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Nonsense
side-tracks
you from your work,
tricks you into wrong decisions and trips you short of your goals.

Nonsense
stops you from

being successful.
 

August 2007

What's with all this 'nonsense'?

It’s time for me to explain why I focus on nonsense at work. (Too busy to read this nonsense? Jump straight to a short bull story.)

The problem with nonsense is that it side-tracks you from your work, tricks you into wrong decisions, and trips you up short of your goals. Nonsense stops you from being successful.

Nonsense is always at work. It never stops. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there is always some sense in nonsense, if you look for it. And if you are willing to look for it, time and again you will find that you can make the nonsense at work – work for you.

In general terms, that is the purpose with my newsletters – to help you to see the sense in nonsense so that the nonsense at work... yes, you get it.

But don’t expect me to help you to spot nonsense. That is simply not possible because what makes sense to me might be complete nonsense to you. Instead, my aim is to help you to understand that ‘nonsense’ is not really nonsense. Nonsense has a purpose. It works at getting you to change your ways.

So, what is nonsense? The term ‘nonsense’ describes absurd, ridiculous, foolish or meaningless words, ideas, or conduct. Nonsense is purely subjective: you are likely to see ‘nonsense’ when you disapprove of it.

For example, you might disapprove of the word ‘bull’, although others commonly use it to indicate nonsense.

That reminds me, here is the bull story - my favorite example of how experience can help you to cope with a little bull so that it does not exhaust your energy and stops you from achieving your objective: A young bull and an old bull are standing on a hill top, looking down on a herd of cows. The young bull says to the old bull, “Let’s run down and make love to a couple of cows.” The old bull turns to the young bull and calmly replies, “No. Let us walk down and make love to all of them.”

Would you like to know when to run and when to walk? Next month I will explain a sure way of spotting bull... I mean nonsense.

Until then, don’t let every little bull run away with your energy.
 

Welcome to our side of the nonsense divide.