In January, I started bookmarking articles and videos I thought were exceptionally insightful, entertaining or relevant.  Reviewing them all at the end of the year would be too daunting, so here are some of the highlights I stumbled across in the first 3 months of 2010.*

(NOTE: I expected to summarize January through June here, but even that’s too much to plow through all at once.  Thus, I’ll be doing this in 3-month chunks.)

The Articles

Kurt Warner, The Great Unknowable Freak of the NFL

Will Leitch’s pitch-perfect assessment of Kurt Warner, the NFL quarterback who never should have existed:

I’ve seen Kurt Warner get angry on the field, I’ve seen him frustrated, I’ve seen him in pain … but I’ve never seen him nervous.  Warner plays like he knows how this story ends. Kurt Warner makes me want to be a better person. He makes me want to try to figure it all out. And he makes me want him to win, win, win, before it’s over, before the mystery vanishes, in a wisp, gone.

Ira Glass on the Creative Gap

Pete Michaud interviews This American Life host Ira Glass, who shares a great anecdote about how long it takes any creative person to stop being “good” and start being interesting.

A Short Collection of Unconventional Ideas

At The Art of Nonconformity, Chris Guillebeau posts a stark, inspirational, (admittedly pro-capitalist) real-world rundown of common sense observations designed to help you rethink who you are, what you’re doing and where you’re going.

A year after you leave college, no one will care what your GPA was.

Once you fully understand what you want, it’s not usually that difficult to get it.

Potential is good when you’re 15 years old. After that, you need to start doing something.

Less Talk, More Rock

Boing Boing urges a return to action instead of text.  And while they’re talking about video games, they could just as easily be talking about your life.

Go right from the inspiration — the vision — to actually making it. Don’t think it through. Don’t talk about it. Don’t plan it. Dive in and start making it happen. If you do that — if you can start rocking — you’ll get some momentum, and when you have some momentum then the project has a chance, because now you’re into it. It’s going somewhere, it’s tangible. Sure, you’ll still run up against problems to solve and decisions to make, but you’ll approach these in the moment and solve them in the moment. You’ll solve them so you can keep moving.

The Collapse of Complex Business Models

Clay Shirky on why the simplest solution to overcomplication isn’t “fixing it” but “blowing it up and starting over” — and what that means for businesses, governments and lives.

When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.

Vintage Posters for Modern Movies

Brain Pickings highlights some modernist-retro movie posters that don’t actually exist… but should.

Everywhere You Look, There You Are

One guy, a cigarette, and a story he just had to tell.

Last night Tyler and I met this odd guy at the eastbound MAX stop outside my apartment who I find strangely lingering in my mind today. Or maybe it’s not so strange…

Hard-Wiring Happiness

Brain Pickings features a video and quotes from Srikumar Rao’s talk about happiness at Columbia University.

You have spent your entire life learning to be unhappy. And the way we learn to be unhappy is by buying into a particular mental models. [...] The problem isn’t that we have mental models, the problem is that we don’t know we have mental models, we think that’s the way the world works.

Drive-By Culture and the Endless Search for New

Seth Godin makes a case for “deep experiences,” and explains why they’re so hard to find.

Mass marketing used to be able to have it both ways. Money bought you audience. Now, all that buys you a mass market is wow and speed. Wow keeps getting harder and dives for the lowest common denominator at the same time.

How I Retired at Age 25

Pete Michaud explains how a leap of faith and a surprise realization helped him quit his day job and never look back.

If I could offer only one piece of advice, this would be it: it doesn’t need to be perfect. Save perfection for your aimless hobbies. What you need to succeed is “barely passable“.

At First, I Was Like…

*NOTE: Not all of this media was created in 2010, but I first encountered it in 2010, so it was “current” to me in that moment.

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If you write, speak or perform for a living, you need an audience.  Without one, you don’t get paid.  (Hell, online, you still don’t get paid even with one.  But I digress…)

Your audience is one way to validate your success as a communicator.

But your audience is also a trap.

If they love you, their adulation becomes addictive.  You learn what they like, what they respond to, and what makes them appreciate you more.  Naturally, you’re inclined to pursue those reactions because they make you feel good, and that means you’re less likely to experiment with anything outside your audience’s comfort zone.

Which Begs the Question…

What’s more important to you: how your work makes you feel, or how your audience makes you feel?

If you want to grow as a creator or performer, you may need to push your own boundaries.  You may need to say and do things your audience won’t like / understand / appreciate, so you can learn from your own experiences — whether your audience enjoys it or not.

