VIR-II-0067
“I promised to mentor him and I actually gave him the hours.”
Promising to help is cheap; the hours are expensive, and they competed with everything else you wanted. You gave them anyway, showed up, taught, answered the late questions. A promise to invest in someone is only real in the time you actually spend. You kept it, and you may have changed the arc of his life.
Your Practice
- Notice the promise was kept in time given, not in the offer made.
- Protect the recurring hour the way you'd protect any commitment.
- Watch him grow and know your kept word made it possible.
- Let investing in people be a promise you keep, not just one you make.
The Architects
“A few first rate research papers are preferable to a large number that are poorly conceived or half-finished.”
Claude Shannon, The Bandwagon, editorial, IRE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. IT-2, No. 1, March 1956, p. 3