Jump Up

Better to explain 

Some awkward mistakes 

Than regret all the chances 

You failed to take 

Jump up and say ‘Yes!’

When life offers a break 

Nobody wins here 

By playing it safe 

Nobody wins 

By playing it safe 

Copyright © 2019 Daniel R. South 

All Rights Reserved

Establishing Accomplishment Targets

Set weekly and monthly targets for what you want to accomplish. For example:

Prepare two new recipes each month.

Take three twenty-minute walks every week.

Complete one home repair project each month.

Read a book a week.

Make two new business contacts every week.

Write a blog post or a chapter of a book each month.

Seating targets or quotas for what you want to accomplish can help your productivity in a number or ways. You’ll be better able to manage your time, first of all, because you’ll have a clear reason to avoid distractions. It’s easier to avoid low-productivity activities like watching television eat up your discretionary time when you know that you have a project due.

Targets help keep you focused. We have all had the experience of letting an important project fall by the wayside. We get side-tracked, and before we know it, weeks or months pass without any progress.

Establishing weekly or monthly goals can help to prevent this. Regular delivery of results keeps us busy and productive. We establish a rhythm with its own compelling momentum. We also build skill when we work regularly, and that helps us to be more productive.

But here’s the best part of all. When we complete regular deliverables, we have the opportunity to share them. The books you read, you can discuss with your friends. The repairs you finish, you can show off to your relatives. Your family will enjoy the new recipes that you prepare, and you can talk about how well it worked out (or laugh about how badly it flopped) with your colleagues the next day. Sharing your results will help you to stay motivated; you’ll want to keep busy and produce more results.

These are some of the advantages to setting regular targets for productivity, but there are some caveats that you should keep in mind.

First, don’t try to do too much. Set easy to reach goals, at least in the beginning. As long as you are accomplishing some small thing every week or every month, you’re being productive. There’s no need to increase your stress by taking on a massive burden.

If you try to cram too much into each period, you’ll run the risk of getting frustrated. You can always ramp the work load up later if you find that you have untapped capacity, but be cautious about adding too much work to your schedule. If you do discover that you’re trying to do too much, dial back the workload right away. A slow, steady, comfortable pace will get you to where you need to be.

Secondly, avoid the temptation to set daily goals. This may seem counterintuitive, but you can get yourself in trouble by trying to meet a target every single day.

The amount of free time that we have each day varies. We all have deadlines to deliver, appointments to make, and events to attend. Further, emergencies and unexpected inconveniences can pop up at any time. When such demands present themselves, we have to take care of them. We can’t just brush them aside simply because we intended to work on an important objective.

When you face a demanding day, you might need to skip or skimp on your daily target. Miss your targets a few times, and you might stop taking them seriously. The motivating factor of having a regular deliverable will be lost if you get the idea that it’s okay to let it slide once in a while.

Weekly and monthly targets give you more flexibility. You can work less, or not at all, on days when life throws a lot of demands at you. Work on your target projects on days when you have more free time, and you’ll be able to stay on track with less stress.

I hope that these ideas will inspire you to take on new challenges and perhaps start important project that you didn’t think that you had time to pursue. I would love to hear how this works out for you. Best wishes!

Copyright © 2019 Daniel R. South 

All Rights Reserved

Thank You

I realized today that as a result of my travels and exposure to international culture, I know how to say “Thank you” in a number of different languages and dialects. I have forgotten a few of them (Denmark, Croatia, Montenegro), but here are the ones that I can recall without reference.

English: Thank you very much!  

French: Merci beaucoup!  

Spanish: ¡Muchas gracias!  

Italian: Grazie mille!  

Portuguese: Muito obrigado!  

German: Danke schön!  

Dutch: Dank je!  

Flemish (in parts of Belgium that don’t speak French): Dank u wel!  

Swedish: Tack!  

Romanian: Multsumesc!  

Hungarian: Köszönöm!  

Slovakian: Dakujem!  

