These are some of the things that I have learned during my life.
* Work hard - there is no substitute for it. It's the only way.
* Don't expect handouts - you want something, work for it.
* Be accountable - don't blame others - YOU are responsible for your life - no one else is.
* Your reputation is everything - work hard, tell the truth, do what you say you're going to do, don't talk bad about people
* Put others before yourself - Life is more fulfilling when you put others first.
* Constantly look for ways to help others - open the door, carry their bags, say a nice word
* Be quick with compliments - there isn't enough kindness in the world today.
* Smile A LOT - people like being around others that are happy
* It's not what you know but who you know - Network - get out & meet people - shake hands, smile & get to know someone new - all of my jobs came through networks of people
* God is important - there is an end to this life - what do you believe happens next? Are you prepared for the next stage?
* Have a positive attitude - if you look for negative you will find it - I prefer to look for positive - I think it's a healthier way to live.
* Love - treat those that you love very special. why would we treat those that love us any other way?
* Life every day like it's your last - that way when the end is here, you will have no regrets.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Friday, October 15, 2010
Lyrical Insight
So much to ponder from lyrics...some of my favorites....I like to see some of yours.
* I keep pushin...keep pushin...keep pushin on..... REO Speedwagon (Keep Pushin)
* Cuz if you play the game, you gotta play to win..... Bryan Adams (Only the Strong Survive)
* Now your climbing to the top of the company ladder, hope it doesn't take to long, can't you see there will come a day it won't matter, come a day when you'll be gone....All I want is to have my piece of mind.... Boston (Piece of Mind)
* And I know it aches and your heart it breaks you can only take so much...walk on....leave it behind...you've got to leave it behind..... U2 (Walk On)
* I feel that when I'm old...I'll look at you and know...the world was beautiful.... Jimmy Eat World (Polaris)
* Today is when your book begins...the rest is still unwritten... Natasha Bedingfield (Unwritten)
* Who do you need....who do you love....when you come undone.... Duran Duran (Come Undone)
* Turn up the radio....I need the music....give me some more.... Autograph (Turn Up the Radio)
* Those were good times.....damn good times... David Lee Roth (Damn Good)
* This is your life....are you who you want to be.... Switchfoot (This is Your Life)
* Hold on loosely but don't let go....if you cling too tightly...you're gonna lose control.... 38 Special (Hold On Loosely)
* But I won't cry for yesterday...there's an ordinary world....somehow I have to find.... Duran Duran (Ordinary World)
* It's a Beautiful Day... U2 (Beautiful Day)
* Right Now.... Van Halen (Right Now)
* I'm Forever Yours....Faithfully Journey (Faithfully)
* Don't Stop Believing... Journey (Don't Stop Believing)
* One life but we're not the same....we get to carry each other....carry each other ..... U2 (One)
* If I turn into another...dig me up from under what is covering the better part of me.... Incubus (Dig)
* If you ask me what I want this year....I'll try to make this kind of clear...just a chance that maybe we'll find better days... Goo Goo Dolls (Better Days)
* Breathe out....so I can breathe you in... Foo Fighters (Everlong)
* Here's to the night we felt alive....He's to goodbye tomorrow's gonna come too soon... Eve 6 (Here's to the Night)
* Life is just a fantasy....can you live the fantasy life Aldo Nova (Fantasy Life)
* You live you learn....You love you learn....You cry you learn.....You lose you learn....You bleed you learn....You scream you learn.... Alanis Morrissette (You Learn)
* I keep pushin...keep pushin...keep pushin on..... REO Speedwagon (Keep Pushin)
* Cuz if you play the game, you gotta play to win..... Bryan Adams (Only the Strong Survive)
* Now your climbing to the top of the company ladder, hope it doesn't take to long, can't you see there will come a day it won't matter, come a day when you'll be gone....All I want is to have my piece of mind.... Boston (Piece of Mind)
* And I know it aches and your heart it breaks you can only take so much...walk on....leave it behind...you've got to leave it behind..... U2 (Walk On)
* I feel that when I'm old...I'll look at you and know...the world was beautiful.... Jimmy Eat World (Polaris)
