A goodbye note to outgoing WSU President Donald Beggs

Fellow Shockers know, Wichita State University President Don Beggs recently announced his intent to retire  from his post at WSU.  When I read the press release, I was taken aback.  Dr. Beggs has held his post as President for nearly as long as I have been associated with Wichita State.  I matriculated to WSU after graduating high school in 1998.  Dr. Beggs joined Wichita State shortly after, in 1999.  He and I became close during my time as a student through my various activities.  I worked closely with him during the planning for the Roundhouse Renovation and we marched together at a Greek Week parade.  I felt close enough to call him a friend, and I am sad to see he is leaving Wichita State behind.  Below is the thank you letter I wrote him after hearing his announcement.

Dr. and Mrs. Beggs-
I am a mixture of conflicting emotions upon hearing of your impending retirement.  Excitement, for the two of you.  Disappointment, that two people who have meant so much to the University community and to me personally are leaving.  Sadness, that the amazing interactions I have had with you both over the last 13 years are over.  And then I get right back to excitement for the two of you as you move into the next phase of your lives.

I cannot explain to you how profoundly you have both touched my lives.  Dr. Beggs- working with you through Student Government and Sig Ep gave me a deep connection to the University.  But our social interactions have been just as important.  You may not remember it, but after graduating with my MBA in 2007, I took my family to a WSU baseball game using my employer’s box, which was adjascent to yours.  You had a big party in your box- Regents, donors, and many other important people and yet you stood at the edge of the box and chatted with me and my family for 15-20 minutes mid-game.  The thing is, this was not an exception.  This was the norm.  You never shyed away from interacting with students and your caring, thoughtful and considerate manner gave you a connection with us that few others could boast.  Shirley, your dignity and grace shone through every time I saw you, whether you leading the alma mater at graduation ceremonies or cheering in the middle of a basketball game.  And I know you’ve heard this before, but in thirteen years, you never once forgot my name and you both greeted me with a warm smile, a handshake or a hug.

Yes, I will miss you both immensely, but so will the University, the students, the faculty and the entire Wichita community.  You’ve touched countless lives during your time here.  I want to thank you for touching mine.

Good luck, God bless, and Go Shox!

Sincerely,

Aaron D. Bushell

The Results Are In!

Well, the Humorous Speech Contest results are in!  I placed…wait for it…

 

Third.

 

Maybe.  There were four contestants and they only awarded first and second.  I feel like I was third compared to the other speaker who didn’t place, but there is really no telling where I actually placed.  I could certainly have placed fourth.  Frankly, I thought my speech was the best one there that night, but the judges didn’t feel the same way.  Oh well.  I had a great time and got to see some really impressive speakers!  There is always next year!

Humorous Speech Competition (State Level)

Here is the video from the District competition on Oct 22nd.  I had some very good competition, but managed to place first.  So this weekend (Nov 12th), I will compete in the State-level competition in Oklahoma City.  I’m very excited!  I have made some slight changes to the speech to help it flow better, but for the most part, this will be the speech I give tomorrow.

Enjoy.

Managing Email and Getting Things Done (GTD)

I currently have 454 email messages in my work inbox.  102 of them are unread. This morning, I’m going to go through them and tell you about them while I make my way to Inbox Zero.

Do It Now (completed in fewer than 2 minutes): 14

Delegate: 2

Delete (or archive): 429

Didn’t Need To Read It: 77

Do It Later (Will take longer than 5 minutes to complete): 9

It took me about two hours to get through my inbox, but I am now at Inbox Zero, an amazing accomplishment for anyone who works in today’s business world.  I average 50-75 emails per day, but using this method, I can actually keep my inbox at zero by processing my emails several times per day.

