White Space:
The Magic Ingredient for Your Busy Life
Part 1
I come from a Jewish family, but we are not candle-lighting Jewish. We are more Woody Allen Jewish. Translation: We do not go to temple or avoid bacon; we just feel neurotic all the time for no apparent reason. Where we are very Jewish is in our love for baked goods. And that’s why it was so lucky that my grandparents used to live next door to the K-Street Deli in Brooklyn. They made a rye bread that was heralded as the best rye bread in all the five boroughs of New York and so every Friday afternoon my grandma used to send my grandpa to buy one fresh loaf of this delicious bread. All was right with the world. Except when he was waited on at the bakery by a sexy Russian sales girl who worked there from time to time. My grandfather Stanley was a timid man. He would walk into the bakery, the little bell would ding-a-ling-a-ling, and he'd walk up and say, "I would like one loaf of dat great rye bread, please." At this point she would whap open the bag, toss in the bread, turn to him with just a hint of flour in her cleavage and sexily say, "Vadyelse?"
He didn't want to disappoint her so he would add something, something he had not previously intended to buy. "Uhh…” he’d say, “And a box of apricot cookies, please.” In went the cookies, and back she came.
"Vadyelse?"
And on and on and on this would go. Finally he'd come home to climb the steps of his brownstone apartment with two huge bags overflowing with cookies and pies and cakes.
My grandma, the matriarch of the family, was about as fierce in bark as bite. As she waited for him at the top of the steps, you couldn’t tell which was going to come first. She would see the spoils of his outing, put her hands on her hips and say, "Ohhh...I see you got some nice treats from ‘Miss Vadyelse’ today. That's good….’Cause you're not getting any from me."
The voice of “Vadyelse” is not unfamiliar today because we live in a culture that loves quantity. Our colloquial language tells the tale: All you can eat, shop till you drop, two for one, the bottomless cup, buy one get one free, more, more, more. We can never be too rich or too thin or too accessorized or too credentialed or too spiritual or too evolved or philanthropic and it seems whatever we do and however hard we work, we get to the end of an exhausting, maximized day of doing our best, lie our weary heads down and hear a little voice say, “Vadyelse?” Vadyelse can you buy? Vadyelse can you achieve? Vadyelse can you conquer? It is exhausting to live each day in the Culture of Insatiability but we do. And the trickiest thing about the voice of “Vadyelse,” whether in my family’s folklore or in your head, is that whenever you get where you think you're going, she moves the finish line.
In business, knowing how to tame the beasts of pace and quantity can be a great gift to those around you and also an important professional base of information. Wellness is no longer a tangential side dish reserved for ladies luncheons or for spouse programs. In 2001, the National Council for Compensation Insurance found out that U.S. businesses spent $150 billion dollars a year on stress-related disability and they spent even more when you factor in the other tension-related costs to retention, focus and customer satisfaction. On top of that, when an employee finally chooses to leave an environment where the pressure is too much, the cost of replacing that person, factoring in lost time recruiting, rehiring and retraining, can total $40,000 to $140,000 per person. Within this lighthearted and personal conversation, you will find truths and tools that profoundly affect your bottom-line.
We are doing more with less. We feel pressure to successfully balance family and work. Our moods and health often suffer as a result of the first two. The a la carte menu of solutions is quite long but let me give you The House Special. There is one thing, simple but not easy, that is the antidote to the graceless hamster wheel of busy-ness and overwhelm. It is called White Space. It is not a metaphor, a spiritual concept or a new aromatherapy scent. White Space means just that - White Space. Open your calendar and see if you have any. Is every available space crammed with things to do? Read on.
White Space on your calendar is a marvelous addition to the music and flow of your day and gives so much. White Space is a place for creativity and inspiration, for instinct and improvisation. It is the place where emergencies are meant to fall without displacing anything. It gives us time to synchronize our human pace with the pace that technologies and driving markets demand.
Continue reading Part 2 >
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