I woke up and started scrolling. On the toilet, I started looking at my Apple watch: first, messages then email. Was there a text or anything on Messenger? A complaint email and a note to send more information, which I mull over as I brew a Nespresso. Coffee in hand, I plop down to write—but first—grab my phone.

“Life is short, and Art is long,” so begins Hippocrates “Aphorisms,” which could be the greatest take away from his complete body of work.

Mrs. Eastman introduced me to The Odyssey in tenth grade. She handed us the classic Fitzgerald translation. The exciting twists and turns of the plot enticed me. I felt enthralled with Odysseus’s adventures with the sirens, slipping past Polyphemus, the bone crunching Cyclops who was blinded by Nobody, his swimming between Charybdis and man eating Scylla.

    In a marathon, at kilometer 30, there is a phenomenon called "the wall." At this wall, the body, which stores enough sugars to keep going for about 30 kilometers, stops moving. Runners who have completed more than a few marathons, at certain times in their career, experience this wall. Paula Radcliffe, who holds the world record for the fastest marathon run by a woman, hit the wall in the 2004 Olympics. She faded, and then stopped, slumping down on the pavement next to the spectators, crying. Hitting that wall is not a pretty sight.

What book would you take with you if you were stranded on a desert island?

The majority of management training centers around team management (hire, train, and retain), individual performance, and exceeding targets. Yet, more careers crash and burn from the neglect of managing up, not down.

APAC leaders find business in Japan bewildering, challenging, or just ignore the differences and blunder ahead to the detriment of the business. Headquarters demands results, but instead listen to familiar excuses.

Sail into the cave.

A sales person will drive an extra mile, make the extra cold call, spend longer on that RFP, do a bit more research on her client, read the client’s annual report before walking into the conference, work as many hours or persistent days just to get the job done. The best salespeople, like the best athletes, move beyond required action and into the exceptional, whether going through sales training, putting added information in the database, or making more sales calls—they take the one extra step others ignore, forget, or neglect. The great sales person knows that in the sales race, there is only first place or nothing; no medals are awarded for second best sales person—only unemployment checks.

営業担当（セールスパーソン）は常に、コールドコールを一本多くかけたり、提案依頼書に少しだけ多く時間をかけたり、クライアントの調査にもう一歩踏み込んだり、商談の前にクライアント企業の年度報告書を読み込んだり、仕事を終わらせるために残業や休日出勤をしたりの毎日です。一方で最高の営業担当（ベストセールスパーソン）は、プロアスリートのように、「求められているよりも一歩踏み込んで」結果を出します。これはセールストレーニングへの出席、データベースに情報の追加更新、セールスコールを多くかけるといった、誰もがわかっていながら無視したり、忘れていたり、できないと諦めていることです。ベストセールスパーソンは常に、営業成績のレースには一番しか存在しないと言うことを熟知しています。営業成績二番目以降にはメダルもトロフィーもありません。ただ「一番ではない」という結果だけが存在するのです。

People make the world go around. They teach you what is possible and that nothing is impossible. Be inspired; read biographies. If you can unlearn the "how to" of our society--getting that "right answer" out of a white paper, and  replace it with the "who to" attitude, you'll open up creativity to help boost success. You can find out what is universal, what works throughout the ages. Start to meet these people, living and dead and learn from them. 

After a few years, Orestes returns. He kills his mom and step-dad and becomes king.

They all live happily ever after.

What book would you take with you if you were stranded on a desert island?

The Greeks, however, ask what is honorable and civilized. Who are we as a people and what actions reflect civility and honor. Is the agency in ourselves or in the hands of fate and the gods?

I swear by Apollo the god of poetry and song, Dionysus, the god of theatre and wine (we will need lots of wine), and Athena (because she is very cool), that I will read the Great Books to the best of my ability and seek out teachers and hold them in esteem. I

Think back to the facts about your parents and assemble their story. I would imagine gaps and unexpected, hidden secrets would remain hidden.

Just completed Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, reminding me of the summer in Marble, Colorado