Day #416 Seventy Days

In a recent newspaper column, Lisa Earl McLeod mentioned the 1 percent rule that she had picked up from her mentor, Alan Weiss:

“Instead of trying to be perfect at everything,” she wrote, “pick something that’s going to make a difference and make a vow to get 1 percent better at it every day.”

According to Weiss, “If you improve by 1 percent each day, in 70 days you’ll be twice as good.”

The math for this may seem counter-intuitive. Wouldn’t it take 100 days to increase by 100 percent?

Nope.

Say you’re starting at a level of 12, and you want to get to 24. If you increase by 1% each day, the first day you’d go from 12 to 12.12,

•    the second day from 12.12 to 12.2412,
•       day 3 from 12.2412 to 12.363612, and so on.
•          By day 9, you’d be at 13.12422327221233,
•             and by day 35, you’d be just a hair under 17 (16.99923307237521).

Sure enough, on day 70, you’d accomplish you goal. In fact, you’d be a teeny bit over the mark (24.0811604207446).

Didn’t you always want to know that?

Of course, you’d have to be diligent about that 1% improvement each day.

You can apply this to just about anything. Learn a bit more each day. Practice a bit more. Study a bit more. Walk a bit more.

Wanna move a mountain/write a book/become a beekeeper/learn Esperanto? Now you know how.

BEEattitude for Day # 416:

       Blessed are those who build their comb with steady work, for they shall have honey aplenty.
 

_______________________________ 

The teeny details:

BOOK SIGNINGS

Dec. 3 1-3 p.m.                      Books for Less, Buford GA  -- TOMORROW!

Dec. 4 1-3 p.m.                      Humpus Bumpus Bookstore, Cumming GA

Dec. 10 2-4 p.m.                    Peerless Bookstore, Alpharetta GA

my books: http://www.franstewart.com Please buy them from an independent bookstore or directly from my website.

my eBooks for Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006AA0I4M

Day #313 Esperanto

When I was having a cup of tea at Aristeacrats a few weeks ago, I spotted a book on Esperanto, the universal language.  I’d heard about Esperanto, but hadn’t ever looked into it. I have to admit, I’m fascinated by the idea. And I’m pretty sure that if I had a friend who showed any interest in it, I’d probably devote some time to learning it.

It’s so doggone logical. Each vowel has ONE sound, for instance. Each consonant has ONE sound.

That reminded me of a little word game my children played on me when they were in high school. Here it is:

What’s this word?        GHOTI

I’m willing to bet you’re saying something like

goat-ee

go-tee

guh-hoe-tee, or even

joe-tee.

Uh-uh. It’s     FISH.

“How’s that?” you ask.

Well, you take the sound of

“gh” as in laugh,

“o” as in women, and

“ti” as in nation

Put all three of those sounds together, and you get F-I-SH.

Esperanto is much easier to figure out than that. For one thing, every noun ends in –o. For plural, you add a –j.

one book=unu libro

two books=du libroj

three books=tri libroj

four cats=kvar katoj

kvin sinjoroj—gentlemen

ses virinoj—women

sep ĵurnaloj--newspapers

ok avantaĝoj--advantages

naŭ ideoj--ideas

dek bovinoj—cows

So, what does this have to do with beekeeping?

Years ago I read about a woman traveling in Germany. Walking down a residential street one day, she stopped to admire a beautiful garden. The woman working in the garden looked up, smiled. They quickly discovered that they had no knowledge of each other’s language until one of them pointed to a flower and called it by its botanical name. From there they happily wandered through her profuse garden, sharing the names in Latin, a very old common tongue.

I wonder what beekeepers do at international meetings? I doubt anybody there speaks Latin. Surely Esperanto would help.

Wonder if I can find a class somewhere?

BEEattitude for Day # 313:

       Blessed are those who learn another language, for they shall have their horizons widened.