Greg's Right FIT #358

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Momentum
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Momentum

• We've all seen a bullet fired from a gun. What makes it work? The propellant gets it going, but then it's about dealing with resistance. Motivating a salesperson gets them going, but success depends on dealing with resistance.  
• A rocket's escape velocity is the velocity it needs to escape the tether of Earth's gravity. It takes a lot of energy. How much energy is needed to move once you're in space? A lot less. When you can, cut tethers holding your people back.
• It's natural to want more, and it makes us happy when we get it. The problem is new happiness fades. We get used to our new normal pretty fast. Hack it with gratitude. Adding gratitude to happiness keeps it around a little longer. Really.
• An enhanced process will be adopted faster than new way of doing things, but not always. A lot depends on the vision of where you want to be in the future. "Present pain, future gain," is a popular saying for a reason. 

Being Human - Sifting through the rubble

“There are no gains, without pains." – Poor Richard's Almanac

What exactly is the point of all those young analysts staying up all night, pouring over reports, and crunching the numbers? Sometimes it's the only way to get to the information you need. 

My projects are not so high stakes that they benefit from long hours, but most of them benefit from a deep dive into the details. For all the advances in AI and ML, humans still have an edge with seeing patterns in unstructured data. Especially in finding a pattern from the missing data that was never collected. 

When you come to a point where you think "there has to be an easier way to get this," or "I get paid too much to do this monkey work," it's tempting to build a new system or outsource. I encourage you to stop right there and make a conscious effort to sift through all the details first. Compile the data manually. 

Taking the time to manually compile information is similar to what happens when we involve customers in product development process. Just as those customers end up giving us tiny insights that alter the trajectory of the product, collecting data manually helps you with tiny insights before you outsource. You're serving as your own customer advisor. 

Present pain, future gain they say. They're right in this case. 

It's where you get the good stuff. 

Random Stuff

"I don't mind getting older, but my body is taking it badly." – tshirt

Last weekend we had a nice visit with our oldest child in the great city of Chicago. There were bookstores, museums, shopping, and big eats. As it happens we knew some other visitors to the city that weekend which means that I went deep into the eating and drinking portion of the weekend. 

Over the years I've learned the Fitzgerald quote about first you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you is about right. I mean, even though he didn't say it first Fitzgerald would know (if the stories are to be believed). I wasn't too bad with the drink over the weekend, but I may revise F. Scott to include food. First you grab a bite or something like that. 

Too much food or too much drink the result is the same. It takes me a while to recover. I'm not twenty anymore. A few months ago I twisted my knee. Not my bad knee, the good one. Home remedies and Google didn't do the trick, and after listening to me complain my lovely bride said, what is it with you and going to the doctor? 

This leads to me going to the doctor. Which leads to me having to go back to the doctor. This leads to my first MRI. I get the diagnosis next week, but I'm already working on a "First you go to the doctor, then the doctor goes to a doctor. . ." quote. It may go into my next book. 

Good stuff. 

PS: Thanks for all the nice words about Ajax the cat. Even the NeverCatters chimed in on. That's nice. Much appreciated.