Thank Goodness It's Monday #300

TAX-TIME LIFE LESSON TO STIMULATE

YOUR THINKING AND YOUR BOTTOM LINE

Thanks to a little-known Washington, D.C. holiday and some odd Internal Revenue Service rules, individual taxpayers have until today -- Monday, April 18 -- to file their federal returns.

 That’s great news for me.

Not because I’ve postponed filing until the 11^th hour.

But because for this milestone 300^th TGIM I have a timely “hook” for sharing (once again for anyone who knows me even moderately well) one of my favorite Life Lessons.

● If you’ve heard it from me before, I hope you find “tickler” value in its repetition and maybe new insight for dealing with today’s economic conditions. Thanks for your patience in reviewing it again.

● If it turns out to be a new item for you, I hope you can take it to heart and use it to make these days easier to weather.

Some basic info: As you may have noted by now, I like acronyms, TGIM (Thank Goodness It's Monday -- in case you hadn't noticed) ... FYI (For Your Inspiration) … BYE (Best Year Ever -- a project with my buddy Eric Taylor) ... 

Certainly they serve as convenient "shorthand." But they are also a powerful and valuable tool for reinforcing important concepts and bringing the full force of the underlying principles quickly to mind.

So, although it’s high season for the dread acronym IRS, that leads my thinking to the origins of perhaps the most important acronym in my mind –

EHFTB

EHFTB stands for – Everything Happens For The Best.

Here's the tax time story behind it: Richard Prentice Ettinger, the co-founder of the publishing giant Prentice-Hall, discovered EHFTB as he started in business as a publisher.

In the earliest days of the company, the pages for his second book, about the then-new Federal Income Tax Law, had just come off the press.

Richard Prentice Ettinger

However: Congress, in its usual wisdom, made last-minute changes in the law. This made many of the already-printed pages inaccurate. Stuck with a huge printing bill and worthless pages, it appeared the new publishing enterprise was doomed.

But RPE, as he was known (more initials), thought hard about what he had. He realized many of the pages were NOT adversely affected.

Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. He concluded that he could salvage the unaffected pages … print some new, correct pages ... punch holes in the whole batch ... and put them all together in a loose-leaf binder.

Bonus payoff: He could sell not just one book but also sell replacement pages on a continuing basis as the Tax Law continued to evolve.

That was in 1915. The forward-thinking Aldous Huxley (author of Brave New World) noted at the time that Ettinger had done with the loose-leaf page something equivalent to what Guttenberg had done with moveable type. Such subscription publishing became a cornerstone of a highly successful enterprise; proof indeed that EHFTB -- Everything Happens For The Best.

 “A nice, but slightly Pollyannaish, sentiment,” you say?

Wait! There's more.

In fact, it’s the most important part.

Richard Neill, RPE’s protégé who was entrusted with the ongoing publication of that first tax tome, passed along this history lesson for many years. (I was a Dick Neill protégé and was fortunate enough to have also known RPE. And yes, he was referred to as RN and I was GS.)

But in the telling and reminding, RN added the crucial element that makes the difference between an interesting bit of business history and a principle which any of us can take to heart and apply.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: When appropriate, and especially if some problem needed confronting or remedying, Richard Neill would annotate the margin of a memo or report with a handwritten EHFTB.

And under those initials he would write –

 FTWMIH

The importance of this second thought, and the principle behind the phrase the letters represent, is THE KEY to making EHFTB work.

Richard Neill's FTWMIH reminder is that –

Everything Happens For The Best

For Those Who Make It Happen

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION: You must take action for anything to turn out “for the best.” You must be ever alert for opportunities to triumph in the face of adversity.

And it’s not easy. You can’t be a passive bystander. You must be constantly and consistently preparing for the future. And when challenges arise you must rally that preparation and confront them. It isn’t enough to want the best. Continually challenge yourself to know what you’re going to do to get to where you want to be. Effort makes achievement.

Make the effort. Make it happen – for the best.

  

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373

tgimguy@gmail.com   

P.S.  And speaking of taxation: Albert Einstein admitted, on filing a tax return, “This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher.” He’s also reputed to have observed, “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”

P.P.S. "We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness, three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our Folly; and from these Taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing Abatement.” Ben Franklin told us that in 1757.