The Pragmatic Alternative

Browsing Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath

2010-06-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

pic courtesy of Amazon.com

The Heath Brothers, authors of Made to Stick, on why some ideas, companies, etc. stay in our minds and others don't, in Switch posit the idea of a rider on an elephant trying to stay on a path.

The Rider is analytical logic. The Elephant is feeling, based on empirical evidence. The Path is all goals.

The Heaths suggest directing the Rider via crystal clear instructions. These include finding what's already right, scripting critical moves, and pointing to the destination. Motivating the Elephant to stay on the Path happens by igniting/finding the feeling, shrinking the change, and growing your people. Shaping the Path means tweaking the environment, building good habits a bit at a time, and rallying the herd.

Teacher, Bart Millar, had two attendance problems. As a former teacher, I can relate. Boy, can I relate. Anyway, he needed to make some changes to get these kids to class on time. He could have attempted a rational approach appealing to their rational riders to control their emotional elephants, which wanted to show up whenever they felt like it, by letting them know their grades would suffer, and with them, concomitant opportunities. He could've asked for their empathy for his position, "Hey, you know how hard it is to teach effectively when I can't use all my class time for teaching?" Effective? Not so likely.

What Miller did was genius. He brought in some old couches, put them in the front of the room, and allowed early birds to sit there if they wanted to. Tardiness problems solved.

That's tweaking the environment.

Amazon has changed the environment for book buying, and now book reading with the Kindle.

Instead of confronting the hard change problem: How do we persuade people to buy more? They did what Chip and Dan Heath call shrinking the change, and building new habits, by asking an easy change problem: How do we make it easier for people to buy?

Voila! How many of us now buy differently than we did 10 years ago? Likely everybody reading this blog. Amazon led the way.

The Heath brothers say their favorite story in Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard is that of Jerry Sternin.

Little wonder, as Sternin is famous for making change with the attitude: “You cannot think your way into a new way of acting, you have to act your way into a new way of thinking.”

Sternin went to Vietnam to save children's lives. He found many intractable, systemic problems. Poverty, lack of education, lack of clean water. Jerry Sternin had no chance to change those. What he did have a chance to impact were individuals. He got mothers in one small village to study lack of nutrition there. He then asked if they knew any childeren who, despite the endemic malnutrition, seemed to be doing fine? Any who were perfectly healthy despite their environment? Yes, said the mothers, there were some children like that.

Next, he had the mothers of the malnourished children ask the mothers of the healthy children what they were doing right. they found little differences made big changes. Malnourisehe stomachs are smaller so some mothers fed 4 smaller bowls of rice a day, rahter than one or two larger ones. Tiny shrimp and crabs, thought to be adult food, were added, along with sweet potato greens, giving kids more protein and vitamins. Then Sternin got those mothers to teach the other mothers.

With the help of those with the most to gain, Sternin managed to make a dent in na big problem, without changing any of the underlying systemics.

This is what the Heaths call Finding the Bright Spots: Ask What is working? And make that the focus.

You can hear a fifteen-minute podcast interview with Chip and Dan here at Amazon.

Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath is worth picking up on, and passing along to co-workers and bosses.

It was 28 years ago today . . .

2010-03-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

I earned my most honest dollar ever. Playing a Neil Young song.

Go figure.

And read about it here.

And don't forget to read the follow-up post here.

Was free-writing about it this evening. Here's a little of that:

. . . finding it there and then, as that guy--likely 3 to 5 years less than my "24 and so much more"--purposefully striding across the square, looking me in the eye, and HANDING me the DOLLAR, not just tossing it off in the case or even humbly placing it in, as at an altar, but handing it to me, eyes up and locked, all a purpose, handing me that dollar in exact appreciation.

The most honest dollar I've ever earned.

One of the great moments of my life.

The Pragmatic Alternative recommends. . .

2010-03-10T10:24:00.000-08:00

pic courtesy of TedsTake.com

. . . Washington Capitals owner, Ted Leonsis's new book, The Business of Happiness.

Leonsis, whose famous 101 List is a model for anyone, spent years studying the mechanics of happiness.

What makes someone happy? Relationships, Community, Self-Expression, Giving Back, Pursuing a Higher Calling.

Everything we're doing at Brazen Careerist.

Hear Ted speak about all these, here: http://fora.tv/2010/02/24/Ted_Leonsis_The_Business_Of_Happiness .

I've had a personal email correspondence with Ted Leonsis for over ten years now.

Since 1999, when he bought the Washington Capitals from Abe Pollin--philanthropist, pillar of the community and mensch himself--Leonsis has dramatically raised the fortunes of his team, above all by connecting with fans, customers and clients alike, actively seeking input.

He asked fans for complaints about the team: about the game day experience, prices, parking, concessions, bathrooms--everything.

He compiled a list of 101 things fans didn't like, then systematically attacked those flaws, one by one.

That kind of enlightened ownership does more than sell tickets. After all, if the team weren't any good, there'd be empty seats every night.

What it does is gains permission. It gets buy-in. It buys patience and time and trust. Trust that things will be done right, that things will steadily improve. That these are shared values.

That "It's always about team, and there's always better."

And I never say "always."

So buy a copy of The Business of Happiness. Ted's idea of "the double bottom line" is crucial.

This one's for you, Penelope.

Oh, and Go CAPS!

Why I Haven't Been Ready For Anything Recently...

2010-03-09T10:47:00.000-08:00

...I'm still getting things done! Working at it--hahd--as they say in N.E.

So, that series I was working on for several weeks has hit a bump, and will return when I get a real system of CoPORDing in place and working daily.

Getting much better, but still re-working.

I find, in contrast to what David Allen suggests, that a top-down approach helps. I'm all too easily distracted by minutia, so his instruction to write it all down, in no particular order, and then rearrange later hasn't been working.

So, it's projects first. Ultimate goals on top, and priorize, organize and review in accord with them.

Goal here is to post more regularly, which will mean shorter posts, and will constitute a more active review process.

Biggest goal for this month: create a shirt a day--like this one front

and back

-- for the month. Starting late, so let's see if I can catch up.

At least a shirt a day every workweek day. That'd be 23 for this month.

And they won't be all about MD. I've got DE, NJ, MN, and CA lined up, along with the usual off-beat hilarity you've come to expect from the good folks at HepCatIndstries.

Stay tuned. . .

Meanwhile, I need a drawing board.

Literally...

What The Pragmatic Alternative Has Always Been About

2010-03-07T07:57:00.000-08:00

pic courtesy media.eyeblast.org

Check out today's Face the Nation, featuring Sens. Lindsay A Graham and Evan Bayh, along with a compelling question from Bob Schieffer about yelling "Fire!" on a crowded Internet:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/07/ftn/main6275271.shtml?tag=contentBody;featuredPost-PE

Pragmatic and alternative.

That's the idea!

Happy Birthday, Huck Finn!

2010-02-18T19:51:00.001-08:00

"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."

Ernest Hemingway

On this day 125 years ago, February 18, 1885, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was published by Charles L. Webster and Company, New York.

How do I know it was published by Charles L. Webster and Company, New York?

Well, since 1982, an analog of this Year of Superior Vision, 2010, I've been the proud owner of a facsimile First Edition of this Greatest American Novel.

And very proud of it I am.

I've read this book since I was in Second Grade. I've read it 15 - 18 times, and I started reading it again tonight.

I love this book. It is the quintessential American Novel. It examines the essential American conflict: freedom vs slavery, and without doubt the noblest character, the most human, the most loving is the slave, Jim.

Few moments in literature rival Huck's resolution in Chapter 31 to stand by his friend.

Motherless Huck, whose father is an abusive drunk, accepts on faith that his entire adventure down the Mississippi with runaway slave, Jim, has been sinful. He may not have good or proper breeding, but he knows right from wrong, and absconding with someone else's property is unequivocally wrong.

And Jim is property. Not a man. An asset. Capital. Physical plant. A factory.

Certainly not a father.

Though Huck knows nothing of karma, he's feeling bad about not having spoken up long ago. He's been carrying and protecting stolen merchandise, and finally resolves to clear his conscience by writing to Miss Watson, Jim's rightful owner.

Of course, he hasn't felt guilty until he learns "the king" and "the duke," two All-American confidence men, have sold Jim to a local farmer, and made him a slave again "and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars."

But Huck's feeling it now, acutely, and fears, "It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from [my home]town again, I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame . . . here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched . . . whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm . . . ."

The misplaced modifier is crucial.

Faced with the prospect of "everlasting fire," Huck resolves to pray. "But the words wouldn't come. . . . because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; is (sic) was because I was playing double. . . deep down in me I knowed it was a lie--and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie," Huck concludes.

So he writes a simple, one-sentence letter to Miss Watson telling where Jim is and where to send the reward money to get him back, and immediately feels better.

Then Huck begins to pray for his eternal salvation.

But not right away. First , he sits and thinks.

He thinks of how close he has come to going to hell. Then he thinks of the ease and joy of his life with Jim on the raft on the river. And he thinks of Jim looking out for him, and caring for him. And he remembers Jim saying Huck was the best friend "[he] ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now. . . ."

Then Huck looks down at the letter, and thinks:

"It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and says to myself:

'All right, then, I'll go to hell'--and tore it up."

If you've never read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, start today.

If you've read Huckleberry Finn, read it again.

I hear you can get it on Kindle for a quarter.

There's no finer story in any language.

Ready For Anything: Chapter 10 -- Creativity Shows Up When There's Space

2010-02-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

Getting ready to write this latest post in the series, a further reinforcement of David Allen’s premise that the mind is truly open for business and cleared for takeoff--aka creativity--only when it is first relieved of its standard job as office space, I realized, “You know, I haven’t actually CoPORDed in a while.”

Yeah, it’s been at least a week, maybe a couple.

I can rightly attribute this to my focus on several key ongoing projects with multiple next actions, but the truth is, in so doing, I’ve neglected to write down everything as Allen instructs from the beginning.

And, as a result, some of the little stuff has been falling through the cracks.

So, before I go any further, allow me to CoPORD right here, right now.

Finish pulling up the rugs in bedroom. Too dusty. Must get rid of.

Call in prescription refill. Hey, wait, I’ve done that! But waiting on follow-up from pharmacy as to pickup/delivery instructions.

Dig out car from under latest 15” of snow.

Congratulate self for waiting till today to do so, when it’s above freezing and snow is beginning to melt anyway, making preceding job easier.

Call about Barbara’s gifts. I wonder if she’s reading this. Hey Babe!

This just in: help out neighbor downstairs in wake of snowfall. This falls into the urgent and important quadrant; won’t take less than 5 minutes, but needs to be done now.

Organize for yard sale in May. Designate other clothes for Goodwill. Get clothes, house wares, etc. to Goodwill. Throw out trash. Buy more trash bags. Plan dinner.

OK, you get the point. And this is just the beginning.

But I appreciate your indulgence in the utterly boring minutia of the warp and woof of my daily decisions-making.

What David Allen brings up in Chapter 10 of Ready For Anything: Creativity shows up when there’s space, is that getting it all down intimidates a lot of people because they fear there won’t be anything really there.

“Is that all there is?” is a pervasive angst among far more people than you might think. The worry is that with all one’s responsibilities, projects, even simple daily to-dos out and in the open, “Is that all there is?” will resonate and echo deafeningly.

So we insist on keeping it all “up here” with a smile and a tap of the forehead, convinced both that we’re managing just fine, and that we could be great, and will be eventually, once our awesome burdens ease up a little and we have time to see clearly again.

No, says David Allen. CoPORD! Get it all out. Review it all regularly. Manage it all in a completely integrated fashion. Only then will we be operating at the top of our game.

David Allen’s point in this chapter is again: Get it all on paper. A mind is a terrible thing to waste on office space. Holding it in clogs the pipes. Getting it out clears the pipes.

Clearing the paths is liberating and almost instantly puts the mind in flow, and flow is where you want to go.

Allen asks this question at chapter’s end: Are you ready for a bigger parade?

Well, are you?

Ready For Anything: Chapter 9 -- If It's On Your Mind, It's Probably Not Getting Done

2010-02-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

"To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life."

Robert Louis Stevenson

Allen comments on "mental karma." That goals as disparate as buying groceries or buying a company, when left in the same storage bin--one's mind--interfere with each other in importance, immediacy, real need vs imagined want.

Allen's solution is, as ever: "Write it down."

Process it. Review it.

Decide, "Do today." Or, "Maybe later."

