Let’s be honest: when it comes to writing, I’m neither Shakespeare nor Godin, and neither are you.  But the difference is, I’m not spending all my time trying to convince you that my blog is worth reading.

You, however, are.

And I know you are because you’re constantly linking to your tripe all over the Twitter and the Facebook and the Google — lord, how you love to SEO my Google — and if I’m going to keep finding all those posts you keep writing, you could at least be coherent about it.

Note: this isn’t even about writing well.  “Readability” is a tall order in this age of “just press and publish,” so let’s aim a notch or two lower, shall we?  Let’s simply set our sights on “competence,” and we can worry about the magic later.

5 Ways to Improve Your Blog (Please)

1. Realize that online audiences only ever skim. Life is short, and we all have a lot to say.  Stop taking up my time with pointless lead-ins which you think “add color and context” to your lists and bullets, but which only read like white noise across my retinas.

2. If you can’t say something original, don’t say anything at all. By adding nothing new to the conversation, all you’re doing is polluting my Google returns with your supercharged SEO bait and driving the cogent articles from people who do know what they’re talking about to a sad home further down the page.  Stop hurting America. (And if this means you actually need to start reading blogs in order to know what other people are saying, so be it.  There’s no shame in caring.)

3. If you’re going to include an image to “jazz up” your post, get creative. Most Flickr image searches will return multiple pages of results.  At least have the gumption to pick something from the second page.  By doing so, you’ll have separated yourself from 95% of your competition, who’ve been using the exact same images since the Internet was first hatched.

4. Preview your blog on the page AND read it in an aggregator. Understanding how different people will see your words helps you format your posts accordingly.  By doing so, you can avoid awkward sentence or paragraph breaks that disrupt the reader’s flow.  Beware of pesky image borders that isolate the last few words of a sentence from the paragraph they’re supposed to run alongside.  Your blog may be pathetic, but it doesn’t have to look like it.

(Plus, a bonus tip: in order to read your own blog in an aggregator, you’ll have to subscribe to it, which means you’ll have at least one subscriber listed in your Feedburner widget!)

5. Stop asking me to subscribe BEFORE I read your post. I’m inspired by your chutzpah, but trust me: nobody buys the cow before suckling the teat.  Afterwards maybe, but definitely not beforehand.  That’s just desperate.

And if all this seems beyond you, fear not.  I’m a harsh critic, and I’m rarely pleased — with my work or yours.  Truth be told, almost no one can write compellingly enough, consistently enough, and with ever-increasing relevance, day after day, week after week, and in a lyrically engaging manner that manages to hold my attention for more than five minutes.

But for god’s sake, you could at least try.

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Saturday morning, Ann and I awoke to the full brunt of the destruction.

Rufus needed his morning walk, and there was no way around it: we had to go outside.  Armed with a shotgun, a lantern and a blowtorch, we opened our front door with a mix of soul-rending trepidation and a sudden resurgence in our childhood beliefs in God — because when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse arrive wearing ski masks, you can never be too careful.

Amazingly, all the buildings on our block were still standing.  The cars had not caved in beneath the mountains of precipitation.  There were no sirens, no wailing children trapped beneath the rubble, and no marauding gangs of anarchists raping and pillaging the survivors.

So we dug a little walkway midway down the block so Rufus would have a place to poop.

Then we went back inside, and we turned on the news, and IT WAS INSANE.  Somehow, the same morning news anchors who are on TV every week had managed to get to the station!  Neither of them looked like they’d had to cannibalize their loved ones in order to get out of the house. In fact, one of them was laughing at a picture someone had sent in of a dog in a snowsuit.

HOW WAS MASS COMMUNICATION STILL WORKING??? WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE PARALYZED!!!

Too confused to function, we went back to bed, mostly to conserve our strength in case we needed to light flares on the rooftop later and help guide the evacuation planes.

But by noon, we once again ventured outside (this time with only a pistol and a hatchet, in case we needed to run) and discovered that our neighbors were not only not dead or eating their own young, but they were shoveling out their stairways, sidewalks and cars.  They were even talking to each other, which never happens.

By this afternoon, a full 24 hours after we were supposed to have borne witness to the final sub-arctic battle between good and evil, Ann and I were digging our car out from its snow tomb and romping in the park with our dog.  Other neighbors were sharing shovels and helping one another chip away at their icy vehicles or sidewalks.  Our next-door neighbors, who never speak to us, even managed to find the time to blatantly ignore us while walking past us!

If they have time to be petty and vindictive over perceived slights, how much of can Armageddon could this possibly be?

And that’s when it hit me:

We got through it.

The world was supposed to have ended (at least by modern meteorological standards), but it didn’t.  Somehow, despite all advertised odds, we were all still functional.  One guy was even going to work, which is as American as you can get during a crisis of biblical proportions.

And that got me thinking…

The country was supposed to have collapsed during eight years of Bush tyranny.  But we got through it.

The country could have collapsed during our current financial meltdown.  But we’re getting through it.

And Obama could still turn this nation into a socialist collective, unless the GOP outwits him and turns it into a fascist dictatorship first.  But we’ll probably get through that too.

In fact, there’s never been anything that’s happened in this country — and, in broader terms, on this planet — that the bulk of us haven’t gotten through.

Yes, we’ve had disasters and war and terror and plagues and homicides and genocides and secessions and depressions.  Yes, we’ve been inconvenienced and had to sacrifice.  Yes, we’ve abused and taken advantage of.  And yes, we’ve been trained to believe that things can only ever get worse.

