Autumn: Greatest Time of the Year

Everyone has their favorite season. You do, right? Well, mine is autumn, a.k.a. Fall. I live in the northeast US, and we have the luxury of getting all four seasons. This is probably why my family loves it here so much.

   

But there are just so many great things going on in the Fall that give me a sense of renewal. Now, that may sound counter-intuitive, as the Fall is when all of our gardens and flowers die, and our trees drop their leaves. Spring is supposed to be for renewal.

   

True, but think of these battery chargers:

1. Kids are back in school (my wife’s #1 also)
2. Football season starts
3. The real baseball season starts (that would be the playoffs)
4. Long, hot days of summer are gone, and that first decision of “do I actually need a jacket today?” before you go out the door
5. The smell of fallen leaves and fireplaces  

I also get a sense of renewal as my work colleagues from Europe return from their ‘August holidays’ and we can now start to “end the year strong” and also begin our various 2011 planning processes.

    

So, while Spring is the traditional “renewal” season … for me, it is the Fall. Enjoy it. Catch your kid’s soccer or football games. Better yet, sign up to coach them. After all, it is the greatest time of year.

 

Do You Have Work-Induced A-D-D?

Do you have, what I am calling, work-induced ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder)? I know I do. And worse yet, it is pretty much self-inflicted.

What do I mean by WIADD? (Everything needs an acronym, right?) Basically, it is multi-tasking to a point where you are not really getting twice as much done by doing two things at once. In fact, you’re actually getting half as much done because the quality isn’t as good. That’s a totally subjective conclusion and based on zero hard data. But tell me you don’t think that is true?!

I mentioned “self-induced” earlier. I say that because I voluntarily use two monitors at work. That way, I said to myself, I can still read and respond to email on one monitor, while participating on a web conference on the other!

Now, sarcasm aside, I actually do find it helpful most of the time. As I just keep my calendar up on one screen and do my work on another … purely for easy reference. (Talked myself into that one, eh?) However that rationalization defeats my point. My point is, BE IN THE MOMENT. Or in the world according to Ty Webb, “Be the ball, Danny, be the ball.”

My ask of you: if you’re on a conference call, close your email and listen to what they are saying. Because invariably you will half-heartedly agree to something on that conference call which you really didn’t hear fully. Only then to realize the ramifications 2 weeks later, to which if you had been listening in the first place you would have never agreed to. And now, you’re two weeks behind schedule.

So, give someone the respect that you would want. Be a good, no great, listener. And then maybe we can solve this dreaded WIADD.

Get out and Walk

I guess you can consider this part 2 of my last post of June 4 (Porch-aritaville). This is about turning off the TV after dinner, get off you’re a$$ and take your family for a walk around your neighborhood.

That is one of the things that we have really tried to do at least 4 times a week. After dinner, the kids clear the table, and we burn off some dessert calories by taking a casual stroll around our town. And taking a walk contributes to so many good things.

1. It is exercise. Not a lot, but it gets you moving
2. It gives you time to decompress from the day, and see how everyone else’s day was
3. You get to meet your neighbors, chat for a bit, and build up your sense of community
4. Security. People out and about see things, (think town watch), and when there are people around, teenagers are less likely to do stupid things
5. My favorite … if you have kids, listen to them talk. Once their mind gets going and they start rambling about something or singing a song they just made up … I’m telling you, ain’t nothing better.

So, try and make a point to grab your significant other, or just you, and enjoy your neighborhood after dinner. Trust me, it’s good for you.

Porch-aritaville

"Nibblin’ on sponge cake
Watchin’ the sun bake
All of those tourists covered with oil
Strummin’ my six-string
On my front porch swing
Smell those shrimp they're beginnin to boil"

Thank you Jimmy Buffet, for creating this state of mind, this place that we can instantly slip to when we hear those first chords of Margaritaville.

It’s not so easy to slip to this place nowadays, is it? My observation is that we are, unfortunately, losing our “porch mentality” in America. I’m not here to figure out why, as it is all a combination of ridiculous McMansion planning + raising kids craziness + urban sprawl + artificial electronic social networks replace real neighborhood networks. Regardless of the reason, I’m writing here to urge you to try and get IT back.

So, what is the “it”? I’m calling it “porch mentality”, or as my parents and grand-parents did … “sitting on the stoop.” We just don’t do it (much) any more – taking the time that is.

Well, summer is certainly here in my part of the world. And last night after my wife and I put our kids down early, we poured a nice glass of Spanish red and hit our front porch. Yes, we are fortunate to have a covered front porch, nice size, partially shaded from the street to give just enough privacy, but not so much as you can’t see who is walking their dog and chat for a bit. It was so nice to hear the sounds of “nothing.” And I use quotes because there was so much to hear that otherwise goes unnoticed. The neighbor practicing violin, another neighbor practicing sax, compressors from window air-conditioners, the thunder storm rolling in, and 3 crows that were really pissed off at something.