According to David Allen of Getting Things Done and Merlin Mann of 43Folders.com, the most important thing to do with email when it comes in is to PROCESS it.  Process it doesn’t mean “read it and decide what to do with it later.”  In fact, both of these methods encourage you NOT to check your email all the time.  I’m sure you fall into a similar pattern as I do.  You see a big inbox full of email and you peruse the inbox, looking for items that look important.  You do a few things and suddenly, more email has popped into your inbox.  Suddenly, you are starting to get overwhelmed and before you know it, well, you have 454 emails and 102 unread messages in your inbox.

Processing the emails requires you to do SOMETHING immediately.  Nothing can get procrastinated until later.  You do one of the following things:

Delete (or archive)

Delegate the task to someone else

Respond (and do so in five lines or less)

Do It Now (if you can do it in two minutes or less)

Defer Until Later (if it will take longer than two minutes)

So, as you look at my list above, you’ll notice one category ended up getting a large majority of the unread emails- “Didn’t Need To Read It.”  How much of our lives and our day is taken up by “Didn’t Need To Read It” emails?  According to my (completely unscientific) study, as much as 80%!  That is amazing!  80% of what is put in our inbox doesn’t require any action, doesn’t require any follow-up, and is just there to take up valuable space in your inbox and matter in your brain.  Eighty percent!  It’s like the Pareto Principle for managing your day!  Dealing with this stuff was easy.  Delete.  Delete.  Delete.  There goes 80% of what was otherwise just taking up space that could and should have been used for the important items.

Now, if 80% of what came in to my inbox was fluff, that still left me with 20% of things that I needed to respond to, react to, work on or otherwise take some sort of action.  GTD and Inbox Zero both subscribe to the “2 Minute Rule.”  If you can respond to it or finish it in two minutes or less, do it now, archive it and forget about it.  Easy peasy, right?

It actually was!  You’ll notice I placed 14 items in the “get it done now” category.  I actually took out the timer on my iPhone and used it to time how long these tasks took me.   These are things that usually I would put off until later because ‘it will take too long to do it right now.”  Believe it or not, several of them took me less than a minute.  The majority took right up to two minutes and one or two took me around three minutes to complete.  But you know what?  They were done.  And at an average of two minutes apiece, that was 28 minutes of my day, but more than half of my “to do list.”

So that left me with 9 items in my “Defer because it will take longer than two minutes” folder.  I’m actually not going to finish them today (because it is the weekend), but I know exactly what I need to focus on first thing Monday morning!

Inbox Zero is amazing, I could really get used to this!  Does anyone else use Inbox Zero or Getting Things Done to get through their to do lists?

Apple iPad/Amazon Fire

The Amazon Fire was released to much fanfare this week.  The Fire is Amazon’s first foray into the tablet market, a market that has been absolutely dominated by Apple and the iPad.  The Fire (details can be found here) boasts some pretty nifty features including what I think will be most important to its success- tight integration into the Amazon Infrastructure (Music/Movies/Apps/Cloud/etc).

Having had a couple of days to reflect on it, I think the Fire is exactly what this market needs right now. Tablets, for a great majority of people, are content consumption devices.  Already, Amazon has perfected the content consumption device with the Kindle. I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t love their Kindle for what they can do with it.  Now, Amazon is adding additional content to what is already a phenomenal gadget. And they are doing so at a price of less than half of what the iPad is selling for. This is an absolute win for Amazon and watch, this thing is going to sell like the dickens this Christmas.

That said, it’s not an “iPad killer.” It IS going to get a huge chunk of the lower-end tablet market that “knows they want a tablet but aren’t sure what.” Before now, these people likely would have bought a 16 gb wifi only iPad for $500. Now, they will buy the Fire for $200 and they will probably love it. They can get books/movies/music and some web browsing plus Facebook and for about 90% of people, that is what they use the internet for.  BUT, as mentioned, there’s just too much it doesn’t do to be a complete iPad killer. Content creation, video editing, camera/video camera/video chat, bluetooth. There is too big a market out there for the iPad (surprisingly, considering how skeptical I was when it first came out) and the iPad apps and the frenzy Apply has built around this thing. The Fire will absolutely take a bite out of Apple’s market share, but the iPad will still be king.