We have two choices:
We can buy into the stress, the noise and the craziness and make it even more chaotic. That’s certainly how it spreads. It feels like the right thing to do–to join in on the anxiety. But it’s not. In fact, the anxiety doesn’t help anyone, and probably makes it harder for those in need. If you’re needed, then help. But if you’re not, if the chaos will get worse if you amplify it, consider a different path.
The other path is to take this moment in time to dig deep and figure out what’s next. In the middle of every market interruption, someone starts building a new market. In the midst of a career adjustment, new careers are built.
The altMBA has a regular decision deadline tomorrow. The session begins April 20.
We’ve engaged with more than 4,000 people around the world over the last four years. The altMBA is not an online course, it’s not video-based and it’s not for a grade. Instead, we’ve committed to finding people who want to work with each other in a journey to level up. You can do it from where you are in your career, and where you are in the world, and a month later, you will have learned a new way forward.
The magic of learning is that it’s yours. Even after the chaos subsides.
March 9, 2020
When the world changes, it’s easy to feel stressed. That’s because stress is wanting to do two things at the same time–stay and go.
When we’re surrounded by people who are also seeking control over an uncontrollable situation, it magnifies those feelings.
It’s okay, probably even helpful, to begin by clarifying the emotions that we’re feeling, especially when we’re apparently talking about something else. Panic is never a useful plan, and it’s even worse if it seems to be about something else.
People rarely say, “I wish I’d panicked more.”
Day by day, step by step, the present becomes the future, and we make the best decisions that we can.
That’s a pretty silly thing to write on the store window.
It says to loyal customers, “watch out, someone new is in charge.”
And it says to strangers and the apathetic, “this place failed.”
If you think about it, though, every day, every store is under new management, if we define ‘new’ to mean, “we learned from what happened yesterday.”
Each of us has a chance to be new tomorrow, if we care enough.
The only way to get better is to walk away from what you used to believe. And the person you become can’t possibly be the same as the person you were.
March 8, 2020
In the future, of course, there are no handshakes. Star Trek, Star Wars, even Spaceballs… no one shakes hands.
And handshakes haven’t been the standard default for as long as we think–they were codified by the Quakers five hundred years ago, because they were thought to be more egalitarian than tipping a hat or bowing.
Today, of course, a handshake is often seen as a threat more than a disarming form of intimacy and equality.
In addition to being a vector for disease transmission, handshakes reward a certain sort of powerful personality and penalize people who might be disabled or uninterested in that sort of interaction. And judging people by the strength of their grip doesn’t make much sense anymore.
Until a week or two ago, demurring a proffered hand (how antiquated to use ‘demurring’ and ‘proffered’ in the same sentence) was seen as odd and a bit insulting. Today, it comes across as generous.
Add to this the fact that in a video call, there’s no way to shake hands. Hat tipping (or perhaps an informal Vulcan salute or simply a smile and a wave) might be making a comeback.
March 7, 2020
Getting found.
No clients, no work.
And the clients have a problem as well: Figuring out who the truly good freelancers are.
A marketplace like Upwork is supposed to solve a classic two-sided problem like this one. But the problem is so difficult that marketplaces often make it worse (and charge too much as well).
They make it worse by pushing people to be bottom-fishing cheap commodity providers. If someone searches for ‘logo designer’, there is a huge amount of pressure to be the freelancer who checks all the boxes, has decent reviews and is also the cheapest.
The problem with that race to the bottom is that you might win. Compliance and commodity pricing can’t possibly work well for an independent freelancer, because there’s always someone cheaper than you.
And clients? Well, every once in a while a good client encounters a freelancer who is worth sticking with. The marketplaces, though, want to be sure to get paid for every hour worked, not simply surface the good ones. Upwork is trying to slip through a change in their terms of service (effective in four weeks) that will subject any client who hires a freelancer they found on their site to a fine of up to $50,000–per freelancer. That’s not good for either the freelancer or the client.
The gig economy is based on the magic of finding the right person for the right job. It falls apart when it becomes a commodity marketplace in which each freelancer struggles to be valued for the work they are able to create.
For most freelancers, the hard part isn’t doing the work–it’s being tricked into believing that they have to be the lowest bidder to succeed.
More on this in our upcoming workshop for freelancers. Sign up for updates now and we’ll let you know when it’s launching.
