Rachel Getting Married Review

Last night I attended the Toronto International Film festival courtesy of one of their board members who is one of my good friends - Warren Spitz. Warren owns Upper Canada Forest Products so buy lots of hard wood from him so he can afford to take me next year.

The film we saw was Rachel Getting Married starring Anne Hathaway. I am not really a film reviewer. 99% of the movies I see are on airplanes.

The movie was very well acted, well written, thought provoking and got into some tough issues (drug abuse, family dysfunction). It certainly made me think.

I prefer movies that are pure escapes and this was not that. It left many unanswered questions. Still, I would rate it an 8 out of 10.

Quote for the day:

Today is a smooth white seashell, hold it close and listen to the beauty of the hours.

Photo from Flickr by Wind Dancer.

The No Complaining Rule Book

I recently read a copy of John Gordon's, The No Complaining Rule Book, subtitled Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work.


I was a bit struck by the title which is allegedly a positive book but speaking about complaining and negativity seemed a little strange.

This book is told in storybook fashion and generally speaking, I prefer books to get to the point than using storybook style; however, I do know there are a number of people who do like storybooks.

I totally agree with the thesis of the book which is you will have more fun and you will do better, the company will do better if you don’t complain and look at things positively.

The book has numerous good ideas on how to reduce complaining and the one thing that I liked was a no complaining week personal action plan which includes:

Day one - monitor your thoughts and words
Day two - make a gratitude list
Day three - take a thank you walk
Day four - focus on good staff
Day five - start a success journal
Day six - let go
Day seven – breathe

Although the book is fairly shallow, I would still recommend it and think it has some good ideas.

And the quote for the day (this one requires thought).

"We are confronted by insurmountable opportunities."

Walt Kelly "pogo" (comic strip)

Hiking In Halifax

Today is a shallow blog post. So skip this if you want depth.


"There's nothing wrong with being shallow as long as you're insightful about it."
--Dennis Miller


I went on a 3 hour hike at Taylor Head in Nova Scotia today. Beautiful. Some photos:





Loved this next one. Shows the power of nature. The boardwalk was completely torn up and twisted and moved about 10 meters.

Learn More to Save Time

A friend of mine emailed me the following Time Management tip:

"One of the most basic time management enhancers that I think many of your readers could take advantage of is software application training. Software is so feature rich that we miss out on likely 50-75% of the features available to us because what we know serves us well enough. Consider a 20% improvement in your use of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook to name a few. Not only will the end products be completed faster but likely improved quality as well."

I attended a 20 minute seminar today at SYNNEX that was put on for our staff called "10 outlook tricks that can save you time". I learned a few things - some of which I have already implemented. And I will save more than the 20 minutes it cost in the next month and every month after that.

I run a busy life and I constantly work to find the right balance between learning and doing.

RANDOM FACT OF THE DAY (courtesy of SimplyHeadlines.com)
------------------------------
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

(one of the things I always admire about Da Vinci is his proficiency in so many fields. He also inspires me to reach higher)

How to Stick to Things.

My busy life continues. I must like it like this or I would not do it.

My son David wanted to make sure that he kept to his workout schedule. He has a friend who has a desk job and wanted to do the same. So David looked back to his economics notes and decided the best way to do this would be to bet each other $100 a week that they would make their workout goals. $100 is a significant enough amount that he would not want to lose. So far this has been a good way for him to keep him on track.

This is a great trick to help us do what we know we want to do. Add some reward or add some punishment. Even without the money, this will work because knowing someone else will know is often reward or punishment enough.

Quote for the day:

"All men of action are dreamers."

---James G. Huneker

Off to dream and act.

Live in the Present

I never really considered myself much of a music guy but this week has been my live music week. Sunday I saw Marnie Neimi's excellent Bluegrass band, last night I went to a Bob Dylan Concert with YPO and tonight I heard Erinz Fire (another great band)at a Technoplanet event.

Technoplanet hosts excellent, well run computer industry events for resellers (I was a speaker). The event today was for Apple resellers. They had a bowl of apples at the podium I was speaking at and I almost started to eat one while I was speaking thinking this would break any boredom in the room.

I am always energized by speaking with entrepreneurs. The audience were all business people who sell Apple products. They have intense competitive pressure. And some of the resellers were very vocal about it. The purpose of the seminars are to help them with business ideas on how they can thrive in the environment they are in.

Complaining if it makes you feel better might be OK. It has never made me feel better. Complaining if it will make a difference is always a good idea. But there are many things that complaining about will make no difference - EG the price of oil or the currency exchange rate. I try to figure out which things I can influence and which I cannot.

Tim Moore, my COO, calls the things you cannot influence or change "conditions". If something is a "condition" then the exercise is how to constructively react and deal with it.

Some conditions are caused by inevitable change. And the "old days" never come back. So the goal is to figure out how to make the present awesome.

Quote for the day:

"The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself."
--Douglas MacArthur

The Power of Full Engagement

My lack of blog posts lately are an indication of the busy life I continue to lead. Not complaining, I know I lead a charmed life and being busy is my choice.

Last week, I attended a Corporate Athlete program loosely based on the book by Jim Loehr "The Power of Full Engagement" put on by the Human Performance Institute. I did a review on this book on Amazon and my blog on February last year. I called my review - Energy Leadership. One message they preach is it is all about Energy Management - not just Time Management. Clearly there is a lot of truth in that.

The course went into detail on how you can add to your energy. Not only your physical energy (fairly easy - eat right, exercise, move - and they had lots of tricks for that) but also your Mental, Emotional and Spiritual Energy.

It was a good refresher for me. I am inspired to positively refine my habits (they call them rituals).

My time tip for the day is to use Amazon Reviews to help make your reading decisions. Amazon reviews are a very worthwhile source of filtering. I look for reviewers who have more than a couple of reviews (this gets rid of the "fake" reviewers who just try to promote their book). I look for reviewers who have credentials so I might respect what they have to say. And of course, I don't believe everything I read.