Am I Half Asleep?

In a meeting, I noticed my colleague almost nodding off. I asked him if he was half asleep. He said, “I’m also half awake!”.

It took me a while to think about this, but I then realized there is a lot of wisdom in what he had to say.

There is a fine line in many things in business, and in relationships. A lot of your current state or the current state of your business depends on the perspective you take when you consider it.

As I look back on my own business career, I find many moments where you are at a crossroads in how you think about the situation you find yourself in (see Thinking About Thinking).

These seemingly unimportant moments can often be the defining ones in your own journey, or that of your business.

Let me give you an example.

When I was in college, I had been recruited by a Government agency in Washington DC. I had interviewed there, and received and accepted a job offer in my final semester of college.

However, I had already committed to interview when a different company from California came to recruit on campus.

I decided not to bother going to the interview since I’d already made my plans. The university encouraged me to go to the interview anyway, because they did not want to offend the visiting company.

Wouldn’t you know, that was the job I ended up falling in love with. I took that job, and turned down the other one and moved to California.

And as they say, the rest is history.

This is an example of what I’m talking about. Is the glass half-full or half-empty? Should I interview, or not?

At the time, it didn’t seem like a big decision at all. Now with hindsight I see that this moment and this decision set the vector for the next 30 years of my life.

So the moral of the story is that you never know where/when these moments are coming.

Don’t be afraid to be half awake instead of half asleep!

–drw