But get it out of your head and onto paper, where you can reliably review the same data every day, even as you move projects to long-term or even not-at-all status.

Because doing so will be just as reliably moving forward the most immediate, most meaningful projects forward.

And the bigger reason: Maintaining a system that stores information reliably, so your mind is free to spend less time on pure processing and prioritizing, and more time on vision and creativity.

Allen's last point is that it takes adults years to fully incorporate his CoPORD model, but kids seem to take to it immediately.

It's true that the younger the mind, the more easily it learns huge masses of new information, so it stands to reason that younger minds will quickly adapt to Allen's methodology.

But learning is always preceded by motivation, and putting David Allen's good ideas and models to work must be proceeded by it.

Let's hope, not only that David Allen's ways get incorporated into curriculum, and that students quickly recognize its value, and so are motivated to practice it.

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled."

Plutarch

Monthly MeetUp Goals -- Feb 2010

2010-02-04T01:50:00.000-08:00

In case you didn't notice, I skipped the monthly meet up goals for January.

Must be some anti-establishmentarianism stuck in my craw, resisting the norm of New Year's Resolutions, having my David Allen, Getting Things Done, CoPORDing well in hand.

At least, as a guiding hand.

Whatever. I didn't post goals for Jan, because I felt I really hadn't accomplished too many of my December goals, and frankly, was a little embarrassed by all that.

And I thought of posting in mid-Jan, and almost did, but have been busy with other things, and so, said to myself: Let it go. Post again in Feb, and keep on going.

"When you're going through hell / Keep on going..."

Therefore, herewith my Feb 2010 Goals:

1. Keep working on AOAYA. I've written / drafted three chapters, and have an outline for 72. Outline will be a-revising, but there's a modality, some framework, and I need to press on.

2. Keep developing "Let's Play SAT!" Sometimes tedious, but needs doing. I've got some good tips, not only for succeeding in the SAT, but also for developing better problem solving skills, better critical/analytical reading skills, and better reasoning skills, especially in the context of the SAT, but which are also transferable in all academic areas, as well as interpersonal and business.

Need to keep tips shorter and to point. On the other hand, Content is King!

Yeah, Content is King!

3. Hand make more t-shirts! Have made one so far, but problems uploading picture files have prevented me from presenting this beauty online. Look for regular production from HepCatIndstries this month, once the pic uploading problem is solved.

4. Also, look for a weekly 8Tracks song mix each week at HepCatIndstries.

5. Last, but not least, develop a copywriting blog--Yeah, yeah, I know: I don't have enough blogs yet. But this month I pledge to get really serious about my copywriting, so I'm putting that out here.

6. That's enough, don't you think?

7. Till next month...

RFA: Chap 8 -- Closing Open Loops Releases Energy

2010-01-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

Just read a fascinating article by Peter Bregman that dovetails nicely with this one. Bregman is one of my faves over at Harvard Business Review. Check it out.

Meanwhile, let's change this up a bit, shall we?

My most devoted readers and the rest of you Astuties out there, will duly note the one week delay on this post. Was pretty sick last week this time, and though drafted this piece on Sunday last, well, it's been a procrastination-fest for some reasons this week.

Did also preliminarily draft this week's piece, too, so there'll likely be a few following here in short succession, including the piece for the Monthly Goal Meet Up Goal Brazen Careerist Network.

Allen's point in this chapter is simple: PHYSICAL ENGAGEMENT, I.E. ACTUALLY DOING what's in your TO DO list creates a synergy and unleashes new energy.

It's like fusion.

No, fission.

Intention and action collide with HYPERFORCE--OK, MAYBE NOT HYPERFORCE.

But the collision itself is enough to effect entire new projects , new ideas, new bridges, among old ideas.

Me, I find it inordinately hard to let go of literally the smallest scraps of paper.

Every receipt tells a story.

Chronologically organized as my mind is, I find it difficult to impose other order -- hence this series -- but more to the point, I find it difficult to toss these bookmarks of my history, nor to organize them in any kind of display/collection.

Then there's any of my daughter's schoolwork, which I'm loath to give up. And there's a bunch of it.

Not to mention every scintilla of brilliance I've ever put on card stock, parchment, papyrus or refined wood pulp.

Notebooks, too. Lots of notebooks. Dating to '75.

And, of course, the organizing of the small treasures: photos found in an old notebook, book, box, bag, etc. I have containers w/in containers and putting things wanted in some order continues to challenge me.

I'd like to close a lot of these open loops and release that energy.

I've got books, clothes, cassette tapes, housewares and more. Free to good homes.

Contact me at this blog.

But my papers are priceless.

Seth@CriticalMass

2010-01-26T23:10:00.000-08:00

I'm no dispassionate reviewer.

I'm a fan.

Bought my first Godin book in '96, The Guerrilla Marketer's Handbook, co-written with the original Guerrilla Marketer, Jay Conrad Levinson.

These are only three sentences that show why you should buy Seth Godin's Linchpin:

1) "It's OK if i get fired because I'll have demonstrated my value to the marketplace. IF THE RULES ARE THE ONLY THING BETWEEN ME AND BECOMING INDISPENSABLE, I DON'T NEED THE RULES." (Emphasis mine.)

2) "Emotional labor changes the recipient, and we care about that. That's why emotional labor is so much more valuable than physical labor."

3) "Thinking About Your Choice: And it is a choice...to buy into the fear and the system, or to chart your own path and create value as you do. It's your job to figure how to chart the path, because charting the path is the point."

OK, OK. So these are three excerpts, not sentences.

My point is -- Seth Godin gets it, gets it, gets it.

In Linchpin, he gives it to you.

It's a gift.

Pick it up.

Ready For Anything: Chapter 7-- Priorities Only Function at the Conscious Level

2010-01-20T11:29:00.000-08:00

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.

Kin Hubbard

Speaking of "open loops," those projects that require more than one next action to close, Allen opens Chapter 7 with a reminder of how deleterious they can be to one's "psychic RAM."

Allen says that when things of secondary importance stay there, and aren't constantly reviewed and updated, we lose track of them.

Then there are they are, double-demanding our attention, threatening to three alarm, to ICU. All because we "didn't have time" for the secondary.

Now they're all we have time for, and everything else is secondary.

Allen says: "This syndrome does not self correct--it self perpetuates."

The reason, Allen suggests, is that current thinking in organizational management is very "ABC." While he acknowledges that certain projects have a greater upside, and so deserve more time and effort, the down side remains: we tend to ignore the less important entirely, until we can ignore it no longer.

That's where the "Someday/Maybe" file comes in.

We all have responsibilities, in the form of ongoing projects that need completion to move the well-being of ourselves and our loved ones forward.

But we need to remember the importance of PROCESSING our responsibilities at least daily.

Remember, first we COLLECT: brain dump all projects / open loops. Get 'em all down on paper/word doc.

Then, we PROCESS to the level of immediacy.

The "Someday / Maybe" file is where we put open loops that we may want to act on, but DO NOT NEED to act on today, or even this month. Things that may, in fact, fall away, to be superseded by others.

Simply put, no "right here/right now" commitment.

"Someday / Maybe."

Allen says:

If it's on the projects list, you need to decide next actions equally on each one and review the status of each regularly. It's okay not to take action on them, as long as you know what the action is and as long as it's a conscious choice. But most people avoid involvement because they don't stop to think what the action is and then miss countless opportunities to move it forward before it morphs into crisis.

Allen uses the example of needing new tires: "either you do you don't." There's not much of a slope there. Problem is, a decision like this one on tires too often will go from "not needed" to "desperately needed."

The difference between an effective and an ineffective approach to this open loop is the difference between "Call tire store for prices" and "Call AAA to fix blowout."

That's why my car has an appointment with my mechanic to check its timing belt.

In closing Chapter 7: Prioriites Function Only at the Conscious Level, Allen concludes:

Clarify and define all the outcomes you've committed yourself to accomplish, small and large, and the actions required to move on them. Then you're ready for the real efficiency game of getting them all done as soon as you can, and feeling okay about how it's going with each one.

What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

Aristotle

Ready for Anything: Chapter 6 -- Two Commitments in Your Head Create Stress and Failure

2010-01-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

Taking on new projects is not necessarily a positive change. It may be a sign of recklessness and non-fulfillment. But going back to all levels of non-completion and completing them is a sign of positive change.

John-Roger

There are a few things I'm learning as I'm writing this series.

First of all, that it's tremendously therapeutic.

Addressing (gerund, kids, gerund) my personal DIS-organization issues in this very public manner is slowly making me more organized.

It's what someone I was reading recently--whose name's missing now--was saying about "hiring a Board of Directors" to keep you accountable.

Now, it's well known -- or at least easily look-up-able--that this blog is not commented on by many.

Still, it is in the public eye.

I'm not much adept at determining how many discrete page viewers I have per week, and which posts they're reading, but I know people do read this blog, and that awareness helps keep me focused.

Second, more than anything, the structure of David Allen's book keeps me focused.

As mentioned in Post 1 of this series, the fact that Ready for Anything has 52 chapters visibility than keeping me organized in a most constructive way.

52 chapters in 52 weeks. Launched on the first anniversary of Pragmatic Alternative, looking forward--clearly--to the second and -- by implication -- beyond.

The third thing is the nature of serendipity. Ready for Anything came to be the template for this year's posts because I couldn't put my hands on Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, the first David Allen book. It was buried under a stack of books and other stuff next the bed.

Knew I had it. Figured it was nearby, in a place of nominal importance. But could I find it?

Not so much.

Because I've committed to evaluating RFA each week, I've been able to begin to integrate CoPORD into my life. In another four weeks I'll have a better big picture idea of all my roles responsibilities projects, and goals.

Meanwhile, it's nice just to know where I put my copy of Getting Things Done.

Today I take great pride in having found an organizational template that works for me, and am committing to working that plan.

It's a good thing.

Because my lack of structure has stood in my way.

It's not a strength.

Enter David Allen and his GTD methodology.

Kind of like Elvis's "TCB." Only different.

In Chapter 6 of RFA, Allen answers critics who claim "getting things done" and CoPORD are "reactive" strategies.

That by focusing first on minutia/trivia, the micro over the macro, don't we then run the risk of staying in Covey's Quadrant IV: Important and Urgent?

"Hey, seeing the big picture, great idea!" says David Allen. "But might not the minutia, the trivia, the overflowing "In" box need to be reckoned with first? "Open loops," as Allen refers to them, must first be closed before we can hope to maintain effectiveness.

What are "open loops"?

Simply put, they're items on yesterday's "to-do" list that didn't get done.

They represent commitments to yourself to do certain things.

Things that didn't get done.

As a result, they take up way too much space in what Allen refers to as "psychic RAM." Because we know we haven't gotten things done we'd planned on getting done, these "open loops" take up--and worse, FRAGMENT-- space in our psychic RAM.

They slow down our operating speed by slowing down the speed of our processor.

It's just that simple.

And how do we close open loops?

By CoPORDing: Collecting. Organizing. Processing. Reviewing. Doing.

Over and over again, with a particular eye to closing open loops, or else putting them in the "Someday / Maybe" file.

It takes time, but as I'm finding out--and betting you will, too--it's time not just well-, but best-spent.

Then horizons -- now replete with mountains and oceans -- beckon.

And the paths are clear.

And you're positioned to choose effectively among them going forward.

It's a good thing.

If you know the point of balance, you can settle the details. If you can settle the details, you can stop running around. Your mind will become calm. If your mind becomes calm, you can think in front of a tiger. If you can think in front of a tiger, you will surely succeed.

Mencius

Ready For Anything: Chapter 5 -- Infinite Opportunity is Utilized by Finite Possibility

2010-01-09T12:04:00.000-08:00

OK, so four weeks later, how far have I come in my CoPORDing, Ready-for-Anything, Getting-Things-Done, David-Allen-run New-Life paradigm?

I know what I need to achieve and I know what I want to achieve, and my constant reviewing of these goals is keeping me focused on them.

In addition, my openness and forthrightness here only serve to confirm these commitments.

At least, I hope they do.

As my good friend, Neil Young, once said, "I know you know."

The thing I've least mastered is the filing system.

