Sanders Says

Tame your flu with Tamiflu

Well, I skipped the flu shot this year and caught the flu a few weeks ago.

Normally, it would take me down for at least a week and a half, perhaps longer since I travel so much. Thank God for Tamiflu. It is a new wonder drug from Roche Labs that reduces the duration and severity of a flu.

Here's the trick to it: You have to take it within the first two days of symptoms. On a Weds, I woke up with that scratchy feeling in my throat. On Thursday, I started to feel some aches and pains and the throat was more sore. I went in to the doctor, and she said I was just-in-time to still get the benefits of Tamiflu. By Monday, I was back at work and 90%. It was a miracle.

Since Feb is the peak flu season, monitor your symptoms and go to your doctor quicker rather than later. While there is no cure for influenza, there sure is a solution -- Tamiflu.

Make the healthy switch

A few food substitutes can make a big difference in your diet's healthiness.

Over the last few years, I've made three big changes to how I eat, and all of them have improved my health. First of all, I've replaced chips and fries with broccoli and low fat salad dressing. This knocks out a ton of bad carbs, grease and sodium and replaces it with a great antioxidant. Eventually, you get used to it and enjoy it just as much as the ‘junk’.

Second, I’ve swapped out lunch meat and burger patties with Boca burger veggie patties. After a few weeks, your stomach will be convinced (like my dog) that they are the same thing. I’m not a vegetarian, but I love Boca’s product line.

Finally, after dinner, before considering any type of desert, I eat an apple. It reduces my cravings for something sweet and reduced the amount of cookies, ice cream and candy I eat. Researchers say that an apple a day keeps the munchies away.

In the last few years, I’ve lost thirty pounds and have never felt better. I’m not claiming these are magic bullets, but the process of substituting good food for bad food is a great way to improve your health.

Don't commit DWIT this weekend

Is it just me, or is texting catching on with the grown ups?

It started with one friend that I was meeting for dinner. He texts me that he's running a minute late. Cool. Didn't even know how to use the function. Later that night, he texts me that it was fun. Next thing I know, four of my adult friends are texting me now, instead of calling. Convenient.

Talking on the phone is easy, texting is like writing a book on a deck of cards while operating heavy machinery. One reporter called driving a car while sending a text message: Driving While Intexticated. Turns out you are probably safer to drive with three drinks in you, than to send three text messages while navigating around a busy parking lot.

A Wall Street Journal covers how texting while driving should be considered criminally negligent.

For the last few years, the kids have been trying to drive and text at the same time. It's not working for them. Check out this Philadelphia Inquirer story for the entire scoop.

Don't fall for it. If you want to text, pull over and park. We are obnoxious enough as drivers with phones planted in our ears. At least when we are on the phone, we can see. Let's not make driving a game of bumper cars this weekend because we'd rather text than talk live. Ignore the texts and eventually, if its important, you'll get a phone call that you can take on hands free.

Your caller will ask, "did you get my texts?"

You can shrug your shoulders and say, "I was driving."

Don't email your people this weekend

Do you remember the days where you had the weekends clear of "work chatter"? If no one had your home phone, you left on Friday and resumed your work life on Monday. Pagers came into our lives and began to erode this. Cell phone became popular in the late 80's and eroded this sanctity further.

With email, all hell broke loose. We got emails from bosses, Customers, vendors and colleagues at all hours and all days -- Sunday too. Most of them can wait until Monday, but Send is such an easy button to click. People that wouldn't dare call you at home on Sunday at 5:30am, would have no problems sending you several emails at that same time.

To make matters worse, thousands of information workers have develped the habit of deferring most email answering to the weekends. One Google executive recently talked about her Sunday email marathons, where she might send out as many as 100 emails. She is not alone.

These habits can ruin weekends, drive turnover and burnout and weaken relationships.

Think about it -- your employee comes in from his Sunday BBQ to checke the weather online and sees his email inbox flashing. You've sent him about five work related emails with some to-do's. He gets back into the work cloud, decides he needs to address it now and the steaks burn outside. He is barely at the picnic and his wife nags him to quit his job that night as they lay down to sleep.

