I was just reminded of a comment I made a few years ago.  I will keep the reason why I was reminded private.  The comment itself is the takeaway.  At the time it just rolled off my tongue but the reaction I received kept it in the back of my mind for years.

Me: “I need you to pull all their trades since Monday at 10am and back into their positions as of that time.”

Employee: “I don’t really want to go through all those positions and re-create their market risk as of two days ago.  Do I really have to go through all that?”

Me: After a meaningful pause so that those around us who had heard the interaction to this point would learn the lesson, “I am sure you do not want to.  That’s why its called, ‘work’.  If you got to do whatever you wanted to do when you are here, it would be called, “play”.  But its not.  Its called, ‘work’ for a reason.”

Too many people these days spend too much time at work doing personal things.  When its time to work, line up all the items you have to do.  Do them.  See if there is more that can be done.  Do those too if possible.  Then be done.  Give yourself a small pat on the back.  Leave.  Then come back and do it again tomorrow.

So the NSA is harvesting our phone calls and e-mails and web searches.  I am not totally surprised.  But I am surprised at the reaction or rather the lack of reaction to it.  It goes to show that most Americans feel completely disassociated with government.  Americans should be (and maybe are) unhappy with this turn of events.  But even most of the educated people I know and speak to feel that there is nothing they can do about it.  Government is too far removed from my day-to-day life.  They will vote every four years but by then they will have forgotten the significant issues and instead be inundated by 30 clips that the two parties want you to focus on.  The level of disenchantment with government is embodied by the passing recently of Senator Lautenberg of New Jersey.

He passed away at age 89 as an active, elected Senator from New Jersey since 1982.  1982.  He has been in Washington as a Senator for 31 years.  Most recently re-elected in 2009 when he was 85 years old.  I mean no offense to the man because I did not know him, or know of him until his recent passing.

But it is actually possible that he was an effective representative of the citizens of New Jersey for the last few years?  He had been living in the highest of socioeconomic and political circles for three decades.  He resided in Washington DC for most of each year.  He was 80+ years old.  What did he know or understand about the plight of the poor and homeless in Camden?  Had he experienced the pain and suffering of the families of shooting victims in Newark?  When was the last time he filled his own car up at the gas pump?  Bought groceries?  Again, I do not mean to pick on someone that I do not know.  There are many in the highest level of national politics that are similar.  John Kerry of Massachusetts has never had a private sector job in his life.  He has live a life of luxury since marrying his billionaire-heiress wife.

It is all part of the current establishment passively working to disenchant the American public.  Get the majority of Americans to tune out the sequesters, the partisan bickering, the broad invasion of privacy.  Get us to just shrug and move on with our day-to-day life and leave the politicians to do whatever they want because we can not do anything about it.  And I am a part of that.  I may be a bit more active in the steps that I have always take to protect my privacy, but too often I shrug off what I believe to be government intrusions into my life.  We all do.  And that is the way Washington DC wants it to be.  They win when we shrug.

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment,” George Orwell wrote in “1984.” “How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to.”

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From Pastor Martin Moeller, 1945:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

When are we as Americans going to speak up about the continued encroachment by our government on our civil liberties?

Went back to the original blog posting by Maroun Najjar as I was closing my browser window.  Nothing special, just closing the window and thinking, Thanks for a good post, random person.  Then I saw it.  The thing in his post that hooked me in the first place.  Under the picture, the sub headline, “Sleep is the Force Multiplier.”

“Force Multiplier.”  US Green Beret’s were given that task when created by President John F Kennedy.  Derek Sivers uses that term liberally when engaged in speaking events like TED.  “Force Multiplier”.  Its what every entrepreneur with a vision needs to have, and to be able to do.  “Force Multiplier”

That term in Maroun’s post is what really hooked me.  And its a reminder of what one needs to have in the back of your mind each day if you want to operate at a higher level.  There are so many tools, communication methods, and ways to multiply one’s force.  Force Multipliers.  Make sure you are aware of what yours are and make sure you use them well.

I’m back.  Took a break.  Had a busy schedule and also lost a bit of motivation, but I am back.  The sun was up at 5:12 this morning and so was I.

I am starting to get more followers on Twitter.  I am not yet public with this blog and am not actively working to promote me, my thoughts or the projects I am working on.  But some interesting people are starting to follow me on Twitter.  Mukund Mohan (@mukundmohan) just found me and I took a look at his Twitter profile.  The most recent tweet had to do with Sleep and I followed the links.  A great posting on Sleep is found below.

View at Medium.com

The post contains valuable information that is presented in an interesting and engaging manner (customer-centric, bullet points), and has a sales slant to it.  great inbound marketing.

I’m back.  Let’s go.