Okay, who told?  I have narrowed it down to 2 suspects.  My older brother Adlai and my husband Matt were the only possible culprits…and since Adlai is currently in Uganda working on an adoption, me thinks it was my sneaky husband.

So what big secret did someone let out of the bag?  Just my kryptonite, that’s all.  No biggie there, right?

Okay, here’s the story.  We all know that I am a self confessed competition junkie, right?  It doesn’t matter what it is, cards, board games, sports, who can eat/drink the most, or whatever.  If you propose a competition I am in.  Well, early on in life my sweet, protective brother Adlai learned that he could get me to do whatever he wanted simply by phrasing it as such: “Sarah, can you go get me XYZ?”…pause for dramatic effect…”I’ll time you.”

Now, you may not think that phrase is all that effective, but for someone who loves competition, especially with herself, and especially competition that involves speed, well you’ve got a winning combination.

When I made the mistake of telling my wonderful loving husband Matt my weakness he laughed and laughed. And then he figured out how to use it in our business. (Leave it to Matt to figure out a way to force me to be productive.) He even went so far as to install a timer on my desktop so that I could time myself on projects. Of course, he added the part of, “Now be quick, but don’t hurry.”  (Which is a good practice for all of us.  When you hurry you make mistakes.  When you are quick you are just fast.)

So how do I know that someone told?  Well, I had just sat down for my late morning perusal of my emails when the following popped up on my screen.

Now, I love The Limited.  I think they have great clothes, but have never really looked at their jewelry.  So what do you think I did after receiving this email telling me that I only had 2 hours to shop?  I of course dropped everything and found myself looking for a new necklace.  I don’t even wear very much jewelry!  Fortunately, the timer on my desktop dinged and brought me back to reality, telling me that my email time was over and it was time to move on to the next project.  Otherwise who knows what kind of damage to my wallet and my schedule I could have done. 

Now, in all seriousness, this was a great tactic by The Limited, not just for speed and competition junkies like myself, but for humans in general.  When giving a promotion or sale it is always a good idea to give a deadline, and the shorter the deadline the better.  We were all trained at an early age to adhere to time deadlines.  (Can you say ISTEP?  I know that I wasn’t the only one that started working ahead…)  So use deadlines to add a sense of urgency to your offers, and to make it a little more fun for some of us.

Now, I have to go.  I’m about to beat my personal best for time spent writing a blog.

-Sarah