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Living for the future

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Being focused and engaged in the here and now, that is being consistently present and mindful of each living moment is a desirable quality often recommended as a technique for mental health.  Don’t focus on the past or future, live in the moment.

While this sentiment does have merit and I would not ignore it, for me the bigger picture consists of the time periods surrounding the present, i.e., the past and the future, neither of which is easily dismissed.

Taking Control

The past cannot be changed, it out of your control.    Valuable lessons can be taken from the past to influence present and future actions but it cannot be changed.

The present, living in the moment, offers limited opportunities for control, that is to say most often occurrences are like a whirling vortex swirling around us for which we have limited control.

Our destiny lies in the future and fortunately that is pretty much a time period we can largely control or at a minimum plan for achieving maximum personal pleasure while limiting risk of unpleasantness.

Owning the Future

Each of us has full accountability and ownership of our futures.  We can treat the future as a surprise or plan for it, or some combination of these approaches.

Whatever method we adopt for living in the future it is a personal choice and our greatest successes are consistently achieved when treating our approach to the future as belonging to us and pro-actively and consciously embracing it.

The past is done, the present is here in your face, to control your life you must own the future.

 

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

What do others think

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I have often expressed the view that my life is all about me.  The intent of this philosophy is to highlight the reality of personal accountability.

Your life is yours and only yours, albeit it is not lived in isolation and life experiences are greatly impacted by the environment.  How you behave is your choice alone.

Feedback

Receiving information from others about their reactions to your behavior, the performance of a task, your philosophy and so on, can be used as a basis for self-improvement.

At the very minimum feedback increases your own self-awareness and so enables you to make informed decisions about actions you take.

It’s still about you

Choosing to pay attention and be guided by the feedback you receive, whether directly from others or indirectly through the things they do (their body language) does not mean you are given up accountability.

Paying attention to what others think and letting it guide the way you interact is certainly done for the other person to some extent.  The critical factor though is how you behave toward others is who you are.

Who you are is very much influencing how you feel about yourself.   If your feedback is negative you feel bad.  This is about you, even though initiated by others it is you who feel bad.

So, paying attention to what others think about you enables you to treat them in ways that make you feel good.  On the surface it seems to be about them but in reality it still is all about you.

Doing it for someone else can really be doing it for yourself.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Taking Charge

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Within the social context of life, all of us have the opportunity to assume control or responsibility for events and actions both internal and external to us.

We can take charge of a group, an event or activity or simply accept full personal control of our own actions.  Taking control removes the ability to blame other people or things.  Nothing made you act beyond your own volition.

Guiding the Result

In a group situation, in the interests of efficiency, it is often helpful if one person acts as a facilitator.  The guidance provided by the recognized authority enables all to act consistently and effectively.

Consider a security guard or first responder providing direction to others in an emergency situation.  Without them, panic could reign and chaos would result.

Sometimes the appointed leader or person in charge is not always obvious.  These cases represent an opportunity for us to step up and exercise leadership, even though we have not been granted the privilege.

For the Greater Good

Being granted authority to take charge (or not) shouldn’t be a limiting factor relative to your decision to step forward and help.  Think of the greater good.

When there is a leadership vacuum the groups’ ability to perform is greatly diminished.  This is not to denigrate the value of collaborative functioning as a whole, that is the hallmark of a high performing team.

However, there are times when group action requires a queue.   Often people are wondering, should I act, what will others think, who is going first, should it be me?

These are great opportunities for you to take charge.  You can influence the result for the betterment of everyone.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Personal Accountability

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Nobody’s fault but mine.  I heard this song by Led Zeppelin today.  The  Zep were a top tier classic rock act founded in the late nineteen sixties, who broke up in the early 1980’s when their drummer died.

It occurred to me the song title was actually a fabulous mantra for personal accountability.  The sentiment is much easier to voice or sing than to actually practice, but for me it really resonates.

You Made Me

One of my pet peeves is how easily we attribute cause to others.  I do this too although I try very hard not too.  In truth comments like “that driver makes me nuts” just are not true.

No one can make you feel crazy, frustrated, angry ,disappointed, etc. External factors can influence how you feel and behave however the fact is the choice is yours and yours alone.

