I’d be willing to bet that at least once a week, you have some kind of subtle panic reaction when you think about what you’re doing with your time. We see this everywhere – people are always saying “I’d love to, but let me check my schedule” unconsciously knowing darn well that they just generally feel like life won’t let them have enough time for anything.  I even find myself occasionally pausing when someone asks me about doing something as simple as meeting for coffee. It’s like I have some time account somewhere that I fear is overdrawn because I haven’t balanced the ledger recently, and I’m worried I’ll get penalties for bouncing my time checks or something. Part of this is simple time management stuff, but part of it may be the QUALITY of your time, rather than the quantity of it. The facts are that first of all, time is an arbitrary measure of something that can’t be stored or saved. Or deferred. It’s going to “keep going”, to the extent that it exists at all. The second thing is, we actually have more leisure time than at almost any point in human history.

So how could giving away some of your time possibly ease your frustrations about how much you have? Well, a recent study by a trio of academics from Wharton, Yale, and Harvard ended up with some interesting results. This piece from the Association for Psychological Science covers it in detail, but the gist of the idea is that when subjects were given either an altruistic task to complete, a mundane task, or leisure time, the subjects that were assigned a task that involved helping someone tested as perceiving themselves to have more time than even the subjects who had enjoyed leisure time.

Feeling short on time? Maybe you should stop reading and go give some of it away!

Mopping is much less glamorous than everyone makes it out to be.

The other day I had a hilarious conversation with an old business connection that validated a theory I have about the best training a person can receive in their early work experience. So as not to embarrass anyone, I’m not going to get any more specific than saying that the business this fellow is in involves a packaged beverage product, and that he’s going through the early growing pains of turning a one-man operation into one that requires employees.

So what is the best work training a person can receive to prepare them for the world of work in general? A restaurant job. This friend of mine was a chef for a long time, and then a restaurant consultant, before starting his current business. And me? I was a waiter and bartender off and on for about 15 years. The laughs we had all revolved around a simple work task. Mopping.

My friend creates a premium product that has a certain hip prestige associated with it, and he’s a sharp guy, so attracts hip, sharp youngsters as employee prospects. This is all great – it brings a unique tone to the workplace and the product. But it highlights something that’s as valuable as practical information as it is amusing.

Want to see your young, smartphone-toting, Twitter-happy hipster employee turn into a deer in the headlights? At the end of the workday, say to them “Fantastic job today! You rock!”, and then pull the mop and bucket out of the utility closet. After the initial look of perplexedness disappears, and they accept the fact that they’re actually going to (gasp) MOP A FLOOR, the real comedy begins. No, the water has to be HOT. No, I mean reeeeeaaally HOT. WHOA! Not so much soap! The SOAP doesn’t do the work, YOU do! No no no! Squeeze that sucker out before you start! We’re CLEANING THE FLOOR, not WATERING THE GARDEN. By the time the person is done with this first terrifying mop experience, they’re so eager to get back to just SERVING CUSTOMERS that it’s like they had a six month training program in customer service.

Anyone who has worked in restaurants knows this routine all too well. In foodservice, you have to spend entire workdays cleaning up people’s drool, food scraps, and other dining and face-wiping debris, and then turn around and talk to them like you’re they’re personal butler. It’s like changing a baby’s diaper and then having the baby say “good job, now go fetch my pipe and slippers, will you?” A simple task like mopping almost becomes therapeutic. This is probably why the military places such an emphasis on cleaning in basic training. Six months of mopping floors and cleaning toilets, and you’ll do ANYTHING to move on to the next task, even killing your fellow humans.

But the serious point I’m making here is that foodservice – specifically in a full service restaurant – gives a person a range of training that you will find in no other job, anywhere. If a person is doing it right, they’re dealing with everything from sales and customer service, to maintaining product consistency, to ballet (try carrying a tray with six dinners on it through a crowded room!) to conflict resolution and therapy (some kitchen lines are more like battlegrounds than work areas) to sanitation tasks like mopping and waste disposal.

Next time you’re hiring some young green employees, don’t just look at their education and the more “professional” school jobs they try to pad their resume with, look for a year at Mel’s Diner.

All throughout history, humans have been fond of making lists of how to behave. The Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Laws Of The Twelve Tables, or in modern times, that horrifying mass of documents known as “law”. Well, we all pretty much know by now that lying, stealing, cheating, and killing are bad; frankly, it’s just a lot of rationalization that makes them seem okay when conducting business. But in our day-to-day lives, we seem to have lost touch with some of the basics. Below are five simple suggestions for better modern living. Feel free to let us know if we missed anything.

Lose The F-Bomb

Sure, it makes you sound tough and indifferent to trivial problems, but maybe that’s the problem. This isn’t about being prudish. The F-Word has its place as a powerful punctuation for a heated remark, but it not only loses its impact when used repeatedly, it makes for rather inelegant expression. Besides, you kiss your mom with that mouth. And while you’re at it, why not lose damning people and things, and stop invoking the names of the underworld? If these words DON’T have metaphysical powers, why use them? They’re just inarticulate. And if they DO, well, enough said. Just be careful – you may invoke THE END OF DAYS by accident.

