This observation, of course, has not been scientifically tested.  I have no way of proving that we really are or are not in a period of increased high-end automobile sales in Indianapolis.   I simply don’t have the numbers.  However, I do have a plethora of personal observations pertaining to the world around me, and when you’re accustomed to seeing $300,000.00 Bentley’s driven nearly exclusively by James Bond, it comes as quite an initial surprise when you see them pulling up beside you every other day at the grocery store.

I really enjoy the beauty of the Bentley.  There’s just something incredible about the power and design intrinsic to the car that makes it irresistibly hard to ignore.  I like high-end vehicles, and I think that as many people who can afford them and want them should have them. On one condition…

…you first ask yourself why (insert name here:______,why?).  We are perpetually in search of the latest, greatest, fastest, shiniest things available.  We want to partake in shiny trips, drive shiny cars, talk on shiny phones, sleep in shiny boxes, and wear shiny clothes.  The world is full of shiny gizmodos and gadgetos and sleek materials that wet our insatiable thirsts momentarily but always leave us longing for more. Is there anything wrong with owning some or even all of this shininess? Of course not.   But, before you upgrade to that new, slightly better productpalooza or purchase your first, fully-loaded Bentley, ask yourself why.  Why must you have whatever it is that you have to have?

Here’s the Should-I-Own-A-Bentley Test:

1. How much pain is going to be associated with this purchase right now and in 4 years from now? In other words, if I can’t walk in and pay cash for it right now, without thinking about it, then how much am I going to be thinking about it over the next few years (on a month-to-month basis)? Will this decision one day cause me pain?  What’s the Joy : Pain ratio, and are you objectively satisfied with that ratio?
2. Who gets to ride in the passenger seat? If you can buy a Bentley, but you can’t give the homeless woman on the street corner (carrying her entire life on her back!) a ride to her make shift home, under the overpass, 3 blocks away, because you’re afraid she might scuff the leather dash, then you should not own a Bentley. Who you allow to ride in your Bentley says a lot about who you are and whether or not you should own one. If the car becomes more important than the people you could be serving with it, than you shouldn’t own that car.

Nearly everyone has a routine. Even the most complex, on the move, progressive, change the world type of people have at least some aspects of routine integrated into their daily lives. You could probably write out your morning, work, gym or eating routines right now if you had to.

It’s at this point in the discussion where most “well informed, self-help, guru type of people” would tell you to break your routine. Do something new (different) for a change! Instead of taking a shower and then brushing your teeth, try brushing your teeth while you shower! Oh, and while you’re going crazy, breaking your routine, changing your life one shower at a time, try washing your feet first instead of your ears or vice versa if you usually start with your feet.

Sometimes we genuinely believe that if we just change our routine it will somehow magically transform us into new (maybe even better!) people. Don’t buy the hype.

It’s not just your routine that’s broken; it’s also your attitude. You can’t find the time to go to the gym, to spend with your kids, to take your wife out to a great restaurant, to start that new business, to get caught up at work or to make that difficult phone call home. “It’s not me,” you say, “It’s my routine!” OR “I’m bored with life, might as well just get this day over with.”

Don’t single out your routine. Your routine is not what fundamentally got you where you are today (whether that’s a good place or bad); it’s your attitude that did, because attitudes set routines. Not the other way around.

Every day is an adventure to be had or to be lost. The majority of us lose out on the daily adventures because we become so focused on our routine, instead of our attitude, that we actually morph into our routine. We become our routine, and instead of us using it for greatness, it uses us to accomplish the only thing it can: Boredom. Your routine will rule you if you don’t change your attitude towards it.

Those who control their routines by controlling their attitudes see things differently. They see every occurrence, every moment of life as a blessing, as an opportunity to reach out, to help, or to meet someone elses need. They don’t allow their routine to suck the joy or life out of them, instead, they impart life and joy into their routine, thus giving them purpose and drive to do big things and serve in big ways.

Can your routine drag you along, give you a life of boredom and an escapist mentality? Of course it can. But, your routine can also be used for greatness, to positively influence people and to accomplish amazing tasks which you never before thought possible. The pertinent difference between the two?…Your attitude.

Don’t let the adventure of today die. Embrace it. Engage your routine with a positive, keenly-seeking-out-others type of attitude and live this day to the fullest extent. Further more, if your routine does so happen to need a change, let your transformation of attitude lead you there and not your desire to change simply due to boredom.

 “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion”

-Cyril Northcote Parkinson, The Parkinson’s Law

Here is what you really have to ask yourself: Does quality trend parallel with time? In other words, if you have more time to spend doing a task, are your results of higher quality?

When I was in college, professors would always (always!) hand out syllabi at the very first class meeting. These syllabi would outline every reading, writing and team project assignment for the entire semester and delicately inform us as to when exactly they would have to be turned in. Without fail, at least one professor would assign a huge, end-of-the-semester, multi-faceted research project to be turned in and presented on during the last week of class. The project would, of course (freak everyone out!), be worth a majority of our points. So, if we wanted to do even remotely well in the class, we had to succeed on the end all project. Here is how the time line usually unfolded for me: Think, worry and scuffle about aimlessly for the first four and a half months of the semester and then (finally!) get to work the week before the project was due, ace the presentation, rock the paper and pass the class.

Wouldn’t it have been easier to have just started the week before it was due (like I did anyways) and not have wasted all that mental and physical energy on worrying and thinking about the task before that point in time?

The answer is yes. It’s the law, Parkinson’s law.

