I live 40 miles from my office. It takes anywhere from 45-90 minutes to get to work depending on the traffic. I also live 40 feet from an office. One day per week I work from home.
(It really is that small; about 4’x7′) It saves me commute time. It lets me focus on tasks that don’t involve the need to see other people. Tuesday is generally my work from home day. Yesterday was Wednesday. I got up. I took a shower. I put on pants. I went to my home office to collect my stuff and head to work. It was about 6:45 AM.
The phone rang.
I never made it out of my office.
I don’t do anything at my job. I’m the guy they call when we need other people to do stuff. There was an issue with one of our call centers. Not super serious, but serious enough that I needed to get people to do stuff to fix it. This happens enough that we have processes in place to take care of it. I work with over 1000 agents across three states. We take millions of calls per month. There are lots of moving parts and sometimes one of them slips a gear.
I won’t drag you through the details of my phone call. I’d probably be breaking some NDA agreements and frankly, I’m not a good enough writer to make it sound interesting. The short story is a long story. Eight hours and fifteen minutes later I was finally done. I was literally on a call for over eight hours.
Have you ever had to use the restroom while you have a wireless headset on? You check, double-check and TRIPLE-check that the MUTE button is depressed.
And, I wasn’t on just one call. That was my internal call. I was also on another call with the client that went for many hours, as I relayed information back and forth between my team and the client. I have a wireless headset and an office phone on my desk, and I also have my cell phone and ear buds.
Occasionally, I messed up the mute buttons and asked the wrong conference call a question at the same time. Mostly, I spent a lot of time waiting for stuff to get done.
I waited for the engineers to join the call. I waited for the engineers to fix the issue. I waited for my call center agents to test the fix. I waited. Occasionally, I would get a third call. It would ring into my cell phone, putting the conference call on hold. I also attended a webinar. I routed the sound for that through my home audio system. As the webinar was presenting I had people talking in both ears. It made me question my sanity. I didn’t get an answer. I think I’m planning to get back to myself sometime next week.
Around 4:00pm when I finally signed off on the final location as being healthy, I realized that putting on pants today was a total waste of time.
Some days are like that.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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My buddy Sean Neuman runs a combination computer repair business and knife shop. Seriously, Hot Rod Computers and Knives. Sean and I worked together at WordPerfect corporation about a million years ago. (Back Where It All Began.) Facebook keeps us in touch, like it does so many people. I texted him last week.
-Sean, this is Rodney Bliss. I need some help installing Windows Server on a 1 TB drive. I keep getting disk errors. No recovery needed. Just installing.
-Sean is working at the Vernal gun show today and tomorrow but I will foreword the message to him. Thanks!
Eventually, I got a call from him to find out the details, and hear his advice.
You know, typically I throw an external 5.25″ floppy drive on there and boot from an old MS DOS disk. Then, I run a utility to clean up the Master Boot Record.
I had to laugh. Sean, one of the best technical guys I know, uses 20 year old technology to fix modern computers. He complained that the modern tools don’t give him the granularity that some of the old stuff does.
I’m fixing my server as part of a major refresh on my home network. I run a Sophos UTM network device that holds my firewall, DNS, DHCP and various other bits and goodies on it. I’ve had it running for several years, but finally started putting some management practices in place. One of those practices was that I got the MAC address for all of my kids devices and added them to the Sophos server. The MAC address is a unique address that every device that is capable of talking on the Internet has.
You probably understand that your computer has an IP address. It looks like four numbers seperates by periods. But, that address can change. In fact, every time you log into a new wifi router, you get a new IP address. Your MAC address never changes. It’s unique for each device.
As I entered the MAC address for my kids devices, I associated the device with their name. Now my network traffic started to look clearer. My reporting showed how long each child spent surfing the Internet. It also showed what sites and applications they were using. But, I also noticed a couple of addresses that I couldn’t resolve.
I realized that what my kids told me they were doing online and what they were actually doing online were two different things. It was easy enough to create a firewall rule to drop all the traffic for the rouge device. And whil eI was reacting rules, I went in and created rules to prevent the kids devices from accessing the Internet when they should be sleeping, or when they should be in school. You stay home from school because you are sick? No internet games for you.
I can pull up the firewall logs and watch them in real time. And I can see them testing the Internet after hours. a couple of probes to see if I was serious about shutting it down.