If you experience road rage and choose to act on your feelings, it is absolutely your choice alone, it is nobody’s fault but yours.  In point of fact the other driver as annoying as they may be can not take control of your brain.

Recognize, you own it

One of the real benefits of being able to fully accept accountability is your actions are measured and far less likely to be precipitous.  Knowing all blame lies with you leads to second thoughts before acting in ways you will ultimately regret.

Believing you will not being able to absolve yourself using a scapegoat or an excuse, that is accepting full accountability results in exemplary personal behaviour.

Give it a try, people will admire you and you will feel good.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Whose Problem Is It?

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At various points in time, everyone encounters a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.

Ignoring the problem, hoping either other people will address it or even that circumstances will change and the problem will just disappear can be options.

Typically though, while these approaches can work,  both are risky with a high potential for failure and the associated negative consequences.

Taking Accountability

One attribute of high performing teams is that everyone accepts accountability.  For important topics, debates or discussions (i.e., issues) the team practices a culture of inclusion.

In high performing groups everyone accepts the need to participate and become part of the overall value add an equation.  Ultimately this means minimal effort is expended to achieve maximum issue/problem resolution.

Building a culture of inclusion and accountability is an activity that everyone needs to participate in.  Achieving a state where group responsibility overrides individual is not a simple task but well worth the reward.

It’s Our Problem

Collaborative efforts, when coordinated and conducted intuitively typically achieve the best results.  Diversity of thinking and approach are powerful tools.

Working together, spreading the effort across multiple resources (rather than relying on a single point of failure) has many advantages over reliance on an individual.

In the case of problem-solving, this requires everyone to take ownership.   They don’t blame or accuse each other, rather like the three musketeers, one for all and all for one.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Fending for Ourselves

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Taxes are a compulsory contribution to the revenue of your governing body or bodies as the case may be (country, province, city, municipality and so on)

The government, regardless of type, i.e., democratic, autocratic or even royalty , enforces the compulsory part through consequences.  These can range from fines to incarceration.

I wonder if the contributions would continue without the consequences.  If your taxes purchase something of value to you, the consequences should be irrelevant.

Spending Money

To a greater degree (more than half but not by much) most of us choose what to spend our money on.  There is a direct correlation between the expenditure and our perception of value.

Whether you are paying for a road or to build a jail to house people you fear, or whom don’t behave according to expectations,  if you perceive these expenditures of value, consequences are not required. You will contribute.

Accountability

The troubling aspect of taxation centres around who controls what the revenues are used for.  Consequences are needed as an incentive to pay because their is no direct correlation between what you put in and what is received in return.

It would be an interesting but highly difficult exercise to calculate what your tax contribution was actually used for in any given year.

Compiling the contribution of the populations provides scale theoretically improving the efficiency and effectiveness of each individuals contribution.

That is, in theory, if you paid directly for all the services you receive from governments directly instead of cooperatively you would pay more to get less.

In practical fact,  if you were accountable for the spending and so only paid for what you wanted, you might get less things and pay more but overall considering all the things you pay for now but don’t actually need or want, you would probably be better off.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Immaturity

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Germaine Greer, noted Australian born scholar and femminist said “You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.”. Wow, someone who understands me.

This quote is quite witty given the definition of immaturity “, that is “behaviour that is appropriate to someone younger.  The definition implies age overcomes immaturity.

Ms. Grier is thinking, age does not necessarily equal mature behaviour.   Passing from youth to middle or old age is not the defining variable relative to immature behaviour.

Immaturity and Experience

As you age you collect experience.  With greater experiential knowledge underpinning your behaviour, it is logical to expect more consistent and effective behaviour.

Of course if one ignores the lessons of experience this would not neccessarily be the case.  Hence, the logic behind the Grier quotation.

The passing of youth can reasonably be expected to be accompanied by the wisdom of age.  However, the ability to effectively leverage your experience through mature behaviour does depend on a few other variables.

Age and Expectation

While it is reasonable to assume our behaviour will improve with age, the zeal and exuberance of youth can carry forward to a late age.  This is not necessarily detrimental.

As I often note in my posts, balance is the key.  Matching your behaviour to expectations while still endulging your inner child is possible.

