My day by L.Vaughan Spencer
L.Vaughan Spencer (friends and admirers call him “L-Vo”) is the author of Who Moved My Cheeseburger? and Chicken Nuggets for the Soul.
L.Vaughan Spencer (friends and admirers call him “L-Vo”) is the author of Who Moved My Cheeseburger? and Chicken Nuggets for the Soul.
He is considered a leading “trendologist”, a word he coined for tax purposes. Having looked at Generation X, then Generation Y, he is focused on the prospects for Generation Z. What comes after that remains unclear. He did his MBA at the Jimmy Connors Institute of Management over the course of a weekend.
I divide my time into Chill Days and Stress Days (not just any stress: “succeeder stress” or “succ-stress”, as I call it).
A Chill Day is when I have no meetings or deadlines; I have three or four of these a week. I rise late, wear loose, saffron-coloured clothes, have carrot juice for breakfast and visualize kayaking to success.
On a Succ-Stress Day, I rise early, dress in black and load up with good carbs, like Motivational Muffins (recipe downloadable at thesucceeder.com for $9.99). Succ-Stress Days are further divided into Donkey Days and Wow Days. Wow Days are for doing things that make people go “Wow!” – like getting to grips with health and safety legislation, unveiling the new menu in the canteen or asking the US government for a billion-dollar bailout. Donkey Days are for paying gas bills, collecting receipts into an envelope or seeing marriage guidance counsellors.
The credit crunch means there’s no more free lunch, nor even a free drink. You can’t leverage your beverage. We’ve moved on from the information revolution to the empathy economy. When there’s no more cash, empathy is the only thing left. We must therefore focus on business basics: what you look like and how you feel. So I run a Business Boot Camp geared to these priorities. Here’s how the training day pans out:
06:30 AM Breakfast (Positive Porridge)
07:30 AM Business Basics I: Moisturizer
09:00 AM Movement and Dance, then Circle of Love
10:00 AM Business Basics II: Clothes – Are your Trousers Assertive Enough?
11:00 AM Break (in silence, while everyone reads The FT’s “How To Spend It” advice)
11:15 AM Case Study: “Look at Me” – L. Vaughan Spencer
12:00 PM Drawing The Future – Change Through Crayons (with a critique by L-Vo) My Day
1:00 PM Lunch (salad and song)
2:00 PM Personal Testimonies (each participant tells his or her own story), then . . . L-Vo tells them where they have gone wrong.
3:45 PM Discounted Cost Analysis
4:00 PM Break
4:30 PM Positive Thinking (each participant addresses the question: “What have I done quite well this week?”)
6:00 PM Dinner (cooked by those whose crayon drawings weren’t good enough)
Are you stuck being a Secret Santa this year for someone you don’t like? Then buy my new book, Don’t Be Needy, Be Succeedy: The A to Zee of Motivitality (Profile Books, 2008). There are many others out there, like Malcolm Wellglad’s The Point of Tipping (a paean to customer service), Bling (his treatise on the use of jewellery in boardroom politics) and Out(right)Liars (his thoughts on the banking crisis). His books will make you think. Not mine. His are