I could have found the rogue devices last year if I’d decided to dig in like I’m doing now. My kids, some of them anyway, “got away” with skirting the rules. But, what they don’t understand, fortunately, is that it’s not I couldn’t find them. I just didn’t care to. Now that they have my attention, there is very little chance of them slipping anything past me.
At least for now, Dad understands computer networks much better than they do. The old dog hasn’t run out of tricks yet.
Nice to know those years of training paid off at least for a little while.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Hey, Rodney. What happened?
Steve is someone I work with. I work in computers. Steve works in computers. We sit near each other. We’ve become friends, bonding over discussions of our scouting activities, tales of families and sharing the same faith. We also have blogs in common, as I was reminded of yesterday. Steve doesn’t write a blog, he reads them. . .including mine.
It’s a cliche to say that writing is a lonely activity. I have friends who are professional writers. They love to go to conventions and book signings and meet their fans. But, even they admit that much of writing is the writer and a keyboard. As a blogger, I don’t go to conventions. I occasionally do interviews, but that’s me defining the content of my blog, but not defining the readership.
I’m constantly amazed when people mention my blog.
Hey, I loved that thing you wrote about motivation.
How’s your car? Sounds like you had some more issues.
Where was your blog this morning?
That’s not the comment that I want to hear. Well, I do appreciate people reading and finding out they look forward to reading it is humbling. But, finding out that they were planning to read it first thing in the morning and it wasn’t there, is not what I like to hear.
When I set out to write this blog, I wanted to write for people like me, white-color guys who go to an office Monday through Friday. It’s why the blog doesn’t update on weekends. And don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that people from many different walks of life enjoy the scribblings I throw up here five days per week. Targeting office workers, I set 7:00AM as my post time. I use WordPress and it lets me schedule posts. And for a long time, I was good about writing the posts the night before, setting the timer and then going to bed.
I got out of the habit. Steve reminded me of it, without actually knowing what my publishing schedule was. He just knew that at the start of the day, after he read his business sites my site was not updated. I’m not even sure he read the article I posted yesterday about Ray Tomlinson, the inventer of email. I didn’t post it until hours later when Steve was busy in meetings and his normal job duties.
It was another reminder that while a writer may sit alone at a table for one, there are others, sometimes a few sometimes a lot, but at least one, who are waiting for him to deliver on his promise. That’s the deal a writer makes with an audience, especially a blogger who puts up content frequently. The writer promises to write and the readers promise to read. If readers cannot find the content when they want to consume it, when they expect to consume it, the writer has failed in keeping up his end of the bargain.
It was a good reminder. Thanks, Steve. This one is up a t 7:00AM.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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We’ve had some very high profile people pass away in 2016. Chances are some of them touched your life in some way, even if you never met them. The one who had the most far reaching influence passed away on March 5. He is a man you’ve never heard of, Ray Tomlinson.
I can hear you now, explaining that I’ve got it all wrong. After all, how could someone I’ve never heard of be more influential than David Bowie, a musician that inspired multiple generations? How could Tomlinson be more influential than Alan Rickman, who played Snape in the Harry Potter movies, but had a career spanning decades with dozens of movies? How could Tomlinson be more influential than former First Lady Nancy Reagan, wife to a president?
The at symbol: “@.”
Tomlinson made it one of the most important keys on your keyboard. You see, Ray Tomlinson invented email. It’s odd, in our modern world of collaborative teams and iterative software developments to find a true inventor. He invented it back in 1971. This was in the age of “big iron.” Computers were huge and really expensive.
Tomlinson says that he created email to allow people to leave a message if someone was not by their phone. Pretty much the same way we use it today.
Email wasn’t destined to be as simple to use at it is today. For example, there are other more complicated address schemes than the brilliantly simple [email protected]. One of the most complicated was one called X.500. It included about a dozen fields that you had to fill in. Kind of like addressing an envelope, but for international mail.
My career has been involved with email since I started back in 1988. I spent 5 years ago WordPerfect supporting WordPerfect Office (which Novell GroupWise.) Later, I went to Microsoft supporting MSMail and later Exchange. And I was just one of thousands of people working on email at those companies and numerous other companies.
It’s strange to think how much of my life and the lives of thousands of other people were influenced by Tomlinson. Email isn’t the sexy application that it was back in the 80’s and 90’s. And I would have found a different job if email didn’t exist.