A lot of people (OK, most of us) have snooze buttons on their alarm clocks, and a lot of people (yes, most of us) utilize those snooze buttons nearly every day like some kind of morning ritual to be played over and over again like some personal, horrific Groundhog Day remake. You know that you aren’t going to get out of bed until 6:30am, but you insist on setting your alarm for 5:45am because this time you are going to get up early and get your day started right! Yeah right. Sure you are. The following morning you hit your snooze an amazing 6 times, each time disturbing and resetting your sleeping pattern and throwing you off for the rest of the morning. What a waste of time. Wouldn’t it have been better to have either (a) just gotten out of bed or (b) set your alarm for a time at which you knew you had to get up, thus saving you 45 minutes of sound sleep?

The main point is this: If you give yourself too much time to accomplish something, you automatically increase the amount of work & energy you must put into it in order to get it accomplished successfully. The more time you allot to a chore, the harder that chore becomes. As humans, we naturally put things off. But, just because we put something off doesn’t mean that we don’t still exert energy toward the task. What if we started putting tasks off on purpose instead of putting them off due to our own apathy? Start putting things off on purpose. Set deliberate time schedules for specific tasks and stick to those schedules. Saying to yourself, “I really need to get my wife a gift, her birthday is in July” when it’s only May, is wrong thinking and is only going to cause you angst and worry. We apply pressure to our own lives by not setting strict guidelines as to when we are going to accomplish certain tasks. This of course leads to over thinking, worry and sleepless nights. Instead you should think, “My wife’s birthday is in July, it’s now May 19th, I will start planning for her birthday and thinking about it at 5:30pm on July 7th, and I will dedicate one hour to planning for her birthday every day leading up to her big day.” Case closed. Mind scheduled. No worries, no wasted time.

Eliminate wasteful thinking and planning. Put tasks off on purpose. Remember that work expands to fill the time container which you give it. If you allow a task too much time, you are planning on giving yourself way too much work.

Make your own syllabus, and don’t work so hard!

There was a time when sales department pep talks, employee rallies, motivating managerial sessions and corporate weekend getaways went something like this: Times may be hard now but just keep doing what you’re doing. Work hard, don’t give up; eventually things will get better. We will come out of this down time (together!) stronger in the end. In other words, demand for what we currently offer, how we currently offer it, will come back.

Rah Rah Rah and the crowd went crazy…kinda.

The effectiveness of perpetually doing whatever it was that we did yesterday in order to guarantee our continued future success tomorrow is quickly becoming, well,…ineffective.

We live in a world where demand for the old, boring and slightly unusable is nil. We interact in markets where doing the same thing over and over and over will not successfully endure. On the contrary, fortunately, we also live in communities where new, fresh and innovative ways of doing things are embraced and loved by an ever growing number. If you are exerting energy to maintain a status quo, trying desperately to solve problems and challenges from outdated and overused platforms, then you are going to disappear. You will be left where you currently are…in the past. We must be willing to embrace transition and change appropriately and accordingly, never sacrificing our values for a quick dollar or following, but always willing to change in order to get better and to help more people more efficiently and more effectively.

If you are (or quite probably now were) a newspaper company who believes you can just keep printing newspapers, and that eventually demand for your paper will go back up…you are going to lose. If you are a car company that believes it can keep manufacturing gas guzzling SUV’s, and that the demand for your vehicles will eventually go back up…you have already lost. If you are a small business that believes it can make do without an amazing website/blog, and that your customer base will continue to find you and use you regardless…you are going to lose. If you are a band who believes that your primary source of revenue over the next two years is going to be album sales, and that you don’t need to find a new creative way to generate cash…you should probably just stay in your parents garage.

Waiting it out until demand for your product or service comes back doesn’t work any more. Why? Because someone else out there is already figuring out a way to do what you do, better. Someone else is out there changing what you provide in order to make it easier and faster and more fun.

If we resist (aggressively fight!) change, then we are going to lose, and we are going to lose quickly. We must adapt. We must continually get better. We have to understand the ever fluctuating attitudes and desires of our followers, clientele, friends and co-workers, and we must evolve to meet them.

Embrace positive change, keep up with how it’s happening, leverage it to the best of your ability, come out of the hard times better than you were going into them.

I’m reading Tribes by Seth Godin and The Book of Acts from The Bible. Both of these books contain stories which pertain to amazing and courageous leadership and fighting the status quo in the face of adversity. I recommend them both for those who yearn to lead.

I get this “letter” from my friends down in Austin, Texas, every 2-3 weeks.  It’s the same situation every time.  I open the mailbox, and this genuine Hallmark letter falls gently into my eagerly awaiting hands.  I think to myself, “Oh, it’s a friendly letter from a friend for something that I must have forgotten.  Is it Christmas?  My birthday? hmmm Whatever could this be…for… (insert heart breaking here).”  After I open it (like a little school boy opening up a birthday card from Grandpa & Grandma!), I am quickly disappointed (to tears!) as I discover that it’s just another advertising scheme (I mean tactic) from AT&T, trying to get me to buy their U-Verse Package.

Q: So, why is it broken?

A: Because I already have a U-Verse account. I bought my AT&T U-Verse account nearly 6 months ago, yet I have still not stopped receiving advertisements nearly every single day in some form or another.  My interpretation:

1. Extreme waste of resources, time and paper
2. Someone at AT&T is not communicating.
3. It’s nice to get a Hallmark card…just not from your Internet/TV provider.
4. Continually provide me with the best Internet and TV service (ever!), email me the bill once a month, and then,…leave me alone.  My heart has had enough.

Check out their amateur video here (warning: corny song accompaniment).

Green Machine