Month: December 2019

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The 2020 Games

Putting certain goals on your New Year’s Resolution is a sure-fire way of failing them.  The social pressure to announce an annual goal is as prominent as ever and many of us just blurt out random expected goals like losing weight, give up smoking, etc. with no real commitment or expectation to achieve the goal.  You are fooling nobody but yourself.

My goal for 2020 is to have less than 15-hours a week PS4 game time.  This will help me to focus on quality gaming rather than casually picking up the latest title but will hurt my PVE Raiding.

….but wait

Does watching game streams actual gaming? The second hard experience of watching streamers pace through your favorite titles may be considered involvement and therefore gaming by some.  The fact that you interact with the gamer, shape their direction and share their failures and achievements is relevant.  It also takes dedicated time but smart lurkers often have multiple screens for this.

Let the 2020 Games begin

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Can I have a word?

One of the questions that makes me want to run away. It is almost always followed by bad or horrendous news or uncomfortable questions often from someone senior or a person with power over you i.e. Human Resources. Its impact is compounded when the person hasn’t made any contact over a long period of time which no doubt led up to this conflict.

As a manager or leader, this tool can be a powerful asset to delivering good news and provide a critical turning point to boost moral.

Sadly, this opportunity is often missed.

Can I have a word? Actually; no f#@k off, in fact I’m gonna block you from all comms.

Can I have a word?
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The Art of being carried

I once read that you should aim to be the dumbest one in the room if you want to get ahead. For me, this has always been an issue as folk look to me as THE subject matter expert.

Raiding on The Division 2 spawns some interesting group dynamics which you have an organic hierarchy of Leader, lieutenants, grunts and carries. A carry is a player that shouldn’t even be in the Raid as they either don’t have the skills or know what to do.

A Carry is like the child you take for their first karate lesson. Interesting enough I’ve enjoyed running as a Carry with no responsibilities or ego for the past few months. Still no Eagle Bearer but I haven’t really earned it.

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 – Waiting for a Carry
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Holidays Survival

Sundays, Christmas holidays and meetings all have traits that make me want to head to an isolated beach and a snack.

The stealth poison of being busy contaminated the quality of all my relationships and I often allow to go unchallenged.

London 11:44 – one of the worst times to travel on the underground

Christmas holidays: The ba humbug of unnecessary overspending.

5 Traits of failed busYness

Failure to plan
Failure to anticipate
Failure to research
Failure to look at lessons learned from previous events
Peer or crowd pressure to follow the popular
Failure to create contingencies
Failure to avoid white noise
I’m busier than you disease
You are so lazy condemnation

No, I don’t want a gift from you
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Perfect Concussion

For the past few months my working environment, namely my primary office, has been an uncomfortable place to work from.  This environmental problem has been stealth and very gradual.  A part malfunction in the ventilation system pushing up the daily heat to 96 degrees daily but in a typical head in the sand approach I did nothing about it.

The environment impacted my mood, focus and ability to concentrate for more than 20 mins but my subconscious coping mechanism made me leave the office early, work from other areas in the building and generally be missing-in-action on a daily basis.

A simple call to building services resolved the issue but it dawned on me how often we ignore the root cause of a problem.

Time to re-focus – Tom Clancy’s The Division 2