March 6, 2020
That’s not the only way we experience the world, and until relatively recently, it wasn’t even the dominant one.
The sun rose this morning. You don’t have to agree with me, but a stranger to our disagreement would confirm that it happened.
Objective reality is measured. It’s not based on talking points. It’s repeatable and verifiable.
When humans share an understanding of how things are objectively, we’re able to make enormous progress, because this objective reality is consistent. It doesn’t matter which group we’re in, or who our leaders are. We don’t have to check with someone else before we can decide if what’s in front of us is true or not. So we can work together to build roads or bridges, to cure an illness or make an omelet.
Much of our life is actually driven by shared cultural reality instead. This is what happens when ‘we’ all agree that brides wear white, or that squirrel isn’t worth eating. There isn’t a universal ‘we’, simply groups that define themselves that way. Shared cultural reality is essential to create harmony within groups, but it can drift over time, sometimes erratically, because the compass can change. It can change when leaders insist it does, and it can change in the face of other changes in the culture.
Our cultural and our objective realities overlap and often conflict. For example, too often, we’ve made the cultural decision that people of certain races, backgrounds or genders are somehow inferior. In the face of objective reality, the cultural reality is (too slowly) changing. Shared cultural reality can stick around for a long time, again because there’s no agreed-upon compass to point to. It’s surprising but likely true that the most devout cheerleader for a given cultural tribe would have been stoned as a heretic by that same group a hundred years ago. The context shifts.
Amplified by the media, divisions over this cultural reality are getting worse. Spin, widely spread, not only seeks to divide us on cultural issues, but resorts to insisting that the objective reality that is challenging those issues isn’t real. By seeking to deny the things we ought to be able to agree on, it sets us back.
The other two corners of 2 x 2 grid are:
Unshared objective reality. This is the scientist or scholar we call a genius. Someone who sees the objective truth before the others, who is pilloried and then celebrated for challenging the status quo we all will be abandoning one day soon.
And unshared cultural reality. This is the artist, the poet or the offbeat person who is living with a different set of cultural rules than the rest of us.
The conflict of our time is between people who are challenging our shared objective reality by claiming that their shared cultural reality takes precedence over what we’ve discovered. And vice versa–objectivists who insist that cultural reality doesn’t matter. It does. It makes us human and helps us find meaning.
They’re different, but we need them both. One way to accomplish this is to not confuse them.
The banana is not a threat to the bicycle.
March 5, 2020
Often, we choose to be selfish because we feel insufficiency.
“I don’t have that much, how can I possibly share it?”
The insecurity that comes from feeling like our foundation is weak or our future is uncertain can cloud our instinct to be generous. Like a drowning person, we cling ever tighter to the life buoy.
You see where this is going…
The single best way to find sufficiency and confidence and trust and forward motion is to do precisely the opposite of what our instincts might tell us.
In an economy based on connection, trust and attention, the posture of generosity is not only the highest-yielding strategy, it’s also the right thing to do.
Ideas shared go up in value. Doors opened turn into new opportunities for all.
TODAY is the last day for signups for The Podcast Fellowship. It’s not too late to be heard. Hope to see you there.
March 4, 2020
Story.
When there’s simply data, it’s all noise. It’s impossible for a human being to absorb data without a narrative.
Once we figure out how to turn your features and ideas and benefits and effort into a story, though, it becomes information. And then we can act on it.
We have a story problem. All of us do. We’re not doing a good job of developing the empathy to turn all the data we’ve assembled into a story that others can understand.
Today, we’re launching the second session of The Story Skills Workshop. Led by bestselling author Bernadette Jiwa, it’s a proven, effective and powerful way for you and your team to learn how to make the impact you’re hoping for.
It was the most successful workshop we launched in 2019, and we’re bringing it back for those of you that missed out. Look for the purple circle on the registration page to save some money.
I hope you can join us.
March 3, 2020
I’ve been studying digital media “viruses” for more than 20 years, and much of what we have discovered about them comes from the analogy to epidemiology and the behavior of real viruses.
Here are some ideas that might be relevant as we come to grips with a slowly unfolding tragedy, and help us with our fears and plans each day.
Viruses act like they are digital. A loud concert gets quieter as you move away from it. A chemical dumped in a lake gets diluted as it moves further from where it landed. But a virus starts fresh every time it infects someone else. Often, we act as if that’s not true. Even though it’s organic and living in our body, it’s a code, one that replicates fairly completely as it spreads. It evolves as it goes, but it also recharges with each new host.