Do you worry that your audience may not follow you down every rabbit hole you want to investigate?  Don’t be.  The fewer people  you have paying attention to you, the freer you are to innovate (and learn from your mistakes) without being judged.

And if your audience complains, derides or discounts your divergence from “the norm,” relax.  They’re only people, just like you.  In fact, there are plenty of…

Reasons NOT to Listen to Your Audience

… including:

• Your audience doesn’t always know what you know.
• Your audience doesn’t always know what THEY know, either.
• Your audience has different goals than you do.
• Sometimes your audience is your competition.
• Your audience is afraid to look stupid, needy or uncool.

History is filled with the tales of innovators who were initially (or repeatedly) ignored or disparaged by their audiences, from Vincent van Gogh to Dr. Seuss.  For every film or book we now consider to be an influential classic, there are dozens of reviews that disregard it as amateur, ineffectual or just plain bad.

And those are the successes.

Sometimes, your ideas really aren’t all that great.  Sometimes they’re half-baked, incorrect, premature or — yes — just plain bad.

But if you don’t pursue them, and learn from the experience of your hard-fought victories and spectacular misfires, you’ll forever be clinging to the safe bets.

And that means your audience, fickle creatures that they are, will eventually abandon you anyway, transfixed instead by something newer, shinier and more compelling — something that pushes their boundaries, even while you refuse to test your own.

Of Course, There IS a Catch to This Advice…

If your audience isn’t always right when they disagree with you, then they’re not always right when they idolize you, either.  Their judgment is just as flawed, mercurial and subjective as yours is, rain or shine.

So yes, by all means, absorb your audience’s feedback.

Just make sure you keep their notes in pencil.

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I just finished the first book I’ve devoured in more than a decade.

Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution details the making of the 5 Best Picture nominees at the 1968 Academy Awards, from their initial concepts through their critical and public reception.  Two of those films, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, centered on race relations during the year when Sidney Poitier became the country’s most bankable star and Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.  Another of those films, Doctor Dolittle, was a money pit that bought its Oscar nominations through old-fashioned studio graft and bribery.  And then there were Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, the two films no one in Hollywood wanted to make and the ones that wound up redefining Hollywood, filmmaking and America itself.

Not since Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls in 1999 have I inhaled a book so quickly.  Not coincidentally, both books detail the seismic shift between the vintage Hollywood studio system and the “new Hollywood” influenced by New York, television and theater.

The films made during this era — Chinatown, Shampoo, The French Connection, The Exorcist, The Last Picture Show, Taxi Driver, etc. — relied on unconventional actors, complex narratives, location shoots, sexual freedom and moral ambiguity.  They reshaped the way films are made, judged, consumed and remembered.  And perhaps more than anything else, they expanded the world’s expectations of what an American film could be.

In short, an entire generation got excited about movies.

All of which makes me wonder…

What Could Web Content Be?

Whenever I think about our evolving media forms, I’m reminded of something John Herman told me (and everyone else in the room) in 2006.

At the very first PodCamp in 2006, John — who is a many of many titles, including “video instructor” and “Pac-Man” — intended to lead a session about the do’s and don’ts of web video.  But after sitting through numerous sessions prior to his own, and hearing how everyone else does what they do, John scrapped his original idea and spoke instead about something even more useful:

Not following the rules.

John had recently bought a DVD set of vintage films made during the early days of cinema, and he’d been amazed at how many of the “rules” we take for granted in modern cinema — shooting establishing shots, filming two people in conversation at opposing angles, etc. — were completely absent from these films.

John realized he’d stumbled across media that had been created before we all agreed on how that media should be created, and he was worried that web media was about to enter a period of “rule-making” that might rob us of our creativity.

That Was Four Years Ago.

Since then, we’ve had precious few “breakout” web creations, and what does succeed online remains mostly confined to the web itself.  Those of us who can’t understand why web content hasn’t been embraced by the mainstream should first admit a harsh truth:

In our rush to monetize social media, we forgot to create experiences people want.

If you want to see a movie or a stage play, you buy a ticket.  If you want to read a story, you buy a book.  And if you want to listen to the radio or watch TV, you need to buy the device in question.

But the Internet just comes with your computer.

Yes, you have to subscribe to the web.  And yes, the web costs money to access.  But you’d do that whether people were creating original web content or not.  You’d do it just for email, news, peer communication and streaming media.

You pay for the Internet because you need it, not because you want what’s on it.

Blogs? Podcasts? YouTube?

Those Are Supposed to Be Free, Right?

People don’t pay for what they don’t need or want.  And no one needs or wants web media that’s a cheap approximation of the same stories and experiences they can obtain better elsewhere.