And yet, regardless of what life throws at us, we’ve always gotten through it.

Which, finally, makes me wonder one last thing…

What If We Didn’t Spend Our Entire Lives Worrying About “What Might Happen?”

If we weren’t always petrified about rain, snow and murder, our local news would have to find something else to report.

If we weren’t entirely convinced that one of our political parties was going to drive our 200-years-young nation to ruin, our national news (and, perhaps, our politicians) would have to find something more useful to do.

And if we weren’t perpetually preoccupied with our immediate concerns about our own health, wealth, relationships and social standing, we might actually find the energy to move forward in the direction we’re so certain someone or something “out there” is preventing us from reaching.

In the end, what prevents us from being amazed at our own resiliency is just how commonplace the act of survival really is.  The world isn’t perfect, and neither are we, but we always manage to find a way to scrape by — and sometimes, we even make the future better than the past we grew up in.

Just ask your parents, or your grandparents, or anyone who’s fled to where you’re living now from a homeland they simply couldn’t bear to live in anymore; they’ll tell you that tomorrow has at least a 50% chance of being better than today, and unlike we modern cynics, they’ll believe it.

And if tomorrow happens to be worse than today?  Trust me:

We’ll get through it.

I think that’s a powerful opportunity, and I’d like to take it a step further:

Does your blog matter?

After all, people really only pay for two things: what they need and what they want.  Is your blog (or your podcast, or your videoblog, or whatever type of media it is that you’re creating) valuable enough to be considered necessary?  Is it entertaining, illuminating or influential enough to be considered desirable?

If you said yes, congratulations.  Stop reading this and get back to producing valuable content, because that’s what the world needs more of.  (As I type this, 4000 people just used cutting-edge satellite technology to tweet about their cats.)

If you said no… why not?  Well, I bet I can guess…

5 Reasons Your Work Probably Sucks

1.  You’re doing it because you want to get paid. If those talentless hacks everyone else is paying attention to can make a living just by being themselves, why can’t you?  So, naturally, you create what you think people will want to pay for, or at least what you think enough people will be interested in to snare an audience that will impress advertisers.  Pardon me while I choke on your nobility.

2.  You’re doing it because you want to get famous. It’s the same “talentless hacks” complaint from above, minus the dollar signs.  You don’t even care if you get paid; you just want to be known.  After all, you have so much to offer.  Why hasn’t anyone else noticed your brilliance / talent / rapier-sharp wit?  [Cue "knowing sigh" here.]

3.  You’re doing it because you feel obligated. Everyone who’s anyone (and millions of nobodies) have a blog, so you should, too.  And you should post at least once a week, and daily if possible.  And you should promote your own work with the voracity of a starving panda in a bamboo factory.  Because if you don’t… well, let’s not even think about what could happen if you stopped.  Probably something horrific.

4.  You’re half-assing it. You really do want to succeed… you just don’t want to work very hard at it.  While others obsess over statistics, refine their marketing campaigns to maximize exposure and test-drive every possible tool, tweak and SEO voodoo spell in order to capture their coveted brass ring of online success, you’re pretty sure you can get by with that default Blogger template and those video clips you made with your microphone pointed toward the fan.

5.  You refuse to improve. Forget about the helpful hints, the friendly suggestions and the outright insults hurled by people who justifiably think your work could be better.  There’s no such thing as constructive criticism because it’s all just white noise from haters who are jealous of your underappreciated skills.  God bless your ego, because it’s the only sounding board you’ll ever need.

Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugs!

Now that that’s over, let’s apply the band-aids and look in the mirror.

3 Ways Your Blog SHOULD Matter

1.  You love it. It’s not always perfect, it doesn’t always do what you want it to do, it keeps you up at night and it’s sometimes more trouble than it’s worth.  But like your kid, your lover or that mischievous hamster you just can’t stay mad at, it’s worth it in the end — and you get something from the experience of nurturing it that you can’t find elsewhere.

2.  Your audience likes it. I don’t mean “likes it” in the “Hey, great post! [Insert linkbait here]” sort of way.  I mean in the “leaves thoughtful comments and takes an active interest in what you have to say” kind of way.  They may or may not be willing to pay you for it, but they’d certainly miss it if it was gone.  So at least you have that.

3.  It can’t be replicated. It’s proof of your own voice, your own style, your own knowledge and your own personality.  Sure, it may not be for everyone, and it may not be overflowing with Pulitzer-worthy material on a daily basis, but it’s unmistakably you.  And if you weren’t producing it, no one else could.

Does that sound like your blog?  It probably does, because everyone thinks their blog is an untouched gem, a ruby in the darkness, a powderkeg of genius that’s ready to blow.  And almost everyone is wrong.

Look again.

Are there flaws in your plan?  Inconsistencies in your approach?  Hard truths you need to swallow and renovations you need to embark on, post haste?  If so, don’t worry; everyone else is in your boat too.  Do yourselves a favor: get out of that boat and into a smaller one, because that one’s going to sink.  Now paddle on, alone and with purpose, and skip to the next header.

Meanwhile, if you’re still convinced your blog is just one Chris Brogan tweet away from a Webby award, my hat is off to you, sir or madam, because even I’m not convinced of that about my own work, and I’m the one giving you advice.

In that case, here’s the last ingredient you need to put yourself over the top: relevance.

5 Ways to Ensure Your Blog Matters

1.  Provide Data, Not Opinions. This past Christmas, a friend of mine mentioned that she wasn’t sure about the whole blogging thing anymore.  To her, “it just seems like everybody’s giving everybody else advice, and I’m sitting there thinking, What qualifies you to give me advice?”

