I am my own worst enemy, because I am answerable only to myself. Each day I have a plan, either written or in my head, and each day I fail to accomplish what I set out to do.  There is always something more important that crops up. 

I know from personal experience in managing teams that 40% to 60% of my day will be unplanned, putting out fires with staff, projects, risk management, politics, major crises. To keep this in perspective, I subscribe to the "jumping monkey" theory of work, i.e., monkeys will jump to me from someone else's shoulder: jumping upward from a direct report, sideways from a partner, downward from a boss. I also jump my own monkeys to others, up, down, and sideways. The idea is to make sure the monkey keeps moving, ends up on the right shoulder, and gets fed or disappears. I'm pretty good at keeping those suckers moving, although occasionally I'll glance backward and there sits one I thought had jumped, grinning at my naivete. Sometimes they bite.

But in the no-job travelogue, there are no staff, associates, or executives, just me. I am all three. So, there should be fewer monkeys, right? Not so. My monkeys are all of my own making; most come from fear and uncertainty. They jump from one shoulder to another, and more keep showing up every day, so that it seems there is a troop of Kipling's howlers driving me to the ruins, chanting  We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true.

I'll find any excuse not to deal with them: I need a haircut, have to pick up something at the store, must finish that next chapter in the book I'm reading, and I'll get to those monkeys later. Except that later means more of them. 

So here is what I have to do: I have to go after the biggest, meanest monkey I have, and get rid of it, while keeping the others at bay. Then, I'll go after the next biggest one, and so on, until the population is manageable and I'm moving forward again in my own direction. That's my plan.

I'll start tomorrow.

There are few things more important when chefing than careful prep, whether your buyers are one thousand college students, the Governor and his education staff, Tony and Carmelo Soprano, or your co-workers at a Christmas party. I've done them all (except for Tony and his "family", although I did work a short stint at an Italian place on the Black Horse Pike in South Jersey, so I came close), and learned that you had better be ready for anything. In one instance one of new my cooks, Igga, was responsible for cooking the dinner vegetables at the cafeteria. I figured he knew enough to cook four pans of brocccoli, then stage each batch as an empty pan came back from the line. I was on the slicer on the other side of the kitchen, doing the same for top round portions, when I happened to check on his progress. Much to my surprise, he was stretched out on the lower table shelf, sound asleep. Fifteen pans of broccoli sat in the food warmers, quickly turning to mush. He over-prepped. He also shortly found new employment.

Another time I was part of a team producing a ten course hot-cold dinner for a celebrity speaker and a crowd of alumni muckety-mucks. Managers from different locations were brought in to keep things running smoothly. We had bought a case of heavy cream quarts (in thick glass bottles with crimped paper lids, the good stuff) to be whipped just in time for the dessert course. This was assigned to a manager from another location, who dumped the cream into a large floor mixer, added a touch of vanilla, a dash of sugar, and turned the mixer on high. Then he disappeared. Apparently he was pretty well snockered by the time his job came around, and he was off having another wee bit. When the chef came for the whipped cream, he had fifteen pounds of butter staring up at him. The chef motioned for me to follow him into the cooler, where he revealed another case of cream that he had ordered just in case. Dessert was slightly delayed, but the strawberries romanoff were a success.

I guess the point is that when the interview comes, it pays to be ready, but not pat. I've interviewed candidates who wanted things done on their own agenda (like Igga), and candidates who went on and on about the same things, even though the interview had moved on (like the whipped cream). I've also had the pleasure of hiring candidates who had a plan and adjusted on the fly, because they prepared and rehearsed any situation. It's a dialogue, folks. Pretend you're talking to your mother, but make sure you know what you want to say, and when. Do your prep work. Your credibility is at stake. 

Now here's what I call a perfect interview. Watch and learn.