To return or not

I haven’t posted here in a really long time.  Quite honestly the demands of work, being a father and husband and trying to have some semblance of having a social life have gotten in the way of what’s really most important here: running a blog.

I still post my Bad Advice almost daily on Twitter.  If you are lucky enough to know me in person I will add you on Facebook (but I warn you I post a lot of pictures of my family).  You can also follow me on Flickr, which I prefer over instagram mostly because I don’t understand why people like square pictures.

I reserve the right to return and blog my brains out, but only once my wife and kid are sick of me or I’m not working 60+ hour weeks.  Until then, see you on the social grid.

-Bad (Josh)

Today’s Bad Advice: Judge everyone

I’m judging you right now.  

It’s not a bad thing.  Actually, it’s honest.  We all judge people.  We do it all day long.  So be honest about it.  ”I’m not judging you” is a lie.

The key is to not pass judgement.  There is a big difference.  Judge people, so you know how to navigate around them.  But don’t judge them to render anything upon them. So when someone says “im not judging you”, feel free to judge them as not knowing what they hell that they are saying.  Just use that to steer clear of them as opposed to calling them stupid.

I am so loving this song.  The first real anthem of 2011 for me.

Cassius I Love You So - Skream Remix (via pritstik303)

Source: youtube.com

Today’s Bad Advice: learn how to take defeat in stride

I’m pretty sure that success is what happens in the spaces between strings of defeat. We don’t celebrate the defeats, but maybe we should. You certainly learn more in defeat than you do in success. Those lessons often come later, after cooler minds prevail. Little solace for the moment though, but know they will come if you look for them and are open to change.

So take those defeats in stride. They teach you have to be successful, they will make you appreciate the successes more and if you are smart they will remind you that what made you successful doesn’t always keep you successful

Today’s Bad Advice: Schedule Fun (and everything else)

Fun things are fun, but sometimes they conflict with the things we have to do.  I say nay nay.  You deserve fun time just as much as the next guy.  But what do you do when you want some fune time and you have so much other stuff to do?  You schedule it, just like anything else you have to do.

If you are working through what you need to do, there should also be time for fun.  If you schedule it, you know when it’s coming, it’s like a reward for getting everything else you did first.

So schedule it, and then get out and have some fun

Today’s Bad Advice: there is no separation between work and life. It’s all “Life-Work”

I keep hearing people say ‘I dont have time for that” or “I get so busy with work I dont have time for myself” or something similar…but I think it’s bullshit.

There is no separation between work and life, and there shouldn’t be.  Your brain doesn’t know how to keep work things separate from personal things, to your brain they are all THINGS, all IMPORTANT and all need to be DONE.  So if your brain doesn’t make a distinction, then why should you?

Everything that you have to DO, want to DO, think about DOING, might DO someday / maybe…all of those things should be handled the same way: out of your head, into a system.  Every call, every errand, every email…doesn’t matter why you need to do…just put them all into your “trusted system” and knock them out when you are doing like minded things.

For example: today’s calls list for me looked something like this:

  • Call Client 1
  • Call Client 2
  • Call Book Keeper
  • Call friend about Lakers game
  • Call pharmacy to refill prescription
  • Call Mom to confirm flight times

I made all of my calls from the car between meetings and I got them all done.  Didn’t matter which were for work and which were personal, I got my “life-work” done in one fail swoop. 

I had no idea: Make something All-Caps (or fix caps-lock mistakes) in Mac OS X 10.6

I had no idea this was added to Mac OS X with 10.6 (like a year ago), and I feel all out of the loop and unproductive as a result.

I screw up the Caps-Lock thing a lot, and sometimes I YELL in emails.  Yeah, I said it.  All caps works, SOMETIMES.  It definitely gets a point across.  Anyway, Mac OS X 10.6 has a way to undo it (in either direction).  It Will Also Capitalize The First Letter Of Every Word.

Select, right-click > Transformations…

Neat

Todays Bad Advice: you win clients because they like & trust you but you keep them by being honest and delivering

Winning trust and being like-able should be the hard(er) part here, but it’s never the case. The client likes you, then you build trust…this should simply be an artifact of your confidence in yourself and your ability to communicate it.

So many times I have seen that like turn to dislike and that trust turn to distrust by not communicating, and that always leads to not delivering. Being honest and upfront never delayed a delivery, ever.

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