Because the failure of any segment of the pentagonal construction that is Getting Things Done a.k.a. CoPORD, leads the entire mass of one's organizational structure to diffuse, dissipate, and otherwise disengage, in Chapter 5 of Ready for Anything, Allen addresses, in an imagined 53-second radio/TV segment of a promotional book tour, the question:

"What's the one thing we do that gets in the way of being productive?" and answers thusly:

"It's not one thing but five things all wrapped together: People keep stuff in their head. They don't decide what they need to do about stuff they know they need to do something about. They don't organize action reminders and support materials and functional categories. They don't maintain and review a complete and objective inventory of their commitments. Then they waste energy and burnout, allowing their busyness to be driven by what's the latest and loudest, hoping it's the right thing to do but never feeling the relief that it is."

The more I devote myself to studying Allen's methods, the more I realize how effective they are.

Of course, my biggest stumbling block remains the heart of the matter: Organizing.

The best news for me, and maybe for you if you're a regular reader of this column, is Allen's response to what needs to be done, i.e. "What are the five best-practice behaviors to ensure that Getting Things Done gets done?"

Exactly those I listed in my Chapter 2 analysis, and which I lovingly refer to by the acronym, CoPORD.

Here's Allen's repetition of that essential message:

"It's a combined set of the five best-practice behaviors: Get everything out of your head. Make decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up--not when it blows up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete, and reviewed sufficiently to trust your intuitive choices about what you're doing (and not doing) anytime."

Allen then offers an even simpler distillation: "Focus on positive outcomes and continually take the next action on the most important thing."

Simple, no?

But if it were easy, we'd all be great.

David Allen seeks to make it easy, and all of us great.

Me, too.

Ready For Anything: Chapter 4 -- Getting to Where You're Going Requires Knowing Where You Are

2010-01-02T12:19:00.000-08:00

"It takes about ten years to get used to how old you are."
Unknown

You're gonna need a map, and you're gonna need to know how to read it.

Sure, you can hire GPS to tell you where and when to turn. But be ready to put up with the sighing "Recalculating," when you get off Chatty Cathy's chosen path.

Nope, you're gonna have to come up with answers to these six questions--then know them on a deep level, internalize them--in order to best position yourself in your world of hopes, dreams, and daily to-dos.

According to David Allen, in order to set your priorities, you're gonna have to understand that these six questions add up to one big one: What's your job?

1. What are your current tasks? Allen reminds us that these are those to-dos last mentioned, your current "next actions," and that the average person has "between a hundred and two hundred of these" every day.

2. What are your current projects? These are agreements with yourself about what you want to achieve in the relative short term. Getting the car ready for a 5,000 mile vacation. Getting your applications for grad school completed. Planning a wedding. Allen estimates most people have between "thirty and a hundred" projects.

3. What are your current areas of responsibility? You have these both on the job (teacher, coach, liaison to PTA, Class of '13 sponsor) and at home (care and feeding, finance and investments, recreation, education). Ten to fifteen of these we each have, says David Allen.

4. How are your job and personal affairs going to be changing in the next year? In other words: How will you be guiding your ship in the coming year? What are you trying to change? What needs to change in your business, home/family life, personal approach in order to achieve your next steps forward?

5. How are your organization, your career, and your personal life going to change? What are your longer-range goals for achievement and personal growth? What projects will you need to undertake to get there?

6. Why are you on the planet? What is your job as a human being? What do you need to accomplish before you die? Who are you?

These are big questions on big levels. They get to the heart of what you want to do or be.

"Most people," says Allen, "want to do or be something in the future -- something different. But without a reality-based reference point of where they in fact are on all levels of life, they're like the Flying Dutchman, doomed to drift."

Clarifying your reality -- finding out where you are on your personal map of success -- tells you exactly where you are, and so, which way to turn next to get where you want to go.

2010: The Year of Superior Vision

2010-01-01T18:56:00.000-08:00

20/20 vision is what scientists consider normal. It means you can see at 20 feet what you should see at 20 feet if your vision is healthy, aka "normal." If you have 20/40 vision, you can see at 20 feet what someone with normal vision can see at 40. Not as good. Read more about vision here.

But, if you have 20/10 vision, you can see from 20 feet what most normal people must be only 10 feet from.

20/10 means superior vision.

So, I hereby dub 2010: The Year of Superior Vision.

A Happy, Healthy, Prosperous 20/10 to all my readers.

How will you show your superior vision this year?

Ready for Anything: Chapter 3--Knowing Your Commitments Creates Better Choices of New Ones

2009-12-26T11:25:00.000-08:00

"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in elimination of nonessentials."

Lin Yutang

By now CoPORD should be on its way into your daily life.

But what if it isn't? What if you’re still balking at the structure of daily CoPORD? You're more of a once-a-weeker, you say, even a once-a-monther.

"Say it ain't so, Joan!"

On the other end of the rainbow, maybe you're so tightly controlled, everything so hyper-structured, that new ideas can't find their way in, or you sub-sub-bury them so from the start, you can't find later where they went. Or your ability to box things up quickly impairs your view of broader horizons.

As Allen says, "Concentration is the key to power in physics and in life, and to operations is the lubricant for the efficient flow of that energy."

Allen's only emphasizing the obvious in this chapter. The trick is maintaining the equilibrium between concentration and cooperation, between energy and matter.

Remember: Sometimes the obvious answer is the answer.

Ready For Anything: Chapter 2--You Can Only Feel Good About What You're Not Doing When You Know What You're Not Doing

2009-12-18T03:38:00.000-08:00

This is second in a series of 52 posts using David Allen's Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work & Life as a prompt for reflection, writing, and ultimately, action!

Since last week's post, I've begun to implement David Allen's Getting Things Done principles.

I find Allen's principles can be remembered easily by using the mnemonic CoPORD: Collect, Process, Organize, Review, Do!

First comes the brain dump: Collect all your "need to dos" in a notebook, a file, word doc, etc. Just put them all down. Any and all goals, jobs, from taking the car in for an oil change, to changing the litter box, to re-purposing blog posts, to writing a new vocabulary list for my Let's Play SAT! blog, to creating an innovative new reading program, to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.

But I haven't put down everything I need to get done in the next, oh, 30 years or so, God willing. Still need to put down EVERYTHING. Allen hypothesizes that many of us don't do this because we're afraid we'll find too little in our inner lives.

Not my problem: I simply haven't sat down long enough to get it all down, or to add new data to my old list. Think I'll give myself 5 full pages and see if that works.

Not to mention a couple more hours this weekend.

And yeah, I don't need to win the Nobel for Literature, but Allen doesn't distinguish between needs and wants. Just put 'em all down. Both ultimately come under the heading "to do," and come with concomitant "next actions."

Processing refers to finding those next steps for every item on one's "To Do" list.

When deciding which to do next, you first must figure out what the actual doing looks like, a step most of us miss. Even as we begin to adopt these productivity principles, we'll miss.

But figuring out just what the next step looks like for every one of our to-dos is liberating. It makes Organizing so much easier.

Organizing what to do next is the natural next step in any process of organizing oneself for greater productivity. Seems too obvious, but most of us organize before figuring out exactly what next actions we're organizing.

Allen's insistence that we see our next actions for each goal first is what makes his principles so potentially galvanizing and liberating. Life changing. For by assessing what action attaches to each of our goals, we free our minds up to come up with our next great idea.

Don't forget to write it down then and there.

This is an idea Allen emphasizes again and again, and the focus of the first 13 principles of Ready for Anything.

Because many of us easily fall back into the modality of "Do something, anything! Just stay busy. Organize my daily "busy"-ness, sure, but perspective and reflection? Later. Tomorrow, 'at Tara'."

Which is fine as long as it gets done.

But what needs to get done, and shows the importance of the first three steps most clearly, is Reviewing your goals, next actions, and proposed order for doing them.

At least weekly.

Penelope Trunk, whose Brazen Careerist network I'm a proud member of, does it daily. I'm beginning to. But not only do the next actions get reviewed, the goals and next steps themselves are re-collected, re-assessed, reorganized and kept current, ensuring that one's most essential goals are the ones worked on first and most often.

Longer term projects are put into separate folders. They're incorporated into the big picture, because some things can't be accomplished in two minutes, Allen's plus or minus time-frame for taking immediate action on a to-do.

I give myself 2-5 minutes, because I know myself well enough to know there aren't too many things I can do in two minutes, but keeping administrivia under 5 minutes per action is a goal worth pursuing, while at the same time keeping the concomitant pressure to perform each in under 2 minutes at bay.

Cut yourself some slack. Know yourself. but make Getting Things Done in a systematic way a goal of yours.

'Cause step 5 is Do!

So do Do! your CoPORDing!

When you're really doing it everyday, trust me, you'll be very happy with your new perspective on it all.

Seth's New eBook

2009-12-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

Download it here:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/what-matters-now-get-the-free-ebook.html

Features reflections by some of today's most ahead-of-the-curve entrepreneurs and business leaders, such as Penelope Trunk, Dan Pink, Tom Peters and Gary Vaynerchuck. Even Seth himself.

Pass it on:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/what-matters-now-get-the-free-ebook.html

Taking David Allen's Advice: aka Happy Birthday, Pragmatic Alternative!

2009-12-11T00:20:00.000-08:00

52 weeks ago I began this blog.

Tonight, to celebrate the first anniversary of this blog, I’m starting a series entitled, “Taking David Allen’s Advice.”

In case you don't know, David Allen is the world's leading personal productivity expert. His book, Ready for Anything, has 52 chapters, just enough to provide a prompt for the next 52 weeks.

And I turned 52 in ’09.

And now you know . . . the rest of the story.

Page 2!

Although these 52 chapters started out as random observations, they’ve been re- arranged by Allen himself, and ORGANIZED into four parts:

1) Clear Your Head for Creativity

2) Focus Productively

3) Create Structures That Work, and

4) Relax and Get in Motion.

Chapter 1, “Cleaning Up Creates New Directions,” begins with the admonition to get your house in order.

Does he know me or something? I’ve been called everything from a hoarder to a clutterbug. Neither of these quite captures the truth, and I do own many valuable forms of media: from books to magazines, to old copies of the Washington Post. From CDs to cassettes to LPs. I’ve probably got a few old 78s lying around somewhere. OK, maybe not, but you know I’ve got 45s.

Keeping a house--or car, or desk, or any open space, really—free of extranea or “stuff” just isn’t my thing. I see open space, I see a place to put something.

Now I like the look of open space. I really do. And I like having open space--I really do. But keeping a space clear and open has long been a challenge. Realistically, it always will be. There’s always something more interesting to do than tidying up. And really the problem is much deeper than that for me: I can draw a connection from one thing to any other thing. The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but that doesn’t mean a more circuitous path doesn’t connect the two points.

We call it the scenic route.

And while I understand the organizing principle of “like with like,” thanks to my investment in Organizing for Dummies, it is never going to be a primary skill.

Yet, Allen insists that clearing the way, literally, opens the path to creativity. With the physical clearing of space comes clarity of vision, says Allen, so when you see various paths, he argues, you can quickly decide which one is best. “The more you sweat in peace,” he quotes an ancient Asian proverb, “the less you bleed in war.”

Allen suggests “cleaning up, closing up, and renegotiating all [our] agreements with [our]selves and others . . . weekly.”

Or, as I put it, “It’s not enough to think outside the box. You still need to know where the box is.”

To this end, Allen suggests using some sort of idea catching device, whether Blackberry or 3 x 5 cards (my preference).

Whatever. When ideas hit, be prepared to catch them and cage them in your idea storage device, so you can harness their power when you have more time.

Allen’s chart for information/time management is at the top of this post. Well worth printing out and keeping in front of you until it becomes second nature. Even following his guidelines 4 days out of 7 will be a big improvement for lots of people.

Or maybe that’s just me.

What about you? Are you organized to the point of anal retentiveness? Or is your style laissez-faire to the point of, “Don’t clean my space! You’ll ruin my organization!”

Whaddya think? Speak up! Weigh in! Come on, don’t be shy.

And, if I do say so myself, Happy Birthday to The Pragmatic Alternative: All of One / And we’re still not done!

PS Special birthday shout out to Penelope Trunk!

Monthly Meet Up: December Goals

2009-12-06T20:28:00.000-08:00

Wasn't feeling too well for much of month, so relatively little accomplished.

Let's review:

Monthly Goals for November '09

1. Primary goal is now developing the HepCat Industries blog and brand. At their best any of my blogging efforts are entertaining, insightful and, ah, educational.

HepCat Industries encompasses and incorporates those three strengths best. Need to further reach out to the graphic design community in an effort to create visually interesting t-shirts and net presence, and need to trust my own design capabilities, my own ability to flesh out my vision, pick up the tech pieces later.