Put Yourself Second

We’ve had at least fifty years of pop psychology and consumer culture telling us that we – as individuals – are the most important thing in the world. Well, look where that has gotten us. We’re obese, have heart problems, waste millions of tons of food while half the world starves, and road rage is at an all-time high. And everybody is surly at the grocery store and the mall as they buy more stuff to fill their emptiness. Next time you’re at the checkout line, let the other person go first. Hold doors for people. At four-way stops, go last instead of edging in passive-aggressively. Next time you feel like ordering “pizza doubles”, bake your own SINGLE at home, and send the savings to a food charity.

Fight Over Who Pays

No, not the way most people do it, as in that awkward moment at the end of lunch when everyone busts out the calculators because they forgot to ask for separate checks. Next time just pay the whole darn thing. And if someone else pulls the same trick first, argue politely twice against it, it shows class. Arguing three times is just rude. You will be shocked by the revolution this creates amongst your dining companions. It also works at the theater, the ice cream parlor, the cafe, the ball game, and when playing golf, whether mini or life-size.

Say Excuse Me, Please, and Thank You

I can’t tell you how many times a day I see someone grunting and snorting on the sidewalk or in a store aisle because someone is blocking their path. It’s quite comical in a way, given the startled smile and courteousness one usually gets in response if they just try saying “excuse me”. Likewise with the ancient magic incantation “please”. It adds mystical power to the statement “I’d like a lowfat lowfoam double vanilla latte”. And when you say “thank you” as your request is granted, members of the Secret Cult of Please and Thank You will grant you an additional secret blessing of “you’re welcome”, letting you know you are welcome to do this all again some time.

Learn How To Use A Mobile Phone. Politely.

It’s amazing that technology has advanced sufficiently that you can call your kids at home from your base camp as you climb Mount Kilimanjaro using a device that fits in your shirt pocket. And it’s amazing that you’re smart enough to get a job that pays well enough to buy one of these incredible devices. Now maybe it’s time you got smart enough to use it in a civilized fashion. Some simple rules:

1.) Unless it’s your stockbroker calling in the middle of a market crash or your dying mother calling from her deathbed, don’t interrupt face-to-face conversations to take a call. And if you MUST glance at the phone to know who called, apologize to your physically present companion

2.) When dealing with checkout clerks, waiters, barristas, bartenders, delivery people, or anyone else who is merely trying to SERVE you, get off the phone, or put your caller on hold. Everyone will be happier. Perhaps most of all your friend who can’t figure out why you’re saying “how much” and “keep it”.

3.) Turn the darn thing off at the theater, the restaurant, the cafe, the funeral, the library, and anywhere else that people don’t want to hear a crappy robot version of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. Failure to observe the RTFM Protocol (Read The Freakin’ Manual) is not a legitimate excuse. If you can figure out how to make a call, you can figure out how to turn the ringer off.

Bonus List:

Stand up and greet people when they join you at a restaurant or cafe

When you’re with a friend and run into someone they don’t know, INTRODUCE them.

Embrace people when greeting them, instead of offering the “white man handshake”

Say “hi” and smile at strangers. Maybe even say “how are you today?” or “Nice day, isn’t it?”

UPDATE: Apple completely turned this experience around, and turned me into a new loyal customer. See the followup HERE

Last week, I happened to be perusing the book 212 Service: The 10 Rules for Creating a Service Culture, when I coincidentally had back-to-back service experiences that highlighted one of the most crucial aspects of service. Which aspect am I referring to? Concern. You can write books, attend seminars, create training programs, and share theories about customer service ’til the cows come home (which they will, if you show them enough concern) but if – at that magic brief moment of contact you don’t have a human or at least a mechanism in place that says “we care, and we’re going to try to help you”, you’re screwed. You may as well ignore customer service altogether. Let me use my recent personal experience to demonstrate what I mean.

My Gran Prix du Laundry

I use this local laundromat to do my laundry. It’s pricier than doing it at home, but way cheaper than sending it out. Being able to do six loads at once saves me about 8 hours every time I do laundry, so it’s well worth it. And I’m lucky, because the local laundromat I use – Mr. Stadium, for the record – is clean, well maintained, and HUGE. They also have wi-fi if I need to squeeze in some work! So this past week I’m jamming on my laundry routine (I have this down to a precise science, like a precision racing team) and about halfway through, I pull a black comforter out of the industrial size wash to move it to the dryer. I notice a slight soap smudge on one corner, but it easily wipes off, so I continue with my assembly-line-like process. As I start shifting all the other loads to the dryer, I go the dryer that the comforter is in to rotate it so that it will dry faster, and am a little flustered to find that it is entirely covered with a subtle soapy film. This could be catastrophic! My entire 75 minute Gran Prix du Laundry may come to a screeching halt as this unexpected problem throws me a yellow flag.