* Today is when your book begins...the rest is still unwritten... Natasha Bedingfield (Unwritten)
* Who do you need....who do you love....when you come undone.... Duran Duran (Come Undone)
* Turn up the radio....I need the music....give me some more.... Autograph (Turn Up the Radio)
* Those were good times.....damn good times... David Lee Roth (Damn Good)
* This is your life....are you who you want to be.... Switchfoot (This is Your Life)
* Hold on loosely but don't let go....if you cling too tightly...you're gonna lose control.... 38 Special (Hold On Loosely)
* But I won't cry for yesterday...there's an ordinary world....somehow I have to find.... Duran Duran (Ordinary World)
* It's a Beautiful Day... U2 (Beautiful Day)
* Right Now.... Van Halen (Right Now)
* I'm Forever Yours....Faithfully Journey (Faithfully)
* Don't Stop Believing... Journey (Don't Stop Believing)
* One life but we're not the same....we get to carry each other....carry each other ..... U2 (One)
* If I turn into another...dig me up from under what is covering the better part of me.... Incubus (Dig)
* If you ask me what I want this year....I'll try to make this kind of clear...just a chance that maybe we'll find better days... Goo Goo Dolls (Better Days)
* Breathe out....so I can breathe you in... Foo Fighters (Everlong)
* Here's to the night we felt alive....He's to goodbye tomorrow's gonna come too soon... Eve 6 (Here's to the Night)
* Life is just a fantasy....can you live the fantasy life Aldo Nova (Fantasy Life)
* You live you learn....You love you learn....You cry you learn.....You lose you learn....You bleed you learn....You scream you learn.... Alanis Morrissette (You Learn)
Monday, June 28, 2010
So You Think You Can Hit a Wiffle Ball?
I remember one of the great backyard activities for my friends & I in the summer was wiffle ball. We used to have teams & standings. I thought I was pretty good.
Then I saw this video. Check out this link. My curveball was nothing like this.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/54677
Then I saw this video. Check out this link. My curveball was nothing like this.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/54677
Friday, June 11, 2010
USA....USA....USA
I'm not a soccer fan but I'm actually very excited to see the World Cup. Just like the Olympics it's fun to be a fan supporting the great USA.
USA....USA....USA.
USA....USA....USA.
Monday, April 19, 2010
55 Rules of Business
http://bluntrandomthoughts.blogspot.com/
Little different slant this time - all business....(except GO CAVS!)
I recently read the book "the Rules of Business" by the editors & writers of Fast Company. This book was outstanding. It outlined 55 rules for performance. I wanted to share them with you. I think this list is awesome. The book has many quotes that support all of the statements. It's a quick read (prob 2-3 hours). Well worth it.
Here they are:
The Rules of Business by Fast Company’s Editors & Writers
Change
1) Adapt or die.
2) Innovation is difficult & often painful. But there is no alternative.
3) When should you change? When things are going perfectly.
4) Regardless of how realistic you think you are being, the change process will take 3 times as long as you like.
Communication
5) Employees need to know – in painstaking detail – what you want to do & why. They need to hear it again & again. Don’t forget: it’s impossible for them to hear it too often.
6) If you can’t communicate, you can’t lead.
7) If you can’t get your message across quickly, you aren’t going to get it across at all.
Creativity & Innovation
8) Nothing is more overrated than a new idea. Ideas by themselves are worthless. It’s what you do with them that matters.
9) If your cool new product or service doesn’t generate enough money to cover costs & make a profit, it isn’t innovation, it’s art.
10) Make innovation pay its way. Business units should have to fund the research they want, instead of receiving a handout from corporate. Having to pay for it is a sure way to guarantee that the research is going to be focused.
Customer Service
11) Ask customers what they want, and give it to them.
Decision Making
12) No is the 2nd best answer you can get to any question you ask.
13) Not deciding is a decision. That’s the problem with procrastinating.
14) It is extremely hard to make a list of all the things you haven’t thought of. That explains why it is important to open up the decision-making process to as many people as possible.
