Remember when business schools advised making a five year plan?

Too much changes in five years to plan that far ahead and in fact, it’s hard to see from now until next New Year’s Day.

A plan that is revised no more than annually is the framework – that’s why teachers update their courses to keep them relevant.

Most importantly, remain nimble – the ability to change, adapt, add and delete making you more open to opportunities that cannot be seen in advance.

Dwelling in the past is often an unhappy place, focusing on joy is a better option.

6 proven ways to accomplish a mood upgrade.

1. Try to solve your problems before bed.
2. Think of five people who care about you for a few minutes every morning before getting out of bed.
3. Meet people including your family as if you haven’t seen them for a long time.
4. Try not to change anyone because it is a sure way to unhappiness.
5. Observe something new every day don’t just go through the usual motions of daily living.
6. Instead of judging people, silently wish them well because everyone is hurting not just us.

Our stress is not caused because we’re weak – it’s our brains, it’s the way they function so trying to be stronger and better may not be smarter.

Multi-tasking makes things worse the brain developed over ages cannot deal with it even if our digital devices can.

96 out of 100 events each day are good, four are bad according to Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Amit Sood.

Focus on the 96% good not the 4% bad as a major way to start making a dent relieving stress.

One of baseball’s greatest athletes ever was more than a baseball card, homerun record or statistics that those behind him are chasing today – it was the grace of making a difference.

Aaron was a civil rights icon who suffered the many insults of racial discrimination over the years but emerged as a gracious human being who never stopped fighting for civil rights.

• Legacy #1 – Living by example transcends racial bias.
• Legacy #2 – Humility looks better each day when chosen over championing your own accomplishments.
• Legacy #3 – A record breaking career, and no amount of money is a substitute for something more meaningful: “I think people can look at me and say, he was a great baseball player but he was an even greater human being”.

One of Aaron’s last public acts at age 86 was to take the coronavirus vaccine to help Black Americans overcome their understandable skepticism of historical medical abuse and discrimination.

The man who conducted over 50,000 interviews on radio, television and online had no formal education, was not even a high school graduate and was a voracious reader who was famous for not reading books written by guests before he talked with them.

King’s real genius was not talking perhaps the oddest quality for someone in the entertainment industry.

• He said “I never learned anything while I was talking”.
• Was a premiere conversationalist who let the other person have their say.
• If you were ever interviewed by Larry, you found him laser focused looking into your eyes while the distractions of doing a talk show occurred around him.

Larry King’s “unspoken” wisdom was that the art of good conversation is centered around the ears not the mouth – a potent lesson in the age of Twitter, texting and user generated content.

They work in a high stress profession with the lives of thousands of passengers in their hands so they can only effectively focus for short periods.

They work for two hours and then rest for 45 minutes.

The brain tires after two hours, minds wander, we become more forgetful, our error rate goes up.

Many Millennials are already burned out having graduated during a recession and now facing a pandemic, but in spite of your profession or age, a rest after every two hours can make you a dynamo.

Isn’t it remarkable that succeeding often doesn’t come down to how good your plan is but how quickly you get started and how long you persist?

Failure Method:  Need to do more research.  Have to check with a friend.  Haven’t had the time to think things through.

Success Formula:  Here’s what I want to do, let me start now.  I’ll divide things up into small projects.  I’ll stay with it even if nothing happens.

The benefit of failing is it tells you how badly you want something and what price you are willing to pay in persistence to get it.

I can’t

I won’t

If only

Problem (they cause stress)

Someday

Don’t

I hate

Impossible

Fear of failing is understandable – it doesn’t feel good.

Except that the only way to succeed is to learn from failures.

No one wins all the time – some do better than others but not by that much.

• If you’re not failing, you’re not succeeding – you’re playing it safe to protect your feelings.
• Times at bat matter – the more swings you take, the more chances you get to connect.
• Everyone has a number – the number of times it takes to succeed.

Replace the fear of failing with the fear of not trying hard enough because the more lessons learned, the more success is earned.

Thank God 2020 is over and yet the good news is we made it and no matter what we were resilient.

Now off to conquering our iPhones and Androids – taking charge, showing them who the boss is and Axios writer Scott Rosenberg has the plan:

• On an iPhone, go to “Settings” then “Notifications.” (On Android, it’s usually “Settings,” then “Apps & Notifications.”)
• See the long list of apps? Turn every single one of them to “Notifications off.”
• Then, and only then, go through the list a second time and ask yourself, “Do I really need this notification?”
• If you do, turn it back on.

Phones have become so much of life and a pandemic that is conductive to staring at screens more often didn’t make it much better.

Our new digital goal:  Make the phone a tool that you control and not a way of life in which we lose control.