Why Learning A New Skill Is Like Having A Baby

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I recently came across and article that I felt was very appropriate for the "time challenged" among us.

One of the reasons people are always looking for shortcuts is because there is so much more to do than we have time for. Therefore we are always running short on time and putting things off until some magical "later" when we will have time.


Imagine you just had a baby. And that baby demanded your attention. At 3am. At 6am. At 9am. What are you going to do? Are you simply going to turn back the clock? Or tend to the baby?

If you speak to parents of newborns they are never ever prepared for the onslaught of time.

It’s like their fortress of sleep and sanity has been invaded. They can’t focus; they can’t keep awake. And no matter how many times you tell them to be prepared for the sleepless nights, they can never ever be prepared. The first time they understand what it means to be in a perpetual emergency state is when they actually have the baby.

Continued...

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Amazing hand art

It is always fascinating to me when creative people make simple everyday things look extraordinary. Enjoy the following hand painted masterpieces.

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Are you looking for employment?

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Here's some great advice for people who are currently seeking employment. It is by Seth Godin.

The three elements of full employment

You will never be out of work if you can demonstrably offer one of the following:

* Sales
* Additive effort
* Initiation

Sales speaks for itself. If you can sell enough to cover what you cost and then some, there will always be someone waiting to hire you.

Additive effort is distinguished from bureaucracy or feel-good showing up. Additive effort generates productivity far greater than the overhead you add to the organization. If your skills make the assembly line go twice as fast, or the sales force becomes more effective, or the travel office cuts its costs, then you've produced genuine value. That surly receptionist at the doctor's office--she's just filling a chair.

The third skill is the most difficult to value, but is ultimately the most valuable. If you're the person who can initiate useful action, if you're the one who makes something productive or transformative happen, then smart organizations will treasure you.

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It's easy to fall for this scam

The following is a scam alert. I received this from LifeLock, very reputable firm that I use for protecting against identity theft. By the way, I also highly recommend you check out LifeLock as a way to minimize the odds that you will become a victim of identity theft.

Type: Jury Duty Vishing Scam

Method of Delivery: Phone call from an alleged court officer

Primary Region Effecgted: Reports from 11 states, including: Florida, New York, Minnesota, Illinois, Colorado, Oregon, California, Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Hampshire; may spread nationally

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (www.fbi.gov)

Scam Characteristics: A caller identifies him/herself as an officer of the court and notifies the victim that a warrant has been issued for their arrest for a failure to report for jury duty. If the victim protests they have never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks for a Social Security number and date of birth to verify the victim's identity and cancel the arrest warrant. This fraud is spreading quickly and has been reported in 11 states so far.

Recommended Precautions:

Be Suspicious
These vishing scams (a combination of the words "voice" and "phishing") are designed to get you to provide criminals with your personal and financial information. Most organizations will not ask you to provide your sensitive information during an unsolicited phone call, so any caller that does should immediately send up a red flag.

Never Provide Your Sensitive Information to Unsolicited Callers
Sensitive information includes your Social Security number, your credit card or debit card numbers, your birth date or birthplace, your vehicle registration plate number, and any other information you wish to keep private.

Contact the Court in Question
To determine the legitimacy of the call, contact the court in question at a number that can be found in the phone book, on a phone directory website, or by calling directory assistance.

Sensitive information includes your Social Security number, your credit card or debit card numbers, your birth date or birthplace, your vehicle registration plate number, and any other information you wish to keep private.

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Is customer service an investment or an expense?

I have a Dell computer that is still under an extended warranty I purchased last year. I've been having some minor and mostly annoying problems with my computer for months. Two days ago, I contacted Dell about the problem and today, a Dell technician came over and repaired my computer. Pretty impressive, right? Unfortunately, no.

This is because my call to Dell two days ago was my third call. Both previous times I spent over two hours during each session working with a tech support person over the phone. And after all that time, my problems weren't fixed. They kept insisting that the problem was something other than their computer.

First they blamed it on a Microsoft Windows problem. Unfortunately thanks to the lousy quality of Windows products, that was a very plausible explanation. So after spending several more hours re-installing Windows and all my other software, the problem was still there.

The next time I called, they blamed the problem on my monitor. They said because the monitor was of too high resolution for the graphics card in the computer, I needed to upgrade my card. The fact that I had had no problem with the same monitor for a couple of years, didn't seem to matter. Turns out that after replacing the card - at my cost, the problem still wasn't solved.

After talking to my BNI's computer geek and explaining what I was going through, he said that unfortunately my experience wasn't uncommon. I was just about ready to bite the bullet and get a new computer, when I decided to give Dell a call one more time. This time I made it very clear from the onset that I wasn't interested in getting any more diagnosis over the phone. I told them that I simply wanted to know if they intended to honor their warranty or not.

I will never know what caused my issue to be finally handled in an appropriate manner. It might have been my attitude or my luck with finding a customer service rep that cared. Or it could well be some other formula that they have at Dell that says that if a customer has tried X times to resolve the problem to no avail and they keep calling, then maybe they should take care of the problem.

What I do know is this: Dell blew it! I'm certain that they have lost money on my extended warranty sale. But more importantly, they have lost my trust, my goodwill and most likely my future business. They might have been better off treating me poorly and saved themselves the cost of trying to fix my problem.

Back to my question on the title of the post: is customer service an investment or an expense? Had Dell done what they ended up doing for me on my first call to them, it would have definitely been an investment. The way they did it, turned out to be an expense. What a shame.

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