It’s been said over and over that all good things must come to an end. Where some ends are because something is broken or changed, it can be simply because something has come to its natural conclusion. That latter case is what I am doing with a writing journal, as I have recorded thoughts on its last blank page.

In the past I have talked about how I write out most all of my blog posts. Call me old-fashioned, but it works for me. Of course sometimes I just put fingers to the keyboard (all 2 of them) For those I have written (read: printed) most were captured in a journal.

This particular journal is a college-ruled composition notebook I bought at Target on September 5, 2012, and I only remember that as it was a Target-brand notebook, and the day I bought it I wrote my first post in it, Remember Team Morale During Work Stress. Since then it has captured many blog posts, brainstorming for blog topics, scratch paper for other uses – such as my kids stats from their last doctor’s appointment – as well as a doodle pad for said kids. Where many things were written from front to back, others started from the back to front, and the last post I wrote in there, My Takeaways From The Book 52 Motivational Quotations For Salespeople By Tom Cruz, was about two-thirds of the way through it. That being said, it was a very organized collection.

What To Do?

So what do I do with a journal that has traveled just about as much as I have over the last several years? Do I simply recycle it, shred it, or save it? I am not about to start saving notebooks, especially as I am trying, with moderate success, to declutter my life. But as I simply can’t discard it altogether, I cut the spine from it and fed it into my Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner, saved it as a PDF document, and have archived it with my other personal documents. That way, if 100 years from now someone wants to know how The Hot Iron was created, they can look at a PDF file rather than yellowing pages in a dusty box. That is if that dusty box wasn’t long tossed out by my future grandchildren first.

This post you are now reading was written out in another journal I bought at a Walgreens last summer and wrote my first post on the book Scrum, as that day I did not have my other journal with me and I needed something to capture my writing, It too has had some other uses, some I hope to share in the future.

What do you use to capture your creativity? Please share in the comments of this post… and let me know if you typed it straight from your mind or after transcribing it from paper.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Blogging • Build • (0) Comments • Permalink

We all sell. Whether the word “sales” is in our job title or not, we all “sell” in some regards. From persuading a solution at work to convincing someone to date us to everything in between and all around, there is some element of selling in our lives.

Where we can succeed in selling, many times we do not. And when we do not, we can react to it in any number of ways. Whether we like it or not, we have to try to sell again. For some, getting back into the proverbial saddle is easy, and for others or just other times, we may need help. One way to get that help is from words of encouragement.

My good friend Tom Cruz has had the word “sales” on his business cards over his entire career (and when I say good friend, I stood up in his wedding and once flew live lobsters out to his house in LA from Boston, but I digress). When I heard he wrote a book titled 52 Motivational Quotations for Salespeople, I knew I had to read it. Of course it is always to support a friend, bit I knew it would be a great collection and motivator as well.

Friend bias aside, I enjoyed this short book. Each quote is on a separate page, allowing you to tear them out and hang them up. As with any book, I had a few takeaways from it:

We need to find what works for us – Reading through a book of motivational quotes in itself won’t necessarily make it a better day. Or maybe it will. We have to find what works for us, though trial and error, and it may be a third-party sharing something with you.

Explore beyond words – We often hear names of people and quotes that have been attributed to them. But who are these people? Were they business or religious leaders? Were they ax murderers or musicians? Does the quote define them or just confuse you? As I went thru this book I ended up searching several names I did not know.

Write your story – Where these quotes are just that, individual sets of words from others, combined they are part of my friend Tom Cruz’s life journey, and thus tell part of his story. We all have a story to tell or at least record for curious others – now or in the future – whether our child or a stranger. No matter who, our story may be of interest to someone someday.

Note Tom did not ask me to write this, nor did he give me a copy of it. I will make sure to give him a signed copy of my future book someday! As I pass along book I read to others, I am sending this one to a common friend of both of ours, who also works in sales, and should publish his own book too.

Were you intrigued or inspired to get 52 Motivational Quotations for Salespeople? Have you thought of publishing your own quotes? I welcome your thoughts in the comments to this post.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Book Take-Aways • Business • Thrive • (0) Comments • Permalink

Typically the inspiration for something I write here at The Hot Iron comes from something that impacts me. It could be a conversation I have with someone. It could be a book I read or a product I try. It could be something I experience. Whatever it is, it will drive me to put pen to paper – or fingers to keyboard – to share it with the people I am fortunate are reading here.

Annually something occurs that I have addressed in various ways, the anniversary of the launch of this blog. With my Hello World post on December 30, 2006, I met a goal of launch a blog by the end of that year, and also launched something that is now entering its tenth year, racking up over 800 posts and over 7 million page hits.