But, I’m glad that Tomlinson created this technology so many years ago. One of the true pioneers of the Internet age.
Rest In Peach, Ray Tomlinson
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Winter is finally loosening it’s hold on the Rocky Mountains. Today, I saw my first yard sale sign. My garden is tilled and we’re to that awkward time of year where you scrape your car windows in the morning and roll them down in the afternoon.
Our Scout camping trips will turn to decidedly warmer locations. This month we are headed for Meadow Hot Springs. The next campout will be our annual hike of “Baldy.” Eight thousand feet of elevation change in two days.
But, before the snow is completely gone from the north side of the washes and the draws, and the south walls of the canyons, I wanted to look back one more time at our winter camp and share two camp hacks. (Mostly because I got some great pictures and I really want to use them.)
During our snow camp last month, we camped, slept and ate in the snow. We even built our fire in the snow. Standing on the snow is cold. Even if you have wool socks and good boots, it’s cold to stand around on ice and snow all day. We built the fire a little higher and stood a little closer. But, eventually we discovered an even better trick than hugging the fire.
The wood we had for our fire came from a company that built gazebos. It was very dry and very square. Blocks of wood are not just for burning.
As the night worn and the boys drifted off to their snow caves, the leaders gathered around the fire to talk. Before long we were all three inches taller. Even the leader with the nicest boots commented what a difference it made to stand on wooden insulation.
I made one serious error in our snow camp. I brought a single pair of gloves. They are great gloves, but digging out a snow cave, they got soaked. Fortunately it wasn’t exceptionally cold. I ditched the gloves and warmed my hands in my pockets. When we arrived home, my gloves were still soakin, inside and out. Here’s a trick to dry them from the inside out.
Take a wire coat hanger and bend the ends up like the picture above. Then, place your gloves over the ends and set them on a heating register like the picture below.
The problem trying to dry gloves is typically that the outside dries out, but inside is still wet. This method takes care of that. Plus, you can reuse the coat hanger.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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It’s only four words. They are scrawled on the back of a piece of blank accounting paper. They were most likely written in less than a minute, and yet, every single word is precious to me.
It’s fair to say I have daddy issues. My mother was married 5 times before I turned 12. When I was eleven, she married my dad. Except, he wasn’t my dad at the time, he was my step-dad. My name wasn’t Bliss then, but it was still Rodney, although everyone called me Rod.
My mom was married to my dad for about thirty years. They were crazy about each other. They were also both hard to live with. Fortunately, not for each other. I met my dad when he was already old. He was nearly fifty. Younger than I am now.
We had a good relationship. Once we got to know each other, he was a good father. He hadn’t always been. And I think he saw my brothers and me as a chance to correct some past mistakes, or at least do better this time.
Emotion was hard for him to show, especially softer emotions. I never saw him cry. I never heard him pray. He never told me he loved me. Well, verbally anyway. That’s why the letter is so precious. I was going through my files today clearing out old medical records and course evaluations, when I came across the only letter my father ever sent me.
Rod: Thanks Love Dad
It’s an amazing letter. It’s almost Hemingwayish in it’s ability to convey so much with so little.
Thanks
I had recently helped my grandmother, my dad’s mom, move into an assisted living center in Provo, near where I lived. My parents lived in Olympia, WA. My dad really wanted to be there to take care of arrangements himself. I wasn’t sure he trusted me with the responsibility. She was moved in easily and adjusted well. My lovely wife and I visited her often. My dad was grateful. I’m sure he’d thanked me for things previously, but it was rare. Not because he wasn’t grateful, but because he didn’t like others to do for him. This letter was to thank me for helping my grandmother.
Love
This was the word that stuck out to me. He was not a man who spoke of love. In fact, I think this may have been the only time I ever heard the word from him directed at me. I knew he loved me. I knew he loved my mother. But, he was more apt to show it than say it. And after showing it, he didn’t want a lot of emotional gratitude showered on him. In turn, I don’t think I told him I loved him. I think he knew. I tried to be a good son. And it wasn’t awkward between us. We simply didn’t share our emotions like that. In fact, I think the first time I ever told him I loved him was while delivering the eulogy at his funeral. That sentence sounds full of regret. It’s not. We parted on great terms with no regrets and nothing left unsaid that we wanted said.
