some stuff

two nights on the trot not getting to bed before 2am because i was hanging out with young people in bars ... hardly drunk a drop as i was driving … but woke up feeling as if i had a hangover how unfair is that?

you have weird conversations in bars ... especially if you are sober and the rest of the company isn't ... someone told me that the guy i had just met was an ordained Baptist minister who then promptly asked me in all seriousness if i was a minister (there were three ministers of various hues around the table) … i laughed an empty kind of laugh and said not as such ... i was like a minister without any of the power ... i meant kind of trappings and position and respect type stuff but i ended up explaining that i didn't mean spooky harry potter type powers

last night i met some people and at one point right out of the blue he asked me 'do you read' ... my immediate response was that of course i did i wasn't a complete moron ... turns out he meant did i read a lot of books and not was i capable of reading

i delight in that thing where you are following a chain of thought in your head which results in a blurted question or remark that seems so out of context and yet makes sense to you at the moment you said it

just been reading about a new book by Malcolm Gladwell ( The Tipping Point man) calle Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking ... the kind of thing where the initial subconscious thoughts you have about someone being far more important to us than the data we then collect about a person ... am a great believer in our intuition and gut reaction ... we gravitate towards people that fascinate and amuse us ... we sense wrongness in people ... we sense something not quite balanced about a persons energy ... we rely on our previous experience of life and all it's weird and wonderful ways and we often respond out of instinct long before we use rational thought ... our instinct colours the way we perceive data and how we analyse information

as my mum used to say 'actions speak louder than words' ... but then she also used to spout all kinds of nonsense so maybe not a good source of life affirming quotes :)

he also talks about The Pentagon running a war game to test new military strategies , the enemy team that had trained with commodities traders defeated a US Army ... in war, there is no time for data analysis ... The Army did a thoroughly rational and rigorous analysis that covered every conceivable contingency ... but the enemy had got used to making a thousand instant decisions in any hour

have been a bit obsessed about this since i read about it ... heads up to any HJ's people this may well make the basis of or discussion on tuesday night ... haven't actually read the book yet but then when has that ever stopped us having an opinion :) ... i like the idea that in the face of everything we think is the correct way do things then along comes someone acting out of instinct and what they know ... and often they do not even realise how they are doing it ... it just happens

at the risk of sounding arrogant (and this is tempered by the full knowledge of my own limitations ... stick and log in eye stuff) ... in the areas i know then i often act out of a mix of experience/skill/instinct if i was questioned how i came to that decision so quickly with no apparent thought or debate i would struggle to explain but i just do

in the same way when we drive ... our brains just do complicated things constantly while reading information and assessing situations and making small instant decisions all the time, while we chat to a passenger

my days are spent in many meetings … something that comes with age maybe do less talk about it more … I process information and ideas very quickly and often make what seem to be snap decisions about whether an idea is rubbish and will never work or can conclude rapidly that something has merit and should be pursued … drives me nuts while people spend another twenty minutes reaching the same conclusion … I am not some super human with a fast brain … just the things I have done in my life leave me with processing skills in certain areas that mean I get there quicker … directing theatre for instance means you have to hear an idea decide if it will give you what you want make a decision about the weak bits then edit and refine on the spot and make a decision to proceed and explore the idea or try something else

as I say it kinda fascinates me at the moment and will probably bore other to tears … apparently it is a good thing that we are all different … not on a wet Wednesday afternoon in your third meeting of the day and you are waiting for someone to catch up it isn’t … I have a friend who says that meetings should be twenty minutes only (probably more do with his boredom threshold)

gonna go and chill and mellow for awhile … after all it is Sunday and that’s what they are for