Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

Before today's post...

Happy Birthday Peggy!!!!!!!









Now it's Heather with our regularly scheduled program:

Sometimes in life and especially in our creative endeavors it is easy to be distracted by all the details of a project and to lose track of what was meant to be the primary focus. I once had a supervisor who was known to say (quite often I might add) that we should remember to keep the main thing the main thing. Although at the time this was quite unnerving there is truth in this adage and I was reminded of this during a recent business trip.

You see, I was staying at a fairly nice hotel who had just adopted this "Sleep System" as their major selling point in their rooms and boy did they have all the details of this sleep system in place. When you walked in the room you were greeted with a satchel of "sleep system" product placed on the bed. The satchel included:

• Eye mask
• Ear plugs
• Lavendar Spray for your bed linens
• A brief description of the other things in the room that were a part of the "sleep system".

That description detailed the black out curtains that hung from the windows, the guaranteed wake up call or your room cost refunded, the sound proofing that had occurred from room to room to assure you wouldn't have to deal with periphery noise and the sleep sounds CD that was placed in your cd player. As a programmer at heart I was impressed with all the details they had covered and was interested in seeing if this program made a difference in my hotel experience.

That day as I went about my conference business I was reminded of the "sleep system" by signs in the restrooms, scrolling screens in the conference center and that evening when I turned on the tv I was greeted with an image of a couple sound asleep in their bed as they clearly benefited from the "sleep system" in place at this particular hotel.

I was primed and ready to take part and see what all the fuss was about so I decided to participate in full. I called the front desk for my guaranteed wake up call, I put in the sleep sound CD, pulled the black out curtains closed and sprayed my sheets with lavendar linen spray and I got in bed ready for the best night of sleep I had ever gotten (at least since Lily was born). What greeted me however was one of the most uncomfortable beds I had ever gotten into. The bed linens weren't plush and comfortable but more scratchy and stiff and the bed itself was hard as a rock. I slept okay that night, after all I wasn't being woken up by a crying baby, but I couldn't help but think that this hotel had loaded all this money into this "sleep system" and had proceeded to miss the boat on the most essential item for a good night's rest...the bed itself.

All this to say that when expressing your creativity or embarking in a new life endeavor it is easy to get caught up in all the fun that the details bring but most times it is essential to be sure that what you are delivering is as great as HOW you are delivering it.

How about you? Tell us a story of when all the details were in place but the final product fell through...or better yet a story of when both details and product came together for a great experience. Our goal today? NO LURKERS!

Signing off until tomorrow...