About Stuart G. Hall

Making a positive difference one day at a time. #London #Leicester

Natural variation sounds a lot less boring than it really is

Sorry about the title. What I wanted to say was this. A boiler engineer from British Gas came round yesterday after we’d lost power for the second time in two weeks. so help fix it. He got to work, got out his laptop to do a diagnostic, and did a good job. The engineer, Kirk, at the end of his work said he could also fix the cause of why the boiler heating wasn’t working, blocked hydraulic pipes which other BG engineers said were unfixable, which thus made me smile. He explained that he had a lot of experience of the boiler model we had from his work in Islington and Bethnal Green where many were the same Valliant model as ours. But that it was funny all you had to do was go to the next borough and there were a different set of boilers. Funny, I thought later in the pub talking to Shirley, because he’d just reminded me of a powerful teaching from the ‘University of Life’, that not all boilers are the same, and not all boiler engineers are the same.

What’s great is that this principle applies to so many different things in life. Just when you get thinking all cab drivers are unhappy dudes, you’ll meet a cheery one with a great sense of humour. Just when you have given up testing a growth hacking hypothesis to death and are about to give up, you’ll get a result which suggests another positive direction. Natural variation is out there, take advantage of it!

How to hit a target with a ball without actually throwing it!

See the scene from 28 Days when baseball star Eddie gives Gwen (Sandra Bullock, Hollywood’s best paid actress in 2014) a lesson on how to hit the target – focus on getting yourself ready – rather than just trying to hit the target. It’s the key to success. As I couldn’t find a movie clip with the spoken lines, here’s the script from the scene between Eddie and Gwen:

What are you doing?
Great. Another thing l suck at.
Well, hold on. Gwen, hey.
Please.
Come here a second.
-What?
-What were you thinking about?
When you threw the ball,
what were you thinking about?
l don’t know. The mating habits
of African ants. l don’t know.
The striped thing.
You were thinking about
hitting the mattress.
Well, you know, it might sound funny
to you, but that’s all wrong.
When you lock in on the strike zone…
…it’s looking about
the size of a peanut.
And you think, ”Damn. l gotta get
that little ball in there?”
You’ve psyched yourself
right out of the game.
The strike zone, the call…
…the count, the batter,
forget all that.
You gotta think about the little
things. The things you can control.
You can control your stance,
your balance…
…your release, your follow-through.
Think about those little things
and only those little things….
You know? l mean….
Because when you let go of the ball…
…it’s over.
You don’t have a say in what happens.
That’s somebody else’s job.
-l want you to try this.
-l don’t want to.
l’m just curious.
-l don’t want to do it.
-l just want to see how you hold it.
Don’t grab it, don’t grab it.
Look at it, look at it.
Hold it like an egg.
Loose. Easy. All right?
Let me get a look at it
from over there.
Let me get a look at it
from over there.
All right.
l want you to throw it over here
nice and easy.
Point at me with your left hand.
Throw it where you’re pointing at.
Better. But you nutted the batter…
…and the other team’s beating
the crap out of you.
Try again. Heads up.
l want you to do it again.
This time, shut your eyes.
-What?
-Just shut your eyes.
-So weird.
-Fire away.
Right there.
That is a strike in any country.