About an hour later I go outside to get some fresh air, and the owner of the club asks me whether I don’t have an issue with playing snooker since my iPhone always seems to stick to my hands. He then also tells his wife that I have 3 laptops at home, after which she decides to ask me: “You don’t have friends, do you?”

My reply was a very stern “I beg your pardon”, and I decided to leave it at that. Sometimes it is not worth going into an argument.

But later that evening I thought of an excellent reply. Why o why not at the same moment, but that happens too often.

“Would you have asked about my lack of friends if I was holding a newspaper or a book?”

Because that was what I was doing: reading De Standaard Online and The Power of Pull via Kindle for iPhone.

My previous post was about prejudice, and this one was a pretty clear example as well.

These days a phone can be so much more than a device for calling or texting people. I wonder how long it will take before the non-tech people will start to realise that fact?

We were quite skeptic as we were really looking for a more traditional Belgian coast restaurant that has more of a fish kind of specialty. But we were tired and did not feel like searching anymore, so we went for it.

Needless to say, and judging by the topic of this blog post, we were very pleasantly surprised. The mussels were delicious. They ware also all you can eat, but the portion they served us was already too big for us, so no second servings for us.

Again an example where you do not always can judge a book by its cover, or a restaurant by its name or interior, or ???

What examples can you share with me where you had initial thoughts that turned out to be completely wrong? Where have you encountered prejudice?

This turned out to be a pretty good choice, because I immediately found a job after 3 years of having 6 hours of French, English and German a week. Another benefit is that this gives you a pretty good general education.

And here the topic of this blog post. In the first year of secretarial college I learned to type blind. And even though I cursed every minute of it whilst following the course, I am now extremely happy to have learned to type blind. If I sometimes see some colleagues struggling to type with 2 fingers, or having to watch the keyboard all the time, I realise what a productivity gain this has become.

Here is the result of the online speed typing test I just did:

I am surprised, I did not type this fast in secretarial college. I guess you do learn by doing.

Want to test your speed typing skills, here is the link to the online test.

So, how much more productive could you become? Let me know in the comments how you did on the test.

But what if e-mail becomes a liability? How many of you have had the experience of jointly working on a document with a number of people via e-mail? And how many of you have had issues with using the correct version? Well I am going to guess a lot of you, as I have.

Is there no better way to share or work on documents? Yes, there is imho. In my team we have started slowly to use a wiki to share documents. Everyone in the team has access to the files, can upload a new version. And if it is a text document, we can all work on it together. All benefits for the team.

Have you used a wiki at work or for private use? What is your experience?

Where would you go? Back in the past, to the future? And would you change anything, or just watch?

the practice of showing and explaining the content of a topic to an audience or learner.

But what makes a good presentation? Far too often I sit in a meeting (virtual or physical) and I see slide after slide of text appear on the screen. Even if it is created in PowerPoint, the file does not make it a presentation. It will have to be a great presenter to keep the audience interested as most folks will read the slides, not listen.

Even if I am not claiming to be a great presenter, I always make it a priority to include as little words as possible. A title on the slide, a picture that says a thousand words, and off I go with my narrative.

How about you? How often do you feel like someone is not giving a presentation, but reading a document in front of the meeting room?

Do you have any tips you can share about what makes a good presentation to you?

But what if all nuclear weapons would one day be destroyed? Then the notion of MUD or Mutually Assured Destruction no longer applies. MUD implies that no big nation, be it the US, Russia, China or any other nation with a big arsenal of nuclear weapons, will initiate a first strike, as it will almost certainly lead to a retaliation and escalation that will lead to both (or more) countries being completely annihilated.

Now then, if there are no nuclear weapons anymore, what is stopping a big country from engaging another into war? Or from simply taking over your small neighbour? If you feel you have an edge, and can surprise your adversary with a first strike, what is stopping that country from going for it?

So maybe we need to keep a few nuclear weapons, just to make sure no one does something silly.

What is your view?

Take Plan International for example, for as little as 0,83 EUR per day you can adopt a child in an underdeveloped country. Your contribution goes towards that child and the community it lives in. And there are other organisations such as Foster Parents who perform similar NGO activities.

Could you survive if you have 0,83 EUR less per day? Changes are high that you could. If yes, why not consider adopting a child through one of these services.

Small things matter.

This is the direct link to sign up in Belgium, I hope you click on it and take action.

“If I discuss my account plan with my manager, and talk about the multi-year objectives, he almost always asks me what deals I can close in the current quarter. How do I handle this situation?”

This is what typically happens in companies that are listed on the stock exchange, and especially on Wall Street. Companies need to deliver results each quarter, and Wall Street is not really interested in the long term, if you do not beat or meet expectations in the current or next quarter your stock price is going down.

Needless to say this is putting immense pressure on C-level management, and this inevitably trickles down to sales management, who is asking for as many deals to close in the current quarter. What happens next quarter, or next year does not really matter much.

There was one exception where a 3-year growth plan was initiated for a certain set of accounts. Without going into details I can confirm that account teams who signed up for this (and received management support) outperformed their colleagues by +10% points (and more) in those 3 years.

But what if companies decided to stop quarterly reporting? What if they only sent out information in their annual report? Would that make a difference?

More than once I was with her when she showed me what she was doing. And very often she was doing it right, and then I asked her why she stopped.

“I am afraid if I push this, I will break it.”

No matter how many times I have tried to explain her that she could not break the device by clicking on OK, she could not master it, she was always afraid to push OK.

How about you, are you afraid? Or do you know someone who is frightened?