Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović, ekrem@www.media-marketing.com
I wish to congratulate the Eid al-Fitr to all who celebrate it today. Bajram Šerif Mubarek Olsun!
I didn’t fast during the Ramadan, but throughout the month I was conscientious and disciplined in refraining from many pleasures, including reduced food intake.
Today, on Eid, I’ll start thinking about a radical change in my attitude toward time. Mak Dizdar wrote: “It’s time to think about time.” Ti me, the final hour has struck. Over these two days of holiday I’ll have to think hard about where I can save at least an hour, hour and a half each day. That’s the only way I’ll be able to finish my book Hotel Yugoslavia and, of course, the book The Best of CDs by the end of August. I have to. Today I made a firm promise to Zvezdana Žujo (Director at Communis Sarajevo) during our lunch in Vinoteka.
For starters we had a conversation about work. Zvezdana says she is happy – they just renewed the contract with P&G although they are no longer a licensed partner of P&G’s global media agency, and she says things with other clients are also going quite well. I told Zvezdana about the progress of my work on the book The Best of CDs, project AD Woman of the Year and on some other plans for improving the portals Media Marketing and Art & Business.
For the main course we had My sweet memories. Unprovoked, Zvezdana said: “I believe that your meetings mostly come down to listening ‘other people’s’ stories, but I would like to hear some of your stories. I want to hear some of those stories that usually begin like this: ‘Hey, Zveki, have I told you about when in ’83 Jure Apih and I, during the Yugoslav festival of marketing communications in Portorož’ … or, ‘it was the 90’s and we were going to Montenegro, to meet Milo Đukanović and present the agency, and I forgot the film in Sarajevo’ …” And so I, along with phenomenal pasta with mushrooms, watered down with Jana, entertained Zvezdana with some of the stories from the book Hotel Yugoslavia which I’ve been finishing for two years now. This was followed by a serious comradely criticism that did not end until I gave my word of honor that the book will come out in September. I had to put out my hand and watch Zvezdana straight in the eye.
Yesterday afternoon I finished translating the last page of Mitja Tuškej’s book No Friends, No Brands. It was actually the introductory page of the book where Mitja writes that the book would never have come out if his Maja had not been by his side through all this time, that it wouldn’t be like this if his daughter Urška had not done the editing of the key parts, if his thirty-year associate Mojca had not believed in him all this time …. For me, of course, the top ten places will be Vedrana, who has enabled me to live my job as wildly as I lived it all these 39 years of our life together. I’m really grateful to her for enduring me (she endures me even today). There will be more thanks, but the book would certainly not come out in September (if it comes then) if on the 4th of July I didn’t have lunch with Zvezdana.
Desert was Zvezdana’s story about Iva Balent. I knew that Zvezdana and Iva are great friends, but it’s been long time since I heard someone talk about someone else with so much love and respect like Zvezdana talked about Iva. And I was very glad about that. Today it’s a rarity to hear someone talk nice about someone else. Everyone is scheming something, in which this and that, and that person are spoiling their plans. Everyone will find a flaw in everyone. Especially in our industry where everyone is fighting for as much of a dwindling pie as possible, and in the relentless struggle for clients it’s difficult to find kind words for each other. A real rarity. And that’s why Zvezdana made my day and my holiday brighter with her story about Iva Balent, with whom I will meet for the first time next Tuesday in Zagreb.
So, my fight with the time begins. Step one – turn off the incoming mail notice on the computer, tablet and phone. Step two – review the e-mails only three times a day: at five in the morning when I get up, at noon, and at four in the afternoon. And that’s all. I spend most of my time reacting on every single ping. As soon as I hear a mail has come, I click on the little envelope, interrupting my writing in mid-sentence, and answering the mail. I get an average of about two dozen e-mails in an hour. In the morning I will review and respond to all the e-mails that arrived during the night. At noon I will open only those that contain material for the portal, and at the third opening of emails, again I will review all, and delete those that just unnecessarily take my time. I have to be rigorously rational in order to be effective in a modest economy of time. If you’ve got used to having me available throughout the day, and answering emails at the speed of light, things are going to be a bit different now. I’m sorry, but I promised Zvezdana that I will finish the book by the beginning of September.
I return to Mitja Tuškej who wrote it so nicely in his book: “It’s a fact that we often don’t know how to stop and think, and so we frantically rush through time. We are influenced by too much information, which pour like a rain on us, too quickly and too often.”