Always Eat Left Handed: 15 Surprisingly Simple Secrets of Success (6 page)

Of course, like many simple ideas – it is far easier to suggest this as a principle to follow than to make it happen in reality.  Here are three suggestions that should help you actually do it.

1. Don’t mention it (for real!).
     When you hold a grudge, the usual way that it comes up over time is through minor comments or remarks mentioned in passing that demonstrate how much you actually have not forgotten what made you mad in the first place.  To fight against that, make a mental commitment that once you have publicly shared that you are “over it” – you will not mention “it” anymore – even in small side comments.  This commitment is the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy … in other words, once you agree to not mention it, you will usually end up forgetting what it even was.
   
2. Start pedaling.
     Choose any cliché about perseverance and you can use it here.  Climb back on the bike and keep pedaling. Get back on the horse.  Whatever phrase suits you, the lesson is the same – you need to forget your past failures and try again.  Or, to use another sports cliché – this time a quote from Wayne Gretzky, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  So start pedaling on a horse and take some shots.  Or something like that.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
   
3. Be low maintenance.
     When someone has a lot of requirements and unreasonable demands, we sometimes jokingly refer to them as very “high maintenance.”  In the real world, unless you happen to be a highly paid pop star – it usually pays to be the opposite.  Sometimes people won’t have time to meet you with, and it’s not about you.  They make time when they can, and sometimes (particularly if you are working with client or customer services) you will need to meet on their schedule. Get over it … and be ready when you are needed.
   

Chapter 12 - Never Serve Burnt Toast

Lesson - Have Integrity When No One Is Looking

There was a time when I thought my job was to deliver toast no matter what.

It was the late 1990s and I was working as a waiter in a popular downtown café in Washington DC.  I had just graduated college and was holding down two jobs while I studied for my Masters Degree.  One involved part time HTML coding on a freelance basis.  The other was waiting tables from 7am to 3pm on weekdays, and all night on weekends. 

After a few months – I quit the coding gig to focus on my restaurant job.  I
liked
waiting tables better.   It involved more personal interaction with new people every day, and was way more exciting than the desk job alternative.  It was only later that I realized how much working in a restaurant actually also taught me about the world outside food.

The Toast Principle

Some people never learn to embrace the things they can’t change.  When I first started as a waiter, I thought my biggest jobs were to get the order right and deliver food to the right table.  Many of the meals I served included toast – and unfortunately for our restaurant, and sometimes that toast would come out a little “extra crispy” on one side. 

It was a common trick my fellow waiters used to always flip the toast over so the better looking side was always presented first.  Many people wouldn’t ever know the difference.  So I did it too.  Then I had one guest who noticed.  And she sent it back.  It would have taken me an extra five seconds to get that part of the meal right and serve her non-burnt toast instead of just flipping one slice over.  But I didn’t do it.

In a moment I realized that I had lost more than a good tip on that meal.  I missed an opportunity to deliver a message to that guest.  I missed a chance to do what I knew was right instead of what I knew was easy. 

The real job of a waiter is to do what it takes to delight a guest.  Not to flip over burnt toast.

What If No One Is Ever Looking?

How many times in our lives do we get that chance to take the easy way out?  More than we probably realize.  Most of us don’t go through lives with security cameras watching our every move.  And even if we did, choosing NOT to be lazy isn’t always an easy thing to do.

Several months ago, I contracted with a small company to do some construction work I needed done to my house.  I asked him to start and paid my deposit.  Just a day afterwards, I was doing some research online and discovered that there was a special rebate offer on one of the materials that the contractor was recommending.  I assumed he knew about it and planned to keep the rebate for himself. 

Before I could ask about it though, I got an email about it from him.  The email shared a link to the rebate and a note promising that after he purchased the materials, since there was a rebate available he would give me a check for half of it.  I wasn’t expecting him to share any of it, much less tell me about it.  Most contractors wouldn’t.

His short term choice to do business with integrity actually cost him half of the rebate – about $200.  Yet I was so impressed with the experience, that I have told more than a dozen people about it and already helped him to get at least two more large projects from friends. 

The result he saw from his choice to do business with integrity was the same as what I learned from my dedication to never serving burnt toast over a decade earlier. 

Having integrity when no one is looking changes everything.

How To Have Integrity

The easiest piece of advice when it comes to having more integrity is simply to be more honest.  But by now, you have probably realized that I’m not a fan of giving obvious advice if I can ever help it!  So here are three more useful tips on how you can have more integrity in your own interactions.

1. Share the unexpected truth.
   There are some truths we expect.  You can’t lie about the degree you earned in school, or about where a product you are selling was made.  But we don’t often expect to hear
   proactive
   truth. We don’t expect the mechanic to tell us how much he
   actually
   makes after he charges to change our oil.  What if he did?  That kind of honesty would stand out – and it’s the ultimate opportunity you have with integrity to share the truth before anyone forces you to.  When you can find the courage to share things that your competitors or other colleagues don’t – then you can stand apart based on your ability to offer a more honest alternative.
   
