Category: Learned Again and Again

Bring It In Already Going

I have learned of two different situations in which is is VERY helpful to start something on your laptop BEFORE you go into a conference room to start a meeting, if you have no lead time in the room to set up:

  1. When you are hosting a WebEx and there will be many people remote.  You can start the meeting outside the room.  When you get inside (and dial the phone ASAP!) and go on fuss with projectors, etc., the connection will already be done.
  2. When you will be presenting something from your laptop or from the network, you can set it all up while you are in the hall.  Then the only delay is to get the projector going, not ALSO to boot up, log in, open files, etc.

I’d like at least one do-over with this lesson.  Learn it here and save yourself that trouble!

Ask (again)

Although I am waiting until the end of the year of blogging lessons to look for trends, I can already tell you that “Ask” is going to be a big theme!

I needed a new kitchen timer.  Just a simple countdown magnetic electronic thing.   My hardware store has them for $20.  Way too much!  Our Big Lots store had none.  So I went our local dollar-type store.  They seemed like the right place for this.  Nothing in the kitchen section.  Nothing anywhere that I could see. I was going to give up but I asked the woman at the register and she said she had seen them somehere else.  She went and found them in some random place.  ONE DOLLAR!

Keep Asking!

OK so I tried to get the deal from Eddie Bauer: 25% off and free shipping if you use your card.  And I had just remembered that I even had a card, so why not.  Worth one more check or a few payment clicks for those kinds of savings, right?  But then the website didn’t like my card.  And neither did the nice lady on the phone.  I asked for the 25% with my own card. She said no but she could still give me the free shipping with another card.  OK, whatever.

THEN she changed her mind and said what the heck and gave me the free shipping AND the 25% off!

The year is not over, but “ask” is definitely a trend that will be showing up in the summary!  Sometimes it’s little stuff, sometimes big, but there is world of difference between asking and not, I have learned.

An Attitude of Gratitude

I learned this from Yoga Journal (BTW I love Yoga Journal):

“Cultivating gratitude is less an act of creating something that isn’t there and more of a practice of realizing what is. It’s about reminding yourself of the miracles embedded in every second of every day—from the largest blessings to the smallest moments. By practicing shifting your attention to what is real (and not clinging to an idea of what you think should happen), you become more appreciative of even the most mundane moments in life, and for the richness all around.”