Texas Blue Lime Productions

Pareto Principle

According to the theory…

• principle: 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes
• economy: 80% of income in Italy went to 20% of the population
• business: 80% of sales comes from 20% of clients (and conversely, 80% of the work comes from the bottom 20% of sales)

My personal interpretation…

• personal: 80% of the joy in life come from 20% of the people and experiences in life

I’m working very hard to spend more time (as a business owner, as a friend, and as a member of a family of two) with those people doing those tasks which are currently only 20% of my time, but are 80% of my joy. While I realize, if the theory holds true, that I’m only shifting my happiness, I also see how that happiness increases. Even if it’s only 20% of my life, it’s a better quality than before.

In recent months, I have cut several things loose from my life. I’ve quit organizations, I’ve stopped volunteering for any entity with more drama than fun[1]. I’ve cut back on virtually everything in my life.

We’ll see if it works for me.

[1] Interestingly, gay chartity work is one of the only groups I held on to. Talk about blowing stereotypes!

Chad went fishing and caught something we all throught was a) too big to handle b) fake and c) a real Fish Tale!

He proved us wrong, though…even when the fishie tried to get him!

Ok, as you can probably tell, the “before” image shows Chad holding the real-size fish he caught on vacation.

It was still a ton of fun for all of us to tease him that it must be a plastic fish if he could hold it so easily. After all, it was a reported 30-pounder!

Emil and the cats found a new game today. They named it Kitty Pong.

They were animated and vocal about something (probably all the chaos in the house, today).

Emil decided that after one meowed, he’d walk to the other one until she meowed. He did this back and forth with them a few times until Purrrrrl won the first round—because Emil made it back to Sosta before she meowed again.

He even held round two, which Purrrrrl won again.

Too bad for the chance at a two out of three, Sosta!

SCENE: meowing cats while we are cooking dinner

EMIL: What is it?

PURRRRRL: meow

EMIL: Are you hungry?

PURRRRRL: meow

EMIL: Do you smell chicken?

PURRRRRL: meow

EMIL: Do you want chicken?

PURRRRRL: meow

EMIL: Do you want to share chicken with Sosta?

(crickets chirping through the silence)

LORI: laughing vigorously because animals understand much more than we humans ever give them credit for

–SCENE: We just finished watching Fletch.–

LORI: (laughing at the last line). That was a great movie.

EMIL: I can’t believe you’ve never seen it.

LORI: What year was it made?

EMIL: (checking TiVo). 1985.

LORI: Baby, my parents didn’t let me watch PG movies in 1985. [implied rant: I was 15 before they let me see a PG-13 movie. I've still never seen some of the great 80s flicks like Caddy Shack.]

EMIL: What are you talking about? We were in college.

LORI: What are YOU talking about? I was in the 7th grade!

EMIL: I was such a pedophile!

LORI: I love my pedophile!

[Reality: in May of 1985, I finished the 7th grade and Emil finished his senior year at Bryan High.
So, I was a 7th grader in '85 and he was a college freshman in '85, but not at the same time!]

Clearly, we’ve never felt much of an age difference. Maybe that’s because by the time we met, it wasn’t much of a difference. Besides, we are both still just kids.

This handy dandy little piece of software nags you to take micro- and mini-break throughout the day. At real break times, it gives you stretches to do. At the end of the day, it tells you to get away from behind the computer and go do something else for a while. It also tracks your mouse movement, mouse clicks, and character strokes.

Wow! Is it GREAT for those of us who tend to get lost in what we are doing and lose track of time.

http://www.workrave.org/leaflet/

(one tiny warning: the default settings are too frequent and too many. Once I adjusted the settings to my own time-frames and limited the reminders for each one, I found it quite useful.)

“Click Here to Enter Our Site”

No! Put your site on your domain, and let me go straight to it. Don’t make me sit through some “commercial” just so you can have another click-through in your stats.

Music That Automatically Plays

Whether it’s a MySpace page or a website, I am already using the sounds in my comptuer and listening to my iPod. Have a button and let me choose to pause my music to hear yours, if I want to!