Viruses are contagious. Epidemiologists measure R0, pronounced R-nought. It’s the measure of how many people a virus in one person will reach. An R0 of 3, for example, means that every person who gets it will infect three more people. Obviously, if the R0 stays above 1, it means that eventually, it will infect every single person. That never happens. What does happen is that the number shifts. When the measles is in an elementary school, it can have an R0 of 20. But, over time, as environmental and other factors come into play, it goes down. Right now, the R0 of Covid-19 is estimated to be between 2 and 3, though it might be higher than measured if there are a lot of mild or unreported cases. As you can see below, more than 2 is very high.
Viruses can spread when we don’t know we have the disease. (And of course, there’s an analogy here to malicious computer viruses). Of course, that’s not how memes and YouTube hits work, but it’s very relevant here. The virus has no intent, no goals, no desires, but viruses that spread tend to be viruses that are contagious when we don’t know it and that last a while. It increases their R0 because apparently healthy people walk around spreading the disease. Freaking out around someone who is coughing isn’t helpful, since there are plenty of people who aren’t coughing who may be almost as contagious.
There’s a difference between the impact of a virus and its virality. The measles are one of the most contagious viruses we know, and fortunately, they only seriously impact (or kill) a small percentage of the people they infect. Because they infect so many, though, it’s urgent to be vaccinated for measles… to prevent you, or the person you’ll infect next, from being a victim. Here’s a chart from a really helpful article in the Times: (click to enlarge)
It’s very difficult to buy your way out of this. We’ve been trained that a good way to deal with emotional stress is to buy something, but there’s not much to buy. So far, it seems as though most healthy people will have an unpleasant time if they contract the virus, but with fluids and rest, will recover completely. It’s possible you’ll need medical help for pneumonia or perhaps access to oxygen supplements or a respirator, but there’s not very much you can have in your home that will help. However, if you meet the CDC’s definition of warranting medical evaluation—such as the presence of a new cough—it is best to call your doctor or local department of health. You may need to be tested, examined or treated.
Big numbers conceal the tragedy of the small ones. If 98% of the people who get a disease end up okay, that can still mean that hundreds of thousands or millions of people don’t do so well. The odds are definitely in your favor, but they’re still odds. There’s a slow-moving tragedy happening, and it’s going to impact people we care about.
The ideavirus in the media is preceding the actual virus’s arrival. That means we are experiencing the effects of this twice. Once, when we’re filled with fear of the unknown (with various entities fanning panic) and again when it actually arrives.
The R0 varies because of superconnectors and the places in which they hang out. They closed the Louvre for this reason—some people and some places dramatically amplify the average rate of spread of the virus.
A mask is not a good luck charm. Medical professionals know how to wear masks and use gloves and proper sanitation to prevent themselves from communicable diseases. Commercially available N95 masks don’t block particles as small as COVID viruses. Watching people walking through airports with their facemasks misadjusted, or touching a surface (the germs can last for days) makes it clear that this is talisman thinking, not actual prevention. Handwashing can work, particularly if it’s done often and well. [Update: it’s become clear that a mask is a good way to keep OTHER people from getting sick.]
The thing is, if every person on Earth was isolated for three weeks, we could be pretty confident that we could move on, but the world is a lot more connected than that. We’ve built a worldwide culture of connection, both digital and physical, and while we can slow down the spread of a virus, we can’t stop it.
There are so many things we can do to radically improve public health. Everyone can get fully vaccinated for childhood diseases and seasonal risks as well. That alone will save hundreds of thousands of lives a year. We can aggressively campaign against drunk driving and get people to stop smoking. We can clean up the environment and invest in clean water and adequate sanitation. That’s millions and millions of lives saved annually. Each of these problems will kill more people than this virus. It doesn’t pay to panic ever, and in a case like this, getting smart and making appropriate decisions is far more effective than going into a frenzy.
Wishing you and yours good health, peace of mind and a quick end to this.
Thanks to Dr. Jonathan Sackner Bernstein for his contributions, all errors are mine.
March 2, 2020
Selling magic wands is surprisingly easy, given that they never work.
Shortcuts, hustles, hacks and too-good-to be-true are always in high demand.
Buyer beware.
