[A personal story with a business ending]
Over New Year’s, I went on a dance cruise to Mexico — a group of dancers goes on a regular cruise ship and effectively “takes over” the dancing, especially late night — and everyone (including non-dancers) ends up having a great time. We’d planned this trip back in the summer, with my two wacky cabin-mates absolutely insisting that we upgrade to a Junior Suite something-or-other which had a lot more room and a balcony. This was August, “pre-Recession” for readers with short memories, and so splurging seemed like a good idea.
Despite FutureNow’s having a record quarter ending in September, by early November my more practical 
side was fretting we should’ve just gotten a regular inside cabin with the fake porthole. Or maybe even save some money by not going at all. I may well have chickened out but The Hummingbird and Dr. Evil (right) reminded me everything was already paid for and non-refundable so there was nothing to do but relax and enjoy it.
You know what? I had a blast. Wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
And not because of the balcony but rather despite the balcony. It was the people I was with that made the experience into a rocking-chair tale fifty years hence; in fact, a fake porthole might even have lent further spice to the story. [Almost at the business part!]
As I’ve thought about the trip the past week, this concept of remembering to live in the present came back to me again and again. How many of the hundreds of people who just stood and watched for hours from the railing wished they’d learned more from their Aunt Ethel’s b-day gift of 6 lessons at Arthur Murray’s so they might’ve joined in? What about the singular, nutty fellow who despite his lack of dance lessons joined in anyway and ended up trading an appetizer of “looking foolish” for a main entree portion of “priceless”?
Are you too busy to take a dance lesson? Or walk your dog? Or take your Mom out for ice-cream? Or – let me segue this to my business theme — work on some project you’ve been putting off, say, increasing your conversion rate? or getting started in testing? or revamping your website?
Recently, I’ve been listening to some Alan Watt’s Zen-ish podcasts and he talks about one translation of the concept of nirvana being “to exhale”. Which is to say, literally and figuratively, action comes when we “breathe out”.
Are you holding your breath waiting for the Recession to end before you try something new? You’ll have suffocated long before then. Exhale, and start acting now to change your company’s situation.
Are you just waiting for your Dev Team to have enough free time before they get around to improving that shopping cart? They’ll never get to it, unless you stop thinking about it and start doing something about it. Exhale, and start.
Not enough budget to start testing and optimizing? When have you ever had enough budget for everything? Stop worrying about it and exhale. Right Now is always the Right Time.