The first time in Manhattan I was overwhelmed and hungry.
I shuffled into a deli.
There, I was still overwhelmed and hungry. I didn’t know what to do.
At the counter, I stood there, dumbstruck.
Behind me, a New Yorker piped up:
Buddy, hurry up, you’ve got ten people behind me.
When I told my Canadian friends about this they hummed and hawed about how rude that nasty American was.
But was he?
There were fifteen people behind me. None of them were likely taking more than thirty minutes for lunch. This thirty minutes included leaving the office and walking to the deli, waiting in line, ordering, eating then returning to their desks.
The eating part probably took place on the walk back.
As a suburban dork from Dartmouth, I wasn’t aware of that fact.
This fine man, was generous. He risked being rude in order to keep the flow of humanity moving.
I was in the wrong for wasting peoples time.
Walking and texting.
Standing in doorways having conversations.
Parking in the middle of the street and holding up traffic.
Given that time is one of the few scarce things these days, our indecision costs all of us.
Make a choice.
Do something.
Shit or get off the pot.
- Thanks for keeping it short 2. Did you get my card in the mail? You should've!
Decisions? I am one of those people who struggle with them and invest time in /waste time on them; always wanting more information on which to base my decision. Yeah, procrastination is a thing. Deadlines are our friend. My career focus was corporate finance, chosen because it literally was the study of making DECISIONS to create wealth. My first job was exactly what I loved, providing the analysis for making big, often strategic, decisions for a Fortune 500 company. It never overwhelmed me, there was a process and I was good at it. Not much different than karate. Like karate, it was a mixture of art and science. The science is routine and able to be perfected. The art is responsiveness to an organic being. In karate, the unpredictable, organic component is the opponent's movements; in finance, it's the business environment. Anyone can become good at science. Excellence in most areas requires highly developed skills in both art and science. Art is highly personal. No algorithm exists to predict the opponent's response nor the business environment's actions. Art is mulitsensory with a huge dose of intuition and skilled responsiveness.
Making a decision from a menu at a deli is not a complicated one. The cost of a poor decision, and the likelihood of a poor decision, given how busy the place was, was small. Yup, shit or get off the pot. Major decisions: relocating to another province, getting married or divorced, or having a child, they are not routine and the risk is high. Keep sitting on that pot until the choice is clear. Then sit some more. Then get off the pot. Beware, someone may kick the pot out from under you. It isn't a chair.