Slideshows That Are Already Time-controlled

Again, I want to see your pictures at my pace (which will be faster than your’s, I’m sure). Furthermore, I want to pause and reflect on the images that move me. I get to decide what those are. You don’t.

Hyper-criticism

Hyper-critical people are just too negative. There is a huge difference between bashing something and offering ideas about it.

Constructive criticism is supposed to be just that, constructive. It includes real ideas and suggestions that are definitive enough to be implemented. Like goal setting, it must be realistic and attainable. Internet Trolls are just hyper-critical with no suggestions or ideas to go with their dislikes and complaints. The worst of these offenders claim that they are engaging in constructive criticism.

According to dictionary.com

Constructive criticism – criticism or advice that is useful and intended to help or improve something

Private Settings on Social Media

If you use MySpace or similar sites to promote your business, please keep your site public, not set to private! How can we network businesses and potential clients if no one can see who you are or what you do? With the proliferation of spam accounts on sites like MySpace, no one marked private gets to be my friend (unless they are a personal friend, of course).

If you are part of a Twebinar, make your Tweets public or create a new Twitter account for the purpose of the Twebinar. If I can’t see the kinds of things you talk about, how can I follow you and enjoy the Twebinar experience? And, if I have to wait for you to approve me to follow you, I might miss the entire event.

What is the point of using Social Media if you aren’t going to be social with the other users of Social Media???

Voicemail Etiquette

When you call someone, show them the courtesy of stating what it is you want from them. Those who call, say no more than a name/company/number feel like Telemarketing. Even if I know you, phone tag is not—and never was—a fun game. Let me know what you need. I can probably do that for you and then let you know that it’s done….instead of having to chase you down for what it is you needed in the first place. Oh, and just so you know: people who do this go straight to my voicemail every time. I’m not going to enable this kind of behavior. So, you’ll have to wait for me to call you back and you’ll have to answer your phone. Want me to answer when you call, then start leaving good messages when you do get voicemail.

Email Etiquette

Do not reply to a message about one topic to introduce another. If you really need to change subjects, finish the one conversation, hit send, and compose a new email message.

Use a good/definitive subject line. Please don’t make me dig through scores of emails from you with the subject of “question for you” to find the exact one I need.

Write like a grown-up and use the Shift key. I know the trend right now is all lowercase—thank you, lazy teenagers who grew up on IM and texting—but it’s hard to read. While we are at it, fix those run on sentences and put a few commas in your writing. If you use Firefox as your browser, it will tell you when a word is misspelled and give you options to fix it. If you don’t do that, onelook.com is your online dictionary friend.

Give me a chance to find the answer before harassing me. You know who you are. Those who send 5 emails to the same person in one hour. Learn to develop some patience and go work on another project while I work on this task for you. Please do not reply with even more questions about the same topic before I’ve had a chance to address the original question. If you didn’t hear from me right away, it’s because I’m either busy or looking for the answer for you. If you didn’t hear from me and it’s been a while, a gentle reminder is fine—preferred, even! (I don’t want you left in the dark; I don’t want you to stop emailing me.) Since any email from you might be “nevermind, I found/fixed it”, I have to check them. Every time I stop to check your next message is another interruption in the path to a solution for you.

If I email you with a tasks outlineing some lists I need from you, do not email me back to ask when we can talk by phone. 1) I need the paper trail and the ability to look this up later. I can get that by phone. 2) it’s a list! Make it for me and hit the send button. Don’t bog down my time, too, while you “think out loud” or whatever it is. Make the list and send it to me. Then, once I’ve had a chance to review it, we can talk by phone to clarify details. In general email should be replied to and phone calls should be returned. There are exceptions to this, but there are some very good reasons for using email. For one, it forces you to say what you need/want instead of doing a lot of “like”s and “you know?”s

Really LOOOONG Signature Lines

OK, people, keep your signature down to a few lines. If you own a business and your signature advertises your current offerings, that’s great. I actually read those and honestly care what you have going on. At the same time, it should not be so long as to be a burden when I reply to your email. If I have to edit your email in my reply, your signature is to freakin’ long.

So, keep it short ‘n sweet….and link to your blog where we can find all the details. Don’t have a blog? I can hook you up. I can create simple blog sites. And I know several web developers if you want something more complicated.