The Pit Stop

I have to point out that about 75% of my laundry is black, so I’m a little concerned. This little soap problem happens often, but is usually minor. But this is an expensive comforter, and it’s BIG. So I take it over to the counter, and the nice but reserved lady gives me a subtle “oh boy, here comes a complainer” kind of look. This worries me slightly, but I politely explain the problem. She looks it over, sighs, and says “lemme go get the manager”. A minute later the guy comes out. He doesn’t look excited; who knows, maybe he was in the back room trading commodities and my timing was bad. But he takes a look and says “Well, we can take care of this. Do you want to leave it and pick it up later? No charge?” He picks up on my “OH MY GOD NO CAN WE DO THIS NOW MY EMPIRE IS CRUMBLING” look and says “Or we can just take care of it right now”. A wave of relief passes over me. This is too easy. I say “that would be GREAT if we could do it now”, and without saying much he heads over to a machine to get to work on it. I go back to my routine, glancing over occasionally to see the guy diligently and methodically DOING MY LAUNDRY. How cool is that? While he’s waiting for the first cycle, he comes over to give me an update, and we strike up a conversation about the importance of customer service, and how it’s probably going to make a comeback in today’s tough economy. It’s easy to stay in business when times are good, even if your customer service is crap. But in tough times, it can make or break a business. He shares a story about how he took over a neglected laundromat in a nearby town that was taking in 200 dollars a day, and turned that into 1800 dollars a day. Without changing anything except the service attitude. I leave the laundromat 10 minutes behind schedule, and ecstatic. I will give this guy more advertising (for free!) in the next few months than he probably got all last year. Not that he seems to need it. But wow, what a great feeling to know there are still business people out there that genuinely care.

Apple Redefines the Word “Genius”

So the next day, I notice that my beloved black MacBook has an unusual problem. A few days earlier, I had noticed that it wasn’t resting evenly as I worked at a cafe, but didn’t think much of it, figuring it was the table. But as I headed out for a meeting now a couple of days later, I noticed that the battery cover on the bottom seemed to have popped slightly out of place. I made a little adjustment, and things were okay. Or so I thought. By the end of the day, the battery was bulging like my MacBook was with MacChild. Personally, I’d be ecstatic to have a Mac Mini, but I know this isn’t how they come into the world. So I do a little looking around on some Mac forums, and it turns out that this was a not entirely uncommon manufacturing flaw. People posting on the forums shared a wide variety of results, but there seems to be a random willingness on the part of “Genius Bar” employees to replace them at no cost. So I head to the local Apple store. They look a little busy when I arrive, but I see a clerk-to-customer ratio of 1:1 or better. There are easily ten “Geniuses” on the clock. So the greeter distractedly greets me as he mutters into his earpiece and taps into his iPad, simultaneously asking me what I need. The guy does a really excellent impression of stock broker engaged in trades while acting like he cares what you’re saying, but I figure they’re busy, so I don’t actually get put off by his detached indifference. Besides, this is THE APPLE STORE. I’ve heard nothing but great things about Apple support. Besides, a minute later, he waves me back into the store.

Genuine Genius Requires An Appointment

So the Genius Guy greets me and asks what the problem is. I pull out my MacBook while explaining the problem, and his eyes widen as he sees how badly the battery is bulging. We agree that it would be surprising if this weren’t doing damage to the internals. He steps away for a moment, and comes back with a boxed battery, without saying much, except that the battery costs $129.00. I point out that I’m not keen on dropping over 100 bucks on what I consider manufacturing flaw that probably warranted a recall that Apple never issued. He says that I have to make an appointment. I think it’s odd that I’m surrounded by Customer Service Geniuses but have to make an appointment, but whatever. I understand that maybe this is now going to be considered more like a repair issue. I ask him if that appointment might be today. He checks his iDevice, and says “I can get you in at 5pm”. That’s 18 minutes from the current time, which was the first ding in the service, from my point of view. He doesn’t suggest anything will actually be accomplished at that point, and I’m being told – while I’m ALREADY being helped – that I have to make an appointment 18 minutes away. I make the appointment, figuring I’ll run a quick errand.

Preliminary Dis-Appointment

I come back for my appointment at exactly 4:58pm. My stockbroker friend that’s doubling as a greeter for Apple doesn’t acknowledge me for three minutes. Yes, I’m timing things at this point. All he was doing was waiting to get a response on a clerk being ready to help the couple ahead of me, a couple to whom he had already spoken. He acknowledges my presence at 5:02. I wait eight minutes, and then attempt to let him know that I can’t wait any longer. He is so inattentive that I finally just walk away. Not fuming or anything, but definitely a bit miffed at the weird 30 minutes of my day that I spent doing pretty much nothing.