Once in a while, and more often than you think you should, take the time to do nothing. Because, you are not really doing nothing. You are recharging your batteries, or reconnecting with your husband or wife. You are mentally sorting out the head trash that you can either forget about, or remember to put on your calendar for tomorrow.

So, watch the sun bake, sit on your front porch swing, and don’t forget about the shrimp

Do Good vs. Do Right

Last week I wrote a piece (just a screen below) on ‘enjoying your work’ … and I do work for a cool company in SAP. One of the things I love is their leadership position around corporate responsibility and sustainability. We even named a Chief Sustainability Officer last year – Peter Graf.

As a software company, we not only sell solutions to help companies manage their carbon footprint and fulfill various regional reporting requirements, but we also strive to be a leading example of a company ‘doing the right thing’. In leading by example, SAP has recently produced our 2009 Sustainability Report. Now this is a cool piece of work. Check it out, click through the easy navigation, or take a video tour. It is one of the first, if not the very first, interactive Sustainability Report available, highlighting where SAP is making improvements in reducing our own carbon emissions.

I started with the title of Do Good versus Do Right. Our co-CEO Bill McDermott used this phrase in a video and it really resonated with me. In the past, that was an “either / or” proposition. Companies either “did good” by their stakeholders, or they ate into their profit margin to “do right” things, like build LEED certified buildings or spend extra on adopting green practices. But it seems, thankfully after years of environmental pioneers paving the way, that doing the right thing is now also seen in corporate America as doing a good thing by your stakeholders. We are still only at the beginning, but this is the opportunity to continue to push environmental responsibility. Doing good IS doing right.

Enjoying Your ‘Work’

Confucius, who lived around 500 B.C., said 'If you enjoy what you do, you will never work another day in your life.' Well, I work for a pretty cool company (SAP), and we just had our customer conference - SAPPHIRE NOW. It was a truly slick event, as it was held simultaneously in Orlando, Florida and Frankfurt, Germany. And not only that, it was blogged and tweeted and satellite broadcast around the world.

The consensus is that there was an energy coming from those events, based on the strategy that was shared and the direction our company is going. Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group and former vice-president Al Gore, were both keynote speakers and shared wonderful insights about how with great opportunity, comes great responsibility.

All of these inputs and insights and discussions and blogs, led me to appreciate the company I work for. Are we too busy? Yup. Do we work crazy hours? Who doesn’t? But I am fortunate to really enjoy, not to mention learn from, the people I work with and those that I manage. If you are reading this post, I hope you enjoy the work that you do. If not, find parts of it that you do like and do those to the best of your ability. You never know what doors that will open.

Community: Its Easy To Be Green

One of the community initiatives my family is involved in is Narberth Greens. It is a community interest group started by young woman who had a pretty simple vision – Environmental stewardship starts at home. She moved back to her home town and started this movement because she wanted to make a positive impact in the town she grew up. My wife and I were chatting with her just the other day asking how all of her various programs were going, and she said something that was both unexpected, yet very positive. She said, “… I don’t feel like I’m as much in need anymore, because so many people are already doing so much good work on their own.”

The good work she was referring to are things like basic recycling, composting, switching to CFLs (compact fluorescent light bulbs in case you’ve been under a rock), turning down their water heaters, bringing canvas shopping bags to the market, or planting vegetable gardens. There are so many EASY things you can be doing that take zero to minimal effort, yet return so much. In fact, listed below are the 10 EASY things you can do, TODAY, to start making a difference.

1. Replace 5 incandescent bulbs with CFL’s: save 500 lbs of CO₂ annually
2. Unplug appliances : save 600 lbs of CO₂ annually
3. Add one (more) vegetarian dinner per week: save 1000 lbs of CO₂ annually
4. Reduce waste; compost: save 500 lbs of CO₂ annually
5. Turn thermostat down 2 degrees: save 1400 lbs of CO₂ annually
6. Cut shower to 5 minutes: save 1200 lbs of CO₂ annually
7. Check tire pressure, get car checked up: save 1500 lbs of CO₂ annually
8. Make sure water heater is efficient, set to 120 ℉: Save 1000 lbs of CO₂ annually
9. Use reusable shopping bags only: Save 1440 lbs of CO₂ annually
10. Give your car a rest: walk or bike for your close errands !

If you are interested in specific details on these, visit http://www.narberthgreens.org/ and look up their Community Challenge. There you will find a document that details just how many pounds of CO2 each action will save annually. You can also visit http://www.50waystohelp.com/ for even more actions you can take.

My family has championed these actions, and none of them were difficult … ok, limiting showers to 5 minutes can be a challenge. But otherwise, it was just a matter of changing one habit for another habit. Once you got in the swing of it, such as remembering to bring in your shopping bag to the market (it doesn’t count if you leave them in your car), it was easy.

So, contrary to Kermit’s mantra of “Its not easy being green”, it actually is. So, man-up! Its not a “red” issue or a “blue” issue. It’s a GREEN one. Start today at http://www.narberthgreens.org/.