Design
15) Design will be the next place companies battle for competitive advantage.
16) If consumers can’t easily use your design, they won’t buy your product.
Execute
17) If you don’t execute, you won’t accomplish a thing.
18) Hold people accountable. Reward those who execute. Coach those who don’t. And if they still don’t get it, fire them. You aren’t helping them, or the organization, by having them stick around.
Hiring & Developing & Retaining Great Employees
19) No matter how overwhelmed you are with work, it is always better to hire no one than to hire the wrong person.
20) A players hire A players, B players hire C players & C players hire losers.
21) If you lose great people, you lose success.
Technology is Not a Strategy
22) Technology is not the answer. It can enable & support the corporate vision, but by itself, technology will not give you a competitive advantage.
23) Operational silos are bad everywhere. But they are especially crippling when it comes to IT, with is vital to almost every organization’s success.
Knowledge
24) Don’t have your people waste time figuring out what someone else in the company has already discovered. Create & maintain an efficient knowledge management system to share experiences companywide.
25) Data are a series of facts. Information is a lot of data about a topic combined with some context. Ideally companies want to manage information in such a way that it yields knowledge: information that has been processed in such a way that it can be used for competitive advantage.
Leadership
26) The principles governing how you lead must remain absolutely constant. How you express them must vary every single time, depending on your audience. You need to make sure they understand what you are trying to do…what their role is.
27) Leaders lead.
28) Leadership is the art of getting people to do what you want because they want to.
29) Leaders need to say two things: “this is where we are going,” and “this is why we need you to help us get there.”
Life & Career
30) Achieving balance in your life is a time-management problem & needs to be treated as such. What that means is you figure out what you absolutely must accomplish in your personal & professional lives, & let everything else slide.
31) You can do anything, but not everything.
32) Take breaks. Not only will it make you more productive, if you go out & see the world you are bound to spot opportunities.
Managing
33) Great managers are just as important as great leaders.
34) The closer top management is to the customer, the more successful an organization is likely to be.
35) Your employees are never going to know how they are doing-and how they can do better- unless you tell them.
Marketing
36) Nothing happens in business until the customer says yes.
37) If customers won’t buy your product or service, you are not giving them what they want or need. It’s your fault, not theirs.
38) Every communication with a customer must answer the 2 questions that they always have (even if they don’t always express them to you): “what do you have and why should I care?”
39) 3 Rules of Advertising: don’t insult us, tell the truth, and have a sense of humor.
Organization & Corporate Culture
40) We get the kind of organization we deserve.
41) If you have a sr. VP of administration, something is wrong. You shouldn’t need a bureaucracy to manage the bureaucracy. In fact, you shouldn’t have a bureaucracy at all.
42) Ultimately, everything is personal.
Teamwork & Partnerships
43) The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If not, you have a serious management challenge on your hands.
44) In well-run companies, everyone is needed but no one is indispensable. In other words, teamwork is built in.
45) Just because everyone wears the same uniform does not mean they are a team.
Risk
46) No prudent risk, no fairly predictable rewards.
Social Responsibility, Trust & Ethics
47) You can’t be a little bit ethical. Either you are ethical or you are not. There is no in-between.
48) Everybody must understand & internalize the company’s core values. Doing so frees up time, because you don’t have to debate the organization’s core beliefs. Everyone knows what they are. It also frees resources. When people know what they are supposed to do, they need less supervision.
49) If it is not right, don’t do it; if it is not true, don’t say it.
Speed
50) In today’s economy, it’s the fast companies that trounce the slow.
51) Look to streamline your operation everywhere. The cumulative effect can be astonishing.
52) Just because you occasionally step on the accelerator doesn’t mean you can keep it floored indefinitely. Organizations can run flat out only for short periods.
Strategy & Growth
53) If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. You need a clear strategy & a clear direction, one that everyone in the organization understands as well as you do. 54) Think!
Link Between Success & Failure
55) If you haven’t had one spectacular failure in your life, you haven’t tried hard enough.
Little different slant this time - all business....(except GO CAVS!)