OK. Did start the new blog. Dropped the "u" in Industries, to match the link to cafepress store. www.cafepress.com/hepcatindstries. Planning on producing hand-drawn and hand-colored shirts for holiday wear and moving forward. Put at least 10 on line here, at HCI blog, and via Facebook.

2. Re-frame Pragmatic Alternative as a once a week blog, or at least a couple, three times a work, instead of an every day blog, which it hasn't been for a while. A better way to grow that brand, as well as the HepCat Industries brand, which is inherently more umbrella-like.

Little work done on PA in November. Laid up in bed. And not in the good way.

4. It's NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month, for you neophytes.

First attempted this in '06, for few words. All still there, but that story's for another day. Or year. Not too much to incorporate into AOAYA, but many tangents. They're both all about sex, death, politics, and love.

It's all about sex, death, politics, and love.

Bought Eric Maisel's What Would Your Character Do? to aid in the construction of characters for novel. Wrote a few 100, maybe 2000 words near beginning of month, but again, not feeling well, and so, not much accomplished. 1,000 word the other day had some value, though drafty. Will carryt on here. Have organized a few trusted friends to critique. That's a positive.

5. Keep 'em (monthly goals) all integrated best by focusing on HCI as the central organizing idea.

HepCat Indstries will see growth in December, due to production of hand-made, hand-colored t-shirts offered for sale. There will be more production.

Spending extra time on Let's Play SAT! brand and blog is the most important goal for December. Continue to write book and make regular entries on blog. Write new word list, and publish first list in pdf form.

6. Not sure how I overlooked this one: Score at least 2100+ on the SAT.

Managed this one just fine, in fact, should have been 2200 even. Official SAT Study Guide indicates an essay score of 10/12, paired with a multiple-choice score of 48/49 in Writing = 790. They only gave me 770. When I wrote asking why, College Board gave me the run around, offering to re-score my test for another $50.

I wasn't questioning the number right out of 49--I remembered answering them all correctly
; ^ ) --but the discrepancy between their official "guide" to scoring, and their actual scoring. When I pointed this out to their representative, she simply repeated the offer to re-score, again avoiding the simple question: Why does The Official SAT Study Guide show a result of 790, while my score remains at 770?

No matter. Be nice to get a straight answer, but 770 is still a 99th percentile score. Scored 800 on Critical Reading, also a 99th percentile score. Broke 600 on Math, 610, a 77th percentile score. When I scored 620 in high school, that was a 95th percentile score. Goes to show how many more are intensively prepping for SAT these days. Total = 2180.

Will redouble efforts to develop Let's Play SAT! blog, and keep working on SAT prep book.

Hermeneutics, or "You're a nudist" . . .

2009-11-30T22:45:00.000-08:00

Whatever he said . . .

Happy Birthday Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift, Roseanne McGeehin, Billy Idol, Bo Jackson, Andrea Newness Brito, et al . . .

Late-Breaking November Goal!

2009-11-06T19:02:00.000-08:00

Not sure how I overlooked this one: Score at least 2100+ on the SAT.

Oh, Boy! Then I can get into MENSA!

Taking it manana, for first time in 35 years.

You do the math!

Any help on putting a tilde on that first n?

Functions, concatenations, combinations, repercussions, and dingbats are all conspiring against me. Them and the clock.

Wish me luck!

Check out OwlSparks

2009-11-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

Carlos Micelli's OwlSparks is an incredibly forward-looking blog dedicated to the dual propositions:

1) It's always about team.

2) There's always better.

He's welcome to disagree, or better yet, add value, aka "the lagniappe."

And don't forget to visit the new HepCatIndstries blog! We're hiring, and we pay EQUITY! Come on over and be the first to comment! Get a free HepCatIndstries sticker! More lagniappe.

Go, go read Carlos's post. You'll get a comment from me as lagniappe. Not to mention a definition of "lagniappe" (lan - YAP), and a link to Ben Casnocha's "Making Time to Think."

November '09 Montly Goals

2009-11-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

Analyzing last month's goals, it's fair to say, they were only partially realized.

1. Can't say I consistently "wrote faster." Wrote some.

2. As yet, no "overhaul" of Pragmatic Alternative. Work in progress. Am learning from Wibbels. Smart move: He's a tremendous resource.

3. HepCat Industries blog still to be realized. But a major goal for this month. Whoops! That's for later.

4. Let's Play SAT! blog and brand. Not much accomplished on blog, but some progress made on SAT prep study book, and more to come. Worked on it today. All in all, made most progress in this category of monthly goals.

5. Some work accomplished on Autobiography of a Young Adult, aka AOAYA. Some. A difficult work. Lots of sadness in search of a joyful ending.

Oh, was that too honest?

Dag!

Oh Well (Pts. I & II) . . .

6. And in terms of that final goal: keeping all the others straight and effectively inter-connected. Not so good. Not so easy to balance all these goals, and integrate them seamlessly into a strong and effective whole.

Not without a few 1099s . . . Or at a minimum, a reinforced, more robust network. Need that support system.

And now, without further ado,

Monthly Goals for November '09

1. Primary goal is now developing the HepCat Industries blog and brand. At their best any of my blogging efforts are entertaining, insightful and, ah, educational.

HepCat Industries encompasses and incorporates those three strengths best. Need to further reach out to the graphic design community in an effort to create visually interesting t-shirts and net presence, and need to trust my own design capabilities, my own ability to flesh out my vision, pick up the tech pieces later.

2. Re-frame Pragmatic Alternative as a once a week blog, or at least a couple, three times a work, instead of an every day blog, which it hasn't been for a while. A better way to grow that brand, as well as the HepCat Industries brand, which is inherently more umbrella-like.

4. It's NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month, for you neophytes.

First attempted this in '06, for few words. All still there, but that story's for another day. Or year. Not too much to incorporate into AOAYA, but many tangents. They're both all about sex, death, politics, and love.

It's all about sex, death, politics, and love.

5. Keep 'em (monthly goals) all integrated best by focusing on HCI as the central organizing idea.

As Lindsey opined in that great '79 nugget on the even greater '79 LP Tusk, "That's enough for me!"

Talk to you next month.

Uh, tomorrow. Later this week. Soon.

Notes On Kawasaki's When Everything Is Free, Currently All Kawasaki's

2009-10-27T02:22:00.000-07:00

The Most Important Things in Life Are Free

Guy Kawasaki (Alltop)

Oct 13, 2009 -

Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired and author of Free, recently gave a keynote speech at Garage’s Revenue Bootcamp. The main points of his speech were:

*

Digital economics has created a deflationary economy in which there is near zero marginal costs for distribution. Hence, content is getting cheaper and approaching free.
*

Today’s generation expects things for free because people have internalized these digital economics. Adults, by contrast, grew up believing that “free” is a gimmick—i.e. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” (Watch this panel of young people to see the accuracy of this observation.)
*

Quality is more and more defined by relevance and not price. Thus, you can’t use price to win market share when everything is free. You have to use product differentiation and relevance.
*

The challenge for companies is to create premium goods and services that they can sell to “free” customers. Companies need to offer people ways to save time, increase their status, or heighten their reputation and convert these ways to cash.

If you’re in a content or online service business, you’re well aware of the pressure to lower your prices to free. The key point is that what customers are willing to buy is far more important than what you’re willing to sell. To learn more about Chris’s concept, watch his keynote here.

HepCat Indstries . . .

2009-10-27T01:33:00.000-07:00

. . . is a t-shirt company.

We are getting ready to launch a new product, in keeping with the monthly goals.

It's actually an old idea in a new package.

There's another old idea, needing approval, which will be coming forward in the next month, if not sooner.

Watch this space for more details . . .

All part of the general monthly--and ongoing--goal of staying fully focused on the work portfolio.

In an age of specialists, we hew to our goal of general expertise.

'Cause everyone else has abandoned that market.

Who'll serve the polymaths?

HepCat Indstries, that's who!

Vertically Integrated, For YOUR Convenience!

Not Just the Coolest -- the Best!

2009-10-23T22:41:00.000-07:00

So, just what made the dollar that guy gave me the most honest dollar I've ever earned?

'Cause while the romance of it is undeniable, I'm not so sure it's true.

I mean, the guy strode purposefully across Washington Square, extended that bill my way with a big grin, so to say, “Yeah. That's what I'm talking about.”

That gut-level, spontaneous, grokking appreciation, the giving without needing to be asked, that's it.

Or was it?

I mean, what about every dollar I ever earned bringing music and joy to markets across America? My markets!

From that first door in Burlington, Vermont, evening 6/26/83, through the record-setting BoulderNovember "Heart and Soul" Weekend, through Eugene, Iowa City and Edmonton, to the last known rap, 7/11/95 in Ithaca, I simply walked, knocked, and said:

“Hi, my name's Jay Hepner. I'm a singer/songwriter working my way to California by playing songs I've written. I'm asking a dollar a song. May I play you one?”

Since when is asking for the order wrong?

Uh, never.

Still, the sincerity of that NYC dollar, the whole "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere" ethos underlying it all. The Neil tribute, lyric pointing the way . . .

Then the guy, a crucial Great Pumpkin to my Linus.

Yeah, still the most honest dollar I've ever earned.

But the most honest job I've ever worked, the coolest, the best, was the job I made myself, door-to-door troubadour, asking condign payment for bringing the good times to you, rather than making you go downtown to get it.

It was a good idea then, It's still a good idea. And my customers got a good deal.

What they didn't get was my hitting the big time. There was no follow up album, though clearly, this was front-end marketing in support of back-end product at a premium.

Next time, I'll make sure I get a band lined up.

Maybe Monsters of Folk . . .

Something to do in November.

So what do you think? Which was the more honest dollar earned? New York, New York?

Or any dollar ever earned in exchange for an original song on a front porch or in a living room?

LMK, J

PS Special shout out to Anastasio, Gordon, Fishman and McConnell. Holdsworth and Daubert, too.

Hey guys, Burlington, June 26-27, '83? Did I play on your porch? If you can confirm, please do: JHepCat72@gmail.com.

Hey Hey My My! aka The Most Honest Dollar I've Ever Earned

2009-10-21T23:52:00.000-07:00

Mayhaps I should wait till March 25th, the 28th Anniv of this event, and as those playing along at home already know by now: your 28th birthday is the same day of week as day of birth, 'cause calendar just straight up analogs every 28.

So, I'll be sure to write 'bout this then, too.

Today I'm writing about it for a couple reasons:

a) Because it's me being me, which is what Penelope is talking about in today's post.

And, after all: Ain't that why y'all tuned in?

b) It should be a nice springboard to tomorrow's post: The Coolest Job I've Ever Had--Big hint: It's referenced in the earliest days of this blog. What makes it the coolest? Well,you'll just have to come back tomorrow to find out.

Film at 11 . . .

c) OK, this is more than a couple things. Tip o' the Pin, as Griffy says, to you literalists out there. But this is the Reader's Digest condensed version. Whoops! There I go again, skewing 1962!

Let's at least bring it to 1979, when Neil Young releasedRust Never Sleeps

--a quintessential lyric from which co-names this post.

Wikipedia tells us it was released June 22, 1979, a day I found myself in Okanogan, Washington--and here's the education/training/career connection--getting fired from my job with Longyear Extraction for securing myself to my safety belt rather than immediately throwing the drill bit down to my boss/coworker below. There was a pulley involved, so throwing may not be the most accurate verb. (Got a better? Send it along!)

It was a Friday.

I was picking apples by Monday. Thinning them, to be precise, for too early in the growing season that far north. Thinning involves popping three or four off a cluster of 5 or 6, in order to give most room to the biggest, most promising young fruit.

I wasn't terribly quick about it, so received my hiking papers Thursday, on the road Friday, Seattle-bound: The Return Tour.

But I digress.

Therefore I am.

Point is, though released in June, I didn't find out about Neil's watershed album till October.

And it's October, 30 Years Later. Happy Anniversary, Rust Never Sleeps!

Anyway, by spring '82, Rust Never Sleeps, with its half folk/half hard rock dichotomic delivery, stood as Neil's signature album.

The death of John Belushi--and my status as unemployed sandwich maker--convinced me that ". . .the time ha[d] come / To give what's mine," and so headed for New York City to become the next Not Ready For Prime Time Player.

Got the interview, not the job.

But in Washington Square,

lunchtime next day, I jumped, jived and wailed one of Neil's most trenchant lyrics:

"Sedan Delivery is a job I know I'll keep / It sure was hard to find."

Guy came up to me, handed me a buck.

