Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?
Okay. I’m not old enough to have used a quill regularly. But there’s something about the idea of slowing down in writing that is missing today.
It’s so easy to fire off e-mails, one after the other, without really thinking about the consequences. In times gone by, if you were angry with someone, you might have to sharpen your quill, dip your ink, and scratch away at the paper before sending your letter to arrive “sometime” in the future. It allowed time to think, “Is this really such an issue?”
There’s also something calming and comforting about the feel of a fountain pen scratching paper fibres as it glides across the page. It’s soothing. And it’s something that’s sadly missing today. Screens with styli come close. But there’s nothing to beat a dip pen, liquid ink, and paper.
What’s a lesson you’ve learned recently that shifted your perspective?
We spend all our time trying to control every aspect of our lives. But the reality is that we have very little real control.
A lot of our lives are controlled by others, or by our circumstances. Employees are controlled by their managers, managers by their directors, directors by the business owners, business owners by the market demand. Children are controlled by the needs of their children, and children by the needs of their parents.
And even when we have free time, our freedom is controlled by the circumstances around us.
Take yesterday, as an example. My plan was to work around the house. Then my son called to tell me that he was available to help me with a different task. So, I drove to his house to collect him.
Leaving his home, we were greeted by a number of neighbours asking if it was my car. Yes, it was. Because a bus has just hit it, and the driver took his bus and left the scene before exchanging insurance details.
And that meant that after caring for the heavy lifting with which my son had come to help, and taking him home, I spent the day making reports to the police and insurance company. And now I’ll have to go through the trials of getting the car repaired. And because the bus driver is unknown, I’ll have to pay the excess on my insurance.
What have I learned? That we’re not as “in control” as we’d like to think we are.
How does it change my perspective? It’s a car. No one died. No one even got injured. It’s just a car.
Was I able to do what I wanted to, yesterday? No. I’ll have to do that today. But there’s no point worrying about it. As the saying goes, there’s no good crying over spilt milk. It’s gone. Like the time I’d set aside yesterday, it’s gone. No point worrying about it. I’ll never get that time back. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
So why worry? Why get angry? Will it help get my car fixed? No. Will it make me feel better? No. Will it get the bus driver punished? No. All it will achieve is cause me stress, and shorten my life. So why worry? Why get angry?
Instead, channel that energy into positive acts that get things done.
The positive side of yesterday was that I had less time available, so I carried out a different, shorter task. And strangely, that made a bigger difference than everything I’d planned but couldn’t do!
What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years” — and what got you through it?
It’s easy to think about hard times. And it’s easy to give in to them.
But the reality is that it’s not the hard times that we have to worry about. It’s what we do about them.
Because it’s a true today as it’s always been. It doesn’t matter how many times you fall. What counts is how often you get up again. And only you can do that.
What’s a fear you’ve overcome — and how did you do it?
I grew up with the fear of getting it wrong. I always felt that nothing was ever good enough for my mother, and that I was constantly being criticised when, in fact, she was probably only trying to do what was best for me, encouraging me to be the person she knew I could be.
Let’s be honest, most of us have had it drummed into us that “good enough isn’t” (good enough).
Then I learned the Pareto Principle. 80% of the benefit results from 20% of the effort. And I suddenly realised that good enough really is good enough. We aren’t perfect. We are going to make mistakes. There are very few, if any, areas in life where perfection is essential. So why waste 80% of our effort trying to correct that last 20% which no one except the most critical perfectionist (which is often ourselves) will notice, anyway.
Greenacre 9 