Transcript

As I speak to groups around the country and around the world, I find increasingly that people are besieged by too much competing for their time and attention. In a word they face a situation that's akin to information overload, just too much bombarding them on both sides. Reminds me of a story when I was 21.

I took the summer off to go to Europe. I went backpacking throughout most of the western European nations. When I got to Spain I looked forward to the opportunity to take an overnight cruise to one of the islands off the coast of Spain. There was Minorca, Majorca, and Ibiza. Ibiza was a wonderful resort area. Majorca was word renown, but unfortunately tickets were left for passage only to Minorca. So I figured, Majorca, Minorca what's the difference? Majorca, Minororca they must be the same except the size.

Well, that night on board, I slept on deck. That's all you got for the amount of money I paid. My backpack was my pillow my blanket was the sky. In the morning when we got to Minorca, something was amiss. When we got off the dock, I didn't see any high-rise buildings. I looked around; I didn't see any kind of development of any type whatsoever; Just small shacks and little two-story buildings at best.

When I got to the town square I kept thinking to myself, there's got to be something more here. And it turned out that there wasn't. Now, unfortunately, the boat wasn't going to return for two and a half days. So, I was stuck. There I was in Minorca. As it turned out, not another person on the island spoke English. Eventually, I found a pensión, which is their term for a room you rent in someone's home. So, I unloaded all my stuff, put on my bathing suit, took my flip-flops out, put them on, wrapped a towel around my neck and decided to make the best of my two and a half days there. I was going to explore the island, find those swimming holes, do everything that was fun and exciting.

Now, I'm walking for two and a half hours in the Spanish sun, with no protection, in the days when I thought I was indestructible, without a bottle of water and I'm starting to get delirious. I'm walking down a hill, when all of the sudden three wild dogs come upon me. The likes of which I hope you've never experienced.

These dogs had mangy looks to them. Their coats were terrible and uneven. Their teeth were showing, there was saliva dripping from them. Unlike American dogs, even American attack dogs, these dogs offered no warning. They immediately stood in front of me in the form of a peace sign: one to the left, one straight ahead and one to the right. Had they encircled me I would have been a goner, but for some reason they maintained this stance. Now, I had no weapon, nothing in sight, no apparent help. I took the towel from the back of my neck and wrapped it in the form of a rat tail thinking maybe just maybe they'd perceive that as a stick or some kind of weapon. So I held it there for what seemed like forever.

If you've ever been in an earthquake, they say that even 15 seconds is the longest 15 seconds of your life. I have to say, in retrospect that the dogs kept me at bay for probably no more than 15-20 seconds at most, but it seemed like a long time. I had no alternative and no clue as to what to do.

Suddenly, a man comes running down the hill. He's got a broad rim hat, he's got a sombrero. He's got a stick. If you can imagine a Spanish man running down a hill, whatever your stereotype dictates, this is what he looked like. He was smiling and he was yelling something, and he came upon the dogs and he seemed to know them. He grabbed one of them, moved the dog off to the side of the road and then, for the first time, I could see there was a pen. There were leaves and vines and everything obscuring the pen. He put the dog in the pen, came back, got the second. And now it's just me and one dog and I realize I'm actually gonna get out of this.

He comes back, gets the third dog and now I'm home free. He smiles at me, says something in Spanish; I don't understand a word of Spanish. I say something to him in English; he doesn't understand a word of it. I take off up the hill. I've got a two and a half hour walk back to my pension. I'm more delirious than ever. The Spanish sun is beating down on me. It turns out, I'm so badly sunburned by the time I get back to the hotel room, I cannot leave for the rest of the two and a half days. I must stay indoors. Well, I had a lot of time to reflect then and a lot of time to reflect over the years. I had help on that day and if I had not I could not be telling this story now.

In your own careers and your own lives aren't you besieged by the hound of faxes, the hound of emails, the hound of information overload, the hound of too much in your in basket, the hound of too much competing for your time and attention? Yeah, we all are. And the reality is: no help is coming. Individually we have to recognize, with the clarity of death, that unless we take stringent measures to keep our name off of lists, to pare down the piles, to reduce them to their lowest possible volume, to strip away those files that no longer serve us, to make sure that in all the spaces in our lives we remain in control. No one else is coming to help us. It's up to us and fortunately, we have the wherewithal to take care of the problem. The first and critical step is to have the awareness.