The reason The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde shocked Hollywood is because they spoke to America’s youth.  Sure, these films were groundbreaking on a technical and narrative basis, but that’s film buff talk; what these films did was connect with, represent and empower an entire generation’s point of view.

And people are always willing to pay (repeatedly) for the opportunity to see, share and absorb an experience that excites them.  (Fun fact: By the end of 1968, The Graduate was the third-highest grossing film ever.)

Unless we start creating web-based content that electrifies audiences — content, I should note, that’s specifically designed for the experience of the web, rather than shoehorning old media forms into new media tubes — we’re squandering a golden opportunity to define ourselves through the stories we tell.  It means we’re really just waiting around for someone else to make the rules, because we don’t think we have anything to say.

And maybe we don’t.  Which could explain the whole conundrum.

But there is a bright side.

See, the studio collapse of the 1960s led to the Hollywood upheaval of the 1970s, which in turn spawned the era of blockbusters like The Godfather and Jaws.

So, by that rationale, we’ll all be swimming in money any day now.

We just have to change the world first.

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Writing a blog in the hopes that you’ll get noticed — or hired — is extremely passive-aggressive.

Most people who’ve made money have made it by pursuing it.  Therefore, they respect what they recognize, which is a desire to achieve.  So, by pursuing work and striving to get their attention, your actions resonate with them.

Meanwhile, posting amazing free content to your blog on a daily basis, and then hoping someone will someday think, “Gee, I wonder what he’d do if I paid him,” is the antithesis of go-getter moxie.

Consider the guy who claimed to land a job by manipulating Google.  He didn’t just get hired because he was creative; he got hired because he got noticed.

He could have also written a blog post about how great he was, and then hoped that his six art directors of choice would find that post while Googling, read it, realize he was a genius and call him for an interview.

But that would have been stupid.  And desperate.  And passive.  And failed.

Stop being all of those things.

Does That Mean I Should Self-Promote Endlessly?

No.  No it does not.

Look at that Google guy again.  Did he spam the world with his joblessness?  No.  He targeted six art directors he knew he’d like to work for, and he got his message in front of them.

That’s the other difference between being aggressive and being passive-aggressive: identifying the target.

If you believe in yourself, then you’ll be confident in walking your message directly to the right person’s doorstep.*

If you don’t, you’ll spraypaint your desires all over the web, in the hopes that someone — anyone — will notice you, and take pity on you, and drag you home to their quonset hut to nurse you back to health.

Do you want a specific result, or any result?

Skip the hut, and find the right doorstep.

The 5-Step Process to Get Hired Using Social Media

1.  Know what you want to get paid for.

2.  Do that work for free.  (This is called practice.)

3.  Become better at doing it for free than the people who currently get paid to do it.

4.  Figure out who pays people to do it, and show them what you do.

5.  Tell them how much you’ll do it for.

Repeat steps 1-5 until you find yourself gainfully employed.

But Wait!  There’s a Bonus Step!

6.  Write a book about how you landed your dream job using social media — and sell it.

Wasn’t that easy?

*Not someone’s face, mind you.  Their doorstep.  And recognize when you’ve been ignored vs. when you’ve been invited in.  Adults respond to confidence; teenage girls respond to bravado.  Unless you want to be employed by a teenage girl, understand the tonal difference in your delivery.

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I never accomplish everything I’d like to get done.  And, as a freelancer, I have no one to blame but myself.  I don’t have coworkers and bosses reminding me daily about deadlines like a 9-to-5 employee does.

Therefore, if I starve to death, that’s my fault — and I don’t like starving.

But I have a solution.

Over the past month, I conducted an experiment that was intended to improve not only my productivity, but the productivity of several other Baltimore-based freelancers.  And, after only four weeks, its benefits have already outweighed our initial expectations.

Here’s what we did, and how it might also help you.

The Premise:

For me, any tasks that don’t literally pay the bills are “optional,” AKA “whenever,” AKA “probably never.”

But I also know that I work best under pressure.  So it was time to invent some.

To do that, I approached several local freelancers and pitched them on a simple idea:

Let’s be accountable to each other.

The Process:

Each week, I met face-to-face with my freelance peers, one-on-one.  We’d discuss our business goals, our “must-do” work, and then identify any optional tasks we’d like to accomplish in the next week.

Then, each of us would then make a list of our own goals for the week, as well as the other person’s goals.  One week later, we’d meet again and see how we did.  (And if anyone needed a reminder, a nudge or a mid-week check-in, we could DM each other on Twitter and keep the ball rolling.)