Dad
This would not seem to be an awkward word. My kids use it multiple times per day. Some of my girls use Daddy, and I’m fine with that. But, my dad wasn’t dad when I met him. He was Lloyd. All my stepfathers were called by their first name. It wasn’t until my parents had been together about 4 years that my dad adopted me. At that point he became Dad, but at fifteen, after four years of Lloyd, the word dad didn’t come easy. And we were a blended family. My adopted siblings were not in turn adopted by my mom. So, their parents were Dad and Patricia. My brothers and I referred to our parents as Mom and Lloyd. When the kids would get together we compromised and referred to them as “the parents.” It sounded like some Jay Roach movie, “Meet The Parents.”
I didn’t continue to call him Lloyd, but I also didn’t call him Dad. I just managed to live my life for many years without allowing myself in a position where I had to address him by name. This letter was the first time I remember him calling himself my dad.
So, four simple words. Sixteen character, not even enough for a long tweet. And yet, it’s been forty years since we met. It’s been six years since he passed away. And they are still four of the most precious words I’ve ever read.
Dad, you’re welcome.
Love, Rod
There’s a business lesson in there somewhere about missed opportunities or the importance of mentors or something. I’ll look for it another day.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
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Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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It was an odd request.
What routine do you use when you write your blog?
Well, I generally write at night. But lately, I’ve been writing in the morning. I try to schedule my posts to appear at 7:00 AM, but sometimes they are later.
But, how do you pick your topics?
I have a hidden blog post that is a list of topics that I might want to write on. But, that’s more of a safety blanket at this point. I tend to jot down ideas during the day. Sometimes I write them on my whiteboard. I have lots of post-it notes with blog topics, stuck in my notebook. I will occasionally email or text myself an idea so I don’t forget it.
That’s no help for me. There’s no way to take your process and replicate it.
My friend was going to start blogging. He knew that I write everyday. Well, every Monday through Friday. He was trying to see if there was anything in my approach that he could use.
I guess I’m an anomaly. Not because of my erratic writing times. But, March 1st marks the three year anniversary of this blog. In that time, I’ve written every day. Sometimes, I’ve written great content. Sometimes I’ve written poorly. But, I’ve done it day in and day out. Between today and March 1, 2013 there are 1,098 days. But, since I only write on workdays, it’s been 783 workdays Today is my 791st blog post. (I’ve posted a few extras over the years.)
A couple of days ago I talked about “What’s It Take To Be the 1%?” I talked about how in a social media community, ninety percent of the participants typically are passive. Nine percent are semi active and one percent create the bulk of the content. The concept is called the 90-9-1 Rule for Participation Inequality in Social Media and Online Communities. Jakob Nielsen did the original write up on the research in 2006. At that time there were about 55,000,000 blogs. They estimated that 55,000 blogs updated daily. While there is truth to the 90-9-1 rule, when it comes to blogs, it’s not the 1% who create the bulk of the content, it’s the 0.1%. Today, there are about 157,000,000 blogs. 176,000 are created daily. Most are quickly abandoned after a post or two. The fact that I’m still here after nearly 800 posts makes me unique.
There is a famous cliche:
Practice makes perfect.
And yet, that’s a lie. If you do something badly over and over again, you simply get getter at doing it badly. The famous football coach Vince Lomardi put it this way:
Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.
– Vince Lombardi
I’ve written nearly a million words since I wrote my first post. Have I gotten better? I hope so. Am I perfect? Not even close as any number of readers who point out my many grammatical errors can attest. However, I have had several people who believed in me. One friend, after reading one of my earliest posts, (Fire, Comics and Change written March 20, 2013) offered the following critique:
Rodney, this is very good. Much better than when you try to tell jokes.
I really wanted to help my friend get his blog off to a good start. I struggled to find any patterns or processes that I use on a regular basis.
Well, I write all the entries on my iPad using the free version of WordPad. I try to create compelling headlines. Oh, also, when I start writing I copy my signature block from a hidden file and I put the words “(The end)” just above the signature block. Otherwise, my text tends to get sucked into the formatting that’s in the signature block.
This isn’t really helping.
I occasionally forget to delete “The end” text.
Still, not helpful.
Ultimately, I think writing is such a private affair that there are few crossover techniques. Ben Bova, the famous Science Fiction writer, told the story of long ago being on a cruise with a bunch of other writers. At night, he was liked down the hall and he could hear the clicky-clack of the portable typewriters. Only the door to Isaac Asimov’s room was quite. You see, Asimov wrote 10,000 words per day and did it all in long hand. Everyone is different.