Email Novellas and Genuine Disappointment Contempt

So that evening, I decide to follow up in a simple way. A message from the “Apple Store Team” awaits me in my inbox. I elect to reply to it with a 900-word email, politely explaining my experience. In an attempt to reach someone I think might actually care, I Cc the message to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Can you guess what happened next? Nothing. I got an automated reply from “the team” with links to things that are supposed to solve all my problems. No surprise there. And I honestly don’t expect a busy CEO like Tim Cook to reply to my emails, right? WRONG. I find it stunning that a high-salary CEO that has literally thousands of employees in his service doesn’t have a team devoted to exactly this kind of message. I don’t expect Mr. Cook to coddle me, but really. Apple is one of the most profitable and cash-rich corporations in the world.

Apples, Oranges, and Ice Cream Sandwiches

So where does this leave me? It leaves me ready to reconsider close to ten thousand dollars in hardware purchases. As I pointed out in my lengthy email that sailed into the abyss, I’ve been comparing tablets, smartphones, and desktops, since most of my devices are at or near the end of their service cycles. And you know what? That DROID RAZR is looking pretty hot compared to the iPhone, and likewise with the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the ASUS Transformer Prime as alternatives to the iPad. And when I look at the cost and serviceability of non-Apple desktops, I start to remember the reason I’ve always resisted making the switch, no matter HOW much I love the Apple design asthetic and quality engineering.

It’s Not About Money At All

So what’s the lesson here? Customer service really boils down to emotion. The fact that the guy at the laundromat gave me five bucks worth of service and a clean comforter were secondary to the fact that he CARED. And that he showed it. And Apple? If I don’t hear something from somebody in the next few days, there’s a good chance they’ll lose ten grand of business over a hundred bucks and some robotic human interaction. If any one of the dozen fellows in that Apple Store had so much as ACTED like they cared, I might have buckled and ponied up for the battery at full price. But now I just may stop being a “switch” customer, AND demand my replacement battery. And frankly, every time I look at my MacBook now, I feel a subtle contempt. It also feels a lot heavier than it used to for some reason.

Over the last couple of years, I watched nearly identical tragic romances unfold, and having a window on these two relationships reminded me not only of the immense influence of guilt on some people’s decision making, but the amazing absence of guilt that some people may feel in nearly identical circumstances. These “tragic romances” I’m referring to were fairly common stories of marriages in which the woman believed the man had become emotionally or sensually vacant, tried to address the problem, and then, out of frustration, turned to infidelity to find the attention they craved.

The woman in one of these relationships expressed very little guilt about her actions, and moved on to get divorced. In the other instance however, the woman apparently felt enough guilt that she eventually rejected a man she had told repeatedly for several years that she loved, and returned to the psychologically abusive relationship with her husband. It was the latter situation that struck me more; as this friend sobbed about the dual guilt of hurting one man to return to the one she had cheated on, I did my best to encourage her to do what she thought was right, and suggested that while it was alright to feel badly about doing something one knows is “wrong”, it’s literally toxic to ourselves to dwell in the guilt. I suggested that once she had acknowledged to herself some wrongdoing, that she “shed that shroud of guilt” and move on.

There’s a remarkable range of things a person probably should feel guilty about, but I can’t help noticing the widely disparate manifestations of guilt or lack thereof that we encounter in modern life. The other day, I was talking to a fellow whose wages were being garnished because of a student loan that was in default, and I asked him how he would feel about mass protest to dismiss or defer student debt. He said he wouldn’t support it. I asked him why – in light of the fact that bankers and politicians were dumping the debt for their financial failures on current and future generations of taxpayers through bailouts – he wouldn’t demand a reciprocal arrangement. He said that what they did was wrong, but that didn’t mean he didn’t owe the debt he had taken on.

That pretty effectively sums up the poles of the range of human responses to feeling guilt over wrongdoing right there. Regardless of the fact that a person may be able or likely to find rationalizations for wrongdoing (especially if the rewards are high enough, as with emotion or riches), there is one kind of person who will feel genuine guilt whether or not they get caught, and another kind of person who will NOT feel genuine guilt whether they get caught or not.

If you’re in the latter camp, I’m not sure why you’re reading this; there’s a decent chance that you’re mildly sociopathic! But if you’re like most of us, you may find yourself in situations where guilt gnaws at you for a variety of reasons. While guilt serves a perfectly positive purpose – it’s our own negative reinforcement for behaviors that don’t benefit us – it can also be a poison that dwells within us, and eventually destroys us.

In the simplest view, there are really only two kinds of guilt. Guilt about something you did, or guilt about something you didn’t do. They can both be incredibly self-destructive, and they can both be fairly easily dealt with, once you identify lingering guilt as the little monster that it is. But that’s probably the real problem. Many people don’t even REALIZE they’re driven by guilt. Are you? Do you fret about how you could have done a better job on something at work? About how you don’t spend enough quality time with your family? Those are both just as likely to be forms of perfectionism, which is another issue worth looking at. Do you feel guilt about how you broke little Jane or Johnny’s heart in college, or the friend you jilted at some point in the past? The first two items aren’t really that hard to deal with. It’s simple as CHANGING YOUR BEHAVIOR. Do better next time at work, learning from the mistakes you made. Spend more time with the family! How hard is that? And the latter two things can end up being almost comical once one takes the right steps toward addressing them. Quite often, when we go to repair this kind of guilt by reaching out to make amends, we discover that the person we thought we had harmed cares so little that they barely remember who we are! Sometimes guilty obsessions can honestly be that out of proportion with reality. The guilt factory in our head can be quite productive.