Since the only penalty for not accomplishing our own goals would be the embarrassment of inventing excuses meant to convince a near-stranger that we were busier than expected, I presumed the absurd guilt involved in such an exchange would keep the participants honest (and motivated).  After all, why lie to someone who isn’t affected either way?

And I was right.  But, along the way, we all learned something else completely unexpected.

The Participants:

Initially, I only wanted one partner for this experiment.  I figured one hourly meeting was all the time I could spare.

But when four different freelancers took me up on my offer, I decided to involve all of them, but still meet them one-on-one.  That way, I could compare and contrast each person’s challenges and workflow, while mine would (presumably) remain constant.

My collaborators in this experiment were:

• Katrina Wagner, graphic designer ( @graphicbeans )
• Nicholas Critelli, photographer ( @critelliphoto )
• Molly White, social media consultant ( @mollywhite )
• Daniel Waldman, marketing / PR consultant ( @danieldubya )

We’re all self-employed, we all battle periods of distraction and aimlessness, and we live our days sandwiched between the rush of deadlines and our own long-term life goals.  We’re busy, but we each needed a voluntary reason to stay focused.

So we started relying on each other to keep ourselves honest.

How It Went:

In my very first meeting, Katrina laid out 5 goals she wanted to accomplish in the following week.  That number was arbitrary; some people only committed to one goal a week, others to more, but no week’s total was ever more than 6.

NOTE: Since I was meeting with people 4 times each week, I kept my own stated goals consistent from person to person.  Otherwise, I’d be making myself responsible for 20 different goals each week, and I’d fail spectacularly.

The first week, I accomplished everything on my list.  My fellow freelancers performed nearly as well, with only a few missed goals in total.

However, the following week, each of us hit a stumbling block.

Personally, I over-committed myself when compared to the amount of free time I ended up having (because I was traveling for 5 days that week).  Others had unexpected family commitments, client complications or new business opportunities that required more time than they’d anticipated.

This setback was actually a bonus, because it prompted each of us to think more critically about how many “minor” tasks we could realistically expect to accomplish alongside our recurring obligations.

Each of us continued to experience our own peaks and valleys of productivity over the following weeks, but we made a point of meeting (or calling) weekly to stay in touch, even if we were slightly off target.  (That way, even if we fell short, we had to own up to it.)

What We Learned:

In the end, I accomplished 11 tasks that I probably would not have completed otherwise.  These ranged from the mundane (backing up old projects stored on my various hard drives) to the opportunistic (getting a month ahead on client blog posts).

Surprisingly (and somewhat embarrassingly), the tasks I tackled took far less time to complete than I’d originally expected.  (One dreaded task took four whole minutes to complete.)   Once I realized this, I felt like an idiot for having postponed so many of them for so long.

For me, the biggest tangible benefit came in the last week, when I finally created my own a daily work schedule.  To do this, I listed:

• my hourly client obligations for each month.
• any recurring tasks (i.e., “editing video,” even if the hours differ monthly)
• any recurring personal tasks (writing this blog, walking the dog, etc.)

Then I broke my week down to hourly blocks and scheduled ample time for each task.

The results stunned me.

I discovered that I have more than enough time to accomplish everything on my list each week.  In fact, if I stick to the schedule I’ve created, I’d even have free time every day.

So where had I been going wrong?

Simple: misunderstanding my time was causing my to mismanage my time, and that drove me into the arms of distraction.

Until this week, I’d been tackling new tasks as they came up, or delaying them under the presumption that I’d have “more time later.”  But once I plotted my obligations against my available time, everything fell into place with time to spare.

And yet, the most interesting benefit of this exercise had nothing to do with efficiency.

What We Were Surprised to Learn:

Along the way, each of us learned a lot about one another’s businesses — and our own.

Hearing someone else’s challenges, exploring their solutions and offering our own suggestions all combined to get each of us thinking differently about how we solve our own problems.

For example, Nicholas told me about his complex system for backing up client files.  I mentioned some of his observations to Katrina, who (coincidentally) had experienced a computer crash the week our experiment started.  She thought her own system for backing up files could use some improvement.  I related both of these anecdotes to Molly, who suggested Katrina should try a service called Dropbox.  I passed that information along to Katrina and Nicholas, and now all four of us are using it.

And while that exchange may not have crossed anything off anyone’s to-do list, it’s information and experience that we wouldn’t have shared if we hadn’t sat down to discuss our businesses with like-minded strangers in the first place.

Summary:

Based on my wrap-up discussions with each of my collaborators, here’s what we’ve taken away from this experience:

–  We each accomplished tasks over the past month that we would have ignored otherwise.

