The Trimmings – I was on my lunchtime walk today and the lawn service was trimming the grass. I get to wondering who determines the schedule for this. Is it done weekly? Well, why not do it once a month, or once a day, or not at all? Is the trimming important for the presentation of the property or is it just for vanity’s sake? I find that in our lives, a lot of the trimmings are for our own gratification. Oh, we’ll say it’s to make a good impression, but it’s really the impression of how we view ourselves. And our vanity attempts to trump the person before us. Here’s how this works. A group is planning a party so one person prepares a shopping list. The next person prepares the list on PowerPoint. The next person adds a picture of each item to the presentation. The next person embeds a video clip of a commercial for each item. This is extreme, buts it’s the kind of thing that happens when our vanity outpaces our need to make a good impression. We try to impress our bosses or our clients, but all we really do is spend a lot of time on something that isn’t very important. Try this: ask for a report “without the trimmings” and see how much time gets saved.