Alan C. Fox

This morning, while I was still in bed, Sprite brought me hot chocolate. It was perfect.

Later, at breakfast, she said, “I’m glad you liked it. I was worried I hadn’t added enough cream.  I was already halfway to the bedroom when I decided to go back and add more because I wanted to make sure it was just right.”

The hot chocolate was delicious, but that is not my point. In life, it matters that you do things right, not merely to enjoy a better result, but to experience the pleasure – indeed, the enchantment – of doing your very best.

My father is 102 years old.  He was a professional musician who played the French horn.  He still teaches young students how they can improve in the art of playing a wind instrument.  At a recent seminar at the University of Arizona, my Dad said to his class, “I don’t care if you are practicing your instrument on a desert island with no one to hear you within a thousand miles.  You still have to do it right.  Every time you put that mouthpiece to your lips you need to focus on doing your best.  You are creating habits which will serve you either poorly or well.”

When I was a kid my mind was always working, especially when it came to finding shortcuts.  Why take thirty minutes to complete an assignment if I could figure out how to finish it in ten and then read a comic book?  I used to value speed above accuracy, and saving time more than doing a complete job.

I was still “shortcut Alan” in law school.  To graduate I needed to finish one final paper.  I was working full time during the day and studying for the bar exam at night, so my research was minimal.  I triple spaced the paper and used three inch margins.  My professor was, shall we say, disappointed.  Luckily, he flipped a mental coin and gave me full credit for the paper so I could graduate and take the bar exam the following week.  Thanks, Professor Ratner.

When I practiced law I was a good attorney, but I wasn’t great. I was still keen on finding short cuts.  As a result, I didn’t enjoy my work very much because I realized, on some level, that I wasn’t doing my best. Also, I was always concerned that my work would be criticized.

Thankfully, I’ve changed.  I admit that sometimes I postpone a business task when I don’t have the time to complete it properly.  But I always look at original sources to verify the numbers, and I look at the problem from different points of view.  Over the past fifty years I’ve learned to review the finished product carefully.

Doing it right is even more important in my writing.  I write quickly. I could create a first draft of this blog in twenty minutes.  But then I wouldn’t be doing my best.   So I slow down, and I keep on revising and making further improvements.  Then my editor takes a pass.  Finally, I polish the final draft until I’m completely satisfied.

I’m still tempted to take short cuts, but I don’t because I want to give both my business and you everything I can.  More importantly, I want to experience the deep fulfillment of doing my very best.

Hot chocolate, anyone?

Alan

Grrrrr.  A jackhammer is working on the street outside my office. It’s ruining my morning.  I can’t concentrate with the constant tat-tat-tat bouncing in my head.

Eventually the annoying clatter recedes into the background and I find myself answering emails and questions from colleagues. I feel almost normal.  Then, just before lunch, suddenly I feel great.  What happened?  Oh, yes.  The jackhammer stopped.

All of us, after a time, stop consciously noticing the negative impact of something annoying. Whether it’s a jackhammer or a stressful relationship, we will eventually tune it out.  But the background tension still remains.

My friend Brad (not his real name) was a dealer in rare coins.  He was a character right out of a Damon Runyon story and I enjoyed talking to him.  One day, however, I discovered that he had overcharged me on many of my purchases.  Then he stopped payment on a check he gave me to buy back a rare coin.  I had to hire an attorney to sue him.

That’s when I realized that Brad was not my friend and would always take advantage of me.  I decided to never see, communicate with, or do any business with him again.

Brad texted, emailed, or called me every day for three months with a variation of the same message: “Alan, I have a deal we can make a lot of money on.” Then he tried to contact me every other day.  Finally, his messages arrived just once a week.  This went on for three years.  I never responded. Now I realize he was robbing me of precious time that I could have spent with my family or real friends.  I am grateful to have my time back.

I often used to see another friend, Roy.  Over many years he became, to say the least, cantankerous.  He was always critical of me, negative about everything else, and wouldn’t tell me why.  The last time I saw Roy I felt a tightness in my chest before I walked through the door to his home,  For the very first time I realized that whenever I was about to see him I unconsciously braced myself to defend against his expected attacks.  Needless to say, I don’t have contact with Roy anymore either.

My life is much simpler when I spend time with friends and family who like being with me and who are not constantly argumentative, contentious, or passive aggressive.

This week I’ve been on vacation, and this morning I noticed that I’m enjoying myself a far more without the stress that I felt on my last vacation when a certain distant cousin joined us.  She is very “high maintenance,” and takes a lot of time and attention. “Won’t you drive me into town,” or, “I forgot to buy cream for my coffee.  Would you please go back and get me some?”

I take a vacation to relax, not to run errands for someone else.  I’m happy to help out, but with this cousin I always had to unconsciously prepare myself for her next demand.  I couldn’t enjoy myself, though at the time I didn’t realize how strongly I was affected.  As you can probably guess, I won’t spend any more vacations with this cousin.

You and I face stress every day that we might not even be aware of any more.  Your life is going to be much happier when you figure it out and . . .

TURN THE JACKHAMMER OFF.

Alan

What do newborn babies work at 24/7?  They work to survive.  They cry for attention, eat, eliminate, sleep and grow.  They learn who their caretaker is, how their hands work, and gradually learn to talk and issue instructions like “Carwee me.”

All babies are young entrepreneurs.  As they grow up they might make it official and set up a lemonade stand in front of the house or sell Girl Scout or Boy Scout cookies.  One friend of mine, who went on to become an anchor on national network television, began at the age of five by writing and acting in plays at her home for which she charged admission.

Suddenly we are adults.  Some of us start our own real businesses, like Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak who co-founded Apple in Jobs’ bedroom (and moved it into his garage when they ran out of room). Today Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world. But most of us wind up as employees working for someone else, putting in our forty hours a week. With a job, a mortgage, and children we can easily lose touch with our entrepreneurial spirit and become resigned to whatever our situation is.

Workers of the work, disunite!  Return to being individuals.  All you have to do is remember the mindset that you had when you were three years old.

When I was young my father taught French Horn to students who came to our house. He also played in the studio orchestras that created music for the movies of Walt Disney and other motion picture producers.  He invested in two apartment buildings, a car polishing business, and a lithography business. And then there was “Tidy Bowl”, a product he designed to clean toilet bowls more easily. His product didn’t succeed, but I believe there is another product by a slightly different name still sold today.

Recently my father celebrated his 102^nd birthday.  Every time I see him he has a new idea for a business, or a new suggestion on how to live (his “mental diet,” or “no stress below the neck).”  He goes lawn bowling three times a week and enjoys our going out to dinner or to a movie together.  Although he walks more slowly than he used to, my dad is always on his mental toes.  Always.

The common definition of entrepreneur is “a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.”

To me each and every one of us is an entrepreneur.  We organize and manage our own lives, hopefully with considerable initiative, and, inevitably, with considerable risk.

I want to remind you that all of us, whether students, employees, or retirees, can recall what it was like to be five years old and figuring out how to get our parents to let us stay up late, or how to earn money to buy comic books we would secretly read under the covers after we went to bed.

We can all take more initiative in our lives right now.  We can each try something new.  No one is putting us to bed before we are tired. We are the only ones who limit ourselves by following rules that we might not even be consciously aware of – rules that limit our energy and our early enthusiasm for shaking up our lives and taking some risk.

We all grow up.  We don’t have to give up.

Alan