Most honest dollar I've ever earned.

Short is Sweet

2009-10-20T23:40:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing I know about writing--and there's at least that many--two are:

a) I don't know nearly enough, and

b) Due to a hyperextension of my Dickens in childhood, I have an overweening propensity for prolixity; incorporating both a sufferant surfeit of formality and a Victorian tendency toward overwrought verbiage.

Like I said . . .

But Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is only 271 words, only 20 of which are more than two syllables: six iterations of "dedicate/d;" two each of "consecrate/d" and "devotion" leaving, among the other ten, "Liberty," "government," "continent," "unfinished," and "remember."

Guy before him talked for two hours. 13,607 words worth.

You remember him, "Ol' What's-His-Name?"

Point is, one thing I do know about effective writing: The truer the thought, the fewer words needed.

Blog Action Day '09

2009-10-15T12:29:00.001-07:00

My first job out of college was with Clean Water Action Project, canvassing door-to-door to raise public awareness--and funds--to protect the eco-balance.

From Clean Water Action, I moved on to the League of Conservation Voters, working hard to elect members of local legislatures, Congress and even the President of the United States--who sometimes must have to stand naked--based on their record when confronted with environmental legislation and stewardship.

In his NY Times column last Monday, Paul Krugman re-made the same points we at Clean Water and League of Conservation Voters were making all those years ago: Mother Earth spins round, but her needs can't be spun, anglesd, twisted, or re-framed. When it comes to earth, it's all about the science: it's only biology, chemistry, and physics that determine what kind of world we live and will live in, 'cause Mother Earth can't be lobbied.

Well, in re-reading Krugman's essays of 9/28/09 and the above-cited, from 10/5/09, I'm finding no such quotes vis-a-vis the biochemiphysical reality of our planet.

No matter. All energy.

Point is, Krugman is saying--again--things my colleagues and I were saying, as were Al Gore's professor in '76, and then Gore himself:

Climate change is real, and it's happening now. It won't get really bad till the end of this century, but that doesn't mean it isn't bad now.

It also doesn't mean we can't do a lot now to avert worse. And that it doesn't have to wreak economic chaos.

As Krugman explains, "First, the evidence suggests that we’re wasting a lot of energy right now. That is, we’re burning large amounts of coal, oil and gas in ways that don’t actually enhance our standard of living — a phenomenon known in the research literature as the “energy-efficiency gap.” The existence of this gap suggests that policies promoting energy conservation could, up to a point, actually make consumers richer.

Second, the best available economic analyses suggest that even deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would impose only modest costs on the average family. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of the effects of Waxman-Markey, concluding that in 2020 the bill would cost the average family only $160 a year, or 0.2 percent of income. That’s roughly the cost of a postage stamp a day. "

What's holding us back, boys and girls, is that, according to Krugman--and I agree--" the campaign against saving the planet rests mainly on lies."

The right, and some who claim the "centrist" mantle, are so focused on "Waterloo-ing" President Obama, that they're willing to sit idly by while the Becks and the Limbaughs, the Heritage Foundation, "and the rest," ditch intellectual honesty in favor of perverting President Obama's--and America's--forward progress.

Just a reminder:

"Just say, 'No!'"

Monthly Goals for October '09

2009-10-04T23:56:00.000-07:00

Today begins a new chapter in The Pragmatic Alternative: A very public monthly goal setting, in conjunction with Brazen Careerist's Monthly Goal Meet-Up Group.

1. Learn how to write faster! Seems I spend more time contemplating what I'm going to write, rather than writing it. Whether it's due to slow keyboards, uncomfortable desks and chairs, or merely my dyslexic typing, seems always to take minutes of contemplation, often with the best thoughts lost down the thoughtplex path.

Need to get the work done, and worry about the results later.

Better to tap, tap, tap, and dance on the keyboard, than to think about what to say.

Hopefully, I don't press publish too soon.

2. Overhaul Pragmatic Alternative. As some of my facebook friends may have noticed, I'm going to be taking Andy Wibbels's Build a Better Blog course. No, wait, that's Darren Rowse's course.

Dag! Not that Andy didn't teach Darren a thing or two, but not the point.

Andy's class is called: Using Blogs and Social Media for Instant Global Impact.

3. Build a HepCat Industries blog analagous to Wibbels's Andymatic. Develop the HepCat Industries brand through snappy funny phrasing, quippy insights, and the dry irony people have come to expect from HepCat Industries. Or will come to expect from HepCat Industries.

Remember, at HepCat Industries: If it's not funny--Don't believe it!

4. Build my Let's Play SAT! brand and blog, by regularly updating with real tips for SAT success. Not that that's the only success you'll want or need. Rather, that a little bit of practice, and a little bit of knowledge about the test and its administration go a long way toward assuaging SAT anxiety.

Treat the test like the game it is, then play to win!

5. Before I set the goal of clearing my plate of too many competing interests, I need to note the goal of regular work on my novel, Autobiography of a Young Adult. I'm lucky enough to have been paired up with a coach who I believe will get what I'm talking about, and knowing he's out there ready to encourage, critique, consider, then encourage some more is invaluable.

6. Keep these goals in the forefront each month. There may be new paths and offshoots, as plants are wont to sprout while growing, but these constants need to be reconnected with, connections made across, daily.

Why Laughter Matters

2009-10-02T00:09:00.000-07:00

Why'd the turtle cross the road?

So he could tortoise how.

"We called him "tortoise" because he taught us. . . ."

And, scene . . . .

* * * * * * * * * * *

In a recent discussion on Facebook. a friend of mine commented on my disappointment with digital TV:

"Sorry dude, it's still a whole lot of channels of nothing to watch."

Now, my anti-TV cred is pretty high.

From November of 9th Grade through November of sophomore year of college, the only TV I watched was selected old movies, Washington Redskins football games, Alfred Hitchcock Presents repeats, and Lily Tomlin specials.

The latter were noteworthy for a couple reasons:

1) They were the only NEW TV I was watching during that time period, and

2) They were produced by Lorne Michaels, who also produces the show that made me a TV watcher again for once and for all, Saturday Night Live.

3) Then I started reading Tom Shales, and the rest is history . . .

In the meantime, I defy you not to laugh at these men dressed as women:

http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/

Whaddaya know! Another Lorne Michaels production.

Laughter = Joy, and Joy is that force you feel when for some ineffable reason--and a few effable ones, lemme tell ya--you just plain feel GREAT to be alive, "For the good and the love and the thing and the do," as Martin Short channeling Jerry Lewis might put it.

'Cause it's GREAT to be alive!

Where there's joy, there's laughter.

And you know that can't be bad.

Free Blogging Course

2009-10-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

Free blogging course

Wait, the course isn't free, but the intro call is.

I've known Wibbels since I started blogging, back in '06.

My copy of BlogWild! is on the bookshelf next to me, easy to get to.

I've decided to go for a little help in my blogging career, and am turning to Andy to provide it, 'cause Andy really is all that. And a bag of chips: your choice. Here's mine:

Advantages of the course are many:

Content is available for download to your 'puter or 'Pod or Zuma, or whatevah!

Also, course is repeatable for free.

There's even a money back Guar-ON-tee, so you can't go wrong.

Wibbels is your ground floor guru. He knows his stuff. Here, I'll let him tell you:

Hi, I'm Andy Wibbels (that's me showin' off the guns at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco). I'm an award-winning blogger and author of the book Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging. I've been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Entrepreneur, Wired, Business Week, Forbes and other national and international media as a recognized expert in blogging and social media. I am also a contributing author to Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars and Business: The Ultimate Resource. For nine years I've been blogging and have taught companies all over the world how to use blogs to save time, make money and increase visibility. I'm currently head of blogger training for Six Apart, one of the global leaders in blogging.

Life is relationships, the best, strongest businesses are dedicated to building the best strongest relationships, turning customers into clients, and clients into friends.

I'm really looking forward to getting started with Andy, and really dedicating myself to studying SEO and Google Analytics to bring The Pragmatic Alternative more of the kinds of insights you've come to expect.

Won't you join us?

http://andywibbels.com/screwed/buy/

Be Remarkable

2009-09-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

This is Seth's advice. Pretty good rule of thumb for success in anything. Don't settle for "good enough." Think like an entrepreneur, not an employee. Be heart and soul all the time. Never take a play off.

When people used to read this blog, it was because it was remarkable.

Time to get back to business.

Everyday.

Healthy, Prosperous, Joyous 5770 to you.

May G-d Inscribe and Seal you in the Book of Life.

One Thing I Do Well . . .

2009-07-24T01:46:00.000-07:00

. . . is find new sources of inspiration, talent, ideas, kindred spirit, then share them.

Of course, Barbara J. Winter is often behind them ; ^ )

Or maybe Seth, or Penelope. Keith Ferrazzi is my latest go-to guru. And let's not forget Wibbels and SFB, etc...

But my latest find from Barbara is Ken Robert's Mildly Creative blog.

Authentic, and all about it.

Oh, Yeah!

Spring Forward, Summer's Here! aka Taking My Own Advice, Pt. Deux

2009-06-11T22:23:00.000-07:00

Six months ago, also on a Thursday night, I began this blog.

On January 1, I said, echoing my own words from, oh, April of '82: If you're not doing it everyday, you're not doing it.

Then I promptly stopped doing it.

Not that I wasn't doing something else. There's your velvet lining.

Reading Seth Godin today, as I usually do, I got turned on to a new review of some old truths, recast, and true again, let's face it: Hugh MacLeod's Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity.

So, particularly if you're a Watkins Mill Class of '09 graduate, on this the 34th Anniv of my own gradiation from HS University, I offer some of Hugh MacLeod's advice:

#1. "Ignore everybody. The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you."

#2. "The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours. The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will."

#3. "Put the hours in. Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. Ninety percent of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina. . .Put the hours in, do it for long enough, and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually."

#4. "Good ideas have lonely childhoods. . . The better the idea, the more 'out there' it initially will seem to other people, even people you like and respect. Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That is why good ideas are always initially resisted. Good ideas can have lonely young adulthoods, too."

#9. "Companies that squelch creativity can non longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
If you're creative, if you can think independently, if you can articulate passion, if you can override the fear of being wrong, then your company needs you now more than it ever did. And now your company can no longer afford to pretend that isn't the case.
So dust off your horn and start tooting it."

Sorry for the upstaging, Sampy!

Don't worry, nobody reads this thing. Unless I write it.

More to come . . .

The Pragmatic Alternative is . . .

2009-03-26T20:15:00.000-07:00

. . .Scientific Method.

How cool is scientific method? Beyond the universe to the universal.

Joe Francis Bacon made it all up, starting with a question starting with What if?

Formalizing the Q, hypothesizing: If >>>> then. If >>>> then. If >>>> then.

How hot is If >>>> then?

It's SofaKing hot!

Then setting up an experiment, figuring out a way to be figuring it out.

Taking some observations, recording some data--hanging and clanging.

Writing it all up in a report, seeing if the experiment revealed what was hypothesized.

If so, repeat for proof of non-coincidentality.

If not, rehypothesize, refashion experiment, run new 'speriment.

Or repeat first, to be sure nothing was awry.

Scientific method is what Paris Hilton was talking about when she first said, "That's so hot."

Knowledge is Power.

Or was that Knowledge is Good?

Either way. . .

Word o' the Day!

2. transition PRONUNCIATION = tran - `ZIH – shin

Definition: a move from one place or time to another place or time
Part of Speech (usage): noun = (n)
Sentence: Making the transition from middle school to high school is easier when you begin with the end in mind. Four years from now are you going to be working, in college, or both?

Derivation/Root: Latin = L transire, to go over or across

The Pragmatic Alternative is . . .

2009-03-12T23:16:00.000-07:00

. . . The Dictionary.

The Dictionary . . . is your friend!

Why bother with any other book? After all, all the words you're ever gonna read are all right here, and---there's pictures!

The thing that's so fascinating about the dictionary is the treasure w/in--like a rich vein of gold in which one also finds diamonds and emeralds and rubies, Oh my!~

'Cause you don't get just words.

Here's what you get:

Not just the definition of the word you're looking for but 2 or 3 definitions of the SAME WORD , sometimes as many as , well, Get has ---- defintions , in has .....definitions ... Get in there!

Phonetic spelling--each word comes with handy dandy funetik spelling to help you see it and say it WRITE!

A pronunciation guide-- never mispronounce a word again. Your go to guide for all phonetic spelling issues...Conveniently located at beginning of book.