The key is to avoid surprise or disaffection by creating a perception of the level of maturity your audience expects without ignoring your own inner needs.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Financial Float

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One regular service financial institution ( FI)  customers use regularly is money transfer/ payments.  Whether a small retail customer or a large Corporation moving funds from one entity to another can be a key service expectation.

The movement of money can take many legacy manual forms from cheques, drafts, wire transfers, payment orders and so on  to diect on-line transfers.

Of course just handing over cash was one of the most widely used methods and although still popular for some transactions (e.g., drug deals) that method is slowly becoming replaced by on-line options (e.g., debit cards)

Payment Options

When moving money  there are several considerations:

– timing of the acceptance of the payment

– payment guarantee

–  convenience

Each of the common legacy money transfer options involve taking money from one account and moving it to another.  Because these are not online real time transactions there is risk the funds are not available (lack of guarantee), lost in transit (inconvenient) or take time to move (slow)

When one FI takes the money from your account and then transfers it to another FI  or credits your account and waits for reimbursement, it is called float.  Float can be positve or negative depending on the flow of funds .

Accumulated positive free float funds can be profitable to an FI while negative float can be costly.  In this age of digital technology it is surprising to me Fi’s still have not fully eliminted these legacy manual money transfer methods that involve unnessecary float.

It is true, world commerce continues to moves toward 100% real time online processing more and more, but unbelievably, there still is a high volume of offline processing (whether credit card, cheque or some other similar form )

Personally I find cheques archaic and frustrating but occassionally no alternative is offerd other than these slow inefficient paper options.

Hey bankers out there, get with it.  Join the digital age.  Resistance is futile .  Force your customers to move off these slow, costly, labour intensive, high risk methodologies.  Might have been okay 150 years ago when Canada became a country, but today, seriously.

 

 

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Some thoughts about Results

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Good results have to be maintained.  Once achieved, relying on past success to be sustained into the future, without continued effort is wishful thinking.

That being said, it is true maintaing a strong positive reputation can be easier than resurrecting one from abysmal failure.  A powerful reason to seek success and when achieved work to continue it.

The Underpinning of Success

I had an interesting discussion today about whether good outcomes can arise by accident or whether planning and effort is required.  Can poor operational processes lead to success.

Obviously happy accidents occur.  People do win the lottery, although the odds are very low and winning is totally unpredictable. And conversly great effort does not guarantee good results.

The risk of failure is higher with bad processes and small effort, hence good risk mitigation dictates putting in the effort and trying hard (whether success is a guaranteed outcome or not).

Controlling Your Destiny

Whatever the level of effort, defining expectations, that is baselining success is a key element in achieving strong results.

Over the years I have seen many projects simply change their duration, cost or scope goals and then when the project is finished, pronounce success.

Moving targets to allow for achievement of same does work but personnally I don’t view it as a successful outcome.   In my experience though this is not an uncommon practice.

Ultimately though, it is like a pyramid scheme, not sustainable.  You can stretch the results for a while but eventually reality catches up.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

I am right

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Occassionally I have participated in discussions where assumptions are presented as facts.  Even worse, those assumptions can frequently take the form of an attack.

For example, “you are not listening to me”.  In fact these statements typically represent a subjective opinion , albeit presented with factual authority.

These are the worst kind of conversation.  Rarely do they achieve anything beyond creating animosity and bad will.  Which leads to the questions like why does this happen?

Seeking Something

Logic dictates conversations, discussions and meetings have purpose.  Whether it just be a cheerful discourse to make you feel good, exchange of information, plotting actions or a myriad of other things, ultimately there is a reason.

Animosity and bad will are probably seldom the goal.  Why would anyone initiate and sustain a discussion that could lead to  sadness or disappointment.  What is the point?

Feeding the Ego

Everyone is important.  Sometimes people get the feeling you don’t understand their importance.  This is one of the triggers of these difficult conversations.

The fictional Vulcan race from the Star Trek franchise are founded in logic.  By removing emotion from the equation, like the Vulcans do,  the type of discourse I have described here does not occur.

That is, assumption based attack focused conversations require strong emotions to be present.  With emotions removed from the equation,  solely reacting logically rather than how you feel (or a combination thereof) eliminates the possibility of a bad conversational experience.

In these cases the focus is on the outcome.  The objective is far more likely to be attained.