Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

So I just found our that Flickr lets me blog straight from their site. Very convenient. I wanted to use this photo as an illustration for my “How to deal with scheduling conflicts” blog but I don’t know how to do that just yet…

Aha, that seems to be a simple ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ action too.

If you are new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thank you for visiting and I am looking forward to hearing your comments!

Want to ask me a personal question? Contact me at boris@bomega.com

 Subscribe to my Feed!

I often forget things. I actually forget most things! Often, I don’t even remember what I did yesterday. And I’m not sorry!

The reason I don’t remember a lot of things is because I’m not interested in some things. And for every thing I forget I remember a lot of other very important things.

Lets say I would ask you, without looking at your calendar, what meetings you have next week. You might remember 3 meetings out of 6, right? And I assume that the meeting ‘Talk about promotion’, ‘Accept Nobel price’ and ‘First date with lovely girl from accounting’ didn’t slip your mind?

And why is that? It is because those meetings are important to you. Some meetings you don’t even need to write down. They keep you awake at night!

You brain actually works like a bullshit filter. It filters out all the boring and unimportant meetings and makes you remember only the good stuff.

And why not put this instrument to work instead of blaming it for forgetting your boring meetings? Intuitively your brain decides for you what is and what isn’t important in your life. Why not trust it a bit more? If you keep forgetting about a meeting my guess is that it actually isn’t important or that you actually aren’t interested in the content of that meeting. So try to get rid of it.

There used to be a time when I would be frustrated about forgetting certain things. Now I’m not frustrated anymore but interested. Now, when I forget something, I wonder why and try to act on my conclusions.

If you forget EVERY meeting in your calendar you might want to go and look for more interesting work…

You are not late if they know you are late.

Think about that the next time you are going to be late at a meeting. Most of the times you are late you actually know you are going to be late way in advance. But you deny it, try to avoid it and then do it anyway.

But you will find out that if you call, even if it is only 10 minutes in advance, that you might not make it people will hugely appreciate that.

So, the next time you have a meeting and you think you might not make it in time pick up the phone and say this

‘Hi, we have a meeting in 15 minutes and I’m rushing your way now but I might be about 5 tot 10 minutes late. Is that a problem for you?’

I often do this, even if I know I’m actually going to be right on time. The reason is that people are usually happy with the extra 5 minutes they can spend answering their email or making one more phone-call. And if I’m on time they are even more impressed with me for making the extra effort.

So remember; You are not late if they know you are late.

That is a weird tip isn’t it? I know and it isn’t a universal tip. If you bump into someone on the train please DO apologize. If you you forget your girlfriends birthday I suggest you apologize profusely.

But in a business-situation you better not apologize.

A few years ago I had a meeting with a manager from a large company and I was a few minutes late. So as I sat down I started to explain why I was late and how sorry I was. He interrupted me and told me…

‘Never Apologize!’

I responded…

‘Excuse me?’

…

Then he explained

‘If you are late, missed a deadline or did something wrong the people who like and respect you will understand that you didn’t mean for this to happen. Your excuse will only embarrass them. The people who dislike you will take advantage of you putting yourself in that position. So don’t apologize. Just do better next time’

I never forgot his lesson and am frequently reminded of it in meetings. I see other people come in late and starting to apologize. It never looks good and they are always attacked or reprimanded by someone who dislikes them or is happy to finally get even.

If you are late for a meeting with several people don’t apologize when you enter the room. Just smile and sit down. Just act as if it is completely natural that you came in later. They will assume that whatever happened must have been mighty important, otherwise you would have made up an excuse and told that!

And don’t let it happen again.

It’s sunday evening and I’m waiting for Binja Mager from TED magazine who wants to interview me.

Tommorow at 5pm I’ll be doing a Skype interview with someone from Seattle.

In a few hours I’ll be in a studio talking with Herbert Blankesteyn on Business News Radio about the future of Wimax. Other guest will be Simon Hania (XS4ALL) and someone from Casema who claims to have Wimax working. Mirko Mensink, Director Strategy & Partnership Management, from Casema who told about their WiMax efforts.

I have spent some time looking into Wimax right after we sold HubHop (Renamed KPN Hotspots) to KPN so I have a bit of knowledge on the subject.

I brought my Wi-Fi enabled Nikon Coolpix S6 with me to the studio. I only had a few seconds before the show started and hardly know how it works so thats why the shots are a bit hazy and unsharp.

The Wi-Fi feature is cool, if I could get it to work…

UPDATE: you can listen to the broadcast here: http://eeuw.blogspot.com/2006/08/17-augustus-wimax-draadloos-en-sneller.html
.

.