It’s time for a rant.
I like to think I keep things mostly positive on this blog, but once in a while, hopefully you enjoy a good rant.
I have this hypothesis that there are two kinds of people in this world – the kind that are on time for stuff, and the kind that aren’t.
If you’re nodding your head then you’re probably on my side… if you’re confused, you’re probably in the latter of the two 😛
Here’s what I mean:
When I schedule a call or meeting with someone, I’m always on time.
I’m not 3 minutes late, or 4 minutes early (although there’s nothing wrong with being early), I’m on time.
- If the Zoom call is scheduled for 3pm, I’m joining it at 2:59pm.
- If a call is running late and I have another one scheduled after it, I politely say that I have to go so I can make it on time to the next one.
- If an emergency pops up – which to be honest, emergencies that require me to cancel calls or meetings rarely come up – I let the other person know well in advance and ask to move the call or meeting.
Unfortunately, not everyone is like that.
But fortunately, a lot of people are. I’m lucky in that in the 5+ years I’ve spent building a law firm, tech company, podcast, etc., I’ve mostly worked with awesome people.
But every once in a while you get some people that just suck at being on time. And it sucks to deal with. And so I decided to rant about it.
The reason it bugs me enough to go on a tangent like this is that in my humble opinion, if you’re late to something, you’re showing a lack of respect for the other person.
If you keep someone waiting for 2 minutes, you’re inadvertently telling them “my time is more valuable than your time”.
And I think that’s wrong.
For that reason, I always give the utmost respect to my calendar and commitments. If you book a call or meeting with me, expect me there on time and I expect the same from you.
Disrespect that commitment more than once, and there may not be a third.
Of course, there are exceptions, but just ignore them all for now. Let me let this all out of my system!!
Anyway, end of rant.
There’s also a big benefit to respecting peoples time: they respect you and your time more for it, and you’ll do more and better business with them because of it.
Do with that as you will.
On to topic number two: on Saturday morning I made a terrible mistake.
I decided to go for a run with a friend of mine, Sergey, and paid dearly for it.
As a quick background, Sergey is a friend of mine in Toronto who is a big fan of extreme physical challenges (in case you didn’t read it, he’s the one who inspired me to train for a marathon in the first place).
Anyway, I took Sergey on a 20km run a few months ago for my marathon training, which was a lot of fun, but he made me promise that next time, he got to pick the run.
Keep in mind, he’s been known to run and bike very long distances, and do other crazy things like insane amounts of pushups, pullups, etc.
But I am a man of my word, and agreed to join him on a run for a maximum of 2 hours. Yes that’s a bit extreme, but I figured if we did the run asap – as close to the marathon as possible – I’d still be in really good shape and able to handle anything for 2 hours.
I was wrong…
Why?
Because he thought it was a fun idea to run up and down an 800 meter hill 13 times.
Well, either 13 times or 2 hours, whichever came first. And let me tell you, as someone who didn’t do a ton of training going uphill or downhill, I did not finish all 13 reps.
But I pushed as hard as a I could, even in really hot and sunny weather, and we finished 12 reps up and down in 2 hours. It ended up being about 16km…
16km where pretty much the entire run was either straight uphill or straight downhill.
Anyway, I was spent and my legs were (still are) donezo.
Suffice to say, it’s the last time I’ll be running with Sergey, haha. Although it was terrible, it was also a tough challenge, and as I’ve learned, it is good to challenge ourselves like that here and there.
Keeps you mentally tough, physically fit and probably a whole lot of other stuff too.
But that’s it for now.
Have a great day and keep grinding.