Diacritical marks!!!Learn the schwa! the macron! the circumflex! They're all here, along with so much more including . . .

Synonyms! Synonyms! Synonyms! That's a spicy! Here's where the language gets its flavor aka "sabor" en Espanol.

Etymology--Roots of rock and roll,so to speak--perchance to know what the hell you're speaking about!

Did you know approx 55% of all English words trace their heritage to Latin? Or that 25% of the English language is rooted in Greek soil?

So whip out that big fat dictionary. Crack it open and take a big ol' whiff!

You'll be so glad you did.

Word o' the Day!

Hiatus--a break in the action...This blog was on hiatus for a while. What was up with that? And what's so great about this entry? Meh. When will this blog go on hiatus again? A hiatal hernia is break in the abdomen where all your guts can spill out. It's a breach or break in your guts, so they all start oozing out. Gross!

The Pragmatic Alternative is . . .

2009-01-21T20:50:00.000-08:00

Neil Young and Johnathan Goodwin.

Neil and Johnathan are working together to convert Neil's '59 Lincoln Continental convertible to an all-electric car that never needs refueling, only recharging.

Neil has this to say, (courtesy of NewEnergyNews): "Johnathan and this car are going to make history…We're going to change the world, we're going to create a car that will allow us to stop giving our wealth to other countries for petroleum….And we're going to do it right here in Wichita, a great place that I now love, where people know how to make things, and make things happen."

Why is the veteran rock and roll star geared up about this project? 2 reasons. First, because he loves his cars: "…people are saying we should go to small cars, but I love big American cars with power…I asked Johnathan that first day if we could take a huge American car like this, 2 ½ tons, 19 ½ feet long, and make it so you could drive it without ever refueling. Something practical…And Jonathan said 'Yeah.' And that's what we're going to do."

Second, because his motivation hasn’t changed all that much since 1971. He’s still trying to use his success to make the world a better place: "…I thought long ago you could change the world by writing songs. But you can't…Oh, you can inspire a few people, get some of them to change their thinking about something. But you can't change the world by writing songs…But we could change it with this car."

Johnathan was profiled in Fast Company in November of '07. Here's an excerpt:

Goodwin's work proves that a counterattack [on Detroit] is possible, and maybe easier than many of us imagined. If the dream is a big, badass ride that's also clean, well, he's there already. As he points out, his conversions consist almost entirely of taking stock GM parts and snapping them together in clever new ways. "They could do all this stuff if they wanted to," he tells me, slapping on a visor and hunching over an arc welder. "The technology has been there forever. They make 90% of the components I use." He doesn't have an engineering degree; he didn't even go to high school: "I've just been messing around and seeing what I can do."

All of which raises an interesting possibility. Has this guy in a far-off Kansas garage figured out the way to save Detroit?

America's most revolutionary innovations, it has long been said, sprang from the ramshackle dens of amateurs. Thomas Edison was a home-schooled dropout who got his start tinkering with battery parts; Chester Carlson invented the photocopier in his cramped Long Island kitchen. NASA, desperate for breakthroughs to help it return to the moon, has set up million-dollar prizes to encourage private citizens to come forward with any idea, no matter how crazy. As the theory goes, only those outside big industries can truly reinvent them.

Goodwin is certainly an outsider. He grew up in a dirt-poor Kansas family with six siblings and by age 13 began taking on piecework in local auto shops to help his mother pay the bills. He particularly enjoyed jamming oversized engines into places no one believed they'd fit. He put truck engines inside Camaros, Grand Nationals, and Super Bees; he even put a methanol-fueled turbocharger on a tiny Yamaha Banshee four-wheeler. "We took that thing from 35 horsepower to 208," he recalls. "It was crazy. We couldn't put enough fins on the back to keep it on the ground." After dropping out of school in the seventh grade, he made a living by buying up totaled cars and making them as good as new. "That," he says, "was my school."

This past November, Neil's post in the HuffingtonPost, outlined his ideas on how to retool the American auto industry:

We need forward looking people who are not restricted by the existing culture in Detroit. We need visionary people now with business sense to create automobiles that do not contribute to global warming.

It is time to change and our problems can facilitate our solutions. We can no longer afford to continue down Detroit's old road. The people have spoken. They do not want gas guzzlers (although they still like big cars and trucks). It is possible to build large long-range vehicles that are very efficient. People will buy those vehicles because they represent real change and a solution that we can live with.

The government must take advantage of the powerful position that exists today. The Big 3 are looking for a bailout. They should only get it if they agree to stop building autos that contribute to global warming now. The stress on the auto manufacturers today is gigantic. In order to keep people working in their jobs and keep factories open, this plan is suggested:

The big three must reduce models to basics. a truck, an SUV, a large family sedan, an economy sedan, and a sports car. Use existing tooling.

Keep building these models to keep the workforce employed but build them without engines and transmissions. These new vehicles, called Transition Rollers, are ready for a re-power. No new tooling is required at this stage. The adapters are part of the kits described next.

At the same time as the new Transition Rollers are being built, keeping the work force working, utilize existing technology now, create re-power kits to retrofit the Transition Rollers to SCEVs (self charging electric vehicles) for long range capability up to and over 100mpg. If you don't think this technology is realistic or available, check out the Progressive Insurance Automotive X prize. Alternatively, check out Lincvolt.com or other examples.

A bailed out Auto manufacturer must open or re-purpose one or more factories and dedicate them to do the re-power/retrofit assembly. These factories would focus on re-powering the Transition Rollers into SCEVs but could also retrofit and re-power many existing vehicles to SCEVs. These existing vehicles are currently sitting unsold at dealerships across America.

Auto manufacturers taking advantage of a government bailout must only sell clean and green vehicles that do not contribute to global warming. No more internal combustion engines that run exclusively on fossil fuels can be sold period.

No Big Three excuses like "new tooling takes time". New tooling is not a requirement for SCEV transition rollers.

Build only new vehicles that attain the goal of reversing global warming and enhancing National Security.

Government legislation going with the bailout should include tax breaks for purchasers of these cars with the new green SCEV technology. The legislation accompanying the bailout of major auto manufacturers must include directives to build only vehicles that attain the goal of reversing global warming while enhancing National security, and provide the financial assistance to make manufacturing these cars affordable in the short term while the industry re-stabilizes.

Eventually the SCEV technology could be built into every new car and truck as it is being assembled and the stop gap plan described above would have completed its job of keeping America building and working through this turbulent time.

Detroit has had a long time to adapt to the new world and now the failure of Detroit's actions is costing us all. We pay the bailout. Let's make a good deal for the future of America and the Planet. Companies like UQM (Colorado) and others build great electric motors right here in the USA. Use these domestic electric motors. Put these people to work now. This plan reverses the flow from negative to positive because people need and will buy clean and green cars to be part of World Change. Unique wheel covers will identify these cars on the road so that others can see the great example a new car owner is making. People want America to win!

This plan addresses the issue of Global warming from our automobiles while enhancing our National Security and keeping Detroit working.

Neil Young and Johnathan Goodwin: getting it done, making it happen.

Pragmatically. Alternatively.

The Pragmatic Alternative is . . .

2009-01-20T16:56:00.001-08:00

. . . President Barack Obama.

Many have commented on it by now, but the point that most resonated with us here at the PA was this one:

" The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end."

Obama continued: "And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account -- to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day -- because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control -- and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.

The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good."

Obama also reminded us of the eternal verities, of the age of wisdom:

"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends -- hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship. . . ."

Few Americans today, with money tight and markets uncertain, with our world in seismic spasm, and our steps tentative in response, can deny the need to adopt as pragmatic an approach as possible to the many challenges we face, both at home and abroad; as a nation one among many, and also as the nation which first and still holds these truths to be self-evident: "that all are created equal . . . [and] are endowed by their Creator with . . . unalienable rights . . . Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

And the honor of the Pursuit of Responsibility.

Here's to you, President Obama.

Here's to all of us, working together.

And:

"Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."

Amen.

You should know this about me . . .

2009-01-07T20:17:00.000-08:00

Whole albums on my iPod:

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Derek and the Dominoes, 1970

Eat a Peach, The Allman Brothers Band, 1972

Europe '72, Grateful Dead, 1972

Wake of the Flood, Grateful Dead, 1973

The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, Bruce Springsteen, 1974

Katy Lied, Steely Dan, 1975

Station to Station, David Bowie, 1976

I know what you're thinking: What happened to '71?

Every Picture Tells a Story . . .

No post today . . .

2009-01-06T22:23:00.000-08:00

. . . going to sleep. Please re-read yesterday's.

Or just go to Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto.

Night . . .

Bruce Mau's "Incomplete Manifesto for Change"

2009-01-05T19:41:00.000-08:00

Fascinating guidelines for the creative soul.

Found through tracking back from Seth's Blog to Social Hallucinations by Daria Radota Rasmussen to John Moore's Brand Autopsy, from which this excerpt is gratefully reprinted.

Collect 'em all!

And here's a link to an ETR YouTube video featuring managing editorSuzanne Richardson.

Remember kids: Show, DON'T tell.

Your teachers will thank you.

And when you're not taking remedial writing for no credit freshman year, you'll thank yourself.

So paint that gambrell-roofed red barn with sturdy silo, crash those cymbals--and symbols, smell the ocean tang, run your hand the length of that cat's tail, and feel that lemon make your mouth water.

Show, don't tell.

Beyond Thinking Different to Doing Different
Electronically reprinting Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Change has become a New Year's tradition on Brand Autopsy. Enjoy all over again ...

Originally posted on December 31, 2004

Bruce Mau, a designer, thinker, articulator, and massive change provocateur, has a lot of ideas on a lot of things. His Incomplete Manifesto for Change is a list, an incomplete one at that, of 43 ideas to get you beyond thinking differently but doing differently. As 2008 turns to 2009, the message of doing differently is one we should all heed. Enjoy.

Massive_change

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth
Author: Bruce Mau (1998)

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ——————————. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'

31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

"Early to bed, early to rise . . ."

2009-01-04T23:25:00.000-08:00

. . . makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."

Words I find it hard to live by. I'm more of an "as long as I can sleep from 4 to 7 am, all will be fine," kind of guy.

But Ben Franklin said those words, and Michael Masterson, entrepreneur extraordinaire, has taken them to heart.

About 8 years ago, he started the online ezine, which is only part of what it is, Early to Rise, based on the (once very familiar) Franklin aphorism.

ETR as Masterson and we subscribers refer to it, is full of good advice on beginning a business venture, investing, maintaining health, and Hey kids! there's even a "Word of the Day" for you vocabulary fans!

Recommended for anyone who wants practical insights into business success, especially sales, marketing, speaking and writing.

How to Read . . .

2009-01-03T21:11:00.001-08:00

Reading. Pretty simple really.

See the letters.

Say their sounds.

Sound letters, sound!

That's it. That's all there is to it.

So how come we all don't score 800 on the SAT Critical Reading?

Well, there is that small issue of vocabulary. If you don't know the meaning of a word, you're not sure of what the sentence says. If you don't know the meaning of several words, well, there's less meaning still.

But beyond simple vocabulary, the thing to keep in mind is: What do you know going into the reading? What in the reading connects to what you already know?

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler, author of How to Read a Book, discusses how to read a difficult book in this excerpt.

HOW TO READ A DIFFICULT BOOK

by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D

Dear Dr. Adler,

To tell you the truth, I find the so-called great books very difficult to read. I am willing to take your word for it that they are great. But how am I to appreciate the them if they are too hard for me to read? Can you give me some helpful hints on how to read a hard book?

THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE about reading is one that I have told my great books seminars again and again: In reading a difficult book for the first time, read the book through without stopping. Pay attention to what you can understand, and don't be stopped by what you can't immediately grasp on this way. Read the book through undeterred by the paragraphs, footnotes, arguments, and references that escape you. If you stop at any of these stumbling blocks, if you let yourself get stalled, you are lost. In most cases you won't be able to puzzle the thing out by sticking to it. You have better chance of understanding it on a second reading, but that requires you to read the book through for the first time.

This is the most practical method I know to break the crust of a book, to get the feel and general sense of it, and to come to terms with its structure as quickly and as easily as possible. The longer you delay in getting some sense of the over-all plan of a book, the longer you are in understanding it. You simply must have some grasp of the whole before you can see the parts in their true perspective -- or often in any perspective at all.

