This mock motivational poster made me laugh out loud when I saw it on Facebook the other day.

We’ve all been there, haven’t we?  Sitting at some $99 kitchen table, remote tossed carelessly to one side, with Led Zeppelin blaring in the background?  Head in hands, we weep for our failures.

It’s no accident that the regretful figure is a storm trooper.  What’s that like?  You’re nameless, faceless, sacrificing your life for an empire you might not even believe in?  And you can’t even get that right.

I feel that way sometimes.  Do you?

We can’t live there.

So the story goes:

Thomas Edison conducted over 10,000 experiments before he successfully invented an efficient incandescent lamp, suitable for home use.  Edison wrote,

The electric light has caused me the greatest amount of study and has required the most elaborate experiments. I was never myself discouraged, or inclined to be hopeless of success. I cannot say the same for all my associates.

In the midst of his study, he was asked if he felt like a failure.  Astonished, Edison famously replied,

Young man, why would I feel like a failure? I now know definitively over 9,000 ways that an electric light bulb will not work. Success is almost in my grasp.

And about 1,000 experiments later, he had it.

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

Lately I’ve been thinking, not only about my mistakes, but about all the time I’ve lost reeling from them.

Trying again is the only option.

I have learned so much.  I’m not the person I was then.

Let’s go.

Photo by turkguy0319

It sure has been a rainy spring.

On more days than not, the walk from the parking lot to preschool has been punctuated by stop, starts, and zig zags around dozens of tiny earthworm bodies wriggling their way across the sidewalk.

To Sam, every worm warrants closer inspection. He squares off and bends at the waist, peering. If the poor thing shows signs of life, it must be saved.

How do you save an earthworm?  You scoop him up in your pudgy fist (“Don’t squeeze too hard!”) and you place him in the grass, where he vanishes into the earth.

But this spring, there are so many worms.  And mommy has a meeting, so can we just skip that one? Please?

So many earthworms, so little time.

Does your day feel like that?

Do you show up at work in the morning and look out over a vast sea of things to be done?  How many earthworms can one person save?

And what about the things that never quite make it onto the to-do list?  The important, but maybe not-so-urgent things, like getting that blood test, or visiting your mother, or (gasp) writing that newsletter?

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

Unless You’re Sam

Sam would happily chew up his entire morning saving earthworms.  He never quite grows tired of it.

“Look mommy, here’s another one!  And it’s moooving!”

On the other hand, the moment a favorite friend arrives, the worms will be forgotten.

The big picture is a scary, wonderful, important, meaningless thing.  Sometimes all you can do is focus on the little picture.  Sometimes you get to say, “I’m doing the best I can.”

No matter how big your plan, it can only be accomplished one earthworm at a time.

Last night I settled in for an evening of quality television viewing with my three year old.

Nick Jr, which bills itself as “Preschool on TV,” is chock-full of life lessons that are invaluable to any three year old.  But what about the rest of us?  Let’s find out:

Dora the Explorer

Moral: So what if your cousin’s quinceanera can’t start until you deliver her crown and shoes? Let’s mambo the whole way!

Dora’s cousin, Daisy, is turning 15 and it’s time for her special party. Someone (probably Abuela) thought it would be a good idea to entrust the girl’s crown and shoes to a prepubescent girl of undetermined age and a monkey in red boots.

Rather than running straight to the party, or (gasp) riding with her parents, Dora and Boots practice their dancing en route, demonstrating that it’s never a bad time to mambo.

Egad, what if we all lived by these principles?

Grown up moral: Goals are great, but don’t forget to have fun along the way.

Go, Diego, Go!

Moral: The lights are green and the gates are up, so it’s safe to cross, but be careful you don’t lose your prairie dogs.

It’s hot on el rancho, and a Mexican prairie dog needs Diego’s help.  She can’t find any grass to eat or water to drink, and there are several dozen more mouths to feed back at the homestead.

Diego finds a new home for the prairie dogs, but to get there, he’s got to move the family across the railroad tracks. Rescue Pack transforms into a wagon to help them cross, but several prairie dogs bounce  out.

Diego has to help the dislodged prairie dogs cross the railroad tracks safely. After conducting several head counts (in English and Spanish), disaster is narrowly averted by watching the lights and gates closely and avoiding the wayward Bo Bo brothers.

What could it mean?

Grown up moral: Be vigilant. Those who have gone before left sign posts (often with flashing lights) to help you find your way.

Dora the Explorer (redux)

What can I say?  He really likes Dora.

Moral: When crocodiles want to eat your friend, you should help him by delivering sticky tape in the nick of time!

Benny the Bull’s hot air balloon has a hole in it, and he needs sticky tape to fix it. Dora has tape in her backpack, but they have to get it to Benny before his balloon crashes into Crocodile Lake.

That tape sure comes in handy. Along the way, Dora uses it to fix her backpack strap, repair the sail on Tico’s boat, secure a bird’s nest in a tree, climb a slippery rock, fix a broken rope ladder and, ultimately, repair Benny’s balloon.

What can we take away?

Grown up moral: When in doubt, sticky tape.

Or this: When you have sticky tape, everything looks like a gaping hole that can be fixed with sticky tape.

Okay, okay, this: Try to save your friends from crocodiles when you can.  You never know when you’ll need a helping hand.

Rules to live by, indeed.

I just passed a molasses truck on I-70.

I have to say, in all my years, I never considered the idea that one might transport molasses in a truck. I’m not talking about an 18 wheeler hauling bottles of molasses. I’m talking about a liquid transport truck with a spigot on the back.

My first thought was this: “I should run that truck off the road and stuck my face under the spigot.”

To my credit, I realized how completely gross that was about two seconds later. Not my best idea, but it did give me pause. What are the implications of having too much of a good thing?

My three year old can tell you that too much candy gives you a tummy ache (although this fact does not slow him down). Watching too much TV rots your brains, and eating too many twinkies makes your pants snug. But does this rule also apply to business life?

Too much information

There is no question we are bombarded by too much information.  I receive so many event and webinar invitations, I could do nothing but show up for stuff day in and day out.  Fascinating, but as any professional student can tell you, it doesn’t exactly pay the bills.

As far as brain candy is concerned, social networking is a slippery slope. Yeah, you can really develop some good relationships there, but it can also take over your whole day if you let it. I’d be embarrassed to admit how many times I found myself six links removed from a tweet and late for a meeting.

Too much work

Is there such a thing as too many clients? I guess that depends on how broke you are. But I’d take half a dozen really good clients over 30 argumentative ones. So yeah, I guess there is such a thing.

Many entrepreneurs talk about work-life balance.  This is a challenge whether you have one client or 100.  How do you turn it off when it’s time to go home? Competing demands make this a hard call. “Make more money” and “spend more time with the kids” are not cozy bedfellows.

Too many services

It’s not polite to say so, but many businesses simply try to do too much.  Sometimes this grows out of wanting to be Jacks and Jills of all Trades early in our business lives.  If someone asks us if we can do something, we say “Yes!”,  especially if there’s a check involved. Consequently, instead of focusing on one or two key services, we try to do too much and, ultimately, we do none of it well.

Consider pruning your services tree to focus on one or two things you can do better than anyone else.

Do you have too much of a good thing? Tell me in the comments.