My bold claims: 1. Every feature within a website RFP can be delivered with a low, medium, and high level of effort (LOE) solution. 2. While the difference between low and high can be measured in single or double digit percentage (e.g., 1-99%), the difference can sometimes span several orders of magnitude (10X to 10,000X). 3. One or two of these massive discrepancies can kill the budget and, as a result, the entire project. 4. We can learn a lot by reviewing GI Joe, the line item scenario.

Defined: A modern lifestyle in which people expend only the minimum effort to complete a task and rush from one appointment to another. A trap where we attempt to compress our life into smaller and smaller boxes of time until there is nothing left inside the box.

Imagine a situation as devastating as killing someone that you love. I tend to live a very sheltered life. I also refrain from watching horror movies. Such thoughts like this are not common in my everyday experience. I found myself speechless amidst strangers as a young man told me his story. And it wasn’t just the story that made me tear up. It was the complete lack of emotion in his being as he rattled off the sequence of events as if he was reading a weather report. It was just three months ago that he got his parents (straight-laced, white-collar professionals) hooked on heroin.

A simple question that will surface assumptions about the needs of everyone affected by a task or a project. I recommend making it a mantra if you are a project manager.

Earlier in the year, my brother and sister-in-law made the bold but necessary decision to leave the hustle and bustle of Boston and seek a lifestyle that better matched their evolved values. This resulted in them putting in an offer on a house in Deer Isle, a place that I never heard of in an area of Maine that I had never visited. Truth be told I was excited for them but skeptical that it would be a place that I could call home.

“Put your oxygen mask on first before helping others.” This phrase is overused both in airplanes safety videos and in self-help books. It’s a simple yet important reminder that we are of no use to others if we’re unable to help ourselves. Unfortunately, despite understanding and agreeing with this philosophy, 2017 was the year that many of my closest family members (myself included) almost drown trying to save others.

Yet another example of a physical limitation that can be overcome through the combination of strategy and mental focus.

Toes all pointed away from me.
The footprints…
Their strides…
Were they sprinting?
Invisible lines connected the different sizes
(stamped into the wet, coarse, cold sand),
which lost definition and proximity
with distance away from the place
where the waves’ hand gently stroked the sand
as the tide began to rise.

The situation? Rather than the person working with you to efficiently and effectively achieve the goal at hand, they resist (or all-out fight) you along the way, which requires you to expend 10 to 1000 times the effort. In short, instead of sprinting side by side to the finish line, you’re dragging them there.

It’s one thing to read between the lines, which is a useful skill to fill in missing details that are either communicated non-verbally or not communicated at all by someone intentionally trying to evade an open and honest dialogue.