Before you complain about everything that’s causing you stress, take a look at how much you are contributing to your own stress.
Enjoy the story:
Stress
Bobby had a fully packed schedule. He had breakfast, lunch and dinner with friends and business associates. Discussions were interesting and covered economy, terrorism, politics, job loss and more. Once he was back at home, Bobby worked all night and finally made some progress on “real” projects. It was stressful.
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Note:
1. A mini saga is a story told in exactly 50 words. Not 49 or 51 but exactly 50.
If you are not careful, your people might give you exactly what you are looking for.
Enjoy the story:
Validation
There was trouble but the leader never believed it. He asked Tom to do a customer satisfaction survey. The results showed that most customers were “very satisfied.” Tom had asked customers rate them from 1 to 5. Tom’s internal labeling had 1 mapped to “Satisfied” and 5 mapped to “Loved.”
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Note:
1. A mini saga is a story told in exactly 50 words. Not 49 or 51 but exactly 50.
The best way to win an argument is not to have one. But sometimes you can’t avoid an argument and for those times, you need to be prepared.
Enjoy the story:
Argument
Bob and Nick held divergent positions on this point. As usual, Bob wouldn’t budge and finally Nick gave up. Bob left the room victoriously. Nick immmediately called his friend Jerry and said, “Jerry, we got what we wanted. The trick worked. I just had to argue against what I wanted.”
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Note:
1. A mini saga is a story told in exactly 50 words. Not 49 or 51 but exactly 50.
I have been a Citibank customer for years and in the last few months, they suddenly started sending spam mails – offers from other companies. Yes, I understand that it may get them some revenue by selling their LARGE customer base and allowing other companies to spam people but if someone does not want to receive spam mails, they should stop instantly.
A few weeks ago, I opted out… sorry let me correct this… I tried to opt-out of the program and I got a notice that said that it will take a few weeks for their email systems to be updated to reflect my new preferences. In other words, they were telling me that I have to bear with their spam for a few more weeks BECAUSE their systems are messed up.
Today, I tried to opt-out again and I get the same message. They are very consistent with the message. Our systems will take a few weeks to update my preferences.
I am just imagining that someone will print out my preference, print it and send it in a horse carriage to a remote location where someone will stamp an approval and then return that in the same horse carriage to be updated by someone else.
Hopefully they will come to the 21st Century sooner than later.
The lesson here is in setting the expectations right. Nobody will believe that it will take a few weeks to opt-out of spam. So why make up things and lose credibility?
We notice what we notice and sometimes what we notice is not enough.
Enjoy the story:
Notice
The parking sign was clear – “No Parking from 6pm to 6am.” The time was still 5.30pm. Tim rushed inside the store. He came back in less than twenty minutes only to find a parking ticket clinging to the windshield. He just noticed that until 6pm it was “paid” parking.
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Note:
1. Thanks to Jason Dirks, co-founder of Meylah for the inspiration for this story.
2. A mini saga is a story told in exactly 50 words. Not 49 or 51 but exactly 50.
You may want something to be perfect. But there might be hefty price to pay for that.
Enjoy the story:
Perfection
Mark was determined to win Sheila over. He decided to do whatever it takes to get her. It was hard. She didn’t like this. She didn’t like that. Finally after eighteen months of work, she got a “perfect” Mark. Unfortunately, the “new” Mark was no longer interested in Sheila anymore.
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Note:
1. A mini saga is a story told in exactly 50 words. Not 49 or 51 but exactly 50.
Times are still tough for many people out there. After reading my post on thanking powerfully, someone recently asked me how they can thank someone (in this case an Author they liked) without spending a ton of money. I came up with a few ideas and shared with them. After the person left, I came up with a few more ideas. Here is the entire list (as of now)
[Note: If you can think of some other creative (low-cost) way of showing appreciation to a favorite author, please add to the comments.]
1. Buy a book or two as gifts for someone that might not have been exposed to their work
2. Write a review of the book you liked at Amazon or any other online outlet.
3. Comment on their blog
4. Tweet one of their posts to your followers
5. Send them an email but do not make them require to respond back to you.
6. Send a link to their work to one of the mailing lists that you belong to. Make sure that you are sending something that is relevant to the mailing list you belong to.