–  We learned while discussing our businesses, and got valuable feedback on our choices.

–  We enjoyed offering helpful suggestions based on our own “outsider” perspectives.

–  We’ve each begun thinking about our businesses in new ways.

–  We have a better understanding of our priorities, and a clearer idea of where our time is spent (or wasted).

Moving forward, we now intend to meet monthly, as a group, and continue to share our observations and solicit each other’s advice.  We’ll also be sharing a web-based project management system, where everyone can post his or her weekly goals and check in to see how everyone else is doing.

And if one of us is falling behind, now we have four people to help pull us ahead.

So… who’s keeping you honest?

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Last week, Chris Penn blogged his 11 Little Secrets to staying happy, healthy, productive and sane.  Fellow bloggers followed suit, turning the idea into a mini-meme.

So I’ll bite.

Justin Kownacki’s 11 Little Secrets to Being Moderately Successful

1.  Don’t Use Your Job as an Excuse for Not Having a Life. Ideally, you enjoy your job.  Optimistically, you love it.  And realistically, you can stomach it for 40 hours a week in order to pay the bills and keep a roof over your head.  The rest of your time is your time.  Live it.

Everyone can live a life that’s filled with amazing moments.  Not all of that will happen at the office.  Don’t feel guilty for not living there.

2.  Create Something You’re Responsible for Sustaining. Maybe it’s a business.  Maybe it’s a work of art.  Maybe it’s a child.

When you’re emotionally invested in something, you’re living a life that no one else has lived.  That’s your story.

When something (or someone) relies on you for its very existence, that gives you a clearer perspective.  Your choices now have consequences.  You can be a hero every day.  Embrace that, because it’s a responsibility not everyone has the opportunity (or the stomach) to enjoy.

3.  Pretend Your Kids Are Watching. Imagine the idealized version of you, the way your kids think of you when they’re too young to realize that you’re just another flawed human being.

Now make the same choices that the idealized version of you would make.  Isn’t it wonderful be to able to look up to yourself?

4.  Observe People. If you only ever live inside your own head, you’re missing the big picture.

Everybody you meet is a litmus test for your own beliefs.  Are your presumptions correct, or are people more complex than you give them credit for?

As a freelancer, I choose to work from cafes every day because a) I like coffee, and b) I like watching people.  I like hearing and seeing the ways they interact.  I learn from the choices they make, and from the way they phrase their questions and answers.

And what I learn from observing others helps me better understand myself.

5.  Surround Yourself with People Who Challenge Your Presumptions. The world is the way we make it, so reminding yourself that people have differing worldviews is helpful when you’re trying to understand why the world doesn’t always work the way you’d like it to.  It can also help you think differently about your own beliefs, and lead you to separate the grey areas from the black and white.

Plus, how you’d solve a problem is not always how I’d solve a problem.  If you know how others would act in your place, your artillery of possible responses to any situation increases exponentially.

6.  Be Comfortable Alone. Ultimately, we live our lives alone.  If we’re lucky, we spend those lives affecting and being affected by others, but that’s entirely external.  The bulk of your life is lived alone, in your own head.

Be comfortable there, because there’s no getting out.

7.  Draw a Line Between Quirks and Flaws. Our irregularities come in two flavors: the quirks that make us individuals, and the flaws that prevent us from succeeding.  Don’t waste time perfecting your quirks when your flaws are what’s actually holding you back.

Your high-pitched laugh or your tragic fashion choices are quirks; others may find them annoying or endearing, but they’re incidental to who you are as a person.  Your chainsmoking, your grudge-holding and your refusal to show up on time are flaws; if they don’t kill you directly, they’ll certainly degrade your quality of life.

Remember the idealized you?  The idealized you doesn’t have those flaws.  Work on that.

8.  Be Specific with Your Language. Words mean something.  Don’t take them for granted.

Like him or loathe him, Christopher Hitchens is one of the most specific writers I’ve ever read.  The words he chooses to express himself mean exactly what he intends for them to mean, which leaves very little room for ambiguities or misinterpretation of his ideas.

Relying on tired metaphors and figures of speech is lazy, and it muddies our ability to understand one another.  When you’re writing or speaking, be conscious of every word you select.  It’s better to use your 1000 word vocabulary well than to sleepwalk through a minefield of ambiguities.

9.  Walk Where You Can, While You Can. America is a car-based culture, which leads us to consider most locations as widespread vistas.  But that’s just one sweeping point of view.

Walking through a neighborhood gives you the time to see the bricks and pavement that comprise the daily lives of the people who live there.  It prompts you to consider the ways our lives are connected, and to marvel at the ways our lives have evolved from the times when walking was the only way we could have gotten from place to place.

