A focus on improvement- in self, in business, in life
April 18, 2011 Leave a comment
I have a saying: “Once you knock that first pin down, the rest will fall!” I normally use it a the gym in reference to my Monday workouts, but you can apply it to a lot of areas in your life.
So, I just got back from ‘Bowling” and aforementioned ‘first pin’ has been knocked down: Read more of this post
April 16, 2011 7 Comments
This is the 100th post on BobbyBluford.com. (I’ll be back in about an hour; I have to run to the emergency room because I think I just sprained my AC Joint patting myself on the back.) When I committed myself to giving everything I had to this blog a few months ago, my goal was to write a post every day. Luckily my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder lost this battle. But while my initial objective may have been a little ambitious, I’m proud of how far I’ve come, how far we’ve come together. And 100 posts is a big achievement, however you slice it. Because of that, I want this one to be extra special. We’ll see how close I get.
I had a few thoughts on what to discuss today. Heck, I have a lot to choose from since I currently have about 50 drafts that I’m working on. After some careful deliberation, though, I thought the best way to celebrate this milestone was to finally finish a post I started at the very beginning, but couldn’t (or actually just didn’t) quite finish. The delay has been due in part to the less than positive feedback I’ve gotten whenever I mentioned the idea. Everyone to whom I’ve mentioned the blog post has said my view is twisted, that my theory of how the world works is glum, troubled, or cynical. And those were some of the better terms used to describe it. Still, even amidst that, I move forward. Because although I admit it is rather blunt and candid, the lesson I’m about to share is one I believe to be absolutely true, as much a fixed part of life as physics and chemistry. More importantly, and just so you know I’m not really saying I’m absolutely certain I am right (I hate people who are rigid—and usually wrong—in their points of view and opinions), what I really mean to say is that this law is one of the tenets on which much of my life philosophies are based.
Ok, brace yourself. The lesson: Read more of this post
April 14, 2011 2 Comments
Make sure to get Rocks Stars to control your Big Dials!
Troy Aikman, the Hall of Fame quarterback that led the Dallas Cowboys to three Super Bowl victories in four years—the first team to do that—started his college career at Oklahoma. Heralded as a high school athlete, he certainly did not disappoint. In his first season as a collegiate starter, Aikman led the Sooners to a 3-0 record, beating Minnesota and Kansas State before knocking off the rival Longhorns of the University of Texas, ranked number 17 in the country at the time. Unfortunately, his season was cut short by Oklahoma’s next opponent, the University of Miami, when the Hurricanes’ Jerome Brown sacked Aikman, breaking his ankle. A long story shortened is that Jamelle Holieway, a freshman, replaced Aikman. And after finishing the season with a National Championship; the school’s sixth, but first in a decade; Holieway became part of Oklahoma lore, to this day considered one of the all-time greats. Oh, and he just happened to be a totally different style of quarterback than Aikman, forcing then head coach Barry Switzer (who ironically would later coach Aikman to a Super Bowl Championship with the Cowboys) to completely change the offense from a traditional one in which the quarterback dropped back and threw downfield to “The Wishbone”, where the quarterback was the focal point of the running game.
You’re probably saying about right now, “Again, Bobby? What are you talking about?” Well, here’s the punchline: Read more of this post
April 13, 2011 7 Comments
I didn’t eat particularly well over the weekend. And due to a few family and work interruptions, my workouts last week weren’t anything to write home about. So on Monday, I was angry. And to paraphrase a famous green dude with big muscles, “you wouldn’t want to see me (workout) when I’m angry.”
I normally do my chest and legs on Monday, but since I hadn’t really done any of my body parts sufficiently well, nor had I gotten much cardio in, I really wasn’t sure what I was going to work on. As is often the case, though, I decided on my drive over to the gym.
HIIT! High Intensity Interval Training Read more of this post
April 11, 2011 Leave a comment
The business world is full of “what-if”s. What if one of your suppliers raises its prices significantly? What if your boss demands that you spend at least 20% of your advertising dollars on sports programming? What if the corporate office suddenly shrinks your overall budget by 25%? With scarce resources, companies (and individual consumers, as well) are always looking for ways to get the most bang for their buck. Making matters more complex and difficult to navigate, often times decisions involve careful manipulation of several equally (or almost equally) important levers. For example, you want to minimize your costs, but the cheapest vendor is not as effective or dependent as the more expensive ones. And even if you had one clear choice, you never want to put all of your eggs in one basket, depending too heavily on one supplier. Or maybe you’re asked to minimize your costs on marketing and advertising, but must reach a minimum number of potential customers.
One way to solve these types of problems is to build a spreadsheet, linking all of the important variables and calculations. You could then give the user (you or someone else) the option to change those variables, viewing the results of different scenarios as changes are made.
The problems with this method should be obvious. Not only is it tedious, requiring the user to manually change the numbers in order to see what happens, but it is also incomplete. Insofar as these problems involve more than a few moving parts, it’s nearly impossible to manually account for and analyze every conceivable combination or possibility.
Luckily, Microsoft Excel provides a nifty tool to do all of this work for you. You can think of it as your own personal problem Solver available at your command. What more could you ask for? Read more of this post
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