Peter Fletcher

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Today in a post

May 21, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

It’s 6am. Outside, rain is falling making that restful pitter patter on the tin roof of the alfresco. I’m about to head into work.

The early start is so that I can meet an electrician who’s installing an emergency power generator at our office. If not for that we’d be without power today and 7 people would be sitting around doing nothing.

My job this morning will be to shut down the server, switch off any computers that were left on overnight and then wait while the power is turned off and the generator is operational. Then I’ll fire up the server and make sure that’s operational before the troops arrive just after 8am.

At 8:30 we’ll have our weekly meeting. This week I want to talk about staying in contact with our referring agents, especially those we haven’t heard from for a while. I’ll also discuss file notes and SMS communication, both of which are important components in risk management and marketing.

Once that’s done it’ll be time for a coffee and then I’ll send a proposal to one of my clients to do some ongoing coaching work. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while so I best get that done today.

Also on the agenda is working on the functionality of our new quote system and preparing soccer drills for training tonight.

It’s going to be a busy day, so I best get moving.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: journal, life, work

Sunday reflections: A run, Pink Floyd and a presentation

March 2, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

People running

There’s a direct relationship between a healthy lifestyle and success.
Image: Josiah Mackenzie http://www.flickr.com/photos/josiahmackenzie/

Today I presented a 45 minute keynote entitled 6 Things to do that will help you succeed despite the odds. The audience was LED Electrical Distributors. They have outlets in Perth, Kalgoorlie and Esperance.

I spent most of yesterday preparing. I sweated over the images and the contents and the bullet points – or lack thereof. I deleted nearly every slide at least once. Then added them back in. Then deleted them. I was like a cricketer who couldn’t work out whether run or not. Yes, no, wait.

Gahhhh!

I finally settled on what I thought was a pretty good slide deck – 9 slides and only one with bullet points. But – and I always do this – I leave the finishing touches to the day of the presentation. The looming deadline seems to sharpens my focus.

That meant an early start this morning to polish, check and write my speakers bio. By the time I’d finished I was feeling sharp and ready.

I checked the time. There was still enough for the 5 k run I promised to make yesterday. I threw on my Asics then I was out the door, up the hill and around the corner.

For the first couple of k’s I was on top of the world. My breathing was steady and rhythmic. And then it hit me. I’d gone out too hard. For the rest of the run I felt like was running through treacle.

But right near the end something magical happened. With about 300 metres to go my legs suddenly felt free and loose and relaxed. My stride lengthened, my speed picked up and it all felt pretty awesome.

Now that I’d delivered on my promise it was time to get ready. But now I had a problem. I usually run first thing in the morning so by the time I’m getting dressed for work I’ve cooled down. Not today.

By the time I hit the road the day had already warmed up to bloody hot. Now, as I walked through the front door, cheeks red, dripping in sweat I was faced with the dilemma of how I was ever going to cool down enough so I can I pull on a shirt and pants.

I jump in for a cold shower. That oughta do the trick.

Well it did – sort of – until I towelled off. Then it was straight back to the sweat factory. I’m sweating like a camper who’s just found a snake in their sleeping bag. It just wouldn’t stop.

So I pull on a pair of jocks, crank up the ceiling fans under the patio and wait for the breeze to do its thing. Finally, I cooled down enough to pull on the work gear and head for the door.

The drive to The Vines is just long enough to listen to the Disk 1 of The Wall by Pink Floyd. It’s one of my favourite albums. I just love cranking up the volume and getting lost in the angst about unhealthy relationships with authority figures that pour through the lyrics.

Hush now baby, baby, dont you cry.
Mother’s gonna make all your nightmares come true.
Mother’s gonna put all her fears into you.
Mother’s gonna keep you right here under her wing.
She wont let you fly, but she might let you sing.
Mama will keep baby cozy and warm.
Ooooh baby ooooh baby oooooh baby,
Of course mama’ll help to build the wall.

After all that, the presentation went well. Of course there are parts that I want to do better: the transition between points, the way that the two main stories work together, timing (I could’ve gone a little longer) and my conclusion – they all need work.

But overall I was happy with the way I presented and it made me smile when I heard a lady say, “That was brilliant!”

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: journal, Pink Floyd, public speaking, running

Reflections on today

March 1, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Today I made no discernible progress towards achieving my 2014 goals. That is unless you count writing this blog post.

Now why is it that the blog post goal has stayed on track and the others haven’t?

The answer is simple.

If I miss one day of writing the goal is over for the year – I’ll come back to that later – but if I miss a run or some chin-ups there’s always the next day. That’s precisely what happened this past week. I didn’t run once and I didn’t do a single chin-up.

Still, I turned up at Frontline this morning and did my thing. It felt great to be hard at it again. And that will probably give me the motivation to get the running and the chin-ups started again.

The reality is, this week has been very busy. I presented to the Professionals marketing group on Monday. It was the first time I’d done that presentation so I had to prepare it from the ground up. Although I used a lot of stories I’ve used in other presentations the re-organising took most of last weekend. By the time I made it to the end of Monday I was already buggered.

I then had an early start Wednesday and I’ve had tomorrow’s keynote (embedded below) to prepare from scratch.

Then I’ve had the brutal feedback about my writing. I think that knocked me a bit. It’s not that the feedback wasn’t valuable – it was – but it took a lot of my mental bandwidth trying to think about what it is that I want to write in a book. I still don’t know the answer to that question but I know that writing a book WASN’T part of the plan for 2014 so I’m dropping it.

Instead, I’m writing – stuff. As Henry Day said this morning, “Your writing is a bit all over the place. But it’s interesting and it gives your readers an insight into your mind.” That’s good enough.

It was never my intention to write blog posts with any sort of narrative theme so I’m happy just to write something.

This post is a nod of the head to Marcus Aurelius who wrote a regular journal as a way to remind himself of the things he ought to be doing. If it’s good enough for an emperor, it’s good enough for me.

Now back to the statement above about the goal being over for the year. That’s bullshit. Yes, if I miss a day I’ll have missed a day but that doesn’t mean that I can’t get back on the writing horse and keep writing.

Thinking of a setback as a complete failure effaces all the good that I’ve done to the point of the setback. And that’s disempowering and it’s what’s happening with my chin-up challenge. I miss a a day or two and I start to think “Of fuck it, you’re not built for chin-ups anyway.”

So, I’m going to get back on the chin-up band wagon and I’ll be running again tomorrow, even if it is just a quick 5 ks.

And on a positive note to wrap things up, I’m excited to see my friend Belinda Dufall starting to blog. Belinda is a passionate advocate for people receiving a fair go and a fine agent. I’m looking forward to reading more of her work.

Led electrical contractors presentation the vines march 2 2014 copy from Peter Fletcher

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: journal, Marcus Aurelius, progress, writing

About Peter

Speaker, trainer and coach. I write about living, loving and working better. Love a challenge. More...

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