Doing One Extra

The other day, I took the time to take a trash bag from our house and pick up the leftover trash in our little local park. It had been there a while, and I just wanted to take care of it. I know some people had advised me that I didn't need to do that. But... I did it. And felt a little happier afterwards. Then I got to thinking...

I was watching one of those exercise gurus on TV recently, and while he was urging us all to exercise more, he said something that stuck with me. Basically, he said start by doing the number of repetitions that feels comfortable. Don't knock yourself out. And then do ONE extra one. Just do one more than whatever feels comfortable. He said before you knew it, you would be doing a new high number.

It reminded me of the keynote speaker some years ago who talked about plussing. This was at a conference of network engineers, all very technical folks, and the keynote speaker was from Disney Training! Everyone was kind of surprised that we had such a non-techie, but he did a great keynote! Anyway, one of his points was that Disney asks every employee to do one extra thing for a guest every day. Just one plus, every day. He pointed out that even though this is just a little extra for the employee, and doing one thing during the day doesn't sound like much, there are ... 40,000 employees? And for guests, often that little plus is the thing that they take home and talk about.

Disney collects these pluses. Employees are urged to share their plusses in weekly meetings, and good ones get passed on. One of the stories he told was about a vacuum cleaner operator. Every day, in Disney World, there is a parade. And after the parade, there is a group of vacuum cleaners that clean the route. These are big, industrial vacuums, and the operators are required to stay with their machines. So one day, John was running his vacuum up the lane, after the parade. And a guest walked up to him, and said, "Do you know where I can get some water?" John stopped his machine, looked around, and saw a drink stand nearby. Now, one of the other rules of Disney is that if a guest asks for something, you walk them over to it. BUT John knew he couldn't leave his machine. So he pointed to the drink stand, and told the guest that if he went over there, they could give him some water. Then while the guest was walking over, John noticed that the drink stand operator had a walkietalkie. So John called him. "Hey, do you see the guest walking toward you? He wants some water. When he gets there, hand him a glass of water."

When the guest walked up, the drink stand operator turned to him with a big smile, and said, "Here's your water, sir!" He handed him a big cup of water.

That was a plus! Something extra. Yes, it was small. But you and I know that when that guest went home, whenever anyone asked him about his trip, one of the things he said was, "They handed me a glass of water!"

What I think is very funny is that when I started thinking about this recently, I realized that I had learned this lesson when I was about 12, I think. Way back in Boy Scouts, when I learned about doing one good deed every day. Just do one extra thing. And as they teach you in Boy Scouts, it doesn't have to be big. You can help a little old lady across the street, get a cat out of the tree, or even just take out the trash.

That's the plus, the extra, the cherry on the top of the sundae of life.

And you can put it there, every day.