2. Follow your instincts.
   The old adage that you should remember what your mom taught you, or what you learned in kindergarten actually does apply when it comes to integrity.  I know from personal experience that those moments when you are asked to work on something or do something that you know goes outside what you consider to be working with integrity … you will feel it.  The real challenge is whether you do it anyway for the sake of your job, or you follow your instincts and make a different choice.
   
3. Put your name on it.
   Unlike many other Professors, when I give my students a writing assignment, I never give them a minimum required length.  No 500 word essays or 3 page minimums.  Instead, I ask them to give me a well thought out and well written paper on the topic – as long as they need to make it.  The one thing I do insist upon, though, is that they put their name on it and often publish it publicly as a blog post on our theme topics of the week.  This public approach means every other student in the class can read it too – and often they do.  The requirement of putting your name next to it underscores the truth about the Internet … that everything you share online is a reflection of yourself. By putting their name on it, my students are promising that they stand behind their work – and that usually means they try harder to deliver great writing and thinking, no matter how long it happens to be.
   

Chapter 13 - Lose Your Watch

Lesson - Be
In Time
Instead Of
On Time

James Bond is never on time. 

In fact, that’s what makes him look so good.  He arrives just as the bomb is about to explode, or the girl is about to get shot, and manages to save the day.  Like most good action heros, he may not show up on time – but he’s
always in time
.

You might think that life isn’t like an action movie, but the power of being
in time
is something that we can all learn quite a bit from.  If you think about being in time versus of just being on time, there is one fundamental difference – being in time is all about the moment.  You need to pay attention to what is happening around you and identify moments of opportunity. 

The problem is, most of your education up until now hasn’t really helped you learn this skill.

Why Just In Case Education Doesn’t Work

In early 2000, two professors from Wharton Business School shared a fairly
unexpected theory in a research paper
.  While most of their colleagues were educating future managers and entrepreneurs with the traditional business curriculum, marketing professors Jerry Wind and David Reibstein felt that there was something missing.

The typical MBA program takes two years, during which time every aspect of business is taught in courses on leadership, finance, accounting, marketing and human resources.  It is a well rounded business education – but Wind and Reibstein argued that it had a built in problem … many of the students wouldn’t use the lessons they learned until years later in their careers.  Wouldn’t it be better, they argued, to teach them just the skills they needed in the moment they needed them?

If you think about it, most of our education from the time that we are children doesn’t often relate directly to what we might be experiencing in the world around us.  All of this education is “just in case” – things that we learn on the off chance that one day we may need to know them.  Calculus, the history of Mesopotamia, long division … these are all pieces of knowledge that you may or may not use through the course of your life.  More importantly, if you did happen to need to know about any of them, chances are you wouldn’t remember enough of what you learned years ago about them in order to be useful. 

In other words, just in case education has a fundamental flaw … no one remembers things forever.   The type of education that could solve this problem, Wind and Reibstein shared, was “just in time education” – usually delivered through job training that relates directly to challenges that people face on the job.  Training like that would be more useful, focus on solving real challenges, and help managers make better decisions while learning.

Why Timing Really Is Everything

It turns out timing is vital to get right for far more than just education.  The strategies to launch new television shows hinge heavily on scheduling them to come before or after proven hits so TV networks can try to move existing audiences from one show to the next. 

Product launches, hiring decisions, and even which moments in life when you meet people all depend heavily on timing to determine how successful each will be.  In almost every case, there is no single roadmap of time that you can point to in order to say there is a perfect time for something. 

In other words, the idea of wearing a watch so you can track the time to help you arrive at a single place at a set time turns out to be the
least
useful way to think about time.   Instead, when you take off that watch – it frees your mind to think about being
in time
for experiences instead of on time. 

Losing your watch changes everything.

How To Be In Time Instead Of On Time

Aside from taking off your watch, how can you put the power of great timing to work for you?  Here are a few ideas on how to do it:

1. Understand when it is urgent.
     There is no substitute for acting with a sense of urgency.  In a sports game, for example, there are key times when acting and delivering are vital.  Presentations, conversations or pitches all have the same principle at work.  When it is most urgent, the rewards are also greatest for acting at the right time.  Uncovering your ability to appreciate this urgency and see those moments coming will help dramatically in preparing you to take advantage of those times that matter most.
   
2. Be in the moment.
     There are many ways to distract ourselves in every moment thanks to information overload, social networks, or just the simple distracting art of procrastination that most of us have mastered.  The best way to fight back is to get better about appreciating the moments that you happen to be in as you experience them.  Try to filter out distractions.  Avoid multi-tasking if you can.  The end result of aiming your focus is that you will appreciate timing and the moments that you experience far more … and probably improve your ability to judge timing as a result.   
   
3. Learn skills “just in time.”
     As we saw in this chapter, the power of just in time education cannot be overstated.  It doesn’t need to be so formal as a training course, though.  Just in time education happens every time you prepare for a meeting or learn a new skill in anticipation for a new day.  The power of lifelong learning and curiosity is that this type of education should be happening for you consistently.