Same goes for your Customers. Don't invade their weekend because you can't conduct your business during business hours. They need the break.

Email Point Of View takeaway: Never let email cross a line that phones or face-to-face cannot. Never let technology erode relationship quality. Less is more.

Like I've said in my seminars, you have the think about your emotional value proposition to your clients and partners. You have to think about the emotional compensation plan for your employees and talent. Because they do. There's an old saying and it rings true here: "Long after they forget what you did, they will remember how you made them feel."

And we are supposed to feel good on the weekends. Thank God its Friday!

Bonus: My first audio download is Rule 6 from the Dirty Dozen Rules of Email Etiquette.
Download Rule6.mp3 (3039.9K)

Recommended: Listen to my Dirty Dozen Rules of Email Etiquette audio program, only available in The Whole Enchilada Package.

Skip the search, figure it out on your own

Yesterday I had the name of a band on the tip of my tongue, but couldn't remember it. It drove me crazy. Eventually, I had to go Google it. 70's rock, sounds like so and so. Nope, couldn't find it. Then I went to Amazon and rode their recommendation engine for about ten minutes and then BANG I found the name...Bad Company.

Whew. Thought that would kill me.

Every time we cannot remember something in the 21st Century, we rely on a search engine or web database to cough it up for us. Twenty years ago we might call a friend or two, but most of the time we finally came up with it out of our own head.

I think those times were better for us. If our brains can rely on technology to produce stored memories, then they will eventually adapt to remember less and less over time. In the future, we will be idiots without a broadband connection.

The next time you are stuck for a name or a band, resist the tempation to logon and solve it immediately and make your brain do a little hard work. You've taught yourself to walk over and talk to a coworker instead of emailing them from twenty feet, consider this an addition to your post-tech boom workout routines.

Otherwise, you are just asking for that memory loss ailment, I can't remember the name of it right now...it's on the tip of my tongue.

Let the sun shine in

Do you work in the dark? If you are a leader, do your people work in the dark?

Recently, I've been studying the impact on light and productivity. I was looking into whether natural light improves our mood state (which would improve our business effectiveness). Not surprisingly, we are a product of our environment. Much like a bad weather day can make us gloomy and listless, a badly lit work environment can do the same.

A landmark study done by academic researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for the EPA found that natural light can improve our vision, function, productivity and mood. Check out the free PDF Study summary.

A brilliant book, Cradle To Cradle, suggests that a building with natural light flooding into the workspace by design creates a more effective workforce and retention advantage. For example, when natural light was designed into the working experience at a Herman Miller factory, retention rates were impressive. People love being outdoors and when skylights and windows pour natural light into the workaday, the overall experience is much better. In the case of the Herman Miller factory, one other advantage was noted in the book: " A number of workers who left for higher wages at a competitor's factory returned in a few weeks. When asked why, they told the management they coudln't work in the dark. They were young people who had entered the workforce only recently and had never worked in a normal factory before."

Takeaway: When ever possible, design to allow sunlight. For computer screen monitoring, invest in simple glare filter solutions or position work stations accordingly. If you have an opportunity, note who works in natural light vs who isn't near a window and has articifical light all day. Rotate the working-in-the-dark group into light when possible if you can't redesign. Open the blinds every morning and go out of your way to let the sun shine into your office.

Work (out) while you watch

I have a television in my home gym and it has changed the way I watch football.

My wife is a football widow, I love USC, The Cowboys and even World Cup style football (England was my team). All in all, I spend a great deal of time watching football. This year, though, I've made one big change that has converted me from couch potato to active-guy: I work out while I watch the game.

Whenever possible, I watch the game as I walk on the treadmill, do situps or lift weights. If I'm not working out, I practice guitar (my acoustic) while I watch.

OK -- not all games are good for "passive watching", but the lionshare of games we watch do not include our favorite teams. Those games can be watched mindlessly while we do *something* productive.

When March madness rolls around in a few months, try this out. Work out, practice, organize, clean your gun (LOL) but do something while you watch. Save your total attention for your favorite team and let the rest of the games be background noise/view while you do something good for yourself.