Tea with McNair

• advice to a college kid, and you

   

"If a friend ask you to go with him for a mile,

            Go with him two."

A friend emailed the other day to ask for my advice with his son who is home from college and disillusioned about going back. I get this question fairly often, “My kid is uninspired about life. What should we do?” Here’s my reply. Names have been changed.

Dear Lou AND Bud,

Your great dad, Lou, tells me you don't know what to do with your life, well get in line and take a number, Bud. Me, too. 
    I am 55 and last year on my birthday I called the California state highway commission trying to get an old "55 MPH" sign to hang in my loft. The man said, "I haven't seen one of those in a while." And then he said, "I think your number has been canceled."
    Wow! I felt invisible, irrelevant, deceased.
    I think and I KNOW that everyone has moments throughout all of their life when they are not certain what moves to make next.
    Left or right, paper or plastic, window or aisle, DVD or Blue Ray, Chicken or Steak . . . HELP!
    IF someone glides through life unconfused and un-conflicted, my suspicion is they are heavily medicated and living in a small, soft room, being cared for by folks in white coats.
   The human mind is a vastly creative, curious, easily distracted, and very powerful–all at the same time. But we also have a heart, eyes, ears, tongue, and our life's experiences to aid in our daily choices: window or aisle, red or white wine, smoking or non-smoking, paper or plastic, white, wheat, rye, or sourdough?

What do you love to do, Bud?

If you were given a year to do whatever you wanted to do, what would that be? (If your answer is, "Go sit on a beach in Hawaii or Tahiti!" well, then just go sit on the beach and come home with an answer.)
    You are young enough to try a few things before settling into exactly what your "major" is--in life and in college. Maybe you take a year off from formal schooling and get an education in the working world. List a few places you think you might enjoy working. It could even be part time job, or two, while you are also volunteering at __________. And consider places to work NOT near home. Think of relatives you could go live with (rent free or real cheap at least) and spend a year in Atlanta, Chicago, Ireland. Who do you know? Who do your parents know?
    Most of my theatre friends went to college and got nice little BA degree in speech, communications, theatre. Then the day after graduation they went back to work making sandwiches by day and doing plays--for free--by night. If you were to ask them, "What do you do (for a living, a job)?" They would ALL answer, "I'm an actor." Even if they were making zero money in the theatre. 
    My friend's son worked in a "body shop" (auto repair) all through high school and college. He loved it. Upon graduation from college (with a business degree) he became assistant manager of the place--moving from hourly wage to salary. HE still gets to work on cars, a lot. He still loves it and cannot imagine doing anything else in life.

What do you love, Bud?

If you don't know, fine. What are two or three activities you enjoy or like a lot, that make you happy when doing them? In fact, if, when you get up tomorrow, knew you were going to spend the day _____________ (fill in the blank) what is it in that blank that would make you wake up excited about your day?
    Another friend went on a long-overdue vacation from her corporate, 60 hours-a-week job (that she liked). She really needed a break. She told her travel agent to put her on the most remote, sunny beach she could get to quickly. She ended up in a tiny, beach-front house on an island in the southern-most corner of the Caribbean. I had never heard of this place and I've been all over the Caribbean. Her second week there, after just sitting on the beach reading, she walk into town (half mile) for lunch and saw a dive shop. Her curiosity lead her to poke around, ask a lot of questions, and take a basic, one-day scuba diving lesson. (She had never even been snorkeling before. She's Canadian.) She loved scuba diving, so . . . she bought the dive shop, hired the previous owner as her senior instructor and lived there for nearly two years. Then, she sold the business, at a profit! Upon her return, she was a far more sane, and calm person. A the tannest Canadian in history. Corporate life had made her hyper. Doing what she loved gave her life back.

What do you love, Bud?

Spend a year, living at home and doing THAT. And, if there's a community college near by, take a couple of courses that sound interesting to you. TRY SOME NEW THINGS and get college credit trying. You are young and there's no rush to DECIDE this week, this month, or this year. I suspect, too, your dad and mom wouldn't mind having you around the house for a little while longer. You will too soon be gone for good.
    But even when you do decide and move on, they can come visit you at your new _______ in __________.
    Please feel free to call me, email me, ignore me, whenever.
    Hint: I tend to answer the shortest emails (2 or 3 questions) right away. Long emails I save in the "To be answered by Jesus, someday" file.
   