It’s also good exercise, great “thinking time” and better for the environment than driving.

10.  Take Naps. Few things in life are more pleasurable than pressing the pause button on your obligations and recharging.  Don’t let a puritanical work ethic rob you of the freedom to disconnect on your own terms.

11.  Have Extremely Few Inviolable Principles. Life is a grey area.  People, situations and opportunities are constantly evolving.  What’s “right” for one person may not be “right” for you, and it all may be “wrong” tomorrow.

The fewer filters we invent to ignore other people and discount their opinions — or to judge them into categories, instead of as fellow complex humans — the richer our lives and the greater our potential will be.

Plus, the less you believe in, the less often you’ll consider yourself a hypocrite.  And then the idealized version of you will have a lot less explaining to do.

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When I was a kid, I drew constantly.

Most people I knew told me I was talented, yet I rarely entered art contests.  I knew what “good art” looked like, and I presumed that there were dozens of people in any given pool of competitors who were at least as good as I was.

I figured my odds of winning were much lower than the effort it would take to find out.

Then, one summer, probably at the urging of my parents, I entered a local comic shop’s art contest.

I got an honorable mention.

The next year, I tried again.

I came in second.

The third year, I won.*

Did this experience teach me that I was more talented than I’d believed?

No.  It just taught me that everybody else is overrated.

The Fear of the Unknown Ass-Kicker

If you’re like me, you tend to have an inflated opinion of everyone else’s abilities and an irrationally low opinion of your own.

You may have no idea what someone else’s true potential is, but you naturally presume it must be greater than yours.

But these assumptions are based on our own illogical reaction to the unknown.

If I don’t know what someone else is capable of, why should I automatically presume that they must be capable of outperforming me?

And yet, it’s this exact suspicion that causes most of us to not take action: unless we know all the parameters of a task, our fears of unknown obstacles lead us to believe that our efforts will most likely result in failure.

Why don’t we ever presume that our efforts will most likely result in success?

Because we can always imagine an obstacle that’s larger than anything we’ve previously overcome.

It’s Not Ego; It’s Simply a Matter of Not Doubting Yourself

Steve Spalding has news for you: your competition doesn’t exist.

He’s thinking in terms of businesses, but his advice is applicable across the board.

Are you afraid to pursue your dreams because you think you’ll fail?  Others have achieved success despite having shoddier ideas, lousier work ethics, less starting capital and worse luck.

Why can’t you?

I’m not trying to inspire you.  I’m not even trying to make you feel better about yourself.

I’m just trying to make you stop irrationally fearing the unknown.

Your Life Is Just a Map That Hasn’t Been Charted

There’s a lot in life that’s unknown.  But every time we discover a new species, a new energy source or a new technology, it always resembles something else that we do know.  And if we can understand its parts, then we can understand it as a whole.

Your unknown obstacles?  Probably just composites of challenges you’ve already overcome.

Your unknown competitors?  Probably just people like you, more or less.

Your odds of success?  Actually, as Chuck Klosterman points out in Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs, everything in life is 50/50.

You’ll either win, or you won’t.

And since we all have the exact same chances… why not try?

Sometimes I need to remind myself that I’ve excelled in the past in order to believe that I can do so in the future.

And sometimes I remember that I still have a few blue ribbons tucked away in a photo album somewhere, which I probably won because a few more talented kids convinced themselves that they’d never be able to outperform me.

Onward.

*Admittedly, this is my 20 year-old recollection of these events.  It’s possible that I won the second year and came in second place during my third, but the general principle still applies.

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If you’re a fan of complexity, you (like me) were probably disappointed by the Boston Globe’s recent report on why most humans believe easy = true.

If we’re wired to seek out the simple, this puts the real power of communication in the hands of whomever can frame complex issues as matters of simple choice.

In other words, we should believe that humans can create the Internet, but we shouldn’t realistically expect anyone to be able to use it?

Bullshit.

If all we ever embrace are the basics, how will we develop the skills necessary to solve more complex problems?

If your business is faltering or your economy is collapsing, wouldn’t you want the people solving those problems to be able to process more than just the basics?

Probably.

But that person can’t do all the work herself.  At some point, she needs the help of people who can only process the basics.  And if she can break complex problems down to the basics, that’s a skill all itself.

So maybe the real issue here isn’t that we need to choose between simple or complex.

Maybe we just need to change the order in which we process information.

“Less Talk, More Rock.”

That’s the advice of the Superbrothers, who used their platform in Boing Boing to rally against the problem of overcomplication.