Talk is cheap, but actions count.  People want advice, but they want it to be based on more than just your own half-baked observations; they want it to be drawn from data, analysis and expertise.  Next time you formulate a theory on how the world works while you’re showering at the Y, take the time to conduct an experiment related to your presumptions.  Measure your results.  Explain what you did, how you did it and why, and then extrapolate: if ___, then what next?  It doesn’t take a scientist to provide the world with useful data, but it does take more than your own best guess.

2.  Explain Complex Subjects in a Way That Your Target Audience Understands. Personally, I love information.  In fact, most people I know enjoy processing new information and having their minds quietly blown.  What they tend to hate is the sexless way that information is conveyed.

Textbooks and seminars are often presented in a sterile, uninviting way that makes even the most compelling subjects seem bland, off-putting and inscrutable.  I might need a Master’s Degree to fully grok the breadth of a subject, but I shouldn’t need one to understand the basics.  And if you can make something obscure seem that much more accessible to an audience that’s prowling around its edges, there’s no telling where that interest (and their appreciation for your translation) may lead.

3.  Curate Media and Information That People Want to Explore. You have hobbies and passions, yes?  You have pet projects and secret obsessions that take up more of your time than you’d care to admit?  So does everyone else.  And a lot of that time is spent tracking down the same obscure information and rare documentation that you’re also pursuing, or which you may already have.  Why not share it?  Or work together with your fellow seekers to create a composite reference point for others?

Not only does sharing information help build a community, it also provides a point of entry for others who might voluntarily follow you down the rabbit hole.  Think of how often you check Wikipedia for one bit of information, only to link-jump through a dozen pages and emerge an hour later.  If you can provide that rich of an experience for a curious visitor, that visitor is likely to return — with friends.

4.  Say What No One Else Is Saying. Despite the fact that anyone can create media, most media still looks like it could have been created by anyone.  Most blogs read like most other blogs, most LinkedIn profiles are interchangeable, and YouTube is drowning in copycat versions of videos that sucked to begin with.

Instead of trying to do what everyone else is doing, only better, why not do what no one else is doing, and do it as well as you possibly can?  There wasn’t a ZeFrank before ZeFrank; now there are thousands.  There also wasn’t an Achewood or a Homestar Runner before Achewood and Homestar Runner, and no one’s quite replicated their quirks yet.  Be a trendsetter or an iconoclast, because if you’re neither, why bother?

5.  For God’s Sake, Ask. Are your readers actually learning anything from you?  Are they being entertained?  Do they care at all about what you’re giving them?  Would they rather see more of something?  Less?  Do they think you’d be great at something you’ve never considered, or do they think you’re pretty terrible at something you’ve blindly convinced yourself you’re wonderful at and keep driving down their throats with no regard for anyone’s greater well-being?

Ask.

You’re under no obligation to implement anyone’s suggestions, but if you don’t, you’ll never know how close you are to giving them exactly what they want — or to solving the problems that prohibit you from fully enjoying the fruits of your own labor.  Remember: the people who bother to respond are the ones who want you to succeed, and they may be on to something.

Hope that helps.

(Did it?)

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* One friend asked if I thought it would be a good idea to provide free consulting services for 6-12 months, in order to “establish a reputation.”

* Another friend was recently promoted to a new, ambiguous job description that makes her the sole individual responsible for her company’s design, branding, advertising and promotions.  Then she was asked to invent her own title.  When she suggested Director of Media & Design, her bosses objected to her use of the word “Director” and asked her to suggest something else a little less… official.

* Yet another friend has absorbed the responsibilities of 4 fired employees over the past 5 years, yet he’s never received a raise or a promotion — and he’s paying to be in a union, which is supposed to protect his interests!

How does this happen?  How do we allow ourselves to be undervalued — or worse, how do we create such valueless self-identities based on the assertions of others?

Well, let’s start at the top.

5 Signs You’re About to Be Undervalued by Your Employer

1. They never raise prices. Inflation goes up.  Gas, milk and heat all cost more today than they did five years ago.  But if your company hasn’t raised prices at a similar rate, it means they’re afraid what they produce isn’t worth more than what they were charging five years ago — and neither are you.

2.  They consistently remind you how “lucky” you are to be employed in a down economy. Translation: “No one else would hire you, so be happy with what you have here and stop expecting better.”  And as long as you doubt your own worth, you’re unlikely to ask for petty things like raises and benefits.

3.  They don’t respect their own time, much less yours. How many rush requests land on your desk after 4 PM, under the presumption that you’ll stay late to do what could easily have been done during normal business hours?  If your boss can’t manage his own time, or if he can’t protect yours by insisting that clients and customers make requests when it’s logically prudent, he’ll be correct in guessing that you won’t complain when your raise is delayed, either.

4.  They’re having family problems. When someone can’t manage his or her own private life, it’s the employees and coworkers who feel the effects.  Suddenly, subordinates are elevated to confidantes, only to then be manipulated, lashed out at or taken advantage of when home life becomes emasculating or infuriating.  If a person’s own sense of value and control is being called into question continually, how likely is that person to accurately gauge your worth?

5. They give away the store for free. Giving customers or clients too many discounts and freebies is a sign that your employer believes price, and not quality, is the only thing keeping his customers from looking elsewhere.  If he believed in the quality of what his company provides, he wouldn’t be giving it away to “keep people happy.”  And if he doesn’t think his product is worth anything, what does he think of his employees who produce it?

