Among the fun things that’ve evolved in Twitter are assorted memes involving our avatars. 
I’m pretty sure it started with Stripper Friday, and since then there’s been Hump Day, Monkey Day, um, Wombat Wednesday… the memes are flexible, interpret them anyway you like, as evidenced by my “Hump Day” avatar shown here. Honestly I’m not sure who’s been responsible for each of these or I’d give proper credit.
Today we’re doing “80’s me”. A while ago I scanned in a bunch of old photos. I don’t have a huge number of shots of myself during the 1980s, I was pretty camera shy. So there are no shots of “new wave” me that I could find, unfortunately. I’d love a shot of the night we went to see the B52s in Poughkeepsie, I was rockin’ a miniskirt, boots, biggish hair, and awesome plastic earrings.
Going through the shots to pick one for my avatar it struck me how much my life completely changed in the 80s. During the 1990s I was pretty much “mom”, living in suburbia, raising my kids. The locale changed but my “life”, not so much. But during the 1980s I went from a rebellious teen sneaking off to be with her boyfriend at any opportunity (among other “irresponsible” acts I won’t detail here!) to a college-educated married mom.
June 7, 2007 – 10:32 am
I saw a post today called “Are you a YES man (or woman)” on the productivity blog Dumb Little Man (funny name, great blog!). I thought it was a good companion to my post “Productivity Hint? NO!” from a few weeks ago.
In that post I wrote,
…the tip that’s made the most difference in my life isn’t one I picked up during my recent productivity blitz. It’s something I learned when I was a young mom.
It’s ok to say “no”.
…
Once I freed myself to say no, I found that I didn’t say it very often. I volunteer regularly. I take on projects and do favors. In other words, my default answer is “yes.”
In the post at Dumb Little Man, Shawn Wood writes,
I do understand the conventional productivity thinking and believe that there are several layers of “Yes”, but I am convinced that the principle should be - “The answer is always yes”.
He gives some good examples of how saying “no” can undermine your influence on projects and can affect the trust others have in you. He also has great suggestions on how to say “yes” without compromising too much.
I don’t know if I’m convinced that it’s always better to say “yes.” I suppose it has to do with who you are working with, or for, and what your end goal is. In the past, I’ve definitely gone through times when “no” was my default answer, and I missed out on some great opportunities to work with and get to know people. Better to take time to make sure “yes” isn’t the correct answer before you say “no.”
June 4, 2007 – 2:12 pm
