Brenda’s Blog – September 16, 2014
“This mouse makes me crazy! I am always typing where I don’t mean to.”
My sweet friend called to read me a letter. When she made changes, she went through the infuriating experience of finding the “bouncing ball” in a totally unexpected place and her revisions inserted into strange locales.
This exasperates me, as well. My typing speed is rapid and to find letters suddenly appearing randomly out of order frustrates me. “Why can’t it just stay where it is and make things simple?”
What is the answer? Clearly, to make no corrections, additions, or deletions would solve the problem. But speedy as I am, mistake-free performance is yet to be accomplished.
No, the answer is to check the position of the little black line (there must be a technical term for it) before typing to see that it is aligned in the desired position. Sounds easy enough, but when my mind gets going, and my fingers engage, my lower tier tasks (like visual contact with the line) fall off the list—-until I find my letters smack dab in the middle of a word three paragraphs up on the page.
Why is this worthy of consideration? For one reason: good leaders make sure their ducks are in a row before taking flight. It is easy to think about the larger picture, and move forward with the vision without checking to see if the action steps are in the sync with the mission. We laughingly talk about “ready, fire, aim,” but failing to see the next step clearly brings healthy forward progress to a screeching halt. Action before assessment equals time wasted.
I consistently remind myself to make sure the black line and my mind are in the same place, but consistently I begin typing only to discover that crazy little whatever has a mind of its own and wanders – much to my chagrin. People are the same way. Unless they are in line with the direction, time is wasted recovering momentum, retraining, restructuring, and starting again.
Bringing goals and little black lines into conformity makes the job at hand so much easier!