7. Subscribe to their blog feed and/or email newsletter and actually read it.
8. Support them by indicating yourself as a fan (eg: Facebook)
9. Follow them on Twitter. Retweet something from them that you think is relevant to your followers
10. Talk about their work to at least one person in your network.
11. Carry one of their books to a restaurant and place it on the table so that others can notice it.
12. Donate one of their books to a local library
13. Pass along your copy of the book to someone that might not have read it.
14. Leave a copy of their book at your office lobby
And, the ultimate appreciation:
15. Put at least one of their advice into practice and make something happen in your own life.
Last week when I was at CostCo, I saw that busy peeling off the pricing label on a book. As I was browsing, I saw that he successfully peeled off the pricing tag on the book he was holding and then immediately stuck the pricing tag back on the book.
No, he was not doing anything funny. If you see the books on display, you would feel like doing the same too. I have pasted below the images of a book cover of The Audacity to Win (a fantastic book by the way) with and without the pricing label.
With the pricing label
(making it almost impossible to read the sub-title)
Without the pricing label
(the sub-title is clearly visible)
It was not just this book but 90% of the books had pricing labels covering a key part of the title or the sub-title. As you can see from the cover, there is a whitespace to the left of the author’s name were the pricing label can be placed. But that would require someone to be thoughtful about what they are doing. And, being thoughtful is hard work!!!
This is story about a story that was made possible by NaNoWriMo. This is a THANK YOU post for NaNoWriMo and the wonderful people behind it.
First, some background. For those of you who have followed me for a long time, you know that I started my writing journey when my first book (a murder mystery) was published a while ago (read story here). I have been fascinated by fiction for a LONG time. My first four books were fiction (murder mysteries, spy thrillers etc.)
There was always this lingering thought that I should write some fiction one day. As you can imagine, that one day would never come because there are many interesting projects going on in life. There is always an excuse to not start on something that you love.
So, when I heard of NaNoWriMo, I was intrigued. NaNoWriMo is a worldwide phenomenon where people take on a seemingly impossible task of writing a novel in 30 days in the month of November. The minimum number of words is 50,000 to be one of the winners. You can read more about how it works on the NaNoWriMo site. But the simple technique is to write at least 1,1667 words per day every single day. So, in other words, you have to spend just one hour every night and you can create a novel. It may not be the best work but it is something to start.
So what makes NaNoWriMo work?
Here are a few things to start with:
1. There is a clear start date (Nov 1) and a clear deadline (Nov 30)
2. There is a specific outcome (at least 50K words)
3. There is a method to the madness ( 1,667 words per day at least)
4. There is a support structure ( total of 162,000+ people total, close to 1000 people in south bay)
5. Write-ins (where writers come together to have writing sprints)
2. Requested two close friends (names to be disclosed soon) to help me with completing the project (polishing, editing etc.) once the book is complete. So I am covered to make this a good book.
3. Created my own plan (20 day plan rather than a 30 day plan) – this involved 10 hours of writing in the weekends and 2 hours of writing every weekday night. I didn’t have the time to work on it during the week days.
5. Discussed my story idea with four friends to make sure that I was not (totally) crazy. Refined the story in my mind. Did not write a single word on paper (that is one of the rules)
During the 19 days
1. Things changed drastically during the 19 day period. I knew that things won’t go the way I had planned. I started exactly at 12.01am on November 1. I took a really big lead (completed more than 10,000 words in two days) at the start.
2. Things slipped multiple times but the early lead helped me to stick to the plan.
3. When things were almost slipping, I went to Write-In where I got back my motivation to write another five thousand words to get back into the plan.
4. Made a few new friends in-person and on Twitter and created a virtual support group.
5. Once I got past 40,000 words, there was no other option but to go all out last weekend to get to 50,000 words.
So, NaNoWriMo was what made it happen for me. My request to you is to think about your own project (it need not be writing a novel) and see if there is a support group and a community that you can participate and make that dream a reality NOW!!!
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