From the Mind of MandoRon

As you can tell by the title, what you are reading is not my original post.

Yesterday, I went on a bit of blogging tirade.  It all started when I received a bit of mail that touched on a nerve… stepped on one of my pet peeves, if you will.

So I wrote a rather scathing rebuke for all the world to read and agree with. 

Was I right? Probably.  Was airing it out in public the right thing to do?  No.

Luckily, I have a rule never to post anything while I’m ticked and my wife lectured me about why I shouldn’t.

1 Peter 3:8 says “Finally, all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude.”  He was talking to me too.

I recently came across a great article on creativity from Patrick Leoncini that I wanted to share.  In case you don’t know, Patrick is an incredible author and a great speaker on the subject of leadership and business.  His books include: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Silos Politics and Turfwars, The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family, and Death by Meeting.

I highly recommend subscribing to his free email newsletter called Pat’s Point of View.  You can sign up on The Table Group’s homepage.

Pat’s most recent POV is titled “The Enemy of Innovation and Creativity”.  He argues (successfully, in my opinion) that the business world spends so much time trying to improve efficiency, that creativity and innovation get squelched.  The creative process, by definition, is woefully inefficient.  You end up wasting a lot of time when you’re trying to create something.  But he points out that some inefficiency is necessary in order to successfully innovate. 

Go read the article, then come back.

A few quotes that I want to point out:

“I’ve become convinced that the only way to be really creative and innovative in life is to be joyfully inefficient.”

“Few people have the self-esteem and courage to continue being inefficient when others are calling them out as being flaky, irresponsible and unreasonable.”

“If we’re serious about innovation, we have to celebrate—yes, celebrate—the inefficiency of the people who we rely on for new ideas, even if it means they are late for meetings, they waste a little time or money and they leave the lights on when they go home. “

Interestingly… when I first read the article, my first thought was to my own songwriting endeavors.  Not my daily job.

I focus so much energy on trying to be efficient with my time, trying to learn to play new songs, and trying to organize schedules and setlists for the band at church, that I leave myself very little time (if any) to just plink around with my mandolin or guitar and create something new.  It’s almost like I need to schedule some “free time” just to mess around with no purpose. 

Interestingly, most of the songs that I’ve written have come out of a time like that.  I’ll accidentally play a chord progession that I like, and then lyrics pop into my head while playing the accidental chords over and over.

So I’m trying to make time for me to be creative musically.  And I’m trying to encourage the “flaky artists” that I know to keep being “flaky artists”, and not worry about the details.  Let someone else handle them.

How about you?  Do you set aside time to be inefficiently creative?  Or does it just come naturally?

I wasn’t planning on a writing a sequel to my recent post, Of Inboxes and Men, discussing how people manage their inbox.  But plans change.  I recently read an older blog post from Michael Hyatt on the subject of email inboxes, and it’s got me rethinking my own email strategy.

A little background first…  Michael Hyatt is the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers.  I follow him on Twitter, and when he recently tweeted a link to a blog post on email inboxes, it caught my attention.   As a CEO, I imagine that he gets a lot of email.  I also know from his tweets, that he cleans out his inbox every night.  So I figured he would probably have something meaningful to offer on the subject of email inboxes.

I wasn’t wrong.  You can find Michael’s original post here.

In his post, he talks about how to clean out your inbox everyday and several strategies for making it easy.  But what really caught my attention was how he files old emails.

Simply put, he doesn’t.

He has one folder titled “Processed Mail”, and moves anything he might want later into that folder.  Then later, he uses the search features of the email program to find what he’s looking for.  Michael believes it’s more efficient and takes less time than using a lot of subfolders.

I use approximately 150 subfolders to file away old emails at work.  My system isn’t working.  I work a lot of different projects with a lot of different suppliers.  I never know whether to file old emails under the supplier’s name or under the project.  I end up doing a mix of both.  Sometimes it takes quite a while to find the right folder.

So I’m thinking about trying Michael’s advice.  It’s a big change and I’ve been thinking about this for several days now, trying to decide if it will work. 

I think my plan of attack will be to try it for a month, or so, without doing away with the older emails already in the subfolders.  I can always go back and refile the ”processed mail” folder later if I bail on the whole thing.

Thoughts?  Is anyone else doing this?

Over my lunch break Monday, I made a trip to the bank (technically a credit union) in order to withdraw some money from my savings account.  I gave the teller, who seemed a little frazzled, my account number and showed my ID.  She wrote the account number down on a slip of paper and the amount that I wanted to withdraw.  Then she had me sign the bottom. 

This was not the normal procedure.  It turns out that their computer system was down and they were having to do everything manually.

But here’s the weird part…  She gave me $500 cash without even looking to see if I had enough money in my savings account. 

Get this… they were trusting me, the customer. (Technically, I am a “member” since it’s a credit union and not a bank.)  Trust doesn’t seem very common in business to consumer transactions anymore…  Although, I once ordered a custom mandolin strap from a guy who will build and ship off of an email, trusting that the check or paypal will come through in a few days.  But I digress.

At some point, the credit union decided to take a risk and continue, as much as possible, providing services to their customers.  Of course, the credit union (and I’m not saying which one) put themselves at great risk in doing so.

What if I somebody had told me they were doing this, and I strolled in asking for money without even having an account?  What if I had made an honest mistake and overdrawn my account?  ($$$ = overdraft fees)

I’ve been to an Intrust Bank before when their system was down, but I was only making a deposit.  I have no idea if they would have given me cash.

So what’s your opinion?  Was the credit union doing the right thing?  Or were they exposing themselves to too much risk?

As I left work today, I updated my Facebook status to read: “I’m feeling especially opinionated today. Feel free to ask me for advice. You may get some unsolicited advice anyway…”  Suprisingly, several people actually asked for advice.

One of them was my Uncle Mark.  He asked for some advice on investing his 401k.  My response was to give it all away - investing in people yields a better return on investment.

A few minutes later, my wife handed me Monday’s Wichita Eagle and asked if I’d read the article about giving.  I had not…

Rant on!

The article summarized some analysis by The McClatchy Company on a recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics survey.  You can read the source article here.

This graph which I borrowed off their website says it all.

The poorest people in America are the most generous!  Seriously?  I have to say that this really blew me away.

Apparently, the rest of us are a bunch of schmucks.  The poor give twice as much, on average, as middle and upper class people.

Maybe the rest of us need to quit supersizing our #1 Value Meals, our cars, our houses, and our plasma T.V.’s, and focus instead on helping others and giving back to the community.

Start tithing to your church.  Buy food for the single mom working two jobs down the street.  Pledge money to NPR so they’ll end the pledge drive sooner.  Do something.

If you fail to invest in and support something bigger than yourself, you’re going to live a very, very small life…  Quit hoarding it all for yourself.  You can’t take it with you in the end…

Rant off…