Thursday, March 5, 2015

Creativity Tips: My American Sniper

I went to the doctor yesterday for my annual physical, which included a blood test. I'm a talker (you never noticed?), so naturally I had a conversation with the guy who was drawing blood:

Jan: I've had a million blood tests. I never look.
Guy: Neither do I.
Jan: Ha!
Guy: Seriously. I've been doing this for years. I don't look. I feel for the vein. And I tell the technicians I'm training, they shouldn't look either. Looking is just a distraction.

Isn't that fascinating? Looking for the vein distracts him from finding the vein.

And that makes me wonder ... what are you and I looking for that's just a distraction? Are there steps we take, every day, that really aren't necessary? What could we do -- possibly better -- if we focused on the end goal, rather than the first step?

As you ponder that, let me address the immediate distraction: What does this post have to do with a sniper? In chatting with the technician, I found out he had spent 30 years in the Green Berets as a sniper. Everybody has a story, my friends. Everybody.

And, by the by, he got the needle in my vein on the first try. No pain. No bruise. No looking.

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