Mercury Retrograde

As a baby boomer, I grew up with more than a passing awareness of astrology. I know my sign (Taurus); I know the basic characteristics associated with the 12 astrological signs. I've even had my chart read -- more than once.

Overall, I'm not much of a follower of astrology. I can't say that I even read my horoscope with any regularity. But there is one astrological phenomenon I track: Mercury Retrograde.

Mercury Retrograde occurs about three times a year, for a period of about three weeks. It marks a time when the planet Mercury appears to be moving backwards in its orbit in the night sky. In truth, it's an illusion. But this occurrence is said to wreck havoc with communications between human beings, whether face to face conversations, contracts, correspondence and the devices we use to communicate with each other.

Here's more on the phenomenon, as described on the website About.com:

What happens during Mercury Retrograde?:

Since Mercury rules communication, it's said that everything goes haywire in that area -- emails get deleted or bounced back, mail is returned, calls go out into the ethers, etc. Some people find that their computers go on the fritz or phone lines go down. I've never seen the hard data on this, so make your own observations. It does seem though that miscommunications abound during the retrograde period.

A Time-Out:

Mercury retrograde gives us time to catch up with ourselves, and to look back. Something from the past might return in a different form. This can mean people, ideas or buried insights that need to surface for you to move forward. Often it's felt as a contemplative time, depending on the sign, a chance to go over old ground again, to claim what you missed the first time.

Be Non-Committal:

There's a long-held belief that it's best to avoid making set plans during the Mercury Retrograde. This means being cautious about things like signing contracts, and forming partnerships and corporations. What gets put in writing at this time may turn out to need serious revising after Mercury goes direct. But since tying up loose ends is the domain of retrograde, this type of finalization might fly.

Can you repeat that?:

In our relationships, sometimes we gloss over things that pushed buttons at the time, but which we let slide. What seemed not worth the trouble may reveal itself as a major issue in need of our attention. The Mercury retrograde is a time for review, when the underlying patterns come to light.

Back to the Drawing Board:

Some dreams and goals get lost in the hectic rushing around of daily life. The Mercury Retrograde period can be a rich time of reflection on those longings. This makes it a time for the soul to ponder its destiny. You might look over old journals, review your creative work, muse on serendipities of the past that have pointed you toward your spirit's calling. It can make the retrograde period a time of solidifying a sense of your personal story and where you're headed.

One potent example of the possible power of Mercury Retrograde: the fractious 2000 presidential election happened during a Retrograde period.

The current Retrograde period started Monday, September 7, and lasts through September 29. The Retrograde effect is said to extend at least a week beyond its official start and finish.

I marked the beginning of the current Retrograde period with the repeated failure of a home computer. It's an older machine, but it's been pretty reliable and provides backup for the laptops in our network. Starting in August, this computer divorced itself from the Internet, defeated almost every repair attempt whether by telephone instruction or professional on site repair, and required a complete re-installation of its operating system. We have spent hours trying to restore this machine to connectivity. I gave it all I had in an effort to avoid buying a new machine.

After another three hours of online chat last night, I think we're back in business.

So I'm convinced that Mercury Retrograde is front and center right now. And I'm also trying to remember the opportunities that it can offer. A review of the About.com entry above highlights the idea that tangled communications may force us to focus on problems that we have been glossing over; things that need more attention. The additional effort could leave us in a better place than we were before.

In other words, Mercury Retrograde may provide the perfect opportunity for reflection.

Multi-Labor

Happy Labor Day!

At this traditional transition point of the end of summer and the start of fall's more serious pursuits, I thought it was a good time to revisit a theme that plays out in countless offices and households everywhere -- the myth of multitasking.

Academic research deconstructing the multitasking myth continues to multiple. The latest was published about a week ago by Stanford University. Researchers Eyal Ophis, Clifford Nass and Anthony Wagner focused on three major assumptions about "successful" multitaskers in this electronic hyper-information consumption era:

1) They manage to pay attention simultaneously to multiple stimuli.

2) They can shuttle from task to task more quickly than other people.

3) They can control their memories better so that they can resume a task from right where they left off.

But in a series of tests which compared those who regularly do a lot of media multitasking with those who don't, the multitaskers were:

1) More distractable

2) Less able to sort through stimuli

3) Less able to stay on task

The Stanford website has a great summary of the study, which can be found here.

Tell the truth: is multitasking making you are productive as you think?

Safety First

Management coach extraordinaire Jill Geisler hits the mark today in her regular podcast for the Poynter Institute. She's talking about how smart managers can benefit from creating a "Safe Venting Zone" for themselves.

(A link to Jill's management blog, "Leading Lines," can be found on the left rail of this page, just a few scrolls down).

Jill recognizes that everyone can get overwhelmed sometimes and need to blow off some steam -- even the most competent and creative executives. As Jill describes it:

"Used properly, your Safe Venting Zone provides you with ideas, solutions and a little therapy. In the Zone, you are away from your staff and in the company of a highly qualified partner."

Jill addresses the need for confidentiality and discretion, vital qualities to keep a "Safe Venting Zone" safe.

Jill adds: "Great bosses know that even blowing off steam needs to be done strategically or it can be self-defeating. That's especially the case when bosses choose to vent to their employees."

She's specifically writing about newsroom managers, but everyone can benefit from planning a safe place to vent.

You can read more from Jill here. And link to the podcast here.

One more thing: Happy Birthday, Jill!

Find A Ladder, or Lend One

This is a bear in trouble. Somehow, the bear got trapped in a Colorado skateboarding park and couldn't get out. After spending the night in the skating bowl, an employee of the Snowmass Colorado Parks and Recreation Department lowered a ladder into the pit which permitted the bear to climb out. You can see the whole sequence here.

