strategy..................

 

. . . professionalism and decorum comprise the ultimate risk management strategy.

-Craig Coben

On the importance of........................

...........................................................................Krulak's Law.

On the importance of sending..............

.......................................................................a professional.

On caring....................................

      I found the cause of the seizures a few weeks later, waiting to happen again.  It was a little twenty-five-cent pin in the internal oil-delivery system that had been sheared and was preventing oil from reaching the head at high speeds.
     The question why comes back again and again and has become a major reason for wanting to deliver this Chautauqua.  Why did they butcher it so?   These were not people running away from technology, like John and Sylvia.  These were technologists themselves.  They sat down to do a job and they performed it like chimpanzees.  Nothing personal in it.  There was not obvious reason for it.  And I tried to think back into that shop, that nightmare place, to try to remember anything that could have been the cause.
     The radio was a clue.  You can't really think hard about what you're doing and listen to the radio at the same time.   Maybe they didn't see their job as having anything to do with hard thought, just wrench twiddling. ...
     Their speed was another clue.  They were really slopping things around in a hurry and not looking where they slopped them. ...
     But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions.  They were hard to explain.  Good-natured, friendly, easygoing - and uninvolved.  They were like spectators.  You had the feeling they had just wandered in there and somebody had handed them a wrench,  There was no identification with the job.  No saying, "I'm a mechanic." ...  And it occurred to me there is no manual that deals with the real business of motorcycle maintenance, the most important aspect of all.  Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.
     On this trip I think we should notice it, explore it a little, to see if in that strange separation of what man is from what man does we may have some clues as to what the hell has gone wrong in this twentieth century.  I don't want to hurry it.  That itself is a poisonous twentieth-century attitude.  When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things.

-Robert M. Pirsig, as copied from Chapter 2 of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance:  An Inquiry Into Values

Only 3,963 hours to go.....................

Remember Malcolm Gladwell's story about it taking 10,000 hours of practice to develop mastery?  Well, here's a 30-year-old guy willing to put it to a test.  Can he go from never having played golf to becoming a pro in 10,000 hours?

“The more he’s improved, the harder it’s gotten to get better. Going from bad to good is way easier than going from good to great. And going from great to world-class? That’s rare territory. The line is thin, but the gap is wide.”

My guess is that he can become a PGA professional and work at a country club somewhere.  I suspect being successful on tour is another story.  That game is as much mental (if not more) as it is physical.  Stay tuned though, I'm pretty much loving the experiment.

Quote taken from here.

On level playing fields...........................

      My friend the Hawk and I were playing the first hole at Prestwick in Scotland;  the wind was howling out of the left.  I started an eight-iron thirty yards to windward, but the gale caught it;  I watched in dismay as the ball sailed hard right, hit the green going sideways, and bounded off into the cabbage.  "Sonofabitch!" I turned to our caddie.  "Did you see the wind take that shot?"
       He gave that look that only Scottish caddies can give, "Well, ye 've got t' play th' wind now, don't ye?"
      The professional conducts his business in the real world.  Adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls, even good breaks and lucky bounces all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged.  The field is level, the professional understands, only in heaven.

-Steven Pressfield,  The War of Art:  Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Blocks
     

Professionalism 101.................................

29.  Has decided their priorities,

30.  and their daily activities are aligned with those priorities.

31.  Can cope with odd-numbered Lists.

32.  Doesn't use "everybody does it" as an excuse.

33.  Thinks through the consequences of an action.

34.  Helps others in their career just as (or not) others helped him/her on their career.

35.  Understands every day is perfect for the challenges they need.

-Nicholas Bate

Earning the respect of a fellow adult man......

Sipp, as only he can, reminisces about what it takes to be an adult, all while honoring Jack Bruce and Cream.

Lots of years and lots of miles.......

Jetboy shares a clip with Buddy Guy and Ronnie Wood messing around with an old Stones classic.  If you want to see how a pro handles a broken guitar string, hang around until the 3:40 minute mark.  Good stuff.