My friend Dave Farland, teaches writing. He encourages people to find their own best writing time. For some it’s the morning. For others it might late at night. What works for one writer might not work for another.
Louis L’Amore, the prolific Western writer claimed he could write with his typewriter propped on his knees in the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard. “Temperamental, I am not.” Other writers require a quiet place with few distractions.
Ultimately, I don’t know that I was very much help to my friend. However, he knows me pretty well. He knows that I’m basically lazy and not the most gifted writer. And if I can plug away for three years and still be going strong, it can’t take brains or talent. It just takes a willingness to put one word in front of the other every day.
Happy Birthday to www.staging.rodneymbliss.com. Thanks for coming to the party every day.
(The end)
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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They are the awards we love to hate. Participation trophies have been blamed for everything from spoiling our children and making them soft, to an increase in gang violence and lack of work ethic. A trophy should mean something, we are told. If we give everyone a trophy, then everyone feels special and as Dash, from the Incredibles told us
When everyone is special, no one is!
I used to believe this. I even discussed the danger the dangers of participation trophies. (What My Kids Taught Me About Participation Trophies.) But, recently I started thinking about the difference between a participation trophy and a trophy for achievement.
These are trophies for a chess tournament that my sons were in. One son got first place, the other got second place. Because of a weird scheduling issue, my two sons didn’t get a chance to play each other. So, they both finished the tournament undefeated. First and second place were determined by how well they did against common opponents. (My son who took second still feels like he could have beaten his brother.)
The point is, there can only be one champion. And there actually is only one runner up. There were a dozen kids in the tournament. So far, we are probably all in agreement that this is a good process. Some of the kids that my sons beat cried when they lost. It tugs at your heart as a parent, but we know that it is building character. So, why change it? Why even suggest that participation trophies might be acceptable. If every kid at the tournament got a trophy, then what incentive would my sons have to win?
None. But, that’s not the point. You don’t have to choose between participation trophies or championship trophies.
These are trophies that my sons got for playing baseball. Their team did not win there league championship. In fact, when they were playing, I’m not even sure there was a championship. It was first year “machine pitch” type baseball. I asked my son what that trophy represented.
Just having fun with the team.
And that’s the difference. It’s important to have competition. It’s critical that we teach our children that working hard, working harder than those around you means that you get the better job, higher pay, the reward for coming in first. But, there is also a place for commemorating a team effort. For rewarding people for simply being part of the team.
Project management is the ability to get people from different teams to come together and work for a common goal. I don’t want my network engineer feeling like he has to outperform my telecom engineer. I don’t want my network upgrade project team feeling like they need to beat the project team working on installing the new phone system.
And as those teams complete their tasks, I think it’s valuable to recognize that. These are some of my Ship -It awards.
These awards were given to all team members after we completed a project. They are adult participation trophies. And they are critical to maintaining team morale.
Don’t knock the partipation trophies. They are a tangible reminder of a time when kids, (or adults) were part of a team. And learning to work on a team is just as important as learning to work hard to be #1. It’s when we confuse the purpose of participation trophies with competition trophies that we send the wrong message.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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My brother is a marketing genius. He wrote a book on marketing called Stealing The Show. (You should read it, it will help you . . .steal the show.) Anyway, he did something a little crazy last week. He started following this blog. Now, you have to understand, I love my brother. But, we have been competitors since we were kids. As adults, we headed in different directions career-wise. We figured that we would try to remove the opportunity to directly compete. While we are both writers, my background is IT, his is marketing.
But, as I saw his name on the email notification, I was suddenly 14 years old again, worried about playing him at baseketball. I hadn’t talked to him in a while, so I called him. Turns out my tension, is completely one-side in this case.
I saw you started following my blog. I feel like I need to step up my game.
Not at all. I just came across an interesting stat recently that made me think about your blog.
Oh?
In preparing to tell this story, I had to think about why I’m a writer. I had a very mercenary reason for starting this blog 3 years ago. I was between jobs and had let my online presence languish. You had to scroll down quite a ways to find me on a Google search page. (There’s a real estate broker back East who shares my name and he got all the search results.) I used the blog to answer an extended interview: Tell me about a time you had to fire someone. Tell me about a time you had to meet a deadline.
