Sunday Advice - Friday News is Bad New

There's Friday Foto and now I am starting a new theme day, called Sunday Advice. This is where I, the great and mighty Kmuzu tell you what to do. - I know it's now Monday, but only by a little. And like Friday, I'm too lazy to create a logo .. so this will have to do.

Sunday Advice

This advice concerns people delivering news. Almost always at the office or with people you see every day this is the standard protocol - The same is almost always true with politics as well, but for different reasons.


Good news is delivered on Monday or Tuesday and Bad news is delivered on Friday.

Here's why it happens and why it's important for you to know.

If a boss gives you bad news on Friday - for instance, informing you that you're fired, then it's usually too late for you to initiate any kind of defense or reaction. Everyone is preparing for the weekend. Human resources is gone and quite frankly no one wants to get involved in such a commitment of time and energy when they know they're going to be on the lake in twelve hours. Also, employees usually get paid on Friday and so it's an easy accounting cut-off.

By the time the weekend is over and Monday starts, all the momentum is lost - momentum is key - something I might write about in my next Sunday Advice.

Good news is delivered early in the week, because a business wants you to spread around the good news. It builds moral and confidence in a company when an employee gets Employee of the Month. And bosses, who have delicate but hungry egos, love to hear the praise all week long.

Here's why you need to know this - If you sense something is going wrong with your boss or with the company, and you have any suspicion that it might be the end for you, then Friday morning call in sick. Sometimes, a boss is not smart enough to hold his cards close to his chest and he might say something like we need to talk on Friday.

If you can, call it into human resources and really play it up. Now this isn't the time to go on vacation or to spend the whole day at the bar watching a baseball game. Stay at home, watch television or surf the web.

If it's really bad news, your boss will call and ask when you're going to be back. My advice is to be vague, but leave open the possibility that you'll be back on Monday. Make sure the conversation is short - say you're thinking about going to the doctor. Then on Monday call in sick.

Remember how I talked about momentum - well you just took all the momentum out of firing you. Usually mid-level bosses have to get approval from HR to fire and hire. And usually, they were too lazy to keep all the records and do all the due diligence. HR likes to have all the paperwork and notes kept the way the want it and they spend many hours training mangers on how to do this and most mangers ignore them. So, in order to get you fired, he/she had to go in and convince HR that it was important to let you go without any of those warning, performance reviews, or performance plans in place. This made HR angry.

Because you did not come in on Friday (and Monday) your manager has to go back into HR and to accounting. HR is going to gripe and complain that the manger can't do anything by the book and accounting's got to redo the whole payroll. It's just a mess.

All of this means, that your manager might just drop the whole thing because it's not worth the hassle. I've seen it happen before. One more thing, when you come back, stop off at HR first and just kind of inform them that you are feeling a bit better and thank them for helping out.

Just my little tip for you to be happy ..

This is just my opinion - I am NOT a lawyer or someone that has any experience in anything whatsoever. As a matter of fact, you're probably better off not doing anything I say.

Do We Really Need People to Tell Us We're Busy?

I was Stumbling around and came across an article in Accidental Creative called, "Do We Really Need More Time?" by Todd Henry. You should read the article before reading this post, but if not then I will summarize. ----> More Time.

These types of articles really bug the crap out of me, because the author assumes the reason people don't engage in some particularly productive activity is they just are doing too much other stuff. Regardless if it's healthy, productive or effective, this other stuff provides for our needs. If television didn't give people something more effectively than say chess, then Milton Bradley would occupy half of Best Buy.

I try to look at stuff I do from a cognitive behavioral point-of-view - with a bit of existentialism thrown in. Everything we do is for a reason. There's actually some purpose to watching television or playing World of Warcraft. These are tools that provide some purpose.

With CBT, you try to be cognitively aware of what you are doing and why you are doing it. For instance instead of going into the fridge and pulling out a gallon of ice cream and then like some zombie sitting in front of the television scooping out frozen brains, maybe you try to find a more productive tool, such as taking a walk to calm that nervous, anxious energy you've built up throughout the day.

Anyway, I wrote a response to the article which I've included in this blog.

Comment to article: Sometimes I read an article and I'm just stunned at the reverse thinking. Americans today work harder and longer hours than at almost any other time in our history. We're pushing the same amount of hours that were worked before the New Deal. We work longer and harder than almost any industrialized country - including Japan. Do we work to live or live to work?

Furthermore, activities such as reading a book, chatting with friends and exercising are actually good things - that build and strengthen creativity. We as a society should be doing more of this - not less. Please people reading this blog - take my advice go buy a good book like, Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey and then discus with a friend at lunch .. you'll be shocked at all the creative ideas that will spring forth from your brain.

Speaking of brains and books - I recommend, The Brain That Changes Itself by Dr. Norman Doidge. It equinoctial explains that our brains actually mold and change with our thoughts and actions. Meaning - if you want to be creative then must do creative things. Sitting at your computer or reading some book on the latest Java registries ain't gonna cut it

Save yourselves!!! go now - call a friend - have lunch - a long lunch - I'm serious, order coffee - look outside the window - find out where your server is from .. laugh a little then go to used bookstore. Live the distraction before it's too late.