Confessions of Someone Who May Someday Be Hiring You

As someone who occasionally employs contractors, I’ll be honest: it’s in my best interest to hire someone who does adequate work at a price well below market value.  The less I have to pay and the more I can benefit from the situation, the easier my own job is in the end.  That doesn’t mean I’m actively seeking rubes to take advantage of, but it does mean that when I stumble across a lopsided deal, I’d be crazy not to exploit it.  As an employer, I don’t stay in business by paying full price when I don’t have to.

That said, I’m also a freelancer.  I know what I’m up against when I negotiate with clients, because I know they’re thinking the same thing I’m thinking when I’m hiring contractors: get as much as possible for as little as possible.  That’s business, and I know how the game is played.

But too few people understand the realities of negotiations.  They fail to see their own advantages and points of strength, so they perpetually negotiate from a point of weakness.  And that invariably empowers the buyer, leaving the seller to accept whatever rate he or she can get.  Often, that number is extremely low, which drags down the industry-wide value of the work being done, all in the guise of “something is better than nothing.”

5 Reasons We Don’t Believe We Deserve More

1.  We have no idea what our work is objectively worth. In baseball, a player who believes he’s being lowballed during contract negotiations can seek arbitration, in which an impartial auditor evaluates the player’s statistics against those of his peers and determines what a future contract should reasonably be worth.  But there’s no arbitration board for marketing directors and graphic designers.  And if we don’t know what everyone else is getting paid, we have no way of knowing what we’re officially worth, so we guess.  Badly.

2.  We forget we’re specialists. Being a graphic designer means more than just knowing how to open Photoshop.  It means you understand how to do things with color, layout, text and design that mere button-pushers can’t.  And it means you have real-world experience solving the very problems you’re likely to be presented with again,  which saves you time and your boss money.  Your expertise is worth more to your employer than the low-cost ignorance of an inexperienced replacement.

3.  We forget we’re providing value beyond our actual job description. Just because someone else can do something, it doesn’t mean everybody else wants do that same thing.  If that was the case, there’d be no market for things like data entry, SEO or Jiffy Lube, because no one in his right mind would be willing to pay for such simple services.  If what you do makes someone else’s life easier, saves them time, or otherwise provides positive intangibles that make someone else’s life better, those aspects need to be included when considering what your work is worth.

4.  We really are happy to be employed in a down economy. I know money is dead, but we all still have bills to pay, and sometimes we’re willing to absorb ungodly indignities just to put food on our families.  And when we start to feel that way, all of our employers convene in an unmarked room and rejoice at the fact that none of us will be asking for anything this year.

5.  We hate confrontation. Asking for a raise, a better title, more responsibility or any other “perk” (like respect) our employer hasn’t already granted to us can feel like the equivalent of asking dad for the car keys.  We might be asked to prove we’re worth it.  We might be told flat-out that we’re not.  And we might even believe it.  Better to secretly suspect we’re worth more so we have something to bitch about at happy hour than to screw up the balls to ask for it and have to look someone in the eye.

So, given our natural proclivity for self-sabotage, mixed with our employers’ tendencies toward self-preservation and resource hoarding, how do we ever find the temerity to ask for — and get — what we want?  (Or, “in this economy,” what we might actually need?)

Simple: we just do.  Because the alternative is just more of the same, and if we’re already unhappy and undervalued, not taking action to improve the situation isn’t going to make us feel any better — and it sure as hell won’t pay our bills any faster.

5 Things to Remember About Yourself When Negotiating

1.  Your work matters, or they wouldn’t have hired you in the first place. In explaining why she didn’t want to force the isssue with her “Director” title, my friend explained that what she does is considered “non-essential” in her company.  If design, advertising, marketing and promotions are “non-essential,” I can only imagine what that company does consider essential, and who they think is worth paying.

2.  It’s not your job to always make the offer. In a negotiation, the power is held by the person with the opportunity to say “no.”  And if the only person who ever has the opportunity to say “no” is the other guy, you’re screwed, because the only way that game can be played is for you to keep making increasingly weaker offers until the other guy finally says “yes.”  If you make an offer and they say “no, but try again,” decline and inform them it’s now their turn to concoct a deal.  That gives you the power of No.

3. What would they have to pay in order to replace you? Trying to compare your job to something else that’s mathematically measurable?  Try this: pretend you could quit tomorrow.  What would the job description your employer would have to post on Monster.com look like?  Now pretend you’re someone with all of those qualifications, and you’re interested in obtaining that job.  What would your salary requirements be?

I bet it’s higher than what you’re making right now.

4.  You’re doing your employer a favor by allowing them to employ you. That’s because you have a lot of knowledge, experience and industry connections.  And even if you don’t, you’re eager to learn.  You have a winner’s attitude, and you’re an asset to any company who’d hire you — and there are hundreds of companies out there who’d love to have you on their side.  So when you think about it, you’re doing your existing employer a favor just by showing up every day, because you’re in demand.  And in that case, aren’t they getting off cheap?

5.  Your job is not a jail cell; you can always leave. Whether we’re “in this economy” or not, all jobs are consensual.  If you’re in a situation where you don’t feel you’re being respected, appreciated or taken seriously, leave.  There’s always someone else who’ll happily pay you to do what you do so well, and there’s always someone else who respects themselves just a little less than you do, who’s willing to do your old job for less money.  When you move on, everybody wins.

Oh, and if none of this resonates with you and you still want to undervalue yourself?

