A LESSON FROM MR. AMBROSE

"Mr. Ambrose was my 5th and 6th grade math teacher at The Pingry School. He was a colorful guy, a descendant of Herman Melville, and also served as Ernest Hemingway's personal secretary for a while. He taught me some lessons that I still use to this day" — QuantumListing Founder David Perlmutter

Make sure you read all the way to the bottom of this post before doing anything else for the valuable lesson from my 5th and 6th grade math teacher, Mr. Ambrose. I promise it will be rewarding.

We have added so many exciting improvements and new features at QuantumListing. Here are just a few:

• We've added all of our registered members to at least one network. Click on the green Networks button on your Profile page to see which network you are in, and request inclusion in others. Be sure to click the Network Listings link on the left hand side of the Profile page while you are there to see the listings in your network. Some of our networks have no or few listings, which is one reason why we added the next feature.
• We've also added a link on your Profile page to make it easy to invite colleagues to join QuantumListing. On the left hand side of the page, click the Show More link and then select Invite a Friend.
• We've done a "soft opening" on our syndication integration with Buildout. We wanted to get user feedback on any glitches they encounter that didn't show themselves in testing. If you are a Buildout customer, you can share your listings to QuantumListing with just a few clicks. Please let us know if you encounter any problems. In the last week, we've already had hundreds of new listings added!

And now, here is the lesson from Mr. Ambrose. On the first day of 5th grade math class, Mr. Ambrose handed out a quiz with 30 problems, saying that we would have 5 minutes to complete it. The instruction at the top of the page was to read the whole quiz over before solving any of the problems. Looking at the daunting task of solving all those problems in such a limited period of time short circuited that first instruction, and I was off to the races, solving problems as fast as I could.

Behind me, I heard one classmate put down his pencil after about 30 seconds. I was puzzled, but plowed ahead with my  quiz without giving it further thought. At the end of the 5 minutes, Mr. Ambrose announced "time's up". I had 4 or 5 questions left. Without collecting the quiz papers, he said Neil had gotten an A and the rest of us had failed. There was one smiling kid in the back row, and the rest of us were sitting in shocked disbelief. 

Had we read through the quiz as instructed, we would have seen that the last line was to put down your pencil without answering any of the questions. Only Neil did that. 

So, why do I bring that up now? If you have read this far, click HERE to send me an email, and I'll extend your Premium Membership by 3 months. If you are not already a member, join and then come back to this post and send me an email.

—David Perlmutter, Founder and CEO of QuantumListing

by David Perlmutter

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