has been around for centuries, and according to the article, changed the course of history. Yet he maintains it also comes with a cost.

Washington Post article on Caffeine by Michael Pollan

Here’s the Audible link to the book

As I write this, I am enjoying some coffee and considering what caffeine has done for my creative juices.

Photo of Kevin Spear enjoying a mug of coffee
Enjoying some coffee with the “All Things Possible” mug.

Should I be concerned that I like my coffee? A stat in the article says up to ninety percent of adults ingest caffeine regularly. It’s a drug that businesses favor because it boosts productivity. Almost every office has coffee brewing. Creatives rely on coffee to get going in the morning. This is especially true considering how creatives like to be night owls. What would the world look like with a caffeine and coffee ban? I shudder to think.

The only thing I’m sure of is it would allow cats to take over the world. My illustration shows what I believe my cat would’ve done to me without that morning perk.

Illustration of a man with his coffee. His cat is sitting atop his head.

Could I quit coffee anytime I want? Sure I could. Just don’t give the cat a heads up if I ever decided to attempt this horror.

Categories
motivation

Problems Exist, and That’s Good

cartoon of doctor and patient

“The adventure of business is to know the problems exist, to hunt and eliminate them, and to grow a culture that does this continually.”

Thomas Anderson in Changed People Change Process

Problems will continually pop up. They are like a game of whack-a-mole. As soon as you address and solve one problem, another one pops up… and that’s a good thing!

If problems didn’t exist, if things went smoothly all the time, what’s the point of work? It would become quite boring. There would be less need for creativity. Problem-solving can be one of the most challenging and rewarding parts of the business.

As the quote suggests, problems become an adventure. If you read a story where the protagonist has a smooth ride and faced no problems, what fun would that be? Adventures involve facing and solving problems.

Embrace problems, analyze and solve them. You may become the hero of your own adventure. You will improve. And you will have fun doing it!

Categories
Marketing

No Small Stories

Cartoon of a boy and grandfather

“If your story is too small, it’s not a story. It’s just an annoying interruption.”

Seth Godin in All Marketers Tell Stories

We’ve all endured it. We’ve all had a friend who began to tell a story that had no point. It just drags on and on. We’ve experienced the person who starts telling a joke but gets lost somewhere before the punchline. What began as a potentially good story falls flat and becomes an annoyance.

In Seth Godin’s book, All Marketers Tell Stories, he reminds me that all marketing is a story. When we think of a brand, we have a story that comes to mind. Your favorite drink sparks a fond memory. Your favorite restaurant has a story you tell yourself about the quality, the atmosphere, and the service you expect.

We tell ourselves stories all the time when we shop. We expect this place to be too busy on a weekday evening. We tolerate this store because it has the lowest price. We begin to shop online and shun a store because we find an even better price and we don’t have to endure the crowds. That story of the store you once frequented becomes small because they can’t deliver what you expected anymore. It becomes an annoyance.

We tell ourselves stories every day. What story do people think of when they think about your business? How can you be sure your story doesn’t become too small to delight customers?

Let’s start telling our customers stories that are true, compelling and so good, we have to negotiate the movie rights.

Cartoon of a boy and grandfather
Categories
motivation

Is It Real Change If You Go Back to the “Good Old Days”?

Illustration of an Amish man at an old PC. I drew this for Illustration Friday. This week's word is "old-fashioned."

There will always be problems and issues. Frequently, when problems arise, it can be tempting to think we need to go back to the good old days. But can you really make lasting change by going back? Were the good old days ever that good?

I grew up during the Vietnam War and Watergate. I don’t think we want to go back there. Before that, it was all the riots and unrest of the sixties. In the fifties, we were in the Korean War and battling polio. And the forties? World War II. The thirties? The Great Depression.

We tend to remember only the good in a decade and tend to forget the trials and troubles each decade had. Sure, we need to learn from the past. But wishing we were back there is an exercise in futility. Nostalgia can only get us so far.

Besides, I have no desire to go back to the computers of yesterday. Who wants Windows 98 and Palm Pilots back? Anyone?

Illustration of an Amish man at an old PC. I drew this for Illustration Friday. This week's word is "old-fashioned."
Categories
motivation

Reacting versus Responding

Cartoon of mother, son and teacher

“A culture of reactivity alone insures that we have time to do little else but fight fires.”

Scott Ellis in Changed People Change Process

I once heard Zig Ziglar talk about the difference between reacting and responding. He urged the audience to think about going to the doctor because you have an illness. What if the doctor prescribes medication and you come back the next week?

If the doctor says you’ve had a reaction to the medication, that doesn’t sound good. That means you have broken out in hives or worse. The medicine isn’t helping.

But if you return and the doctor says you have responded to the medication, that means it is working and you are on the road to recovery.

It can be very easy to react to a situation. Frequently, a flurry of emails comes in with scores of very hot jobs. If you are servicing twenty different customers in a day, you can have twenty different hot jobs. The next thing you know, you spend the whole day putting out fires.

But what if we trained ourselves to respond instead of react? Instead of jumping at every hot job that comes in, what if we prioritized and looked at the big picture of the workload instead of attempt to put out twenty different fires?

It can be as tempting to react like the Sunday school teacher is in my cartoon. But if the teacher in this example reacts in a way that prevents her from the lesson and highjacks the rest of the time in class, it can be wasted time in class. That’s what reaction does. It creates waste.

Our challenge is to minimize a culture of reactivity and transform it into a responsive culture. Scott Ellis’ book has already given me some great insights on how to do that. Stay tuned and I’ll let you know how things progress.

Cartoon of mother, son and teacher