Thank you.  I hate paying full price.

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As my friend Maya and I were laughing over the pitch-perfect captions on Unhappy Hipsters, I wondered how Dwell Magazine (where most of the photos come from) could not know that they were selling people images of emotional isolation.  “How can they believe this lifestyle is something lust-worthy?” I asked.  Or was Dwell actually deconstructing modern life with a sly wink, and Unhappy Hipsters just happened to be in on the joke?

“I don’t think so,” said Maya.  “I think it’s hip to be sad.”

Which blew my mind a little.

I mean, I know we’re still swimming in a post-grunge culture.  I know “fun” died with the ’80s, and that I shouldn’t be surprised when depression becomes a national pastime.  But maybe that’s why I was so startled by this possibility.

I always thought hipsters were supposed to be counter-culture.

If so, what are they doing spending all their time being navel-gazing fucks?  That’s what the rest of the world is doing!  When the word of the day is emotional desolation, shouldn’t hipsters be the ones having dirty, sexy, colorful, senses-shattering, mouth-watering, eye-boggling fun?  How else are we supposed to know what the mainstream is doing wrong?

Or is self-fascination the kind of cultural black hole you just can’t pull back from?  Did the hipsters go too far, with their wheels greased by decades of Nirvana, The Killers and The Cure, to be able to switch gears and head towards the light?  Have we lost our anti-establishment bellwether to the seductive embrace of Room & Board?

If so, we might be really fucked.

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After reading Bruce Levine’s compelling theory on America’s self-perpetuating cycle of socioemotional abuse, it seemed obvious: what the world needs now is inspiration, not rhetoric.  My intention was to compile a list of people, events and art that have inspired me throughout my life, and encourage others to do the same, as a way to get each of us thinking about who inspires us and why — and to investigate how that inspiration has directly affected our lives.

But then a funny thing happened: I couldn’t find any inspirations worth citing.

Not that I haven’t drawn insight from books, music, movies and people.  I have my favorite influences, like anyone else.  And not that I don’t learn by example from imperfect people who’ve defied the odds, overcome obstacles and accomplished seemingly-impossible tasks.  Like you, I find strength in the knowledge that all reasonable things are possible, if only we execute and persevere.

And, ironically, I think that’s why I no longer buy into the concept of inspiration.

Inspiration Is the Shiny Side of an Excuse

To me, the need to be inspired implies two things:

• You believe external obstacles are preventing you from achieving your goals, and
• You’re not personally convinced that what you’re pursuing is achievable.

No one needs inspiration to mow the lawn.  Motivation, perhaps, but not inspiration.  Because we know how to mow the lawn, we’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again.  It’s a foregone conclusion that it can be done.

But if you want to do something seemingly complex, like landing a dream job or starting your own business, you’re bound to spend half your time researching practical solutions and the other half poring over case studies of people “just like you” who’ve “made it,” in a quest for proof that obtaining your desire really is possible.

But just because someone else once succeeded — or failed — at what you’d like to do, that doesn’t mean you’ll find the same results.  And just because something’s never been done, it doesn’t mean it can’t be.  It just means it hasn’t been done yet.

So why should an illogical, and possibly irreproducible, anecdote so heavily affect your own self-estimation?

Inspiration = Instruction + Fairy Dust

If you believe you can accomplish something, only two things are stopping you:

• Yourself, and
• Aberrations of nature

One of those, you have complete control over.  The other, you can’t do anything about.  And inspiration has nothing to do with either of them.

Are you prepared?  Are you equipped?  Do you know what you don’t know?  Do you know whom to ask for help?  Do you have the mental and intestinal fortitude to reach the finish line?  Do you know for sure where that finish line is?

That’s the product of knowledge and skill, not inspiration.  If you fall short, it’s your own fault.  Pick yourself up, shake it off, and do it again.

And if you’re inches away from the finish line and you’re felled by a blizzard, a hurricane, an armed revolution or an aneurysm, well, that’s life.  If you still have yours, pick yourself up, shake it off, and do it again.

By all means, you should learn from the experiences and examples of others.  But never forget that you are your own person with your own set of skills, goals and flaws.  Lessons and influences can help you make your own way, but at the end of the day, no inspiration is as useful as simply moving forward.

And Now, a Caveat

When my own morale is low and I need a boost, there are obviously books, songs, films and memories that I turn to in order to pull through.  I’m quite aware that my own emotions can be manipulated for better or for worse, and if the alternative is drowning in a whirlpool of my own self-destruction, yes, I’ll gladly climb aboard a life raft of lofty quotes and happy platitudes.  I’m not immune to sentiment.

But if you, like me, are the kind of person who takes comfort in the knowledge that even the most unlikely outcomes to a challenge are entirely possible due not to extraordinary efforts, divine intervention or dumb luck but simply to doing things as well as possible, let the following example serve as your guide.

1992.  NCAA Tournament regional finals.  Duke vs. Kentucky.  Overtime.  After one of the greatest games in college basketball history (whose recap is still enthralling 18 years later), Duke is down by 1 point with 2.1 seconds left in the game.

And then this happens.

Basketball fans never forget that shot, or what was at stake, or the magnitude of difficulty involved.

For everyone else, consider that this is what had to happen for Duke to win that game:

• Grant Hill had to pass a basketball halfway across the court, over a defender.
• Christian Laettner had to catch the ball with his back to the basket…
• … turn around
• … shake off a defender
• … take (and make) a fade-away jump shot from 14 feet away
• … all with 2.1 seconds left on the clock.

