Picture this scenario: You go to the refrigerator to get a jug of milk. Should be simple, right? What could go wrong? The refrigerator is packed. The milk is right there in front on the top shelf, wedged in between a pint of cottage cheese and some bottles of apple juice. You’re holding a glass in one hand and you reach up with the other to grab the milk. It’s wedged in tight. You jiggle it a little bit and realize that you really need to put down the glass and use both hands to unpack things.
You reach to put the glass down and … one of the juice bottles pops off the shelf. You make a mad grab for it. It slips away from you. You try again. It bounces off the vegetable bin. You try again. It smashes onto the tile floor. Glass and juice puddle all over the floor and now you’ve got a mess that must be cleaned up right away.
What went wrong here? You got careless. It’s probably appropriate to yell at yourself for being careless. But your carelessness mattered because you were trying to do a task with no margin for error. Had there been a little margin in the packing on the shelf, your small error wouldn’t have caused a major mess.
Margins matter. Books have a margin that makes them more readable and nice to look at. And the outer margin of a printed book helps protect against errors in cutting the paper. Another word for margins is whitespace. Your books need whitespace.
So does your life.
A little whitespace on the refrigerator shelf makes it much easier to take things out. It also makes it easier to find things in the back of the shelf. When you think about whitespace in your life, you can see all kinds of places where it’s crucial. Not just your physical space, but also your time, your money, and your energy.
When your schedule is so packed that you have absolutely no extra time in your life, an unplanned trip to the mechanic can have ripple effects that wreck your day, then your week, and then your month. Your schedule needs whitespace.
When your financial situation is so precarious that you’ve maxed out your credit cards, that unplanned trip to the mechanic can leave you without a car and without a way to pay for repairs. Your finances need whitespace. When you’re so exhausted that you can barely drag out of bed in the morning or do your duties, an unplanned bout with a cold virus can knock you out. Your energy level needs whitespace.
Your life needs whitespace. So does mine. So does everybody’s.
Knowing that you need whitespace won’t magically make it appear. There isn’t any whitespace
wand you can wave. The concept of whitespace is just a mirror you can use to help you see when you have a potential problem that could come crashing down on you. The first step in solving a problem is knowing it’s there.
Right now, my life needs some whitespace. The stack of stuff on my desk table and chairs keeps growing. It doesn’t keep me from closing the door. Not yet, anyway. But it’s a warning signal. By admitting to myself that my life needs whitespace, I have a real chance at solving the problem.
As you read this, I hope to be floating across the Mediterranean in search of white space in my life.
Korn Ferry recently published a survey of over 400 executives about their vacation plans and while the results were not startling, they were telling. 67% of the respondents indicated that they had either postponed or cancelled their vacations due to the demands at work and the majority (57%) did not expect to use all of their available vacation days. In today’s business environment, it is a badge of courage to announce that you are cancelling or deferring a planned vacation or day off for the sake of work.
Another not so surprising factlet was that 88% of the executives indicated that while on vacation, they maintain connectivity to their office either by email or text messaging. The bottom line is that American business is not unplugging sufficiently to recover and recharge. Alas, today’s executives are under immense pressure to drive performance and growth, however according to Kevin Cashman, a Senior Partner and organizational consultant with Korn Ferry, “Individuals who take time off are proven to be more productive, have higher morale, and are less likely to make critical mistakes.”
While I have no plans to cancel my vacation, I will be the first to admit that I will be monitoring voicemail and email while gone.
In an effort to create some white space before I leave, I am going to give you some charts to look at (to offset all those stock charts we have been seeing). After all, a picture is worth a thousand words so these charts make up for the words I didn’t have to write!
Housing starts are coming back. We aren’t back to 2006 but a nice steady incline; 
This is equally reflected in existing home sales;
Just as housing continues to improve so does the job recovery. The number of jobs has finally caught up and continues to rise steadily, wages have not increased at the same pace.
The inverse of Employment is Unemployment and as you can see, it also continues to decline (the grey bars show the recessions).
GDP and personal consumption have recovered from 2009 but have just bumped along.
With recent events in the stock market, the Fed is in a box, not a coffin, but a box. They need to raise rates in September or December to prove our economy is strong but not hurt the emerging economies anymore than they are with a strong dollar Then we will enter an election year, where the Fed historically tries to be uninvolved.
Finally, I am both pleased and sad to announce that Nancy Murphy will be retiring over the next two months. I am so happy to see her and Brian find more white space in their life. At the same time it is like losing an arm because of our nearly 30 years working together and 20 years at CDC Commercial.
I hope you enjoy the story…
The Black Dot
One day, a professor entered the classroom and asked his students to prepare for a surprise test. They all waited anxiously at their desks for the exam to begin.
The professor handed out the exams with the text facing down, as usual. Once he handed them all out, he asked the students to turn over the papers.
To everyone’s surprise, there were no questions – just a black dot in the center of the sheet of paper.
The professor, seeing the expression on everyone’s faces, told them the following:
“I want you to write about what you see there”. The students, confused, got started on the inexplicable task.
At the end of the class, the professor took all the exams, and started reading each one of them out loud, in front of all the students.
All of them, with no exception, defined the black dot, trying to explain its position in the center of the sheet.
After all had been read, the classroom silent, the professor started to explain:
“I’m not going to grade you on this, I just wanted to give you something to think about. No one wrote about the white part of the paper. Everyone focused on the black dot – and the same happens in our lives.
We have a white piece of paper to observe and enjoy, but we always focus on the dark spots.
Our life is a gift given to us by God, and we always have reasons to celebrate – nature renewing itself every day, our friends around us, the job that provides our livelihood, the miracles we see every day…
However, we insist on focusing only on the dark spot – the health issues that bother us, the lack of money, the complicated relationship with a family member, the disappointment with a friend.
The dark spots are very small when compared to everything we have in our lives, but they’re the one that pollute our mind.
Take your eyes away from the black dots in your life. Enjoy each one of your blessings, each moment that life gives you. Be happy and live a life filled with love!
