Category: Uncategorized

Years ago, I learned (the hard way) to always find your actual gate at the airport before you settle down to wait for your flight.  I was 22 and on my first business trip.  I was heading out of Gate 23 and had some postcards to write, so I sat down by the mailbox (There used to be such a thing within the terminal.  Really!) at Gate 22 and waited for them to call my flight.  They called, I popped up, and found out that Gate 23 was a tram ride away from Gate 22.  It was sad.

Since then, I’ve always made it a point to get to the actual gate first, then eat, shop, whatever.  This has paid off many times. (OK, once in Orlando I told this story while not following the same advice (how ironic!) and missed the concept of a monorail to the gate and almost blew it but I almost always made a point of this..)

Sally tried to follow this advice, when she was early for her flight.  She went through security with more than an hour to spare, planning on buying dinner for the flight, and then found out that the area had pretty much nothing.   All the food was somewhere else.  So sad!

So the modified lesson is: Find out where your gate is.  Find out if there are the services you need.  Make an informed decision based on the sum of these parts.  But still please leave some extra time in case there is an unmapped monorail in your future.

I learned, from Rosemarie, that it is illegal in New Hampshire to drive with snow on the roof of your car!

Who knew?  Did you know?

The day after she posted this, I saw a car pulled over and the driver working hard to clear the snow, under the supervision of the officer with the blue lights.   I’ve just never noticed this before, but it does make sense.

According to CBS Boston, “A first offense will cost you between $250 and $500. A second offense could cost you up to $1,000.”

Never mind that little window scraper you’ve been driving around!  Invest in a big snow brush!

It was a few years ago that I learned the term “meta.”  It was Anna’s wedding.  Kat (or was it Sally?) said that she just saw someone take a picture of the photographer and the other one replied “How meta!”

Meta is just about the about.  I know metadata, the data about the data, and meta-analysis, the analysis of a whole bunch of other analysis.  I think the everyday use of the term has sort of passed now, but I still really like it.

This a blog post about posting blog posts.  In an effort to bring more Lessons to your eyes, I have looked at the obstacles in my way and what I have learned to get around each one of them.  You’ll know this is working if you keep getting Lessons, much more frequently than in the recent past.

Obstacle 1: I want to get it “just right”

Solution: See yesterday’s post.  The lesson is to just write it up, get it out, and stop fussing so!

Obstacle 2 (a variation on Obstacle 1): I want to get all the “metadata” right.  In this case, it’s the Categories.  See the bottom of posts before 1/1/13 for examples of Categories.  I have carefully marked each of the 500+ posts with multiple categories that I created.  (What did I think I would do with that?  I don’t know!)  Some of my quick data entry options don’t have a way to mark Categories

Solution: Goodbye Categories!  Hello quicker Lessons!

Obstacle 3: Timing.  I don’t remember when I learned it. Or I learned 3 things in one day and I want to spread them out because I really like the idea of a Lesson per day, so I don’t enter any of them.

Solution Part 1: Who cares when I learned them?  Post it anyway

Solution Part 2: PRE-post the lessons – put them out there and pick a date in the future and “schedule” the post.   How many times have I been in some remote location, having an adventure with Sally, and have a Sally and the City update magically appear on my phone, while she’s busy doing something else? “How did you do that?” I ask.  “I scheduled it in advance, remember?” she asks.  Well now I do.  I even wrote this post yesterday, and scheduled it for today!

OK, will this work?  You’ll find out along with me, in the days ahead!

If you have learned other lessons about posting to your blog, please send them along!

Around previous New Year’s Days, I have promised to write a summary of what I’ve learned from a whole year of Lessons.  I haven’t done it yet (see Big Lesson 2.)  And that’s just as well, because after many years and more than 550 lessons, there are only a few themes and I’m going to let you in on them right now!

Ready?

Big Lesson 1: ASK!

Over and over, the lesson is to ask for what you want, what you need, what you don’t know but need to know. Ask for help, ask your family, ask your friends, ask your boss, ask a stranger, ask Jeeves, ask the universe!

So many of these lessons come down to that that I have thought about creating a “category” called “Ask” and marking every ask-related lesson with this – but I never did (see Big Lesson 2,)  Even without marking them, most lessons I learn make me think “Oh! There it is again! It’s all about asking!”

Big Lesson 2: “Don’t let the perfect drive out the good”

This one comes to use from Voltaire and/or Steve.  Whatever the source, the lesson is profound.  One year ago, almost to the minute, I posted this same lesson relative to this blog – I vowed to fuss less and post more.  But it didn’t stick.  I still got held up with wanting to phrase it right, categorize it right, and ended up with a pile of profound lessons on post-its and scraps of paper, doing us all no good. 

 

This qualifies as a Big Lesson because it extends way beyond the blog.  It’s so easy to not do something because I can’t do it all the way.  Sometimes just doing it is what matters.  I was shocked to learn, long ago, that procrastination can be caused by perfectionism, because the former sounds so slacker-like and the latter the opposite, but without this lesson, it’s easy to put off what can’t be done just right. Then we get nothing.

 Back to the good-enough blog, I have learned some tricks about HOW to blog more easily but I haven’t yet done it. So now I start again, which brings us to:

Big Lesson 3: Start Again

I have a very popular category here for Lessons Learned Again and Again.  This experience has taught me that some lessons take more than one pass. Or two. Or more.  So what?  All we can do is keep learning.

 

What do you think are the Big Lessons?  Post a comment or send me a message and I’ll give you your own day!