The strategy for minimizing guilt in your life is actually pretty damn simple. Don’t lie. Don’t cheat. Don’t fear. Communicate! Things like the infidelity I mentioned at the top arise from one’s fear of the confrontation one thinks will result from expressing one’s true feelings. Telling someone what you think will almost never have results as negative as those that come from subterfuge, deceit, and avoiding the facts.

Dealing with persistent guilt has other solutions, but they all center around self-forgiveness. If you’ve done your best to make amends or change your behavior, and are still feeling guilt, there are several things that can help you. One is simply time. While a confession or making an amend can sometimes provide instant, almost magical relief, sometimes we just need to process and heal. Another is obviously therapy. Talk therapy can really help us hear the fallacy of our own thoughts, and free us to move on. And if you have faith or a spiritual side, ponder the fact that while bringing your problem to a church figure may actually AGGRAVATE the problem, since guilt is one of the key tools of many religious organizations, the PRINCIPLES of your faith may provide an incredibly easy answer. Most faiths and spiritual practices have something devoted especially to release from guilt. Think of the entire purpose of a figure like Jesus, for instance, who – if you believe the teachings – was sent here to free us from our human flaws, partly by acknowledging that we all have them!

It may just be time to shed that shroud of guilt you’re wearing.

It’s not very becoming.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw an AA sobriety token. Years ago, I was putting in another droll night as a bartender at a high-end restaurant in San Francisco. Early in the evening, before the dinner crowd had arrived, a well-dressed fellow sat at the bar, and as he downed a few shots of Jack, chasing them with beer, he politely told me how much his life sucked. A common occurrence of course; if you’ve ever bartended – or sat on the other side of the bar – you know that doing the job well requires an honorary degree in psychotherapy. I served up the usual long ears and nods of affirmation, and before long, he was on his way, leaving a hefty cash tip. As he stood up and turned to leave, he tossed a large coin on the pile of singles, and said “keep the change”.

The melodramatic irony of what he had just done honestly didn’t hit me a few minutes later when I gathered up the tip, and looked at the big bronze coin that had the Roman numeral “V” in a triangle on one side, with the words “Unity”, “Service”, and “Recovery” surrounding it, and on the other side had some prayer about serenity and courage. It didn’t really hit me until I shared it with a co-worker later. I had suspected it was some kind of sobriety thing, but as I talked to my co-worker – who had alcoholic parents – I suddenly understood for sure that this guy had just decided to throw away five years of sober time, and this was his personal and silently dramatic way of announcing it.

I view this all with a very different perspective at this point than I did in those days. Over the years I learned that I myself had a problem with alcohol and addiction, and finally, a little over a decade ago, I got “mostly” clean for about four years. I say “mostly”, because although I mostly didn’t drink for four years, I allowed myself an annual or semi-annual “drinking event”. Either around my birthday, or around the holidays. On a couple of these occasions, I just had one or two drinks, but more commonly I’d get pretty drunk, feel like crap the next day, and have no desire to drink for quite a while as a result. In spite of these “scheduled relapses” as I now think of them, my life pretty quickly improved during this period; I started a business, got my finances in pretty good order, and got seriously involved with what I thought was going to be a long-lasting relationship.

And then, for some reason, I decided it would be okay to start drinking again on occasion. Having broken my “no more than twice a year” rule, I thought I’d be smart and at least keep it to a once-a-month thing, just to be safe. Of course, pretty soon, once every couple of weeks seemed pretty reasonable, but only if it was for some kind of social reason – I wouldn’t just go out and buy some booze for myself. And frankly, once you’re drinking every two weeks, that starts to feel contrived. I mean, everybody drinks on the weekend, right? So soon once a week was just fine. And when you’re as busy and hard-working as I am, sometimes you just want to reward yourself in the middle of the week. You know where I’m heading with this. Within about a year, I was drinking every single day again, and before long the daily start time crept earlier and earlier into my day. A glass of wine with lunch was okay, right? It was only about a year later that I was having the occasional Mimosa or Bloody Mary with weekend brunch. Because that’s soooo cosmopolitan. And soon, I was finding it difficult to just plain function without a shot or a glass of wine in the middle of the day somewhere.

