Random Thoughts

Turn soul-sucking TV commercial time into soul-saving personal-me-time.

Do you wish you had more time for the important things and people in your life?  There’s a no-brainer way to add hours, days and weeks of quality time to your life.  Stop watching TV commercials.

Here’s what I’m talking about . . .

We spend sixty-one days a year watching the idiot box TV.

According the Bureau Of Labor Statistics:

On an average day, nearly everyone age 15 or over engaged in some sort of leisure activity, such as watching TV, socializing or exercising. Watching TV was the leisure activity that occupied the most time (2.7 hours per day).

2.7 hours X 365 days = 975 awake-hours per year spent watching TV.

What do those hours equal in days?  For kicks, let’s divide the average number of TV watching hours by and an arbitrary number of awake-hours in twenty-four hour day.  Let’s use sixteen as the awake-hours number (that leaves 8 hours for sleep).

975 TV watching hours ÷ 16 awake-hours in a day = 61 days a year watching TV 

Sixty-one days of watching TV is a lot.  But, what’s even worse, is this.

We allow TV commercials to steal eighteen wide-awake days of our lives every year.

According to Wikipedia:

Commercial breaks have also become longer. In the 1960s a typical hour-long American show would run for 51 minutes excluding advertisements. Today, a similar program would only be 42 minutes long.

61 wide-awake TV watching days X 30% (percentage of commercials in an hour of TV) = 18 wide-awake days of commercials.

If we use a DVR to record our favorite TV shows, we can reclaim eighteen days a year.  What beautiful, adventuresome, prosperous, relaxing or wondrous things could you do with and extra eighteen days in 2012?

If we don’t DVR our TV shows we’re either stupid or lazy. Or both.

I know.  Some TV loses luster if we don’t watch live.  No biggie.  Don’t record those, watch those shows live.  But for the other ninety-seven percent of what we watch, DVRing is the only way to go. Doing so will add eighteen days of personal-me-time to our lives every year of our lives.

Imagine this!  We DVR everything we can, and slice our TV watching time by a measly twenty-five percent – BOOM!   We just added a staggering full month of precious personal time per year back into our lives.  That’s a lot of life!

What are you going to do with an extra full month of personal-me-time per year? 

Thanks for reading – cheers.  if I can be helpful, ping me – Ken Brand 832-797-1779

Photo Credit

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The scarcity happens because so many businesses don’t care enough or are too scared to invest the energy in so many seemingly meaningless little bits of being extraordinary.  Seth Godin

Scarcity.  ELBs.  Ah Ha.

What ever our profession, how people value us is compromised of Exponential Little Bits.  All the little bits done right add up  to More Ah Ha.  Done lamely, it’s more of the same-ol’ same-ol’.  Same-ol’ same-ol’ is common and leads to invisibility and irrelevance.  When others think we’re just like everyone else a commodity, in essence, we melt from their memories and become secret agents. Then we starve, or limp off to the Elephant Graveyard.

What we want.  What we need.  What we can’t succeed without is creating Top of Mind Awareness as a trustworthy and scarce valuable real estate agent/advisor/professional.  Being viewed as extraordinary requires extraordinary effort.  We can’t skip steps, or fire off a shiny silver bullet.  To be perceived as something scarce and valuable requires a collection of sincere, thoughtfully planned and carefully executed behaviors and actions.

For example:

• How you look.
• The company you keep.
• How you listen.
• Learning and sharing.
• Tone of voice and body language.
• Color.
• Relevance.
• Humor.
• Sincerity.
• Honesty.
• Candor.
• Promptness.
• Reliability.
• Generosity.
• Enthusiasm.
• Personal accountability.
• Responsibility.
• Visibility (on and offline).
• Flexibility and sensitivity.

All of these character based efforts and actions piled on top of each other, over and over again, lead to extraordinary.  The extraordinary is supremely scarce.  If we want a 2012 LoveFest with success these are some of the things we’re gonna have to-do and be, day in and day out.

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Thanks for reading.  I think I’m mostly writing to myself here, forgive me if I’m being duh-obvious.  This may is an exercise in shared affirmative-self-talk to help me/us follow a righteous valuable path.  All the best to you in 2012.  If I can be helpful, ping me – Ken Brand 832-797-1779

 Photo Credit

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External Posing is Brand Management

True confessions.  I’ve done this, and I do it now.  You probably know people who do it too.  They’re everywhere.  Look in the mirror.  The brands/logos we display.   The names we drop and the cars we drive.  The clothes and those amazing shoes.   This is people (me and you?) posing as someone we aren’t may not be, but want to be seen as.

What does the car you drive say about you?  We know how we dress makes an impression.  For example, I hate wearing a suit, but on occasion, I’ll wear one to make an impression and when it’s respectful to the people I’m with.  Unfair or not, people judge others by the vehicle they drive, how they dress and other external signals.  It’s human nature.

External posing is not bad thing.  We’re all defining the external perception of our personal brand, whether on purpose, or not.  Some would call it Brand Management.  And smart.

But some might disagree, believing that they don’t put on airs or bother with packaging.  They are who they are.  Fair enough and power to the people. But that’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking to myself and others who might from time to time question themselves when they consciously project/broadcast a physical persona that isn’t exactly how we see ourselves.  I’m saying I believe it’s a natural thing to do and it’s smart.  Rrunning fatally off the rails happens when we Internal Pose.

Internal Posing is Evil

Internal posing is evil because it shows a disrespect for others, values and promises.  Internal Posing is making promises you have no intention keeping.  It’s pretending to care, when you could not care less. It’s telling people you’re honest, unbiased, ethical, reliable, punctual and committed, when in reality, you believe that the ends justify the means.

We have to guard against the evils of Internal Posing at all costs.  Without respect for others, values and promises, all is lost. 

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Thanks for reading.  If I can be helpful, ping me Ken Brand – 832-797-1779.

Photo Credit – Gaping Void

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