Also – are you subscribed to get these lessons via email?  If not, I am asking you to sign up!  It’s easy!  Start by typing your email into the box in the top right corner and take it from there!

I’m back!  I really never left.  I have post-its and scribbled lessons all over the place, waiting for the time to write them up.  Lots of lessons to share and I hope it’s soon!

But for now this lesson is so big that I need to put it in writing in real time:  When the road conditions are frightful, STAY HOME!

A few years ago I tried to make a Personal Policy of following the National Weather Service, as a nice objective guideline.  “Winter Storm Warning” or “Winter Weather Advisory” means don’t drive, unless it’s an emergency.  And my job is never an emergency.

But I am deeply committed to my role the Institutional Review Board, and I did not want to miss a meeting.  So I ignored my own guideline and hit the road (after my sweet husband got up in the dark to dig out my car), thinking that Boston is only going to see rain today.and I only need to get on the bus to leave the driving to others.

What a mistake! The drive to the bus station was terrible!  Although it is not pelleting ice as it was last night, the road surface is an icy mess.  My anti-lock brake lights told me, continuously, that I was not actually in control of the car, even if I thought I was.

The surface lesson is simple: Stay home when roads are bad, and there are objective ways to determine “bad.”  Use them!

I am sure there are deeper lessons here.  Things about why I think my meetings are worth this risk (something about other people making it in…) but this is not my time to figure those out.  I have learned to take the life-saving lessons first (Stay home!) and figure out the other stuff later . Or not.  But I’m hoping that this lesson will save me and maybe others from a big mistake another time.

 

 

What a great Election Day!  These are some of the things I learned and re-learned yesterday:

1. Do what you can do.  I know that canvassing is not my thing, but I know that cold and hungry workers who are going door-to-door need hot and delicious food, and I know how to make it.  So I set out to have that be my “thing”, thinking that I would do it all day.  I brought the first mega-batch of chili to local headquarters and learned…

2.  You can’t put a triple-batch of chili into a regular crockpot and expect it to heat up at the same rate as a single batch!  Whoops.  Oh well, time took care of that and it was a big hit and meanwhile I learned…

3. Be flexible.  If canvassing is what’s needed, then that’s what I need to do!  Fortunately, I had a great team with Lava and Max, and we each did the parts we liked.  At the end of the day, we were exhausted and happy because…

(and this is the big one)

4. I need meaningful and productive work.  Maybe we all do.  But I surely do.  Working towards something and making visible progress is really rewarding and makes me happy.  Being part of a group of enthusiastic and positive people, working together over time, is also part of the formula for happiness, for me.

And then just when I thought I had learned all my lessons for the day, I also learned, from Steve:

5a. Never stick a sticker (such as a campaign sticker) on a suede item of clothing

and 

5b. If you do, you can remove most of the residue with the edge of a spoon and then the remainder with a pencil eraser!

Now, on this “Day After”, and with any other Lessons Learned, the trick is to take it all #Forward!

I love to vote.  There is nothing like that feeling of walking into the polls, with all those other patriotic people working and voting, all part of this wonderful democracy that is so easy to take for granted on every other day.  

I learned this from Sally’s great blog: Here is a guide to today’s voting, state by state, from the Washington Post: The Fix’s Election Night Viewer’s Guide.

I have learned, over time, that I really do not like knocking on doors, but that I can feed the people who do! So after an early morning shift with signs at the polls, I’m off to cook some hot food – it’s cold out there!

I just learned this from Gale, who posted it from Merrimack Patch – Six Ways to Stay Connected During Hurricane Sandy

Now if you click the link (and you should – there is some good info there), you’ll see that the link is called SEVEN ways to stay connected.  What is the lesson here?  It’s that everyone is freaking out just a little bit.  Chill.  Breathe.  Stay inside.  Unless you are told to evacuate.  Then do so!

I learned, from Jill, that in some places you can rent a Christmas tree!  What a great idea!

In San Francisco, it’s Rent a Living Christmas Tree LLC.  They deliver and then pick up in early January.  I love it!

Hi!  I’m back!  Over the next few days, I will be posting some of the many lessons I have learned lately.

One of the biggest ones that I have re-re-re-learned is this: Just do it, take that single step to get back on track.  For a career procrastinator*, this is the biggest challenge of all: once I fall behind, it gets harder and harder to catch up. 

In my freshman year in college, I met a boy who skipped class for a week.  I was astounded.  How could anyone do that?  Later, I learned that you do it by skipping just one class, for whatever good reason. Then just one more.  Very quickly, it gets harder to go back – there is work to make up and there is work to even find out the work to make up.  Procrastination feeds on itself, and before you know it, you are sitting on the sorority house roof drinking beer with your friends the day before finals and confessing that  you haven’t been to a class since mid-Terms.  OK that wasn’t me, but I was there and you get the idea.

I’ve learned lots of lessons lately.  And now that I’m back, without making up any excuses or inventing tragedies that have befallen imaginary grandparents (you know who you are and don’t worry you clearly turned out responsible and honest), I’ll be finding those scraps of paper and posting A LESSON A DAY until I run out of material.

I will try to post this near the date when I learned it.  If you are getting this via email (you smart person!) you’re all set.  If you have stumbled on on in the blog, you’ll need to browse back through time to find new entries and anyway you should subscribe now!

Thanks for hanging in with me!

Jane

* In 1980, I sent for an application to the Procrastinators Club of America. They were a real organization, based in Philadelphia, and had trips like the one to England to complain about the crack in the Liberty Bell “It’s about time someone did something about this” they said at the time.  I still have that paper application (really) because I didn’t want to rush it and not qualify.