wroolie

Getting Things Done

March 16, 2006 by wroolie Leave a Comment

After reading David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, last week, I decided to order the book from Amazon. I read too many self-improvement books. Lately, I’m getting tired of all the hacks that are re-hashing all the other people’s findings. It gets so tiring reading this crap hoping “if I can just take one thing away from this . . .”, but get nothing.

This book is different. I’ve read other time management books and I’ve made lists with priorities and had my boss come in with an urgent task that throws the whole list out of whack. This book focuses more on a “mind like water” approach (from karate). This all sounds very simple and Allen even admits the common sense to it all.

On the “common sense” note, I constantly hear people refer to the books that I read as “it’s all pretty much common sense”. However, the things the authors like Covey, Allen, Tom Peters, etc, cover are never applied by most people I know. Perhaps it goes back to the Mark Twain Quote–“Common Sense is not that common.”

The Beautiful Sight

March 15, 2006 by wroolie Leave a Comment

One of the most beautiful sites I’ve ever seen was the night range at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri when I was in basic training. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a tracer round being fired from a rifle in the the pitch black sky, but it is fantastic.

A tracer round is a false bullet that doesn’t pierce anything (I don’t think, but given it’s speed . . .) but just glows orange as it is fired. In our magazines, it was every third round. In the nighttime when you can’t use the black site post, you need to use the tracer rounds to help aim. If you ever see the old Gulf War 1 footage of the orange glowing bullets flying into the sky, these are tracer rounds.

In basic training, they don’t look nearly as threatening as they would in war.

I vividly remember sitting on some old sports bleachers huddled up with fellow soldiers and watching the night range. It was so dark. We sat in the bleachers waiting for our turn to climb into the foxhole and shoot.

Eventually, after about ten minutes or so for the current troops to get ready, a flair would be fired into the air and turn night into day. As the flare was slowly lowered to earth with its tiny parachute, the soldiers start firing.

On the night fire range, the soldiers can’t see the targets until the flair goes up. When they fire, two out of three rounds should hit the target and the third (the tracer) bounces off the target and into the sky. As the flare extinguishes, I remember looking into the air and watching the orange glowing rounds fly into the air as I smelled the discharged gunpowder waft over me.

A beautiful site. I wonder if anyone in war-ravaged Iraq ever thought so.

Do you get bored easily?

February 8, 2006 by wroolie Leave a Comment

I once blew a job interview because I told the interviewer that I get bored easily. Well, actually, I answered his question.

After telling the guy about all of my accomplishments, about my optimism for the future, and the work I do on my own to keep my skills sharp, He asked me the question. I told him how I keep up on various areas of study. I told him how I wake up at 4am every morning to read or develop my technical skills. He was impressed with my enthusiasm. Then he asked me, “Do you get bored easily?”

I didn’t know the right answer. I couldn’t bring myself to say no. I do get bored easily. When I told him yes, I knew it was over. After interviewing for an hour, I threw it out because I couldn’t answer the question right.

“My concern is that we don’t always work on new and exciting things here. I’m concerned that you would find the more tedious aspects of meeting with clients and discussing the same thing over and over again to lose your interest.” I backpedaled as much as possible after that, but it was no use. I found out later that I wasn’t hired because I might get bored easily.

It was one of those moments when you know the right answer as soon as you leave. How could I get bored easily when I spent an entire year learning Mandarin? How can I get bored easily when I sat through hour after hour in history lectures when I’d been up all night working in a motel.

The place I was working at the time I had been at for two and a half years. Still, I missed the question.

This was nearly three years ago. When I look back at that interview, despite the awful feeling I had driving home afterwards, I’m glad I said what I did. I do get bored easily. We should all get bored easily.

When the world moves as fast as it does, some are going to cling to the quo and others are going to move forward falling all the time.

Which would you rather be?