Ed, a coach friend of mine shared this image with me. I suggested that the lesson is that people should find their ladders -- the help that they might need -- and save themselves. Ever wise, Ed added "Yes, and throw a ladder to a buddy in need."

Confessions

Time to 'fess up.

Readers of this blog have noticed (hopefully!) the lack of activity over the summer. I wrote about it recently, attributing my absence to the heavy workload I carried over the past few months. That's true, but it's not the whole story.

It's not just work that's laid heavily upon me. It's been more a question of mood, of atmosphere. A sense of uneasiness.

Or just plain meanness. The public discourse sapped my soul this summer. I guess it started around the time of the incident involving Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. As most of America knows, a Cambridge police officer responded to a 911 call at the professor's home, investigating a possible break in. There was a confrontation. Words were exchanged. Ultimately, Gates was arrested and briefly held in jail before he was released and the charges dropped.

Then President Obama was asked about the event at a White House news conference. He said he thought the police had behaved "stupidly" by arresting someone in their own house, after the homeowner had presented proper identification.

You know the rest. The country and the Internet exploded into arguments about black vs. white; cop vs. citizen; Ivy League vs. blue collar; and various forms of class warfare. The missives got nasty and personal. I stupidly continued my practice of reading the comment sections following various news articles and blog posts. Read them until I realized I was being poisoned by the vitriol.

The Gates controversy subsided as the Health Care debate ratcheted up. Now the hostility was no longer limited to the Internet, but live and in person at Town Hall meetings. Little debate or information sharing there. Just screaming and half-truths and name calling, sometimes with a firearm accompaniment. All offered fresh all day courtesy of your favorite cable channel.

And this week, I've been stunned at the outpouring of hate focused on the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, a man whose personal failings were well-documented. I was stunned that some people needed their demonized portrait of the liberal politician so much that they could not take one moment to acknowledge his humanity, or the possibility that he'd contributed anything positive to mankind.

I can't really explain why this atmosphere has weighed on me so heavily. Maybe it's the confrontation with hardened ideas and hardened heart -- surely anathema to a coach who believes in options, and the capacity in each of us to learn from our disappointments and failures to begin again.

Enough. I'm done with the lamenting. Done with being made small by the negativity of others. I reclaim my voice. I chose to coach and to lead by example.

Baby, I'm Back.

Google Thyself

I Googled myself today.

It wasn't the first time, by far. Curiosity had led me to that practice many times in the past.

But I hadn't be so motivated for some time. Until today.

It wasn't an exercise of vanity. Instead, it was a form of self-preservation.

Washington Post writer Kathleen Parker prompted my search. Her column today details legal activity surrounding a Vogue model and an anonymous blogger who plainly did not find said model to be her flava. The blogger posted frequently and voluminously about model Liskula Cohen, describing her as a "skank," along with other derogatory names.

Cohen worried that these missives could negatively impact her marketability. After all, how many businesses want their products to be identified with a "skank?" So she sued Google, which hosted the offending blog (as well as this one, if you haven't noticed), and demanded to know the true identity of the poster. A New York Supreme Court judge ruled in Cohen's favor and ordered Google to reveal the blogger's name.

That's not the end of it; not yet, at least. The outed blogger, Rosemary Port, is now suing Google for $15 million because it disclosed her identity. Cohen has dropped her previous lawsuit.

Now apart from my frequent despair over the growing lack of civility in anonymous discourse over the Internet, my interest in this dispute was minimal. After all, why would I have reason to worry about my online profile?

Then I stopped. Because it only takes one determined person to turn your electronic world upside down. Even if you believe yourself to be a straight shooter and fair broker.

So I Googled myself for the first time in several months. There were a lot more entries than I expected. Only a couple of surprises. And thankfully, nothing that bad.

But I will be keeping a closer watch in the days to come.

A word to the wise: Do you know who you are in cyberspace?

Begin Again

Oh boy.

I was afraid to see how long it had been since I'd posted to this blog.

Wow.

I'd think about writing something to explain my absence, but then it would seem lame and I was busy, so I let it go.

The truth is a little more complicated, but not by much.

I had a lot of work. A LOT. Which, in these challenging times, is a good thing.

I would get up early and stay up late into the tonight to balance my projects. I found that burning the candle at both ends gets much more exhausting as I get older.

I also reaffirmed that I can tolerate almost anything (almost!) as long as I know it is finite.

I could reach for a number of profound metaphors from that statement, but I'll let it lay as it is for know.

Another truth is that at some point, I made a choice to let the blogging go for the short run. I recognized I had a finite amount of energy to get through this period, and something had to go. Something turned out to be Present Perfect Coach.

It's likely that I might have found a way to do my blogging. For a variety of reasons, the best plan for me was to give myself permission to let it go for the short term.

So now the big projects are over, and I'm about to launch another big project; one that's much closer to my heart.

I'm taking my baby girl back to college tomorrow. We'll head off early in the morning.

The faithful reader may realize that this is my daughter's sophomore year at college, so it's not the first time she's left the nest.

Yet, this journey does mark a new beginning for her. She's entering a new university in a new state, in a different part of the country.

I am enormously proud of her, for so many reasons. She assessed her freshman college situation, and realized "you only get one chance to do undergrad. I think I can do it better." On her own, she researched her options, made her applications and successfully transferred to another school.

Because this is my kid, I'd like to think I've provided her with the tools and the foundation to know she had options, and to have the courage to try something new. And to learn from less-than-perfect experiences.

Both of us learned that we can begin again.