So I tried outpatient substance abuse counseling. Twice. And both times it seemed to help for awhile, but it wouldn’t “stick”. Finally, I put myself in inpatient rehab, because EVERYBODY knows THAT’S where they fix you for sure. And guess what? I drank four months later. So I bounced around my personal “bottom” for awhile, until I finally ran into an old friend who helped me get to some AA meetings – which I had resisted attending with any regularity or commitment – and now, a few weeks shy of exactly four years later, I’m still sober. And more at peace than I have ever been in my life. So I should be REALLY EXCITED to celebrate my four year AA anniversary in a few weeks, right?

Well, maybe not.

Most of what you hear about or read about regarding “sober anniversaries” is how it’s a great time to celebrate the sober person’s new life, and give some positive reinforcement to their new behavior. And that may be true in many cases, but in my opinion, it’s also another potential setup for relapse. My personal experience was that my first year anniversary was just plain annoying, since I felt I still had so far to go before I should celebrate anything. I thought I’d heard all the old-timer jokes by now, but when I shared this though recently, a woman at the table said “well, like they say, congratulating an alcoholic for not drinking is like congratulating a cowboy with hemorrhoids for not riding a horse”. And I have to be honest, my next two anniversaries were relative non-events. It felt kind of gratifying for my sponsor and my home groups to acknowledge them with tokens and whatnot, but frankly, I was so happily living day to day (one of the great results of working a halfway decent program!) that it was really just a blip in the course of things.

But with my fourth anniversary approaching, everything has been quite different. A few weeks ago, I found myself stuck for several days in that “squirrel cage brain” that most addicts and alcoholics know all too well. It took me a couple of days to even recognize it for what it was. Why? Probably because my life has been going so well that at most, I had been going to one meeting a week. Once I realized it wasn’t my hectic schedule and project delays that were making me nutty, about 50% of the uneasiness went away. And even more restlessness was alleviated when I simply went to a meeting the next day!

And then two things became glaringly evident to me. One I already knew on an intellectual level, but the other blew me away; I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it.

The first was something that a lot of people with long-term recovery experience know all about. There’s a common pattern for people in recovery that involves relapsing around the 4-5 year mark. People will talk about it in a lot of different ways, but the basis of this phenomena is probably rooted in the fact that for most people, 3-4 years is just enough time to get one’s life fully in order, and once your life is “in order”, there’s a fairly good chance you’re going to be hungry for something more than basic stability or financial success. This hunger may manifest as loneliness, restlessness, a bloated sense of self-satisfaction, or a myriad of other things. I followed this pattern like clockwork with my first period of “dry time”. Never mind the strict AA-based observation that I was relapsing annually, the fact was that I was naturally going through a lot of the cycles someone would go through working a twelve step program. Just not as thoroughly, and certainly in a way that was going to lead to a much larger fall when the five year wall came along. So what happens at this magic 4-5 year point? A failure to embrace and cultivate the emotional and spiritual maturity that’s finally in one’s grasp. Go read steps six and seven if you don’t understand why someone would choose not to pursue continued spiritual growth when it’s placed right in their lap.

So there’s that. But what was this other big epiphany I had missed? I had overlooked another kind of anniversary, the kind often discussed in therapeutic settings, that’s based on the human tendency to relive emotions or traumas on anniversaries. What I had failed to ponder as I approached this four year mark was that I HAVE NEVER BEEN CLEAN THIS LONG IN MY ENTIRE ADULT LIFE. No matter how you slice it, I’m in new territory here, and that wily addict in my head is rubbing his pesky little hands together in delight. For now I’m just winking at him knowingly. I think I have a strategy for this new phase of my sobriety, one that involves doing some better follow up on some step work, and re-energizing my connections with folks in the fellowship. Pretty easy stuff!!!

So what am I doing in a few weeks on the day of my four year sober anniversary?

I don’t know. It isn’t here yet.

This provided us with a few valuable lessons:

1.) It’s hard to write something snappy daily.
This was perhaps partly a discipline problem. We’ll get to that in a minute.

2.) Ian is a bit of a windbag.
We won’t get to that in a minute. It should be evident if you peruse his articles here on the site.

3.) It’s important to adapt to new situations quickly.
It can often give quite the wrong impression if you don’t.

4.) Ian and Nick are not avid Twitterers
Is that a bad thing? Probably not. By the way, did you know that sending a single tweet uses a whopping 2MB of code?

So I’m willing to entertain the notion that if we had been more disciplined, writing a “Daily Fix” would have been easy-peasy. But the fact is that we launched this idea right around the time we were completing our recent book, and doing a soft release during the holiday season. At the same time, we’ve been working out the details of a contest involving YouTube submissions, prepping for promotional appearances, launching a publishing company, and starting a new book. Sounds a little like excuses, doesn’t it. Maybe so.

The Secret About Discipline

So I at least re-learned a little secret about discipline. You know what it is? The only secret to discipline is simply DOING a thing, persistently. There is nothing else. Except choosing not to do a thing. Which is what we’re doing in this case.

Writing Something Snappy Daily

I recommend trying this some time if you haven’t. I personally write a minimum of 500 words a day for my work. But “something snappy”? That’s an entirely different animal. I’m going to give this a shot in a different context soon just to challenge myself.