How long is 2.1 seconds, you ask?

Read this whole entire sentence.

That’s 2.1 seconds.

Not only did Hill and Laettner do all of that, exactly as described, and within the 2.1 second time limit, but Lattener took the time to pump fake before the shot.

Boom.  Duke wins in overtime, and goes on to win the national championship.

Pump fake.

Now, tell me again how hard it is to do whatever you were just complaining about.

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A few days ago, Michael Hasko tweeted something that sums up our increasingly polarized world:

Apparently any sort of dissenting comment on a message board is trolling. -sigh-

And he’s right.  While you might think “social” media should involve an exchange of mutually-respected POVs, that’s rarely the case.  Instead, like-minded tribes flock together and hurl stones at one another with such zeal that anyone offering even a mildly disagreeable opinion is immediately branded as The Enemy.  With “discourse” like this, is it any wonder we all cling so desperately to our own fishbowls and echo chambers?

Since when did we become so convinced of our own infallibility that we’re now completely unwilling to consider the opinions of others?  Shouldn’t global access to information make us more skeptical of absolutes, and therefore more accommodating of our individual differences?  Or maybe it’s just the opposite: when we’re presented with so many opposing viewpoints, perhaps we cling to our own ever more fiercely because admitting we might be wrong would undermine one of the only “truisms” we don’t feel compelled to question on a daily basis.

Whatever the reason for our social decay, things have gotten out of hand.  From the Senate to the cubicles, we’ve lost our willingness to listen to, learn from and discuss any assertions other than our own.  And as this erosion of civility continues across all walks of life, we run the risk of handing future generations tracts of dogma instead of the ability to reason.

But it doesn’t have to go on like this.  We just need to take incremental steps away from our own intellectual isolation.  As such, here are 11 ways you can stop perpetuating the cycle of exclusion.

1. Stop preaching to the choir.

Everyone loves being told how smart they are — or, more importantly, how right they are.  The assurance of being correct is a drug like no other.  And the “connectivity” of the Internet provides you with an endless supply of listeners who’ll fall all over themselves to agree with you, no matter what you believe.

Avoid that.

If you really believe something, try selling it to someone who thinks you’re wrong.  If you’ve ever tried pitching social media to a hostile boardroom, debated the existence of God with an atheist or argued with a child who refused to buy into your set of rules, you quickly realized that “just because” is never the right answer.  Defending your beliefs helps remind you why you do believe them in the first place — and, occasionally, it reveals the gaps in your own logic that might lead you to question your own certainty.

2. Stop letting yourself be preached to.

If you only consume streams of information that reinforce your own presumptions, two things happen: you’ll never learn anything you didn’t already suspect was true, and you’ll never be surprised.  The people who sell you the information you’re imbibing already know that you’re naturally opposed to philosophical conflict, so they have no reason to rock your mental boat.  And the more candy they feed you, the less likely you are to stray.

You wouldn’t consent to eat the same three meals every day for the rest of your life, so why sign up for the informational equivalent?  Start sampling.

3. I agree with you, but…

A good friend of mine once noticed that I always got extremely aggravated whenever I’d argue with a certain ideologically opposed family friend.  His point of view made as little sense to me as mine did to him, and each of us refused to concede any points because we were both dead sure we were correct on all counts.

After hearing us debate our polarized philosophies on several occasions, my friend suggested I employ the concession above.  By doing so, he explained that two things would happen:

• I’d establish a common ground, thereby dissolving the brutal tone of the debate, and
• I’d clarify the specifics of what we were actually disagreeing about, rather than allowing the discussion to roam unbounded.

So I tried it.  And it worked.  And no, even today that family friend and I still don’t see eye to eye on the vast majority of the world’s problems.  But we can also drink a beer and talk about football without every conversation dissolving into an indictment of our belief systems.  Sometimes a truce is a two-sided victory.

4. Ignore national politics.

As someone who’s spent the past decade getting irate over American politics, only to look back and realize I could have been doing something useful with all that energy, I say this with all sincerity: we care way too much about what Washington is doing.

Thanks to our jingoistic American news cycle, people are more aware of what the President is doing on a daily basis than what their neighbors across the street or around the globe are ever doing.  Our priorities and sense of scope are broken, with our own government being portrayed as having a disproportionately large impact on our daily lives and well-being, compared with the larger and smaller influences that actually mean more to us in the long and short term.

Yes, we elected them.  And yes, they’re going to rape and pillage us as their way of saying thank you.  But obsessing over lofty claims, party rhetoric and things that may or may not happen only distracts us from the real news that we could have an impact on, if we only knew it was happening.

5. Focus on what matters directly.

You have bills to pay.  You have mouths to feed.  You have love to find, and some to give.  You have goals, hobbies, passions and concerns.  And you have a nagging sense that things could be better in your life, “if only I could ___.”

So does everyone else.  Get those basics squared away and you’ll have time to spend on filling in that blank, rather than alleviating your frustrations by obstructing someone else’s attempts to do the same.

6. Focus on what matters globally.

Every time I watch the TV news from another country, I find myself quietly astounded that there is another country besides America.  In the US, we only talk about world news when there’s a war, a disaster or a missing blond girl in a hard-to-spell place.  But if you venture beyond our borders, you’ll find there’s a swath of other people with other cultures, values, beliefs and problems that need to be solved.

You don’t need to solve them yourself, although that is a pretty American thing to want to do.  But just being aware of those problems so you can not contribute toward making them worse would certainly be a good start toward making things better.