Shakespeare was spoiled for generations of high-school students who were forced to go through Julius Caesar, Hamlet, or Macbeth scene by scene, to look up all the words that were new to them, and to study all the scholarly footnotes. As a result, they never actually read the play. Instead they were dragged through it, bit by bit, over a period of many weeks. By the time they got to the end of the play, they had surely forgotten the beginning. They should have been encouraged to read the play in one sitting. Only then would they have understood enough of it to make it possible for them to understand more.

What you understand by reading a book through to the end -- even if it is only fifty per cent or less will help you later in making the additional effort to go back to places you passed by on your first reading. Actually you will be proceeding like any traveler in unknown parts. Having been over the terrain once, you will be able to explore it again from points you could not have known about before. You will be less likely to mistake the side roads for the main highway. You won't be deceived by the shadows at high noon because you will remember how they looked at sunset.And the mental map you have fashioned will show better how the valleys and mountains are all part of one landscape.

There is nothing magical about a first quick reading. It cannot work wonders and should certainly never be thought of as a substitute for the careful reading that a good book deserves. But a first quick reading makes the careful study much easier.

This practice helps you to keep alert in going at a book. How many times have you daydreamed your way through pages and pages only to wake up with no idea of the ground you have been over? That can't help happening if you let yourself drift passively through a book. No one even understands much that way. You must have a way of getting a general thread to hold onto.

A good reader is active in his efforts to understand. Any book is a problem, a puzzle. The reader's attitude is that of a detective looking for clues to its basic ideas and alert for anything that will make them clearer. The rule about a first quick reading helps to sustain this attitude. If you follow it, you will be surprised how much time you will save, how much more you will grasp, and how much easier it will be.

The same applies to a shorter piece. Whether you know the words or not, whether you know a lot about the subject or not, read it through once thoroughly, then go back and re-read it.

Good reading is re-reading.

Risk!

2009-01-02T11:20:00.000-08:00

I've had this posted on the wall of my bedroom for a few years now, but it dates to about 1990, and survives as one of the many scraps of paper I haven't thrown away yet.

Found the added lines in an online thread.

I love the dueling anaphora of infinitive phrases.

Live the life you love.

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement.
To explore feelings is to risk exposing our true self.
To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd is to risk loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try at all is to risk failure.
But to risk we must,
Because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The man, the woman, who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
One may avoid suffering and sorrow, but one cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love.
Chained by certitudes, one is a slave who has forfeited freedom.
Only one who risks is free.

A simple "Thank You!" . . .

2009-01-02T10:20:00.001-08:00

. . . to Barbara J. Winter, writer/teacher/entrepreneur amply noted in the inaugural posting to this blog.

Or maybe not so amply noted. Because it's been three weeks since I've mentioned her.

Barbara responded to my first posting with a lot of support and
a link from her post, "Email worth reading" to Taking My Own Advice.

Priceless.

So, thanks again to Barbara J. Winter for her empowering notion of Making A Living Without A Job.

In it, Barbara says, "For the few who are passionate in their work, that passion is basic to their emotional well-being--and to their financial success."

The few, the proud, the passionate, the pragmatic alternatives!

Finding meaningful work . . .

2009-01-02T09:32:00.000-08:00

At its core, meaningful work is helping people. Penelope Trunk 9/29/08

1. Make sure you can take care of yourself first. If you're not healthy, provided for reasonably sane, you're not much good to anyone else. And as mentioned at the top everybody else is why you're here.

Riffing . . .

2009-01-01T11:20:00.000-08:00

Nothing changes on New Year's Day -- U2

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. (The more things change, the more they stay the same). -- Alphonse Karr, Les Guepes 1849

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.
Gail Sheehy

If you're not doing it everyday, you're not doing it. -- The Book of Hep, 4/8/82

Thought for the Year:

Today the Internet democratizes authority, and people are judged not by their age or experience but by the quality of what they have to say.

Penelope Trunk 11/29/07 http://blog.penelopetrunk.com

Did I mention Penelope Trunk?

2008-12-31T10:48:00.000-08:00

Here's a great post from Penelope from a couple years ago.

It's not just about the mechanics kids . . . It's about having good ideas and how much you care.

Specialty of the Pragmatic Alternative?

Career counseling and entrepreneurship for the 14 - 30 set.

Best of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to you and yours in 2009, and in years to come.

Hep

Benefit from blogging without spending tons of time

A few months ago, I was interviewing this guy, Ben Casnocha.

The first thing you need to know about Ben is that he started a company when he was fourteen. And it's still around today, four years later. Ben doesn't run it, but my point is that it's a real company.

But no, wait, that's not my point. This next paragraph isn't my point either, but I'm going to tell you anyway: Ben's company, Comcate, helps governments do stuff online. Nothing particularly notable about that except that it's exactly what my second startup did. So while my own governments-go-online startup was going bankrupt in the dot-com crash. Ben was in his sixth grade classroom making a success of that very business.

Ben does not know this. I nearly fell on the floor when I was on the phone with him, and it was all I could do to keep the interview going. But now, whenever you see me grandstanding about my three companies that I started, you can recall that I'm also the one who was outmaneuvered in my business by a kid in junior high school.

But anyway, I digress. Ben is a very humble and interesting guy, and he's hard to not like. So during the interview, I asked him how he meets people to mentor him. This is what he said, "Mostly face to face. Not through the more traditional ways like blogging."

TRADITIONAL? I had to pick myself up off the floor again.

But you know what? That was eight months ago. And I've been blogging for a while now, and Ben has a point. It is very, very easy to meet people through blogging. And it's very efficient — you never have to leave your computer.

Some of you are thinking you have no idea where to start. So look, here are the easiest instructions for starting a blog. Some are you are thinking it's too time intensive. But you can grow a useful network efficiently from a blog that you post to only once or twice a week.

I think the networking benefits should be enough reason for you to be posting twice a week. After all, if you can't afford two hours a week for networking, your career is in trouble. But here are three more benefits to blogging — these are goals you should have for your career anyway, and they're goals you can reach by blogging only a handful of times a month:

1. You will force yourself to specialize.
You can't really write a blog about everything. Well, you can, but it will suck. So you'll need to pick a topic and stick with it. And just the act of doing that is good for you because specializing is good for your career. After all, you can't be known for something if you are not specializing in something. And once you are known for something you have a lot more leverage to get the kind of work you want to be doing.

People who want flexible work schedule often think that being a generalist will give them a lot of wiggle room. In fact, it's the opposite. A generalist is easy to find, so no one needs to bother giving you a flexible work schedule to keep you. But if you specialize you are not so easily replaced, so you can ask for more flexibility at work.

2. You will let people know you have good ideas.
One of the biggest complaints people have about their work is that no one listens to their ideas. Everyone wants to be a creative thinker, but not everyone feels like that sort of work is open to them.

With a blog, though, you show people your creativity. Got a lot of ideas? Good, because there are a lot of days in the week for you to fill on that blog. And instead of you running around the office complaining to people about your stifled potential, you can show people your potential by broadcasting your ideas. The best way to get hired to spew ideas is to spew them and get people interested.

3. You will show passion and commitment.
There is a lot of evidence to show that, all things being mostly equal, we have a proclivity toward hiring people we want to have sex with. But we also have a proclivity toward hiring people we like. And after all the Ford Models are out of the interview cue, the most appealing people are those who have passion and commitment.

Of course, if you have read any how-to-interview advice, you know you should always say you have passion and commitment. But people who have it exude it. And if you are a blogger, and post at regular intervals, you don't need to tell people about your passion and commitment - it's right there on the page.

. . . aaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnddddddddd . . .

2008-12-30T23:20:00.000-08:00

We're back!

Missed us, didn't you?

How could you not.

Back from taking some needed time off with daughter and friends.

Not that blogging isn't a full-time job.

It is, so that's not it.

But time off is time off.

In the meantime, through Seth through to Pistachio, through to Shel Israel, I came across Penelope Trunk, who's doing marvelous work in alternative, and not so, career counseling, on her blog and with her company, BrazenCareerist.com

Wow! I'd advise anyone looking for great career advice to check in with Penelope.

The thing I love most about Penelope's blog is that, along with her very practical advice and insights, she offers her real travails and concerns. You know, the kind of thing I've been covering on ReInventing Myself!

What, you didn't know?

No way. You're kidding me.

Seriously.

I'm just saying . . .

(Establishing ethos, establishing ethos).

I've already written her and thanked her for her great template of topics--blogging, career fulfillment, college students--some of the first things covered here at the PA, and only the first three listed on Penelope's which I know will guide me as I continue to establish myself as a great coach, career counselor and oh yeah, teacher.

Typing all this while listening to Laura deliver her Keynote in Montreal about using Twitter, and why to.

Gotta work up some backlog, so I can publish daily . . . You, too . . . House still needs cleaning.

Neil was write, "A ma-aa-aa-an / A man needs a maid . . . Just someone to keep my house clean, fix my meals and go away . . ."

My Favorite Commercial of All Time . . .

2008-12-24T03:50:00.000-08:00

Love YouTube! More to come . . .

I remembered this commercial slightly differently. Nice that there's a video record. As Warner Wolf used to say, and probably still does somewhere: "Let's go to the videotape!"

Here's the set up:

It's summer of '93. Michael Jordan has just led the Chicago Bulls to their third straight NBA championship, astutely dishing off to an open Steve Kerr, who whooshes the winning shot in Game 6 vs Barkley's Suns.

Jordan is the best. He shoots tons, plays 48 minutes of out-of-his-head defense--every game, feeds assists. "Da Bulls, Da Bulls, Da Best!" the fight song goes.

But Jordan always knew a lot of hard work went into becoming "the best."

That's why we see Jordan, all alone, practicing that most basic of basketball plays, the foul shot. Again, and again, and again.

Jordan can imagine failure, being "just a basketball player" (Hey kids! Note embedded quote!), so he takes arms against it and that. Deliberately.

Because at the end of the game, 80% of the time, foul shooting makes the difference.

Reading Geoff Colvin's new Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else last night at Barnes and Noble,Rio is what sent me looking for this commercial.

Highly recommended.

His thesis is supported by research that shows that greatness is within reach, but getting there won't be much fun.

It takes what researcher K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University calls "deliberate practice," whose key components -- designed specifically to improve performance, easily repeatable, provides an ongoing feedback loop, demanding mentally, and ain't much fun -- are quite easy to understand.

But there is that bottom line on the road to greatness: It ain't all grins and giggles.

But the upside is huge, says Colvin, senior editor in chief at Fortune where this excerpt was published in October, 2006:

"Maybe we can't expect most people to achieve greatness. It's just too demanding. But the striking, liberating news is that greatness isn't reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and to everyone."

Words to grow on, kids!

About the IdeaVirus: Well, Let Seth Tell It . . .

2008-12-22T21:38:00.000-08:00

Hope I get this write: The following content comes directly from Seth Godin's blog, also known simply as Seth's blog.

I did not write any of this post, other than this brief introduction, but share it here today and give Seth Godin and Seth's blog full credit for all the content posted below.

Last week I mentioned Seth's Unleashing the IdeaVirus, and that I planned on releasing it here on The Pragmatic Alternative.

Maybe Seth's a reader, 'cause he's not only re-released Unleashing the IdeaVirus in his latest blog post, he's also reflected on its relevance 8 years later, and reemphasized just what makes an IdeaVirus an IdeaVirus.

Enjoy this great post, and read Seth's blog everyday.

I do.

It's appointment web.

Hep

What is viral marketing?

Viral marketing is an idea that spreads--and an idea that while it is spreading actually helps market your business or cause.

Two kinds of viral marketing: The original classic sort in which the marketing is the product and which a self-amplifying cycle occurs. Hotmail, for example, or YouTube. The more people use them, the more people see them. The more people see them, the more people use them. The product or service must be something that improves once more people use it.

A second kind has evolved over the last few years, and that's a marketing campaign that spreads but isn't the product itself. Shepard Fairey's poster of Barack Obama was everywhere, because people chose to spread it. It was viral (it spread) and it was marketing (because it made an argument--a visual one--for a candidate.)

Something being viral is not, in an of itself, viral marketing. Who cares that 32,000,000 people saw your stupid video? It didn't market you or your business in a tangible, useful way.

Marketers are obsessed with free media, and, as is often the case, we blow it in our rush to get our share. We create content that is hampered or selfish or boring. Or we create something completely viral that doesn't do any marketing at all.

I wrote the first mainstream book about viral marketing. It's free (still) eight years (and millions of downloads) later.