I’ll write the next group phonetically.

Russian: Spasiba  

Greek: Efcaristó  

Arabic: Shookrahn  

Urdu: Shookria  

Hindi: Dhanyavad  

Mandarin Chinese: SHIE-shie  

Japanese: Arrigato gozaimasu  

Korean: Hahm Sahmnidah 

Finally, two more from regions of the USA:

Hawaiian: Mahalo  

Western Pennsylvania: Thank yuh/Thank yins! (plural)  

Remember that it costs nothing to be respectful and polite. Everyone appreciates hearing “please” and “thank you” in their own language. Happy traveling!

Columbo

The impeachment hearings are like watching an episode of the 1970’s television series Columbo. You know who the bad guy is. You know what he did and how he did it. Now, you’re just watching to see if Lt. Columbo (Adam Schiff) can figure out how to prove it in his calm, soft-spoken, methodical way.

Delusions Of Superiority

Have you noticed that white supremacists are among the least impressive white people that you’ve ever seen? What is it that makes them feel superior? These fools couldn’t earn a spot on an all-white croquet team. 

Anyone who props up their lagging self-esteem with the convenient but patently ridiculous notion that their race, their religion, their country, their ethnicity, their political ideology, etc. is superior is broadcasting to the world that in their heart they feel like a pathetic failure. How much better it would be if they simply took stock of themselves and found a way to contribute something of value rather than blaming others for their feelings of inferiority? 

Making a contribution is a far more effective way to climb out of the pit of self doubt than pretending to have a genetic superiority over people who look, think, or worship differently. A world of possibility opens up when individuals take responsibility for their own contribution instead of conveniently passing the blame for their failures onto others.

Strangers

There’s considerable difference 

Between being a stranger 

And being estranged 

From someone you love 

The silence 

The distance 

Are on the same scale 

But there’s a nagging persistence 

In dreams that have failed 

Estrangement’s most tragic 

For the soul 

And the heart 

The innocent victims 

Of lives ripped apart 

They mend ever slowly 

Even with lots of care 

For they know the full value 

Of the sweetness 

That’s no longer shared 

Copyright © 2019 Daniel R. South 

All Rights Reserved

Stress Test

The doctor recommended a stress test. I said, “I’m already stressed. What do you want to know?”

Bad Form

She was so fat 

And her pants were so tight 

It looked like she had 

A butt in the front 

One Sweet Night

That one sweet night 

When all was right 

You came by 

To hold my hand 

And dance with me 

And I believed 

Deep in my heart 

That love could conquer all 

Copyright © 2019 Daniel R. South 

All Rights Reserved

November’s Frigid Revenge

When I moved from Pennsylvania to New Jersey years ago, I arrived at the beginning of summer. The hot, sunny weather was rarely interrupted, and the thick, engulfing humidity was unlike anything that I had ever experienced. I remember marveling at how intensely hot the interior of my car would become after baking for hours in the open parking lot of my office building.

Summer was followed by a pleasantly mild autumn. I continued to go out in shirtsleeves most evenings and felt perfectly comfortable without a sweater or jacket. I didn’t think twice when some colleagues proposed a trip to Atlantic City in the second week of November. Certainly, it wouldn’t be very cold by then.

Here’s a word of advice. You can have fun gambling at a casino, but don’t bet against Mother Nature.

The Arctic blast that’s engulfing North America this week reminds me of that fateful trip to the shore. Temperatures plummeted into the twenties Fahrenheit, while strong, near constant wind made it feel much colder. High rise buildings channeled that wind and accelerated it through open spaces, as though it weren’t harsh enough at its native speed. There were moments on the boardwalk where I found it difficult to breathe.

It was a rude awakening. Steamy, sultry New Jersey, the new home that had seemed blissfully tropical during the warmer months, had a harsh, bitter season to offset the warmth of summer, a season that made an impressive introduction during one particularly frigid excursion to the seashore. Mother Nature was holding all of the chips that weekend.