Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

January 16, 2014 · 11:10 am

The Life In Your Time

I know it’s not TunesDay but today’s screen has a bit of a musical bent.  As Robert Hunter wrote: “Once in a while you get shown the light/In the strangest of places if you look at it right.”  That’s what happened to me the other night and I thought it would provide some food for thought today.

English: King of the Castle Living life on the...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My enduring affection for The Boss is no secret to any of you who read this mess regularly.  He was on the Jimmy Fallon show and at the very end of his interview he said something that resonated:

It’s not the time in your life, it’s the life in your time.

Coming from a musician, that can mean a lot.  After all, Janis, Jimi, Kurt, and too many others put a LOT of life into their brief time and one wonders how much more great music they would have created had they not done so.  As it turns out, Bruce‘s quote wasn’t quite original.  In fact, a similar saying has been attributed to everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Adlai Stevenson:

“However else you live your life, live it freely. It is not the years in your life that count, it is the life in your years.”

That was to a group of students in 1952 and he used it repeatedly thereafter.  With whom the saying originated is unimportant.  What is says is.  Stop and think about the last time you put down the smartphone, turned off the computer and had a meaningful conversation about something other than work.  Maybe you love and feel passionately about your work and that’s great but perhaps that passion should be spread out a little to give you a break?

We’ve all had friends and others we’ve known die young (and as I get older “young” is an evolving concept).  I doubt any of them wanted another day at work or to play a video game or to post silly photos to the web.  I suspect they’d all want the time back they wasted worrying about things that didn’t matter or holding grudges or being afraid.  We all know people who live their business lives that way and it may extend beyond business.  Too bad.

None of this is news, I know.  We’ve all been told to come up for air, to live in the moment, and to participate in our lives instead of being a spectator.  As with most things in life and in business, the challenge isn’t to identify the things we ought to do; it’s to do them.  Do you agree?

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January 7, 2014 · 11:58 am

Stairway

TunesDay, and we’ll use the occasion to talk about a song that makes every “Best Rock Songs Of All Time” list.  It is, as Robert Plant says in the performance below, a song of hope:

That was from a 1973 performance of Stairway To Heaven.  I used this song while teaching poetry to a high school English class (the class and I made a deal – they’d learn all the correct terms with which to analyze poetry and pass a test on them; I’d only use rock lyrics for poetry study).  It’s a really interesting piece in terms of how the meter changes from anapestic (dah dah DAH) to dactylic (DAH dah dah) to iambic (dah DAH) to match the increasing pace and intensity of the song.  The music isn’t too shabby either!

There been a lot of debate over the years what it’s about.  I’m not a believer in the whole myth about a Satanic ritual song if you listen backwards.  I do, however, know that the stairway image comes from the Bible (Jacob’s Ladder – another oft used image in music) and much of the rest is kind of English pseudo-medievalism.  I don’t really read into it a lot except for two points I think are useful as we think about business.

The first is in the first lyric:

There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold
And she’s buying a stairway to heaven.
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for.

You can’t buy a stairway to heaven – it’s something that’s earned.  Plant’s being snarky but he makes an excellent point.  We often don’t understand the value of some things or people because we’re looking at the next shiny object.  We also underestimate the work involved in achieving success.  It’s not something that one can queue up and buy – like the stairway, it’s earned.

The next is probably the more important lesson:

Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on.

In other words, there comes a time when every business – and every business person – might need to stop, reassess, and change direction.  Conditions change, priorities change, and the people who are successful learn to change with them, modifying business models and career paths along the way.  That’s why, in my opinion, it’s a song of hope.  More importantly, it reminds us that business (and life) is a journey, and maybe that journey is every bit as important as the goal, which is where that stairway leads.

What do you think?

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January 6, 2014 · 10:56 am

No Success Without CES

The first big event of the new year is under way in Las Vegas.

Consumer Electronics Show

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s the annual CES which used to stand for Consumer Electronics Show but I’m told that since the show has gone way beyond consumer electronics it’s just CES.  As the Wall Street Journal wrote the show

grew up around devices like television sets and stereos sold by distributors and retailers…but it has continually morphed to add new classes of products and companies that don’t fit the classic consumer-electronics description.

“Huge” doesn’t begin to describe it.  125,000 or more people attend and hour-long waits for cabs are common while reservations at most of the better Vegas restaurants are rare.  After a few days, your feet hurt from walking the more than 1.92 million net square feet of exhibit space as does your head from the non-stop loud environment.

I used to love to go despite the drawbacks.  It was at CES I saw my first e-reader and was shown the first “connected” TV in a hush-hush meeting with one of the TV manufacturers.  While both those things are common now, they were brand spanking new business opportunities at the time and got us thinking about how we could grow our business, that of our partners, and enrich our mutual customers’ lives.  The “next big things” this year are supposed to focus on wearable, drivable and mobile-controllable technologies.  We’ll see how that all plays out.

You might be wondering why I raise this.  After all, while you might have a passing interest in CES, for the most part you and your business might have nothing at all to do with curved TV screens or wired cars or toasters that can send you a text.  Fair enough.  CES was always a chance to think out of the box.  What possibilities opened up based on what I was seeing at the show?  My point is this:  the start of the new year is a perfect time to take a step out of the routine and take a look around.  Search out a show or a conference or a meeting of your industry that will let you see something new.  Use what you see to think big thoughts.  After all, much of what is at CES was someone’s pipe dream or maybe even “impossible” not very long ago.

Even though I’m not at the show this year, I’ll read the reports and maybe even watch some of the live streaming taking place.  You can’t spell “success” without using “ces”.  This inquiring mind wants to know more.  Yours?

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