Go right from the inspiration — the vision — to actually making [whatever your idea is]. Don’t think it through. Don’t talk about it. Don’t plan it. Dive in and start making it happen.

If you do that — if you can start rocking — you’ll get some momentum, and when you have some momentum then the project has a chance… Sure, you’ll still run up against problems to solve and decisions to make, but you’ll approach these in the moment and solve them in the moment. You’ll solve them so you can keep moving.

The take-away here is: rock before talking.

In other words: do something.  Then investigate its impact.

This approach doesn’t remove the element of complexity; it just shifts it to the end of the line, when the information you’re processing is based on experience instead of presumption.

Maybe the Superbrothers are on to something.

Buy This.

The Ad Contrarian (AKA Bob Hoffman) is a devotee of simplicity.  But he also fears that we’re now living in the age of the complicator, and that makes the life of an advertiser hell.

As he tells it:

Next to talent, the most important quality an ad person can have is the ability to simplify.

There are a million things to say about any product or brand. A simplifier understands the difference between what is essential and what is peripheral.

To a complicator, on the other hand, everything has equal weight. He is unable to do the most essential of all strategic tasks — eliminate the unnecessary.

Like the Superbrothers, Hoffman has a point.

As an organizer, I can always appreciate the need to simplify.

As a communicator, I know that simplicity is the way to connect quickly with lots of people.

And as a marketer, I know that the path between your eyes and your wallet doesn’t include a detour into your brain.

But what happens when opposing sides each cling to their own simplicities?

If Easy = True, Does That Mean Complicated = False?

When President Obama gave his annual State of the Union speech back in January, the Harvard Business Review’s Roger Martin analyzed Obama’s language and found something compelling.

I’ve seen this pattern of “integrative thinking” employed by a number of highly successful business leaders — so much so that I set out to study it. What I’ve found is that these leaders, rather than defining their job as choosing from between opposing ideas, are inclined to reject the choice and instead seek a new and better model.

So, instead of being forced to choose between two seemingly exclusive options, Obama (and the other leaders profiled in Martin’s book The Opposable Mind) prefer to seek a third solution that satisfies elements of each argument while still accomplishing his end goal.

This seems wise.

But considering the easy = true theory, it also seems politically dangerous.

Isn’t it easier (and faster) to polarize an audience, accomplish what you can with the friends you have, and view your opponent as The Other?  Doesn’t that simultaneously define your boundaries, limit your expectations and provide you with an excuse if you fail?

Sure.  But it’s only satisfying if your goals are easy.

Before You Can Grab the Brass Ring, You Have to Board the Carousel

Getting rich personally isn’t the same thing as fixing the economy.

Getting laid isn’t the same thing as raising a child.

Being happy isn’t the same as staying happy.

They’re the basics.

Getting rich is easy.  Getting laid is easier.  And being happy is just flipping a switch.

Fixing a complex system is a lot harder, and it requires a person to bridge the gap between the easy and the complicated.

If you have goals, you also need a system to achieve them.  Sometimes, that system is one step: “Go.”  Other times, that system is a labyrinth of weighted choices and collaborative responsibilities.

Either way, your ultimate goal (AKA “the hard part”) is a matter of solving the easy problems in front of you, step by step.

And the more clearly you see how the basics connect, the more you’ll be able to do with them.

Less talk, more rock?  Absolutely.

Just be aware of what all those rocks are building.

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If you’re good at what you do, (some) people will like it.

If you’re really good at what you do, (some) people will hate it.

This is good.  It means you’re conveying ideas in a visceral way that makes people react.

But if your end goal is to be loved by everyone, it’ll never happen.  And this means you’re in for a life of misery.

Don’t believe me?  Take it from Shakespeare.

“A Nashville Audience Is Not a Toronto Audience.”

A few months ago, Nashville was drubbed by art lovers for requesting that Toronto’s Classical Theatre Project “tone down” the sexuality in their performance of Romeo & Juliet so as to not offend the sensibilities of a Nashville audience.

Ultimately, the performers rejected the request, which left some parents quite displeased.

[A] woman who identified herself as Val, a home-school teacher from Hermitage, “struggled being here with my son. The sexuality was too much. Our children need to be more pure.”

As expected, the comments from the newspaper report of the incident ranged from blind support of the actors to enraged support of the parents, including denouncements of Shakespeare himself as being “too lewd” for any tasteful audience.

So, if we can all agree that even Shakespeare can’t please everyone, the question you need to ask yourself is:

What kind of audience are you trying to please?

Approach #1: “I’m in It for the Money”

If you do what you do because you want to get paid, then you probably want to get paid by as many people as possible.

