“I can’t believe they charge us to check bags now” blurted the seated passenger.

“You are preaching to the choir” said the flight attendant. “They’ve got it all wrong. They should be charging to carry bags ON the plane. Check as much baggage as you want under the plane for free, but if you want to carry something on, it’s going to cost you. That’s what takes so long. If there was no baggage here in the cabin (or less of it), we’d have taken off 30 minutes ago.”

Here’s a question: Are you listening to the people who are actually carrying baggage on your plane? Who are your users and what are they saying about your product or service? Most of what you need to hear isn’t audible from your office desk.

Of course, if everyone hates it, then maybe I’m a bit off. But one out of ten isn’t always a failing grade. If one person (or one small tribe of people) latches on to an idea, or a tool, or a way of thinking – and each of them bats one out of ten, that’s called steady growth.

As an old friend advised me years ago, “10%” doesn’t tell you anything. The question to ask is, “10% of what?” Would you rather have 100% of nothing or 10% of a million?

I find this incredibly powerful, so much so that we scaled back many of our online “portals” this past week so that were weren’t spending all day “tending the fields” as he put it. We are considering other ways to centralize what we do, and how we reach people we want to work with.

What’s keeping you from actually doing something today? I start every day with only one list: three things I want to accomplish by the end of the day. Not four…not a list of things I’ll never actually do. Three things that are so important, I will cancel anything else.

And I don’t make that list in advance (here’s what I want to do this Thursday). I make it when I wake up – and only for that day.

What can you remove from your day – today – that is helping you hide from doing the things you actually want to do – things that actually make a difference. Stop tending the fields.

There are three aspects to every sound:
Beginning – Duration – Ending
Care for the duration of each note as you would a child,
and respect the silence between sounds.

This silence “between sounds” is something I have come to appreciate more as I mature as a musician myself. At a recent performance, a colleague and I had just finished an improvisation (piano and voice) and as it ended, I was struck by the beauty of silence. Not only did it help me appreciate more deeply what had just happened, but it also gave me space to actually hear what was coming next.

When do I start the next piece? Even after thirty seconds, the sound and affect of the previous music was still resounding across the room. As I waited and actually enjoyed the absence of music, the time came to begin the Bach Invention. It was palpable…almost obvious…but certainly later in time that I would have initially guessed.

When do you start the next thing? Giving time to absorb and process what has already happened always takes more time than you think. Take the time, and respect the silence between sounds. I’ve found that starting the next thing is always later than I expect. Put another way: those things I start too early (at the wrong time) rarely fulfill me.