« Toward Making Your Life a Work of Art. | Main | Paris Sunday Mornings. »
January 03, 2014
How to Pick a Fight in a Global Recession.
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
--Henry Kissinger, quoted in The New York Times Magazine, June 1, 1969
Answer: You choose fights more carefully--and you go on the offensive only when you must. As Rome discovered too late, protecting every terrain and border is expensive and draining. As business and trial people learn young, butting heads with everyone who has ever done you a disservice, or fighting every point in an oral argument, or an evidentiary or discovery dispute, will not just be expensive and draining. It will defeat you. And it will make you go bonkers.
In an economic downturn, you have to be even more careful, and often plainly conservative, in reigning in your warrior ways. Put another way, and as a friend of mine likes to day, "allow yourself two or three creeps every day". Don't engage every jerk you meet. Don't right every wrong.
I've been told this my whole life. I hate it. It's a hard lesson--but merely part of the wages of being competitive and bellicose. For me, our old friend Henry, who turned 90 in 2013, said it in a way we can all remember it, and even plan a little.
No Worries, Bubala: Henry steps out in 2011.
Posted by JD Hull at January 3, 2014 11:59 PM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)