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Balancing Act: The Newsletter (No. 217, September 2017) Balancing Act® is our registered trademark. You are encouraged to share the contents with others with appropriate attribution. Please use the ® whenever the phrase "Balancing Act" is used in connection with this newsletter or our workshops. Balancing act is in four sections this month: 1. Techniques for Balance 2. Musings 3. The Human Condition: Tentativity 4. ORTIYKMWOYBNT-O Department FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER! YOU CAN FIND ME HERE: AND FIND ME ON FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/RockStarOfConsulting Free consulting newsletter: The Million Dollar Consulting® Mindset: Listen to my new, free Podcast Series on iTunes or on ContrarianConsulting.com: The Uncomfortable Truth 
• Cancel a business meeting before you go to it in poor health or under stress. You can make up a cancellation but not a poor performance. • The IRS in the US never calls anyone, they use only hard copy mail. Don’t be tricked by the scammers claiming you’re being audited or sued. • When you buy a new car, stipulate the service requirements you prefer as part of the deal, e.g., your car is picked up and delivered, you always receive a loaner, you want roadside assistance, and so forth. • The acting in soccer over “fouls” is as bad and boring as anything in the World Wrestling Entertainment. • Good learners learn, period. I am unaware of any empirical evidence showing that students at Ivy League and other prestige, expensive universities are more successful in life than those who attended state universities or small colleges. • Watching people play poker on TV is about the most boring activity imaginable to me. • You can’t blame Michael Phelps for making money by racing a fake shark. You can’t blame the people who came up with the idea to try to make money, or the advertisers who decided to fund it to sell their stuff. I do blame anyone who watched it and complained that it wasn’t a real shark or a close competition. They must believe The Survivor or The Bachelor isn’t scripted. • If you need to know the mileage a car gets, or the utility costs on a house, you can’t afford them. • Knowing what we now know, do you allow your child to play football or head a soccer ball? • I always assume the other guy is not going to stop at the stop sign or yield the right of way in traffic. That kind of defensive driving saved the Bentley from being T-boned by a moron in a pickup truck on Nantucket. 
Con Ed (Consolidated Edison) was once a client of mine. This was the company running New York City’s vast, ancient system of electrical, natural gas, and steam (yes, steam) lines under and above ground. Their ubiquitous trucks hovered over open manhole (person-hole?) covers while men descended into the gloom of the bowels of Manhattan. And always on the roadway was the wonderful admonition on their sign, “Dig we must for a greater New York.” They had reason to dig, as do oil exploration companies, gardeners, and those who lay building foundations. But it seems as if mankind (this is a guy thing) has a propensity, a calling, a tropism—to dig. Nowhere is this as apparent as on the beach. I’ve been in the Atlantic, Pacific, Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian, Indian, and Aegean Oceans and Seas. I’ve been on beaches all over the world, where it’s easy to play ball, toss a frisbee, join a volleyball match, or play that annoying paddle game. But more often than not, guys are digging in the sand. Sometimes, when they choose to dig in front of me instead of in front of their own claimed patch, I ask them to move. The holes are dangerous and people have broken legs stepping into them in the dark or after one too many Coronas. They build fortresses, damns, palaces, all based on excavating holes in the ground, often with intricate attempts at diverting the inevitable high tide. At 8 am on the beach at Point Pleasant, NJ, a man created two parallel walls about a half-foot high, tapering off to draining pits at the ends. (He might have been former military, afraid of being flanked.) He then built a series of redoubts beyond the walls, finally placing two chairs and beach paraphernalia as if in a castle keep. It was a hell of a construction job, but it was also a good 50 yards from the breakers and the only thing that would have approached his silicon Maginot Line would have required a modern Noah. All social classes dig in the sand, as do all ages. Over the course of a week I watched one guy, on the same vacation schedule as my own, consistently dig huge holes with his son, even though his son always quickly grew bored by the exercise and went to play in the surf. Every night the ineffable ocean obliterated his work, and every morning he labored again, Sisyphus-like in his grim determination. I finally asked him one morning why he dug these huge holes every day even though his son was uninterested and the elements didn’t respect his work. He had to think for a moment, never letting go of his plastic shovel. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I think it’s because it’s the only thing my own father did at the beach.” 
To be tentative means to do something without confidence, or refuse to do something because of that lack of confidence. Technically, this would be termed “tentativeness.” But I need a neologism, because that term is, well, too tentative. So I created “tentativity.” Tentavity is related to the laws of inertia, equally Newtonian. If an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion, people with tentativity tend to remain tentative. Like a barnacle’s calling to cling to a ship hull or a piling, or like the dreadful TV show The View’s participants’ belief that they have some higher moral standing, it is an inherent guidance system that always points to caution. Tentativity means that we don’t follow up with the client for an overdue check because we fear that the buyer will be upset; that we hover over the buffet items for half an eternity because we’re not sure which type of lettuce will be more fulfilling; that we never do take that island vacation because, well, there are just so many islands that we might choose one that isn’t as good as some others. I view a “don’t walk” sign as advisory, not as a fait accompli—if there’s no traffic within sight and it’s raining, I’m walking. I regard a late payment from a client as akin to a violation of sacrosanct values, and I mount my dragon (well, I rent one from Khaleesi) and rain fire on accounts payable. If a sign says “Take one” I take two because I may lose one. If you want the front (and best) seat on the roller coaster, the best view of the sunset, a fast agreement from a buyer, or better attention from a medical staff, you can’t allow tentativity to direct your behavior. “Nice guys finish last,” observed baseball great Leo Durcher. That may not be true. But tentative people do. Take definite, assertive action. You can always correct it. But you can’t correct tentativity. Because unlike a wrong direction, it’s no direction. 
When we drive up to Hyannis to get the ferry to Nantucket we go very early to avoid the traffic. Our habit is to have breakfast at a place on a hill overlooking the marina and await our boat. This year, my wife sat down and I headed to the men’s room. I entered to find it completely redone, and was amazed that it was so, well, feminine, for a breakfast joint. Then I realized there were no urinals, and rushed out of what was, of course, the women’s room. Thankfully, no one observed this as I entered the men’s room next door. Now at the urinal, I heard a strange sound from the stall behind the wall, where the door was open. The sound stopped, and a woman sauntered out with a plunger and said, “Pardon me.” “Sure,” I stammered. 
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Balancing Act® is our registered trademark. You are encouraged to share the contents with others with appropriate attribution. Please use the ® whenever the phrase "Balancing Act" is used in connection with this newsletter or our workshops.
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