I eventually found another job, and while I still love to tell those management leadership stories, I ultimately ran out of the stories we all carry around with us through our careers. I told them all, or nearly all. You guys kept showing up to read every day and so I let myself explore some of my other interests. I wrote about Scouting. I wrong about car repairs. . .A LOT. I wrote about my kids.
I went to dinner recently with a friend who commented that I seem to have mastered the ability to find a new topic everyday. I make lists of interesting topics as they come up. I jot notes to myself to remember to tell an interesting story. Occasionally, I see a news item that I want to discuss in a technical setting. But, mostly, I just talk.
Am I a success?
I havn’t really given that much thought. My original goal was to land a job. I succeeded at that. My goal was to increase my search results. I succeeded in that. Then, my goal was to tell some stories. I succeeded at that. I’ve never really tried to make money from blogging. I’ve set readership/views goals and occasionally hit them, and occasionally come up short. But, I get great enjoyment out of this daily conversation. In that sense, I guess, I’m being successful.
The stat my brother shared with me was this, in a social network of 100 people, 90% will be passive, 9% will be semi active, and 1% will be very active. When applied to blogging, that translates to 90% of those who start a blog, abandon it. Nine percent of those who start update it occasionally. And, 1% of those who start a blog update it regularly. I’ve been updating this blog every day since March of 2013. My brother explained,
It’s estimated that 155,000,000 blogs exist. Out of that, one percent update their blogs on a regular basis. I was sharing this stat with a group of people and realized that I knew one of those 1%.
It was interesting to me that I had this discussion after writing “Your Motivation Is Not Going To Be Enough” where I talk about how the determination to show up every day trumps the motivation that might have got you started, but won’t sustain you.
I have another friend who regularly posts the following quote.
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
– Albert Einstein
Like the tortoise and the hare, sometimes you succeed just by showing up and putting in the time. If you happen to enjoy it, that’s a bonus and a pretty good definition of success.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Tell your friends about this!
I want you to hold this book.
Okay.
Now, hold it higher, above your head.
Okay.
Now, keep it there.
The exercise made no sense. I was watching a discussion about people attempting to make a change in their life. The subject of this exercise was a teenage boy who claimed he wanted to change, but was discouraged that he was unsuccessful. And, in listening to his story, he had tried. But, each time it didn’t work.
It was obvious his arms were getting tired as he held the heavy book above his head. They started to dip slightly. The moderator was waiting for this moment and pounced.
I thought you were going to hold that book up?
I’m trying.
Maybe, you’re just not motivated enough. Do you really even want to hold the book up?
The boy once again pushed his arms straight and raised the book, but it was obvious that gravity was quickly winning out over his arms. Finally, he couldn’t hold it anymore and he dropped his arms in defeat.
Did you want to hold up that book? Did you really try?
Yes, I tried. It was too hard to keep going.
So, you failed.
The boy poured all of the months of setbacks dejectedly into his answer. It was barely a whisper,
Yeah. . .I failed.
I hated the presenter. What a jerk. Couldn’t he see that the boy had honestly tried his best? It was a pretty heavy book. And what did this have to do with life changes anyway? The boy didn’t need to learn how to fail. He needed to learn how to succeed. A few minutes later the presenter proved me wrong.
I’ve occasionally had jobs where I really wanted to succeed. I spent extra hours to try to succeed. I did everything in my power to succeed. I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t good enough. I failed. Maybe that’s why I identified with the boy and the book. I knew just how tough it was to want to do something and simply not be good enough. Like I said, I hated the presenter and his insistence on pointing out my failures.
Climb up on this chair. Now just hold the book in front of you. Notice how high the book is above the floor.
On the chair, the book was the same height above the floor as it was when he was holding it over his head.
How long do you think you can hold the book at that level?
Probably all day.
And the light started to dawn in the boy’s eyes. Just to make it clear the instructor stated the point that we were all thinking.
The chair, is the difference. The chair is those people who want to help you. The chair is tools, training and techniques for your success that you don’t even know yet. Rather than a crutch, or a sign of weakness, the chair represents the support structure that every one of us needs if we want to truly succeed.
I thought about those jobs that I had failed at. Not only had I avoided asking for help, I had tried to hide my struggles. I assumed that admitting that my arms were getting tired from holding up the book would be a sign of weakness. I, along with the boy started to understand that the real weakness was stubbornly refusing to reach out; with thinking that I had to do it all myself.
Instead, I just needed a chair.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
