Sunday Morning Ponderings

Sundays are my favorite mornings - maybe even more so than Saturday mornings. It's trite, I know. New York Times, homemade Chai (I'm getting better), CBS Sunday Morning (Charles Osgood in his bow-tie is cute), and PJs until an embarrassing hour.

This Sunday is no different. Except for the theme that's formulating in my head: Surrounding Yourself by Good People.

Three observsations:
• VF's recent cover story and photography "Laughing Matter: Comedy's New Legends"
• Today's NY Times article in the Style section about "The Fempire"
• (This is an ongoing observation) Plannerette's unspoken (and self-induced) knowledge competition with her beau, who's one of the smartest person I know

Like the rest of the country, I am enamored of the comedy stylings of Andy Samberg's Lonely Island, Apatown, Tina Fey and her SNL tribe, The Fempire and more. In their own mediums, they are smart, insightful and just plain funny. I find myself hungry for content, scouring for behind the scenes footage, articles, quotes, and more from each of them, "wasting" hours for laugh. Besides a good laugh, I think there is bigger lesson that I have realized: individually these people are smart and funny on their own, but they are better because they are part of a core group. This group allows them to bounce their ideas off each other, test their writing, build and improve.

If you read the above articles, it's clear that great ideas are coming from the people alone, but from the group as well. The group makes them each BETTER than they'd be alone.

This is a lesson to me: one that I guess has been percolating for me. Surround yourself by people that make you better - listen to them, use them to bounce ideas off of, argue with them, call them on their arguments, ask questions. Doing so will make your work better, smarter, and in the end - if these people are colleagues - bringing them into your process allows them to buy into the thoughts early on, thus hopefully ensuring the success of your work. (I wish this was always the case.)

Plannerette's beau is a perfect example: as one of the smartest people I know, he makes me a better planner just because he questions things that I don't always question, he seeks out and finds trends and observations in other areas/categories that I don't innately have as much interest in, he shares this information to ultimately allow me to broaden my knowledge base. It's my job to take and synthesize that information in a way that makes sense of things.

So, the moral of the story for this junior planner: surround yourself with good, smart people you can trust, who you can be yourself around and use them to share and better your ideas.

I guess it's not rocket science: it's no different than seeking friends which we've been doing since kindergarden. But it makes a difference. I have seen it happen in my work world time and time again.