I recently read the book "the Rules of Business" by the editors & writers of Fast Company. This book was outstanding. It outlined 55 rules for performance. I wanted to share them with you. I think this list is awesome. The book has many quotes that support all of the statements. It's a quick read (prob 2-3 hours). Well worth it.
Here they are:
The Rules of Business by Fast Company’s Editors & Writers
Change
1) Adapt or die.
2) Innovation is difficult & often painful. But there is no alternative.
3) When should you change? When things are going perfectly.
4) Regardless of how realistic you think you are being, the change process will take 3 times as long as you like.
Communication
5) Employees need to know – in painstaking detail – what you want to do & why. They need to hear it again & again. Don’t forget: it’s impossible for them to hear it too often.
6) If you can’t communicate, you can’t lead.
7) If you can’t get your message across quickly, you aren’t going to get it across at all.
Creativity & Innovation
8) Nothing is more overrated than a new idea. Ideas by themselves are worthless. It’s what you do with them that matters.
9) If your cool new product or service doesn’t generate enough money to cover costs & make a profit, it isn’t innovation, it’s art.
10) Make innovation pay its way. Business units should have to fund the research they want, instead of receiving a handout from corporate. Having to pay for it is a sure way to guarantee that the research is going to be focused.
Customer Service
11) Ask customers what they want, and give it to them.
Decision Making
12) No is the 2nd best answer you can get to any question you ask.
13) Not deciding is a decision. That’s the problem with procrastinating.
14) It is extremely hard to make a list of all the things you haven’t thought of. That explains why it is important to open up the decision-making process to as many people as possible.
Design
15) Design will be the next place companies battle for competitive advantage.
16) If consumers can’t easily use your design, they won’t buy your product.
Execute
17) If you don’t execute, you won’t accomplish a thing.
18) Hold people accountable. Reward those who execute. Coach those who don’t. And if they still don’t get it, fire them. You aren’t helping them, or the organization, by having them stick around.
Hiring & Developing & Retaining Great Employees
19) No matter how overwhelmed you are with work, it is always better to hire no one than to hire the wrong person.
20) A players hire A players, B players hire C players & C players hire losers.
21) If you lose great people, you lose success.
Technology is Not a Strategy
22) Technology is not the answer. It can enable & support the corporate vision, but by itself, technology will not give you a competitive advantage.
23) Operational silos are bad everywhere. But they are especially crippling when it comes to IT, with is vital to almost every organization’s success.
Knowledge
24) Don’t have your people waste time figuring out what someone else in the company has already discovered. Create & maintain an efficient knowledge management system to share experiences companywide.
25) Data are a series of facts. Information is a lot of data about a topic combined with some context. Ideally companies want to manage information in such a way that it yields knowledge: information that has been processed in such a way that it can be used for competitive advantage.
Leadership
26) The principles governing how you lead must remain absolutely constant. How you express them must vary every single time, depending on your audience. You need to make sure they understand what you are trying to do…what their role is.
27) Leaders lead.
28) Leadership is the art of getting people to do what you want because they want to.
29) Leaders need to say two things: “this is where we are going,” and “this is why we need you to help us get there.”
Life & Career
30) Achieving balance in your life is a time-management problem & needs to be treated as such. What that means is you figure out what you absolutely must accomplish in your personal & professional lives, & let everything else slide.
31) You can do anything, but not everything.
32) Take breaks. Not only will it make you more productive, if you go out & see the world you are bound to spot opportunities.
Managing
33) Great managers are just as important as great leaders.
34) The closer top management is to the customer, the more successful an organization is likely to be.
35) Your employees are never going to know how they are doing-and how they can do better- unless you tell them.
Marketing
36) Nothing happens in business until the customer says yes.
37) If customers won’t buy your product or service, you are not giving them what they want or need. It’s your fault, not theirs.
38) Every communication with a customer must answer the 2 questions that they always have (even if they don’t always express them to you): “what do you have and why should I care?”
39) 3 Rules of Advertising: don’t insult us, tell the truth, and have a sense of humor.