Writing this post is always different from the others. Rather than try to come up with something profound or prolific (or any other adjective beginning with “pro”), I will simply say thank you! Thank you to all who read this and all who have inspired me to write over the last year and years. I have gotten more excited about blogging in 2015, and I am looking forward to more sharing and conversations in 2016.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Announcements • Blogging • (3) Comments • Permalink

As the saying goes... on any given Sunday, any team in the NFL can beat any other team. What late NFL commissioner Bert Bell said decades ago still rings true today, as can be seen with a recent game involving my beloved Patriots and a certain team from Philadelphia. This parity in competition is good for the game of football, but not always good for the fans, especially if they can't get in to see their team due to the increasing cost of NFL tickets.

As someone who had Patriots season tickets during very lean years for the team, as well as traveling to see the team in other NFL cities where it was either extremely easy or hard to get tickets, I have known first-hand the impact on team performance and the impact on going to a football game. When the folks at TickPick created this infographic on winning and the impact on ticket cost for all NFL teams, I had to see it, and they have allowed me to share it with you here.

Click on the sample of the infographic above, or click this link to view the NFL football ticket cost infographic from TickPick full-sized.

As you can see, there's a variety of percent increases in ticket values and costs based on if a football team is a winner or not. What's also interesting to see is the difference in ticket costs. Though the value and cost of New England Patriots tickets can increase by 78% based on their winning, the cost at $479.63 is less than the Chicago Bears at $770.42, whose price only increases by 53%. Knowing a little about both teams, the Patriots base ticket costs are much less to begin with than the football team who plays a couple of blocks from me.

Where this infographic is for football, it is telling for all sports and events. Next baseball season it will be a lot easier and affordable to get a ticket to see David “Big Papi” Ortiz play in his final year here against the Chicago White Sox in US Cellular Field than it will at Fenway Park in Boston. I learned this first-hand when I moved to Chicago the day the Red Sox were playing the White Sox and everywhere I looked I saw Red Sox jerseys, a surreal scene to say the least. Other impacts, including stadium size and season ticket base, play into this as well.

Enjoy this infographic and I welcome your thoughts and stories in the comments to this post if you have experienced this as well and have traveled to see your team in another city due to ticket cost. Thank you to TickPick for letting me share this infographic.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Diversions • Guest Post • Strategize • (0) Comments • Permalink

It came to me a while back, something I guess I always knew subconsciously but only then came to the forefront of my mind – most people spend most of their time around their job. I then decided to put fingers to technology to see if I was right, and here’s my analysis and further thoughts on it.

Jobs and all their trappings

When thinking about how we spend our time, our jobs tend to be at the top of our list. This is of course assuming we don’t sleep most of our lives, but I digress. The job itself is the major time hoarder, assuming the typical 8-hour day. But if your day is anything but typical, it in itself is probably more than 8 hours, give or take a few minutes to a few hours.

As the TV infomercials say, “But wait, there’s more!” There’s the commute to work, both to and from it. You then need to prepare to go to work – wake up, shower (hopefully), eat and of course thinking about work. After work, there is probably some decompression, which involves more thought. If you work for the bare-minimum tech-savvy company, you can probably check your work email on your mobile device, and that adds up quickly, whether it is during the day or off-hours, including weekend. Then there's time devoted to things like doctor's appointments if things aren't so great on the job, but I don't have to go down that path here, do I?

Speaking of those off-hours and weekends, you are also thinking about work in addition to being connected to it. You may also be shopping for work, whether it is clothes, food or other supplies to get you through the day. And let’s face it, you may even take time after (or before) hours and on the weekends to actually do work, taking those time-consuming thoughts into even more time consuming actions.

So what’s your point Mike?

Now that I have set a somewhat somber point, you may be asking why? Why even bring this up?

Where I have thought about this very topic for a while, I wanted to write it out to make it real, tangible, and in my own face, and as a result in yours as well. By doing so, it is a realization that this will play into my upcoming goals for the new year. Where this time allotment towards my job may not be a direct or the primary input to my goals and decisions, but acknowledging it, I am realizing it will have some impact on it. From what I buy to where I live to what I do outside of work to whatever I may not have even thought of, the amount of time that my job currently occupies my time will come into consideration.

This time consumption perhaps consumes you as well – hopefully less, but perhaps even more. And let’s face it, it consumes most everyone. I say most everyone as I realize there are those who may not have to or want to work as much, and have the ability to disconnect from it. It may be because they are wealthy, live a simpler life, have a business or job that does not require as much of their time, work part-time but make enough to make them happy, or something else I couldn’t possibly fathom, but would love to.

Even if your job takes up most of your time, that may be ok, providing you love it, or maybe just a strong like. Or it’s convenient to where you live so your commute time is shorter. Or whatever it is or are, when you look at it written out, I hope you are at a minimum content with it.

The lay of the land

Now that I have painted the picture, do I (or you) want to hang it on the wall, or change it? I am not trying to draw any conclusions here – just simply putting it out as I said earlier, but reserving the right to refer to this in future writings.

I welcome your thoughts on this in the comments to this post… and please leave out any specifics about your job in those comments!

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Blogging • Business • Diversions • Strategize • Thrive • (0) Comments • Permalink