Obie’s Out of Bounds

Some borrowed and some new

1. Work hard but play harder.  The rule of life that keeps one sane
2. Don’t eat where you sleep. A rule of the road that makes you see new, different things
3. On any trip reserve some time for yourself.  Again, this lets you see/experience new things of interest to you
4. Don’t give away your luck.  If you win something or come by a windfall make use of it or reserve some of the winnings to invest in future chance
5. Hot glass looks almost the same as cold glass.  This comes from my glass blowing days and will save pain
6. Always look for what is missing in a situation, product or happening.  Those are the hard things to find, sort of like “omission versus commission”
7. If something cannot go on forever it will stop.  Adapted from economist Herbert Stein, St. Pete Times 11/24/05 and has broad applicability
8. Don’t count sunk costs.   From a marketing finance course but much broader: make decisions only on future potential from future investment of time/labor/cost, not based on past (sunk) investment
9. Never wish away your life, enjoy every minute.  Sometimes you are bored or do not like a situation, but some day you will wish you had it back
10. When estimating use the “pi factor”.   3.141 times or divided by what you expect in the direction less favorable to you and you will not be disappointed
11.  If someone is nice to you but not nice to the waiter or cab driver…. they are not nice.  This is always true
12. If you do something on time and at cost but it is not any good, no one will care about the cost or time.  However if your “something” exceeds expectations and works, no one will care if it is a bit late and somewhat over cost
13.  If you do not fail or mess up sometimes, then you are not trying, doing or stretching far enough

This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 2:28 pm and is filed under About Obie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.