Adapation

We violated one of our own unspoken rules here. It’s common knowledge that in today’s world, it’s crucial to adapt quickly to new situations. I would submit that it was our own intrinsic commitment to follow through and discipline that actually left our “Daily Fix” column in a not-very-daily state. We will now be posting in this section when we feel like it. It’s entirely possible that we lost visitors who were interested in our daily content; we’ll never know. But by simply changing the name of the column, multiple burdens are lifted!

And that’s The Score.

See? I told you Ian is a windbag. He is in fact hoping that this long winded, self-referential diatribe will inspire Nick to write something snappy soon to bump it off the main page.

Although the polish has dulled over the years, I was raised to be a bit of a stickler when it comes to the use of language. One of my great mentors was Mrs. Lane, my eighth grade English teacher. She was an alternately sweet or stern old black lady who spoke “White English” with vastly more precision than any of her uptighty-whitey peers at the mostly white midwestern middle school I attended. She taught us useful things like the fact that “snuck” isn’t a word, made us articulate our consonants, and vigorously prohibited prepositional endings. She enforced these rules with a policy she announced at the beginning of the year, which was that violating any of her carefully outlined golden rules meant the offending party would be the target of a high-speed projectile in the form of a blackboard eraser or a paperback version of Catcher in the Rye. This would probably get a teacher fired these days, but it was one of the best lessons I ever learned. Communication isn’t only about words, it’s really about engaging people. We loved Mrs. Lane, and she taught us much more by building this relationship than she ever could have with a pile of textbooks and writing assignments. Which she had plenty of too, by the way.

Later, I was influenced by George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (one of his Collected Essays), in which he skewered the bloated language that is so handy for influencing political thinking, and pointed out that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought”. He focused especially on things like “dying metaphors”, “verbal false limbs”, and “pretentious diction”, and pointed out how people who think they have something important to say will spout an ornate phrase like “In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that” rather than simply saying “I think“. I also was influenced by something the Nobel Prize winning Richard Feynman shared in his autobiography Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. He was talking about how some fields of study were really all bluster, with little if any science to back up their “facts”. He was attending a series of seminars presented by other professors from various fields, and shared his bemused contempt in this passage:

There was a sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read – something he had written ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn’t make head nor tail of it! I figured it was because I hadn’t read any of the books on that list. I have this uneasy feeling of “I’m not adequate,” until finally I said to myself, “I’m gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly, so I can figure out what the hell it means.”

So I stopped – at random – and read the next sentence very carefully. I can’t remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: “The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.” I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? “People read.”

There are many examples of this in modern life; and in some cases, the results of this language abuse are not only confusing, they might be downright dangerous. Let’s use the DSM-IV as a sort of case study itself. The secret cabal of psychiatrists that engineer this monstrosity of diagnostic recommendations are in a sickening symbiosis with the pharmaceutical industry, and make a business of cleverly crafting disorders out of common human behaviors to market new drugs with decades-long marketing cycles. Take, for instance, the DSM’s parameters for defining AD/HD. For a positive diagnosis of the disorder, the subject must exhibit the following symptoms of inattention for at least 6 months to a degree that is “maladaptive and inconsistent” with their developmental level:

Inattention

a) often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work, or other activities
b) often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities
c) often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly
d) often does nor follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace
e) often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities
f) often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort (such as schoolwork or homework)
g) often loses things necessary for tasks or activities (e.g., toys, school assignments, pencils, books, or tools)

Hyperactivity and Impulsivity

a) often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat
b) often leaves seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected
c) often runs about or climbs excessively in situation in which it is inappropriate (in adolescents or adults, may be limited to subjective feelings of restlessness)
d) often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly
e) is often “on the go” or often acts as if “driven by a motor”
f) often talks excessively
g) often blurts out answers before questions have been completed
h) often has difficulty awaiting turn
i) often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversation or games)

Forgive me, but having been influenced by the plain and incisive speech of folks like Orwell, Feynman, and Mark Twain, I’d venture to suggest that not only is that all relatively normal behavior for a kid, you might state it all a little more efficiently by saying “boy, that kid’s fidgety”. I jest a bit, but this is a serious issue. Language is manipulated to label children as social deviants, merely on the basis of their ability to sit still and pay attention, and this is accomplished by plastering polysyllabic pseudo-scientific jargon on top of airy fairy descriptions of behavior. This phenomena is equally dangerous in politics. We live in an era when even a neoconservative thinks that neoconservative means “the new way that conservatives think”. It doesn’t. It means that the person wasn’t always a conservative!