And, as a bonus, you might not be so afraid of people with different skin colors, wardrobes or last names.

7. Take direct action in your locality.

Hating either national political party doesn’t get you very far.  Neither does making sweeping generalizations about systemic national problems like failing education, absent health care, abused ecology or a corrupt economy, and ending with a proclamation that these problems are “too big to change,” or that “someone should do something about it,” is just an excuse to keep whinging.

Surprise: you’re someone.  And no, you can’t wake up tomorrow and fix nationwide problems with a wink and a smile.  But you can probably make a difference in your neighborhood.  You can probably call your city council representative and ask for help.  And you can probably conduct yourself the way you wish your elected officials and other people of influence would, and lead others by your example.

It’s not as folksy as bitching about Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow over wing night with your buds.  But it might make everyone’s life a bit more palatable.

8. Hold people accountable.

When your friend, lover, coworker or boss doesn’t do something he said he would, point it out.  Don’t be a dick about it, but don’t let it go uncorrected either.  Because the more lax you are in your accounting of others, the more lax everyone — including you — allows themselves to become.  We’re only ever good people when there’s a reward for it, or when there’s a penalty for being bad.  Don’t wait for someone else to enforce acceptable standards; that’s how mediocrity takes control in a lazy culture.

Oh, and when it comes to politics, forget party affiliations: if your elected official didn’t do what he said he’d do, or if she did things you find reprehensible, vote ‘em out.  Fear that “the other party would only be worse” is irrational; focus less on how bad it could get and focus more on holding your representatives accountable for doing the job you paid them to do with your tax dollars.

9. Be unafraid of change.

As mentioned above, fear of change is irrational.  We’re always petrified of “how bad it could get,” but we forget two things:

• Whatever “it” is, it’s probably already pretty bad now, and
• No matter how bad “it” gets, we’ll live through it.

Look at the vast amounts of shit people have lived through for centuries.  For every enlightenment, there’s a dark age.  For every scientific advance, there’s a worldwide cataclysm.  Your parents always had it better and had it worse, depending on the topic of conversation.  And the past always looks more romantic than the future, because the past is something we’ve proven we could get through while the future just might involve that one insurmountable challenge we just can’t overcome.

Don’t bet on it.  We’ve come this far without destroying the planet, so one more bad piece of legislation or ill-timed hurricane won’t do us in either.  Worry less about the unknown obstacles and fear more the possibility that if we don’t move toward change, this might be as good as it gets.

10. Refuse stereotypes.

The problem with stereotypes is that they’re usually accurate.  Clichés don’t happen based on once-in-a-lifetime irregularities; they happen because the same kinds of people repeatedly do the same kinds of things, and those things tend to be irredeemably stupid.

But instead of seeing those aggravations as uncorrectable offenses, ask the larger question: why does this happen? What cultural, sociological, geographic or political influences cause certain people to act in certain ways, or to believe certain things?  How do those habits get started, and why do they perpetuate despite their impractical disadvantages?  Are they even considered disadvantages by the people who do them?

Once you understand that everything has a root cause (or multiple causes), you can understand our differences rather than writing them off as cultural deficiencies.  And that brings us one degree closer to not hating each other.

11. Question certainties.

If you do nothing else, doubt everything.  Doubt what you’ve always believed.  Doubt what everyone else believes, too.  Refuse to say with certainty that any one thing is irrevocably true.  See the world as a massive grey area, rather than pillars of black and white.

The world is full of conflicts and riddles, and we have the capacity to quell some of them and solve others.  And yes, by doing so, we just might create more problems in the process.  Such is life.  But whatever worldviews we form, and whatever actions we take, we should be making our decisions based on data, not ideologies.

And if that means you spend a little less time watching TV news, a little more time talking to those neighbors you’ve never actually introduced yourself to, and a lot less time posting anonymous hate screed to your social network of choice, then maybe 2011 won’t seem like the festering shithole 2010 seems poised to become.

And that’s a start.

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Despite plenty of lucid arguments to the contrary, many smart (and opinionated) people believe that “community building,” “brand management,” “increased awareness” and other intangible benefits of marketing are useless, or at least that they’re incidental byproducts of marketing’s real purpose: sales, sales, sales.  If something can’t be measured in ROI, it’s a waste of time, and since so much of what we now call “social media” is ethereal, the validity of the entire field must be called into question.

And I agree.

But where I think people lose track of their own argument is at the root.  Because marketing is sales.  And so is shipping.  And so is packaging.  And so is customer service.  And so is employee retention.  And so is public relations.  And so is dress code, color scheme, the ecological impact of your parking lot and the flower arrangement in your lobby.

Every part of your business impacts sales. That’s because sales is the end goal behind every decision your business makes, from the market you target to the name on the door.  And if we’re going to wail in the streets about all the ways people are missing the point about marketing, then I need to see some more hard numbers of my own.

For example:

• Are your conversion rates affected by the screen brightness of the buyer’s monitor?
• Which muzak was playing in the elevator immediately prior to peak sale hours?
• How do sales rise and fall during each employee’s lunch break?
• Which verb tense generates the most e-blast click-throughs?
• Do stores lit by CFLs outsell the ones lit by incandescents?
• Does your shopping cart’s border thickness matter?
• Is your delivery van’s tire pressure affecting the integrity of the packages, resulting in the possibility of lost business due to customer disappointment with the surface scuffs on the product’s overwrap?

The variables are infinite.  And they ALL affect sales.  Just because marketing is an easily-measurable target, and one that’s popular to publicly dissect, that doesn’t mean it’s the only aspect that should come into question.

