Not groggy, not zoned out, not hyper, merely awake.
Aware of what’s around us. Present. Seeing things clearly, hearing them as if for the first time.
How often are we lucky enough to be awake?
Mass media, social networks, marketers—they rarely help us become awake. They seek clicking, buying, fearful zombies instead.
The people we seek to serve, those that we’re trying to reach–in the rare moments when they’re awake, are we wasting that tiny slice of magic? Do we create fear or boredom or ennui in the short run merely because it’s easier for us?
Seeking a state of awake seems like a worthy quest. And when we find it, it’s worth cherishing.
November 11, 2018
The unanticipated but important memo has a difficult road. It will likely be ignored.
The difficult parts:
a. no one is waiting to hear from you
b. you need to have the clarity to know who it’s for, what’s it for and precisely what you want them to do
c. you have to have the guts to leave out everything that isn’t part of (b)
Consider a memo that was left outside my door at a hotel recently. The management distributed 1000 of them and perhaps ten people read it and took action.
Here’s what to keep in mind:
- Pattern interrupt. When was the last time you listened to the seat belt announcement on an airplane? We ignore it because we’ve been trained to ignore it. When you show up in a place, at a time, with a format that we’ve been trained to ignore, we’ll ignore you.
- Write a story. You seek engagement. Talk about me. About you, about yesterday, today and tomorrow. If you earn the first sentence, you’ll need to sell me on reading the second sentence.
- Frame the story. Help me compare it to something. Create urgency. Make it about me, my status, my needs.
- Chunk the message. How many things are you trying to say? (Hint: two might be too many). Let me scan instead of study.
- Include a call to action. Right here, right now.
Here’s a before and after of what inspired me.
November 10, 2018
Filling up a bucket might not be fast or easy, but you can easily measure your progress. Patience isn’t difficult, because you can see it getting filled.
Most of what’s important to us, though, doesn’t show itself this way.
Drip by drip is how we build things, but we can’t see it. One more “no,” one more failure, one more lesson learned.
It’s not a bucket, but it is a journey.
November 9, 2018
Perhaps it’s time to do something else.
Not a new job, or a new city, but perhaps a different story.
A story about possibility and sufficiency. A story about connection and trust. A story about for and with, instead of at or to.
Bootstrapping your way to a new story about the world around you is one of the most difficult things you’ll ever do. Our current story was built piecemeal, over time, the result of vivid interactions and hard-fought lessons.
But if that story isn’t getting you where you need to go, then what’s it for?
It’s entirely possible that the story we tell ourselves all day every day is true and accurate and useful, the very best representation of the world as it actually is.
It’s possible, but vanishingly unlikely.
What if we search for a useful story instead? A story that helps us cause the change we seek to make in the world, and to feel good doing it.
If you can’t solo bootstrap it, get some help to install a new story. It’s worth it.
November 8, 2018
There are two good reasons to do random testing.
The first is that you’re working with a homogenous or expected distribution, and the cost of letting something defective slip through is pretty low. For example, the chef doesn’t have to taste every single serving before it leaves the kitchen. Quality manufacturing is based on the efficient use of random testing to be sure that each batch is expected to be within tolerance. It works as long as the thing being tested isn’t itself widely variable. If it is, you’ll need to test every single unit.
The second is that you’re trying to send a message to alter people’s behavior. Drug testing or tax audits are examples of this. You can’t test everyone, but you make it clear that there’s a non-zero chance that someone who is outside the rules will get caught.
We do random testing all the time without realizing it. That’s probably a mistake–we should either test every unit (when the stakes are high or when outcomes are unpredictable) or we should trust our people and our systems enough to test very rarely.
It doesn’t make sense to set up a random speed trap. Either measure the speed of every car or measure the speed of none of them.
Sending a message through testing and draconian punishment might make good security theatre, but it’s a waste of time and trust.
November 7, 2018
On almost every issue that divides the electorate (in the US and abroad), the group that gets out the vote will win.
In most elections, the more some candidates spend, the more disillusioned the electorate becomes. The goal is to keep the opponent’s supporters from caring enough to vote.
These are not unrelated facts.
We’re being played, manipulated and pushed around. It’s important to not fall for it.
Here’s the simple math:
If you’re tempted to not vote because of the vitriol or the imperfect nature of the choices, then you’re supporting a downward cycle, in which the candidate who best suppresses voter turnout of the opponent’s backers wins.
On the other hand, if you always vote for the least-bad option, then a forward cycle will kick in, in which candidates (and their consultants and backers, who are also causing this problem) will realize that always being a little less bad than the other guy is a winning strategy. Which leads to a virtuous cycle in the right direction.
Don’t get tricked. Show up.
November 6, 2018
Your car may have a powerful engine, but if the steering wheel is out of whack, it’s probably a mistake to simply drive faster. And putting in premium gas and removing the muffler doesn’t help much either.
And if you’re driving on a crowded road, it makes no sense to hit the gas and tell anyone who gets hit to be more careful.
We don’t have to wait for a wreck, a smashed engine, to put our tools to better use.
Capitalism is an extraordinary engine. It has remade every corner of the Earth, and done it in the course of two or three lifetimes. Together with its cousins, technology and industrialism, capitalism is an evolving system that changes whatever it touches.
But the purpose of our society isn’t to optimize capitalism. The purpose of capitalism is to allow our society to become better. A culture that opens doors for and nurtures the people we care about.
The issues of our time are education, corruption, access, infrastructure, civility and the downstream effects of the work we do.
Investing in guardrails and fixing the steering doesn’t deny the power of capitalism. It puts it to better use.
[An aside: Kevin Kelly points us to GeoGuessr, which is a superfun Google Maps game, one that I spent two hours on yesterday–it would be great if every sixth grader got good at it. One thing I noticed is how much most of the world looks alike now–one of the plus/minus side effects of the paving/cultural spread/commercial shift of the last fifty years.]
November 5, 2018
Persistence is sort of annoying.
Consistency, on the other hand, is the happy twin brother of persistence.
Consistent with your statements, consistent in the content you create, consistent in the way you chip away at the problem you’re seeking to solve.
Persistence can be selfish, but consistency is generous.
And the best thing is that you only have to make the choice to be consistent once. After that, it’s simply a matter of keeping your promise.
November 4, 2018
Twelve years from now, your future self is going to thank you for something you did today, for an asset you began to build, a habit you formed, a seed you planted.
Even if you’re not sure of where it will lead, today’s the day to begin.
November 3, 2018
The answer to your quandary is right there, in front of you.
It’s just that it involves more work, more risk or more trade-offs than you were hoping for.
November 2, 2018