So where where am headed with all of this? Well, to be honest, I sometimes wonder if my own inability to speak the convoluted language known as “corporate speak” has prevented me from being more successful in business. This topic came up for me the other day when my associate Nick used the term “edgecrafting” in a sentence, without missing a beat. The term is of course from marketing guru Seth Godin’s book Free Prize Inside, so I knew what Nick meant. Or did I? It’s a handy phrase; it really makes it sound like you’re doing something innovative and cool, when in fact you’re just doing finish work and driving your idea to completion. But that sounds really dull at a meeting, so suddenly we’re edgecrafting.

But this isn’t some outline for a dataviz-driven preso for extensible, frictionless, and future-proof strategies for reconceptualizing your core competencies to re-invest in and empower your intellectual capital to optimize your quality vectors and leverage existing potentialities for envisioneering economically sound strategic theme areas to architect your new clicks-and-mortar brandgagement. No, I just want to point out that sometimes, language might get in the way of what you’re trying to say, and more importantly, what you’re trying to DO. One of the funniest examples I’ve ever seen of this was when I was presenting a design comp to a client several years ago, a small local bank. One of the executives sitting in on the meeting was a VP with the bank. I had used Dreamweaver – the software commonly used at the time for website development. Dreamweaver had a plugin called “Lorem & More” which would let you replace the classic Lorem Ipsum with other styles of filler text. One of the options was “Corporate Mumbo Jumbo”, and I had used a block of auto-generated gibberish something like:

As knowledge is fragmented into specialties an investment program where cash flows exactly match shareholders’ preferred time patterns of consumption measure the process, not the people. Benchmarking against industry leaders, an essential process, should be a top priority at all times in order to build a shared view of what can be improved, an important ingredient of business process re-engineering. To focus on improvement, not cost, building flexibility through spreading knowledge and self-organization, in a collaborative, forward-thinking venture brought together through the merging of like minds.

After commenting on the color scheme and asking if we could “punch it up a little”, he said “and I think some of that copy needs to be tightened up too”. Yes, this man was so used to seeing meaningless gibberish in his line of work that even knew how it could be refined. To his credit, the guy was making easily five times what I make, and his day seemed to consist largely of saying he didn’t like stuff and wanted it fixed.

So is this bizarre and inflated language really a necessary component of a successful business? Well, if it’s an organization with 500+ employees which adheres to things like the 80/20 workforce rule and believes in daily strategy meetings, probably so. How the hell ELSE would you fill the time? If you’re an up-and-coming cubicle farmer, fear not – there are plenty of resources for meaningless twaddle to pad your PowerPoint deck. The Business Jargon Dictionary is one, or if you’re too lazy too actually cut and paste the phrases, Andrew Davidson’s Corporate Gibberish Generator™ does the heavy lifting FOR you.

But if you actually just want to get crap done, and convey to others how to do it, there are some really simple tricks. Many of these are no-brainers, but that’s exactly the problem. Our brains get so worked up trying to make our ideas sound important that we forget whether or not they actually ARE.

1.) Are you preparing a “deck” merely because you have nothing to say and a PowerPoint or series of infographics will make it seem like you do? If it’s the latter, ditch the PowerPoint.

2.) Do you really mean “Accelerated Emergence of High Maturity Behaviors” or are you trying to say “faster results”? If you’re actually looking for faster results, you’ll get them with the latter.

3.) If you strip your descriptions of a product or service down to the simplest possible form, and it sounds like the product sucks, there’s a good chance it does. Ditch the product AND the language.

4.) Does your deck consist mainly of slides with 3 to 5 bullet points? Try a whiteboard, and write them as you deliver them. It keeps both you and your audience more engaged.

I could go on for hours about PowerPoint, and am sometimes tempted to do so with a PowerPoint. I’m the guy who you can quote for saying:

“PowerPoint. Helping people who don’t know what they’re doing prove it since 1984.”

What it all really boils down to is this: Talk Normal, Stupid.

This made me think about what used to make me do this. Like most people, I have BILLS TO PAY, and going to work seemed the straightest path to solving that particular problem. But is it? I mean, if you hate your job, what is the purpose of going to it, if its only purpose is to perpetuate the life that makes it a grudging necessity? Many of us know there’s another way, but even after we realize we might pursue this path, we’re not even really sure what we really want any more.

How about some tools? Recently Nick and I were discussing the value of various kinds of tests. Although I have no degrees, I have most of the skills and gifts of trained therapists and counselors, because I’m an ENFJ (more on that in a moment). Nick however has a degree in psychology, and in fact worked for several years with Dr. Jim McConnell, author of what was for a long time the world’s best-selling college psychology textbook. We have plans to share various self-assessment tools in the coming months, but I thought I’d share a “fun” one that is based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

This was one of the first tests that helped me zero in better on my true gifts. As an ENFJ, I apparently share traits with people like Oprah, Dr. Phil, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. How’s that for an odd mix? The “ENFJ” stands for “Extroverted Intuitive Feeling Judging”.

So what “Myers-Briggs Type” are you? If you don’t have time to take a real version of the test, there are plenty on line that are reasonably accurate, provided your input isn’t too biased. There’s one here that has a single page of 75 very simple questions. What type are you?