Organization & Corporate Culture
40) We get the kind of organization we deserve.
41) If you have a sr. VP of administration, something is wrong. You shouldn’t need a bureaucracy to manage the bureaucracy. In fact, you shouldn’t have a bureaucracy at all.
42) Ultimately, everything is personal.
Teamwork & Partnerships
43) The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If not, you have a serious management challenge on your hands.
44) In well-run companies, everyone is needed but no one is indispensable. In other words, teamwork is built in.
45) Just because everyone wears the same uniform does not mean they are a team.
Risk
46) No prudent risk, no fairly predictable rewards.
Social Responsibility, Trust & Ethics
47) You can’t be a little bit ethical. Either you are ethical or you are not. There is no in-between.
48) Everybody must understand & internalize the company’s core values. Doing so frees up time, because you don’t have to debate the organization’s core beliefs. Everyone knows what they are. It also frees resources. When people know what they are supposed to do, they need less supervision.
49) If it is not right, don’t do it; if it is not true, don’t say it.
Speed
50) In today’s economy, it’s the fast companies that trounce the slow.
51) Look to streamline your operation everywhere. The cumulative effect can be astonishing.
52) Just because you occasionally step on the accelerator doesn’t mean you can keep it floored indefinitely. Organizations can run flat out only for short periods.
Strategy & Growth
53) If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. You need a clear strategy & a clear direction, one that everyone in the organization understands as well as you do. 54) Think!
Link Between Success & Failure
55) If you haven’t had one spectacular failure in your life, you haven’t tried hard enough.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Htting a Baseball
So I learned how to hit a baseball today.....great article about Rudy Jaramillo in ESPN The Mag - He's the hitting coach for the Cubs. According to him, this is all you need to do:
1) Establish a rhythm - stay loose before the pitcher releases the ball
2) See the ball out of the pitcher's hand
3) get separation - the hands go back and the front foot comes down
4) stay square - keep the front shoulder close and let the hips lead the swing
5) transfer weight back to front
That's it. Sounds simple. Now I can be a great hitter. I'm going to make a trip to the batting cage soon & see if I can do better than just foul off a couple of 70 mph pitches.
The big leagues & millions of dollars are right around the corner.
1) Establish a rhythm - stay loose before the pitcher releases the ball
2) See the ball out of the pitcher's hand
3) get separation - the hands go back and the front foot comes down
4) stay square - keep the front shoulder close and let the hips lead the swing
5) transfer weight back to front
That's it. Sounds simple. Now I can be a great hitter. I'm going to make a trip to the batting cage soon & see if I can do better than just foul off a couple of 70 mph pitches.
The big leagues & millions of dollars are right around the corner.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Total Eclipse of the Heart
* Every time I hear the song "Total Eclipse of the Heart", I think of the scene in Old School when the Dan Band plays it. Is it just me or do others have the same vision?
* Hard to think of what INXS would have been like had Michael Hutchence not chosen to hang himself. Would they have been as big as U2? He was a big loss to music.
* You would think that after the Tiger issues & a few brush off-field issues already on his resume that Big Ben would be a little more careful. More off the field items are being exposed. This is a disappointment to all of the many Steelers fans that hold such reverance for Ben.
* March Madness is right around the corner. How many thought the Buckeyes would be mentioned in talk for a #1 seed? Wow! It's been an amazing turnaround since Turner has been healthy. Just think if the OSU football team was in this position. Columbus would be buzzing. Not many feel the same about hoops. Why?
* Hard to think of what INXS would have been like had Michael Hutchence not chosen to hang himself. Would they have been as big as U2? He was a big loss to music.
* You would think that after the Tiger issues & a few brush off-field issues already on his resume that Big Ben would be a little more careful. More off the field items are being exposed. This is a disappointment to all of the many Steelers fans that hold such reverance for Ben.
* March Madness is right around the corner. How many thought the Buckeyes would be mentioned in talk for a #1 seed? Wow! It's been an amazing turnaround since Turner has been healthy. Just think if the OSU football team was in this position. Columbus would be buzzing. Not many feel the same about hoops. Why?
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