Tim O’Hare
observations, thoughts and useful stuff…Archive for from other people
Properly versus twice
Yesterday I attended the sixth of seven “Essential Leadership Skills” staff development courses that I am following. This one was on “Enabling People to Perform”. During the event the course leader gave a quote (without original source) that appealed to me…
Why do we not get time to do things properly when we do get time to do things twice?
To my mind this nicely captures a common problem that occurs in the workplace. things quite often have to be done more than once because they have to be completed in a rush and the outcomes are incomplete or in some way lacking. How better it would be to always make sure that there is enough time to do a job properly and, as a consequence, only have to do it once.
Chance favours the prepared mind
Listening to last week’s Scientific American podcast I was particularly struck by a quote that was mentioned in one of the reports. In the podcast the quote was given as “chance favours the prepared mind” and attibuted to Louis Pasteur but looking it up online it seems that the original quote was more along the lines of “In the field of observation, chance favours the prepared mind”. This longer quote reflects Pasteur’s work as an scientist and rings true in my mind, but the shorter quote has more wider applicability as a statement of the familiar idea that “we make our own luck”. Anyway, I liked the quote and I certainly believe it to be true so I thought I’d lay it down as an entry on this site.
Empathy games
Reading yesterday’s The Times newspaper (actually it was the glossy magazine that comes with the newspaper on Saturday and never has anything worth reading in it…) I was taken by the following quote from author Rose Tremain:
“On Tube journeys I try to imagine the thoughts of the people I feel most afraid of. After four or five stops they morph into ordinary citizens. I’d encourage people to play this kind of empathy game as often as possible.“
It was part of a short interview in which she talks about the need to listen to everybody, however young or old, because listening to people is the best way to have interesting questions to ask. She also describes how as she has grown older she has stopped asking herself “What makes me happy?” and started asking herself “What gives my life meaning instead?”. The result is that she has become far happier. Simple, but profound…