Download 2000Ideavirus.pdf

I haven't updated it or made it pretty, but I think the core ideas stand up pretty well. (I even talk about the Zipf's Law and the long tail, but didn't realize it at the time).

Here's how the book itself is an example of viral marketing:

1. I posted the PDF for free. Three thousand people downloaded it on day one.

2. The file is small enough to email to your friends. I encouraged people to do just that.

3. Some people mailed it to fifty or a hundred people. It spread.

4. That's just viral. The marketing part? I released a $40 souvenir hardcover edition. People knew the idea but didn't like the format or my design skills. So they paid a lot for a book they had already read. It went to #5 on Amazon (#4 in Japan). We sold the rights in dozens of languages. And the paperback rights. And it helped me get speaking gigs.

BUT! 5. That's not why I did it. If I had done it as a clever way to sell books, it would have failed. It would have failed because I would have somehow tried to track it, or added friction, or tried to profit in some way from the idea. I was way too dumb at the time to have done it right if my goal was to do it 'right'.

The critical element of viral marketing is this: it's built in. It was built into Hotmail and built into YouTube. The more people used the camera on their cell phones, the more the idea spread, the more people wanted a camera.

If you want to do viral marketing, you can try to come up with a viral ad, but you'll probably fail. You're better off building the viral right into the product, creating a product that spreads because you designed it that way.

Viral marketing only works well when you plan for it, when you build it in, when you organize your offering to be spreadable, interesting and to work better for everyone involved when it spreads. If I don't benefit from spreading it, why should I spread it? I won't. If you don't benefit from your users spreading the idea, it might spread, but it won't help you much. So both elements have to be present.

The reason for this post is that viral marketing is getting a bad name, largely from clueless marketing agencies and clueless marketers. Here's what they do: they get a lame product, or a semi-lame product, and they don't have enough time or money to run a nationwide ad campaign. So, instead, they slap some goofy viral thing on top of it and wait for it to spread. And if it doesn't spread, they create a faux controversy or engage a PR firm or some bloggers and then it still doesn't work.

Being viral isn't the hard part. The hard part is making that viral element actually produce something of value, not just entertainment for the client or your boss.

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It's not whether you have the answers . . .

2008-12-21T20:39:00.000-08:00

. . . It's whether you know the questions. The Book of Hep, 2/25/1980

And now the answers to last week's fun quiz:

A. False. Marketing isn't everything. Love is everything. Love is the why which powers the how.

B. True. Everything is marketing.

Oh, and if both are true, "Marketing is everything" clearly takes "Everything is marketing."

Everybody knows, Love and Only Love will endure.

Trackback

2008-12-18T21:08:00.000-08:00

I'm learning about TrackBack, and you should, too.

Here's a definition, from the Andy Wibbels classic--almost three years old now!--BlogWild!:

"A TrackBack links to another blog that is referencing that particular post. Her's an example:"

I was reading Seth's blog today, and he mentioned several interesting things, in two separate posts.

First, I read about a woman named pistachio, who offers micro sharing, macro results, who's raising money for clean water for the kids in India, via twitter.

I read Wibbels yesterday, on mind reading, and Mitch Meyerson's Guerrilla Marketing Coach site. Note at the latter that two of the three blogs on the guerillamarketing coach blogroll have already been mentioned here as key influences.

And in Seth's blog the other day, a brief writing lesson.

Yeah, pretty sure that's TrackBack.

Question is: How many of these TrackBacks will link directly to articles sighted?

We'll soon see . . .

Key is connecting to particular posts.

When I Write Curriculum . . .

2008-12-17T20:29:00.000-08:00

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."
- Ernest Hemingway

. . . every student will write a blog on a schoolwide, maybe systemwide network.

Nothing wrong with literary analysis, but not always relevant in day to day communication needs.

What is needed are . . .

. . . strong, active verbs that show, not tell

. . . disdain for simple "to be" verbs, and passive voice

. . . imaginative word pictures, i.e. similes, metaphors, personifications

. . . sense words: smell those french fries, taste that cotton candy, feel that sandpaper, hear that train whistle, see those stars and stripes . . .

Another long term project--developable over the course of a student's school career: create your own Squidoo lens!

Write about something you can write about, about something you care about. Write it better and better. Add in graphics, widgets, an estore, you name it. It can be done. I've only got one so far, MeMBA but am planning on building a few real soon, before year's end.

Squidoo is the brainchild of Seth Godin--Hey, wait! You've heard of him!--I've got one minimal lens there, and have several ideas for more.

By writing for publication, students will learn to take more responsibility for their content. No one writing for publication wants to look bad. Connecting the goal of better writing to completing the writing process sets the expectation that writing needs to be readable.

People are actually going to read you.

But too many students have become disconnected from process's end.

This isn't news. Nancie Atwell has been working this idea very successfully since the mid to late 1980s, as detailed in her books, In the Middle, and Lessons That Change Writers.

And she's coming to Baltimore this spring.

See you there?

Top 10 Reasons YOU Should Blog!

2008-12-16T21:48:00.001-08:00

#10 You're writing for publication.

#9 Because you're writing for publication, you're paying attention to your punctuation. No sense looking the total dumbass.

#8 Not wanting to look the total dumbass, you read over what you've written, to listen for, locate, and place the commas, the semi-colons, the periods.

#7 You're now proofreading. You're paying attention.

#6 Because you're paying attention, seriously considering what you're writing, your writing is improving.

#5 Because your writing is improving, you may be taken more seriously. Your opinions may be more respected. You may actually be supporting your opinions with facts, relevant anecdotes, statistics, empirical data, research. You know, the whole cause and effect situation.

#4 I'm just saying.

#3 Writing all the time in your blog not only improves your writing skills through constant practice, it also improves them by constantly consciously running your processor, aka your brain.

#2 From Ted's Take, blog of Ted Leonsis, owner of Washington Capitals, among other things: " . . . happy people find outlets for personal expression . . . I think the pursuit of happiness, which is an American ideal, is a large contributor to the explosion in blogs that we’ve seen over the last few years."

And the #1 Reason you should blog:

When you get to college, you won't be paying anyone not to give you credit for learning what you didn't bother to learn in high school.

My Life in Marketing, Part 2: My Marketing Library

2008-12-15T20:38:00.000-08:00

Because I know how much it matters to you all, I thought I'd let you know when I first got interested in marketing.

(Establishing ethos, establishing ethos).

Uncharacteristically, I don't remember.

I do however, remember the day I bought my first marketing textbook.

It was July 28, 1982 at a used book store in Durham, NC. I was on my way to Chapel Hill, via bus, because I'd never been there before, and I thought it was time, since I was so close. The book was Principles of Marketing by Jay Diamond and Gerald Pintell, two professors at Nassau Community College on Long Island. I've still got it.

The next marketing book was Guerrilla Marketing Excellence by Jay Conrad Levinson. This book is still a revelation. 50 of the best marketing tools as propounded by Levinson, or as he puts it: "the fifty golden rules for small-business success."

Highly recommended if you can find it. Levinson has updated his approach, of course. He wouldn't be much of a marketer if he hadn't, and he is.

Currently, I own only one book by Seth Godin, Tribes. other than the previously mentioned, co-written with Levinson, Guerrilla Marketing Handbook, and the previously available as a free download, Unleashing the IdeaVirus.

In addition to those mentioned, I recommend Godin's The Dip, Purple Cow, Survival is Not Enough.

Next, why good writing is the key to strong marketing.

My Life in Marketing, Part 1 . . .

2008-12-14T22:15:00.000-08:00

A long, long time ago, over 25 years now, I embarked on my First National Tour.

Having worked as a canvasser for Clean Water Action and League of Conservation Voters, and having worked door to door for Fuller Brush, and yes, even Avon, I saw the door to door model as one that suited my skills and services perfectly.

Unlike your average street corner troubadour, I couldn't play much.

But my songs and singing were right entertaining if I do say so. And I do. That's the marketing.

marketing: letting people know what they can do with their money or resources, and why they should

So, after learning how to reach out door-to-door for support of safe drinking water and environmentally visionary leaders, I sallied forth on my First National Tour, selling performances of such legendary tunes as "Dogs in Durham," "Movin' to LA," and She Didn't (Want My A** Like I Wanted Hers). The last listed reminded listeners that "sushi" rhymes with "Belushi."

And so, stranded in Middlebury, VT, where my dog was surviving a run in--literally--with a '65 Buick LeSabre, I drove up the road to Burlington, natal home of the door-to-door guitar tour, and knocked on my first door at 6:30 pm, June 26, 1983.

My rap went something like this:

Hi, I'm Jay Hepner. I'm a singer-songwriter working my way to California by playing songs I've written. I'm asking a dollar a song, or three songs for two dollars. May I play you one?

And if they liked the one, I'd always repeat the three for two offer.

Made $44 dollars that evening and the next day in Burlington, VT, and a marketing mode was born.

Now did I max out this marketing technology?

Sadly, no. I did not secure a record deal. Nor did I find a band to support my singing and songwriting, even though that is what I'd advise anyone in similar circumstances to do today.

But I did manage to play my way from Vermont to California, with a couple stops here and there to work for Clean Water Action or the League of Conservation Voters.

Point is, at every front porch or living room venue, I left my patrons with a promissory note, "Good for one free concert," each one signed and dated, in expectation of my hitting the big time.

I may not have hit it yet, but that's what backing bands are for.

Who'll be my Station Wagons?

As Johnny used to say, "More to Come . . ."

Take My Fun Quiz!

2008-12-12T13:46:00.000-08:00

True or False:

1. Marketing is everything.

2. Everything is marketing.

If both are true, how does that affect your choice of channels or methods?

If neither is true, do you even play?

Which one, if true, most negates the other if the other is also true?

Is the quiz no longer fun?

Discuss.

Back Monday with more good times!

Jay

Taking My Own Advice . . .

2008-12-11T19:58:00.000-08:00

. . . After all, if I've got something of value to add to the conversation, I might start simply by taking my own advice.

Let me explain.

Last night I ran into a former student, currently out of work, a little distraught, as you may imagine.

"I'd love to get into graphic design. I wish I'd studied it in high school. I wasn't encouraged, but I wish I'd done it anyway.
"I also really like animals," she continued. "I have an interview tomorrow for a job in a vet's office. It doesn't pay great, but it's working with animals, and that's what I really want to do."

"More than graphic design?" I asked.

"I think . . ." she hesitated. "Yes, more than graphic design. I volunteer to care for the adoptable cats at PetSmart, and I just adore cats. I know I oculd do great work if only I could work with cats all day, every day."

Then, since I have long fancied myself something of a career counselor, I started in.

"Let me tell you what to do with your life," I began. "Only please don't notice I've done nothing with mine." (I kid because I love.)

And you know, there've been some hall of fame coaches who weren't all that as players. (Establishing ethos, establishing ethos.) Sparky Anderson and Earl Weaver, Tommy LaSorda and Tony LaRussa in baseball. Joe Gibbs and John Madden, Bill Walsh and Vince Lombardi weren't superstars in the NFL. Red Auerbach, no ace on the court, did OK coaching and managing the Boston Celtics.

But I digress. (I digress, therefore I am.)

Point is, you can't make someone talented, but any coach who adheres to Morgan Wooten's 3 Rules, and more importantly, gets their clients to, too, will go far.

So will their clients.

Those three rules?

1. Work hard.

2. Play smart.

3. Have fun.

So, here's what I told my former student:

* Go online

* Find an expert on your passion, cats.

* Join the conversation, then . . .

* PAY ATTENTION!

* Read what they write. Listen to their podcasts. Note who they refer to. Read and listen to them, too. But mostly, above all else . . .

* PAY ATTENTION!

In three months, you'll be ready to respond intelligently -- not only to your expert, but also to someone who has the power to hire you. Or you'll feel confident enough to start your own blog, or even . . .

. . . your own business, doing what you love, what you want to immerse yourself in every day, living your passion, your dream.

Making A Living Without A Job, as my good friend Barbara Winter, the person who first whispered in my ear, and established a templste for self-employment.

Because her advice was -- and is -- so pragmatic. so alternative.

Because the deal is making a living.

The real deal is enjoying making a living.

Barbara advises setting up profit centers. Seasonal work and side work, a variety of both. All adding up to a full year's income, fully engaged.

That's making a living without a job.

PRAGMATIC -- Making a living

Without a job -- ALTERNATIVE

I hope my former student's listening.

More about Barbara Winter -- and the other experts I've been listening to these past few years -- along the way.

Please stay tuned. . .

Joy, Jay