Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

The polyphasic voyeur

If you haven't been keeping up with Polyphasic Pavlina, you may not know about polyphasic sleep. I wrote a bit about it earlier, if you want to catch up.

Well, today, I saw a post from Steve about Polyphasic Mutants, and it reminded me of an email thread Bren Connelly, Skip Angel, Lisa Haneberg, and I exchanged the other day. We somehow ended up talking about "polyphasic porn”, “sexy management”, and other things that would draw the kind of attention that Steve’s wakeful lifestyle have received to date. That conversation got me thinking.

Gardener2_1

First, lets settle on the definition of polyphasic, courtesy of MerckSource.com: (poly·pha·sic) (pol²e-fa¢zik) having or existing in many phases. With that in mind, I will try to describe other polyphasic activities that Steve might be able to investigate for us in the future:

Outlandish Polyphasic Definitions
polyphasic management 3-4 hour blocks of micromanagement interrupted by short periods of inattention. This is in contrast to many traditional (monophasic?) management styles which utilize 3-4 hour blocks of inattention, interrupted by short periods of micromanagement.
polyphasic employment A technique that enables polyphasic sleepers to “double dip” or “triple dip” by holding 2 or 3 full time jobs at a time, and still work 40-hour weeks at each of them. If you sleep polyphasically and only have one job, you should be a doctor or a taxi driver. See “polyphasic porn.”
polyphasic porn When combined with polyphasic employment, this enables one person to run a successful 24-hour phone sex business.

OK, so it’s a little ridiculous. I am amused by how much voyeuristic interest Steve’s polyphasic experiment has drawn, particularly the people who (apparently) are trying to get him to stop. I think a lot of people are just jealous that he is able to stick with it (I know I am). Besides, he lives in Vegas - what could be more fitting in a 24-hour city?

Hats off to you, Steve - and I look forward to your next boundary-expanding experiment.

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Bend It Like Drucker

"Management" means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folklore and superstition, and of cooperation for force. . .

--Peter Drucker,
People and Performance

My February issue of the Harvard Business Review came in a couple of days ago, and I just finished reading a great article on "What Executives Should Remember." This article is a "best of" compilation of some phenomenal essays by the late Peter F. Drucker (1909-2005), perhaps the most influential business thinker in the last century.

These are the kinds of articles that keep me coming back to the HBR as a subscriber. If you don't subscribe, head down to the book store or news stand and pick up this issue even if this is the only article in there that you read.

Here an example of what I took away from this piece:

It's wrong to keep doing "the right things" after the old reasons no longer exist.

In the first essay of this compilation, "The Theory of Business," Drucker talks about how so many companies find a routine that works for them and then cling to that routine long after the world has moved on. It's the old story of "survival of the most adaptive," and he uses GM as an example (he wrote this article back in 1994, by the way).

There is a great discussion of how the "right thing" for success in business is dependent on the times you live in, and the conditions that impact you. This isn't about values, ethics, compassion, or any of that - it's about effective response to changing economic realities. Sure, some of those economic changes are driven by social change, but social responsibility alone isn't enough to drive business success. A cost model is an unfeeling bastard (my words, not his).

I love Drucker's closing thought in this piece: "[CEO's of stumbling organizations] accept that a theory's obsolescence is a degenerative and, indeed, life-threatening disease. And, they know and accept the surgeon's time-tested principle, the oldest principle of effective decision making: A degenerative disease will not be cured by procrastination. It requires decisive action." Whoa.

More nuggets of gold await you, o reader!

The other essays are excellent, as well.

  • In 1963's "Managing for Business Effectiveness," he tells us how to "organize the job of managing for economic effectiveness and how to do it with both direction and results." This is masterfully done through his treatment of the three questions: "What is a managers job?," What is the major problem?," and "What is the principle?"
  • In "What Business Can Learn from Nonprofits," from 1989, when he talks about how nonprofits have a stronger sense of mission, a higher sense of responsibility, and better focus on the long term than their for-profit peers. His theory is that a big reason for this is that the nonprofit board is more committed and active. Indeed, in many cases, the board members are some of the largest financial contributors to the organization, and have often spent their own time volunteering to support the cause. Very thought-provoking.
  • In "The New Society of Organizations," 1992, you'll find a disconcerting discussion about how modern organizations are a destabilizing influence (as opposed to society, community, and family which are all "conserving institutions" that try to maintain stability by preventing or slowing change). Again, this essay is even more interesting in light of the recent public challenges of Ford, GM, et al.
  • And the fun continues through "The Information Executives Truly Need," "Managing Oneself," "They're Not Employees, They're People," and "What Makes an Executive Effective" (the last line says it all: Listen first, speak last.)

I really only began to appreciate the wisdom of Peter Drucker about 3 years ago. When he died in November, I was sad to hear the news. But the ideas of this special man live on in his writing - pick up a copy of HBR and see for yourself.

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Save your comments

Des (desparoz On The Go) has a fantastic technique for keeping track of comments you've made on blogs around the web.  It involves del.icio.us tags, and it's elegant in its simplicity.  I plan on starting to use this, as it will be simple with the "Popup post to Del.icio.us" link I've added to my browser toolbar. (see tip below)

Thanks for the great technique, Des!

** Tip:  How do you add a button for Popup posts to Del.icio.us?

  • Once you're registered and logged in to del.icio.us, you can find "Popup post to Del.icio.us" under Browser Buttons. 
  • Then, you just drag the link to your toolbar or add it to your Favorites to use it.
  • I have also created a an ActiveWords keyword called "pd" which does the same thing.
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Don't let the judges scare you...

January has been a particularly time-hungry beast, of late, so I haven't had as many cycles as I'd have liked to post things here. But - here is something you should check out - it's a very cool idea-sharing project run by Lisa Haneberg of Management Craft.

Bren, Skip, and I are judges but don't let that scare you. We're practically neutral (though we're all fascinated by any cool gadgetry) and we love to promote great ideas.

So bring out your best - and share.

And I'll get some of my half-written posts out here real soon now, you'll see.

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