   
McNair 

P.S. If you find a really great job, hire me! 

Now get out on the dance floor and start moving those feet.

• do you want it thursday or good?

  No More Bad Brainstorming

The redoubtable comic actor, Sid Caesar, pioneer of television sketch comedy, performed 90 minutes LIVE every Saturday night on his ground-breaking television program in the 1950s, Your Show of Shows.
    Network “suits” demanded Sid & Co. submit scripts by Thursday. Scripts were usually not ready. The “suits” pushed.
    Sid rebuffed, “Do you want it Thursday or do you want it good?”
    That's why I wrote my next book, DONUTS ON THE MOON, Brainstorming Secrets of a Theme Park Designer. With the tools in this book I believe it can be booth “good” and “Thursday. ” One of those tools–at the heart of my 7 Agreements of Brainstorming–is the necessity of making a clear distinction and separation of the two very powerful, but necessary activities of Creative Thinking and Critical Thinking. Most of what we do in the corporate world (and with working teams everywhere) that we call "brainstorming" just isn't!
    Some one throws our an idea, a thought, a whim, and immediately some else offers a criticism, an analysis, a rebuff to shoot it down. It can even be a disapproving sigh. This not only short circuits the creative thinking process, it sends a message to whomever offered the idea that they are not valued. That is what they think and certainly feel no matter their intentions of their critic.
    One the most frequent excuses for all the analysis and criticism, to every idea, is, "We just want to eliminate bad ideas as we go along so we can get to a good solution more quickly."
    Impossible! No one will have thee idea, thee solution. It will be an amalgam of several ideas, from various sources. You won't know it. till you start playing with several ideas, hundreds of ideas. Don't eliminate, create.
 If we say everything that comes to mind and write down everything said, we can imagine, invent, create, solve, virtually anything. instead of having a handful of ideas in thirty minutes--that we shoot down, stomp, choke the life out of--we can have 300 ideas in thirty minutes.
    Whatever the topic: think it, say it write it. You never know where a great idea will come from unless you consider everything. Every idea can be an inspiration to others thinking.
   
I want your work to be “good” rather than “Thursday.” I believe it can both.

McNair

P.S. Whither the Donuts?

Chris stopped by for a cup of tea and asked when and where my new brainstorming book would be available. If it were up to me, next week. My literary agent and I have received great enthusiasm from several editors at big name publishing houses, but they couldn't get their marketing and sales folks to take it on.  We have received a total of fifteen rejections, so far. I say "so far" as my friend, Madeleine L'Engle* received more than thirty rejections for A Wrinkle on Time.  That little book was selected by TIME magazine, in 1999, as one of the top three children's books of the 20th century (along with Charlotte's Web and The Chronicles of Narnia.) So I'm just getting started.
    I wrote four drafts of DONUTS ON THE MOON, Brainstorming Secrets of a Theme Park Designer, changed the title three times–so far–and hired an independent editor (who my previous publisher engaged to edit my "last" book,  RAISED IN CAPTIVITY, A Memoir of a Life Long Churchaholic.) All that before I showed it to my agent.
    Now my long-time, good friend Jim Hancock (published author and wordsmith) is editing it for length and crispness--leaner and sharper. As the book is filled with actual stories of my methodology at work with a myriad client roster, my challenge has always been which stories best illustrate the process. Unfortunately if I tell how a big company used Agreement No. 4, small non profits say, "Well how does that apply to me." I am finally coming to see that I cannot make this book about both brainstorming and Remedial Application of Simple Concepts Across the Organizational Spectrum 101.
    Thus, I hope to be resubmitting the NEW book (spiral bound and with illustrations and graphics) in the very near future. Stay tuned to this site for further news. If you are NOT yet on my email list, please subscribe as those folks will get first word and a discount offer to get the books, autographed,  as soon as they are available.  Subscribe HERE.

* Our friend, Madeleine died 6 September 2007.

                      Illustration, left, by McNair, used by permission, sort of. }