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.

 

My powerful vision

I've had a few inquiries about how things are going with regard to my vision since my LASIK procedure back in June, so here is a quick update:

I just went in for my "final" checkup on my surgery, and my vision tested to 20/10 - much better than the 20/20 I was hoping for.

I am quite happy I went through the LASIK process, and would do it again without any hesitation. I have also received some oral and email questions in the past couple of months so I thought I'd share them here, along with my responses:

  • How's your night vision?
    • I've never had any issues with night vision either before or after the surgery.
  • Do you need reading glasses now?
    • No, I don't. They tell me I will, eventually, as part of the normal aging process but I can deal with that. There is no evading the march of time, I suppose.
  • Do you see halos or haze when you look at bright lights?
    • I did see a bit of haze for the first 45 days or so (most noticeable first thing in the morning and late at night), but it gradually faded. After that, I saw a bit of haze if I went too long without using my artificial tears (eye drops). I don't see any halos or haze any more.
  • What's your advice if I'm considering this?
    • Check out the doctor ahead of time. Ask for references, visit the office, and even ask to observe a surgery if you want to. If anything doesn't pass your sniff test, look elsewhere.
    • See if your insurance plan has any discounts available. Mine did - and I saved 20% by going to a doctor on the plan. I also used my company's medical "Flex" plan to make this a pre-tax expense (ask your benefits plan representative if this is an option for you).
    • After the surgery, do everything the doctors tell you to do for follow-up care. This is especially true of the regimen for keeping your eyes moist with artificial tears - that helps your eyes heal properly, and is one of the most important things you can do. I used a watch with a countdown timer on it to remind me to put the drops in on time.
  • Does this mean I have to put drops in for the rest of my life?
    • No, your tear production returns to "normal" levels over time. I still carry the drops, but I only really use them first thing in the morning now and when my eyes get tired from late nights.
  • Where did you have your LASIK done?
    • Teplick Vision, and I'd use them again. You can find them at www.oregonlaser.com, if you're so inclined.
    • In the interest of full disclosure, I don't (and haven't) received compensation for any of the stuff I've written about them on this blog. However, if you tell them I sent you and you get the surgery done there, apparently I'll get some kind of thank you gift from them. I'll gladly accept such a gift, should I receive one.
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ParetoMan - 21st century superhero?

Not long ago, I wrote my post on the value of improving your strengths by only 10% (see "Related items" at the end of this post). What a lovely coincidence that, only a week or so later, I happened upon Richard Koch's book, "The 80/20 Individual".

As you may infer from the title, this book discusses a personal improvement strategy based on the Pareto Principle, better known as "the 80/20 rule." (Koch wrote this book as a follow-up to his 1997 book, "The 80/20 Principle" which I've never read).

I've been pleasantly surprised by the depth, insight, and applicability of this book.

The power of "wealth-creating" individuals and small teams

Overall, this book is about how to maximize the impact of your individual wealth-creating capabilities by exploiting your top 20% most valuable skills, ideas, and activities. Even in large organizations, a lot of the power and growth comes from small teams and their ability to disproportionately exploit the resources of their larger parent. Koch tells us that, when companies enter the Fortune 50, their growth slows down dramatically. In fact, the research he cites found that 91% of companies entering the Fortune 50 never grew substantially again without acquisitions.

His techniques are all centered on creating a growth "engine" to create wealth and achieve wild success.

An energizing presentation

Based on the title, I was expecting this to be focused on individual strength development, and I expected to see a lot of the same kinds of "psyche yourself up" techniques present in many self-improvement book. Instead, I found a holistic approach to help you deal with and maximize individual strengths as they relate to success in business. There are exercises and advice in the book to help you tune your mindset to look for your strengths, as well as case studies to help you maximinze what Koch calls your "20% spike." The 20% spike is the "thing", in any endeavor, that provides unique, game changing differentiation for people who win.

Koch spends some time discussing people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and others to discuss how they've maximized their "20% spike." Anyone who's able to win by maximizing their 20% fall into a group that Koch terms, "80/20 Individuals."

The "meat" of the book is 9 chapters called "The Nine Essentials of 80/20 Success." Each chapter has a philosophy, some examples, and advice to help you apply the nine essentials.

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Is there a hockey stick in your world?

You may have noticed the deafening silence in my posting this week (or not - but it was there). That's because I work for a software company, and it was the end of a quarter.

In our business, the end of every quarter is a frenzied period in which a large portion of our quarterly business closes in just a few days time. This is fairly common within every software company I've ever been associated with, and it can be an exciting and stressful phenomenon.

Exciting, because there are a lot of great, game-saving "plays" that pull a team together to do what it takes to get the business in. Stressful, because it's really hard to predict where your business will come in when so much of it remains "invisible" until the final days of the quarter. The fact that any delay in process on either side (the company's or the customer's) could cause the business to slip beyond the end of the quarter. In these cases, it can affect the software company's profitability or, in the case of many customers, the budget may "disappear" if it isn't spent.

This is called the "Hockey stick effect" in our business, because it means a big spike at the end of the quarter, causing our daily business graphs to be shaped like hockey sticks.

This effect seems to be rooted in the quarterly-focused metrics of the public software company, but it happens in privately held companies, as well (like mine). I often wonder how much customers perpetuate this phenomenon by holding their buying decisions until late in the quarter to gain extra pricing leverage against software companies?

This has gone on so long in our business that I think it's baked into the fabric of the software business.

What about those of you in other businesses? What kinds of cycles do you deal with? Are they good or bad for you, your customers, and the business?

I'd love to hear your stories.

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Do you know what you're talking about?

I've been involved in (and even instigated) a bazillion shapeless, formless conversations in business. You may know the kind I'm talking about - you have a meeting, a bunch of folks show up, you talk for a while, and the meeting breaks up. Did you get what you needed out of the meeting? Nope.

Here are some of the things I've learned (some, the hard way) that can help make these conversations more productive - especially valuable for sales situations, partnering discussions, "buying stuff" meetings, and things like that.

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I was big in the 60's...

If you're in for a few minutes of interesting, trivial research (or, if you are having a baby and want to do some statistical research on names) you should check out "Name Voyager."

This browser-based app lets you type in a name and it will tell you how popular it's been since the 1880's, whether it was popular as a boy's name, girl's name, or both, and other interesting things. For example, I found out that my name was very popular in the '60's (when I was born) and has had a recent uptick (see the graph).

Other interesting things I discovered:

  • "Osama" has never been in the top 1000 names, according to this app
  • "Elvis" was more popular in 2003 than any other time since the 1880's
  • "Shakira" came out of nowhere in the 90's, peaked in 2003, then dropped out of the top 1000 (thanks to "Hips Don't Lie" I bet it has a big resurgence)

You can use this for some fun prediction games, too. For example:

  • What impact do you think "The Simpsons" has had on the popularity of the name Bart?
  • What about Justin Timberlake's effect on the name Justin?
  • Why has the name Jacob been so popular in the last 5 years?
  • How has the popularity of the name "Gay" changed since the 1880's?
  • Has the name "Jamie" been more popular as a male name or a female name?

This doesn't answer any of the mysterious questions of the universe, but it's a fun way to spend a few minutes on the web.

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