HR, tech support, cleaning ladies, spouses — I’m looking at you.

What’s the ROI on everything?

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Employers want to know that they can trust the person they’re paying to get the job done.  Ditto for clients, who need to know they’re in good hands before they relinquish their future to someone they can’t control.

And regardless of your preference for certain body types and personality quirks, nothing gets one person’s pheromones crackling like sensing another person’s confidence.

I’m not talking about hubris, ego, showing off, commanding attention, “owning the room” or any other displays of wannabe alpha-domination meant to convince other people that you’re The Man.  (Or, depending on your chromosomes, The Woman.)

I’m talking about the two actual kinds of confidence.

There’s the confidence that comes from knowing what you’re talking about, and there’s the confidence that comes from being able to admit you have no idea what you’re talking about.  In theory, it’s important to be able to tell these two types apart, so employers, clients and mates don’t get hoodwinked by fast-talking charlatans.

But it isn’t.

Do You Know What I Know?

If you don’t know what you’re talking about but you’re trying to convince someone you do, you’re not going to appear confident in the first place.  You’re going to appear bombastic.  You’ll be overly jovial or subtly hostile.  You’ll act and speak in ways that obscure your lack of knowledge, and betray your own lack of faith in your ability to get the job done.

If you don’t know what you’re talking about but you do know how to learn, you’ll be confident in your ability to deliver an end result that will please your client even if you’re entering uncharted waters.  Because confidence doesn’t come from knowing the waters; it comes from knowing where to find a boat and a map.

You may not be an expert in a field, but you’re an expert at becoming an expert in a field.  Your confidence stems not from your ability to execute, but your ability to adapt and apply previous experience to new obstacles.

Either way, the client wins.  And the client knows it.  Which is why the client doesn’t need to know if you know what you’re talking about.

They just need to know if you can row.

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Photo by estherase, via Flickr.

This approach has resulted in a cacophony of competing messages, as everyone strives valiantly to be heard above the din.  Instead of “joining the conversation,” it now feels like everyone’s joined the fray, and only the most relevant or rewarding messages manage to break through the squall of white noise.

This development has also altered our valuation of people’s time.  Instead of presuming a person’s shop or services are so remarkable as to be worth someone else’s time and effort to come find them, the provider’s time and effort is now worth less than that of her audience or her customers.  It’s now her responsibility to make time for them.

But with everyone competing for the same 24 hours of attention, is it any wonder that some people are starting to question the merit of this new technique and instead casting a wistful eye toward the more easily-managed construct of walled gardens?

Grant Me a Brief Respite in Your Branded Eco-Lounge

Information overload helps no one.  If we want to process information, we need a break from absorbing more information.

Enter (literally): the walled garden.

In info-speak, a walled garden is a self-contained info-system.  People come in, they see what you want them to see, they have conversations and ask questions about a narrow range of relevant topics, and they’re presented with action items and takeaways designed to keep your message and branding top of mind as they head back out into the unpredictable static of the info-storm.

Previously, companies were derided for expecting web surfers to linger in their walled gardens.  With so much information “out there,” how could companies be presumptuous enough to require that people spend their precious time in the company’s space?  But once the sum total of information available “out there” surpassed our ability to process it meaningfully, those structured storehouses of information started to seem less like oppression and more like relief.

Even sources who “should know better” are calling for a return to prior simplicity.  A stellar post from BBH Labs about stimuli and mental computation floats the following justification:

“For now at least, there’s room for brands to be marketed as tools to help Neo-Luddites swim against the tech tide.  Guinness, Magners, KitKat – ought to be creating virtual & real walled gardens for when you want to kick back and relax, away from the torrent of data.”

Suddenly, what once seemed like a sure sign that a company “didn’t get it” is now being touted as a wise move for companies who want to position themselves as “counter-culture.”  Evidently, what we now consider “culture” involves a massive continual onslaught of stimuli and low expectations for long-term retention.

Who knew outdated communication techniques would so swiftly experience a romantic resurgence?

The Upside to Enclosure

These days, the breadth of available information is obvious.  But those seeking depth or context require more than an endless barrage of stimuli; they require some mental (or digital, or physical) space to sort it out.  A chance to dig a little deeper.  Some time to consider the bigger picture.

Walled gardens provide the structural, thematic and operational constraints that let us evaluate smaller bits of information over a longer (or at least less disruptive) stretch of time.  When you’re in Facebook, you may see a torrent of data, but it’s all contextualized according to whom you’ve opted to follow (and how).  When you’re on the Dos Equis website, you’re free to learn more about their beer at your own speed, rather than relying on a chance encounter with a serendipitously-timed tweet or a randomly-generated ad.

Granted, there are impractical ways to do this.  And in an age of respect for “open” communications, limiting your customer’s options isn’t always a blueprint for success or goodwill.  But the companies that strike the best balance between constriction and collaboration under the guise of providing users with improved functionality will likely see the greatest end results.

It could even be possible that companies and sites who restrict information flow will be rewarded for their stewardship, as long as the ultimate control of that flow is in the hands of the user.  And the better attuned a site is to the cognitive needs of its users, the more value those users will ascribe to the information provided, even if it’s the same information they could find elsewhere by chance.

The worldwide flow of information won’t be slowed; that genie has left the bottle.  But there’s certainly an opportunity for companies and curators who can provide rest stops along our ever-widening Information Superhighway.  (And if those rest stops do come with Kit Kats, so much the better.)

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