I have learned that if I don’t write my Lessons Learned down, then I don’t remember them and hence it’s difficult to learn from them!
Oh yeah… I have also learned that I have to write them down legibly. If I can’t read them it doesn’t count and it doesn’t work.
Sally says that she’s learned that if you smile on the Green Line, people treat you differently. Someone even told her they liked her hat! (It is cute!)
Jenn C, who is fighting a nasty cough, heard two different people recommend the same solution for sleep in the same day, so she tried it and it worked for her!
She put Vicks Vapor Rub on her feet at bedtime, then her socks, and then slept better and got more rest than she had in weeks.
What do you think? Have you done this? Why would it work? As a reflexology-related effect, as Jenn suspects?
On this day, I learned multiple lessons about using a GPS. The first few are obvious – or at least they are now:
Be specific about the address! Winthrop Street is by Logan Airport, and is nowhere near Winthrop Square in Downtown Crossing. There are at least three different Summer Streets in Boston, in three different places.
Check out the GPS map view or the whole sequence of directions before you start out. Then you can pick the one to which you would actually care to go!
And this is the big one of the day: Even though it sounds like a good solution for navigating the one-ways, forget using a GPS in Very Old Boston! The Fanueil Hall area, complete with 200+ year old paved cow paths, twists and turns and small angles, seems to have named (but not labeled) roads that not distinct enough for my Garmin GPS. It freaked out! It went into an incoherent rant that went something like this as I crawled through traffic: “Turn right on Milk Stree.. recalculating turn left on [something] str… recalculating.. recalculating… turn left on .. recalculating…” Well you get the idea.
Not yet a month after I learned it (see January 11), I am learning the lesson AGAIN to keep the darn power cord with the device for which it was born and bred.
“Our real challenge is to make systems that change, not to make systems that will last”
Lynn Vogel, CIO of M D Anderson Cancer Center
Yes, Bring Your Own Food. Particularly when traveling. No, just all time. And definitely if you are someone who gets cranky/insane when overly hungry. Just have healthy snacks around. Pack them in pockets and nooks in bags. There is no downside to this.
My friend Donna, who should know after surviving four rounds, has learned this:
When kids get to be juniors or seniors in high school, sometimes it is better to just let them learn the hard way!
Jane's Lessons Learned 