Suggestion?  Offend as few people as possible.

The less objectionable you are, the easier you are to hire.  The fewer excuses your boss has to make for your behavior, the longer you’ll remain employed.

Safe?  Yes.  Interesting?  No.  Fulfilling?  That depends.  Would you rather be admired or pay your rent?

Approach #2: “I’m in It for the Experience”

If you’re not worried about starving to death, you can afford to take chances.

You can afford to piss people off.  You can afford to define yourself, rather than allowing yourself to be defined by others.

Suggestion?  Be extreme.

Anybody can push the envelope, because it’s easy to push the envelope right back.

So set that envelope on fire.

Sure, you might get burned, but flames attract an audience.  And you’ll immediately know who’s on your side.

Once you know who your friends are, you can decide whether or not you want to bridge the troll gap and form a consensus, or if you’d rather keep forging ahead on your very own path.  One can be lucrative, the other can be memorable, but if you go big, you’ll never go home alone.

Approach #3: “I’m in It for Myself.”

This is the hardest path to advise because, really, you’re entirely on your own.

Nothing anybody else says at this point will convince you that you’re wrong, and no amount of ass-kissing will make you feel any more right.  When you reach this point, it’s all you.

And by then you won’t care if you’re surrounded by trolls because nothing they can say or do would distract you from pursuing your own goal, whatever that goal might be.

(NOTE: It bears noting that “trolls” and “cops” are not the same thing.  If your personal path leads you to be surrounded by the cops, you may have pushed that envelope farther than anybody else appreciates.  Sanity is a treasure; guard yours.)

A Word About Being Needed vs. Being Needy

Audiences are tricky things.  Without them, you’re no one (other than who you already were yesterday).  But with them, you may become someone unrecognizable.

You want to be wanted, but you hate being reliant on someone else.

You want to be loved, but you never want to get hurt.

But having an audience is not a one-way street.  (Even Julia Allison knows that.)

If what you do becomes popular or profitable, you’ll want it to remain so.

Thus, if you become needed by others, you’ll become needy by association.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does limit your ability to experiment.  It does mean your choices will be judged.  And it does mean you may someday have to make a choice about what you really believe, and who you really are.

Are you Toronto or Nashville?

When the time comes, you’ll know.

In the meantime, enjoy the ride.  And when in doubt, remember: trolls like fire.

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In response to my blog post about popularity vs. relevance, Gradon Tripp mentioned his own quandary: he’s not sure if “being himself” is costing him money.

This is a doubt we all suffer on a regular basis.  Social media is supposed to be freeing and profitable, so we do our best to split the difference.  This means we’re forever studying our own public behavior to ensure that we’re being “professional enough” and “personal enough” at the same time.

But what if the real dichotomy isn’t “personal vs. professional”?

What if it’s “personal vs. practical”?

The Truth Is Only Half of the Story

You don’t get far in life without solving problems — first your own, then someone else’s.

The more problems you can solve, the more relevant you are, and therefore the more popular you become.

But not all problems are created equal.  Some are a problem of function, and some are a problem of perception.

When I recently tweeted my take on the vicious cycle of how Baltimore’s crime rate drives affluent workers (and their tax revenue) to the suburbs, resulting in budget shortfalls that force the city to cut police jobs, Dave Troy insisted that my view was inaccurate.

But whether or not my view is flawed, that’s only half the story.

The full story is Baltimore’s economic issues + people’s perception of Baltimore’s economic issues.

You can fix one and still have a problem with the other.  But you can’t fix both simultaneously.

So which would you choose to fix?

That depends on your personality.

Plumbers vs. Jugglers

Some people are plumbers.  They fix tangible problems.

Some people are jugglers.  They fix aesthetic problems.

You wouldn’t hire a plumber to entertain you, and you wouldn’t hire a juggler to fix your pipes.  One is good at improving function, and one is good at altering perception.

The problem with social media is that we’re led to believe we can do both.

I’m not so sure that’s a wise plan.

Let’s Be Reductive.

What’s the primary reason someone should pay attention to you?

What’s the secondary reason someone should pay attention to you?

Break your work down to an adjective and a noun, and you’ll get your answers.

Are you a “witty instructor”?

A “perverse artist”?

An “opinionated guru”?

The noun is what you do; the adjective is who you are.  Combined, they’re what you bring to the table.  Make sure they can coexist.  (Does anybody buy from an “opinionated salesman,” or hire a “slacker photographer”?)

You can be great at what you do, or you can be great at who you are.  Figure out which half of the equation you choose to define yourself by, and proceed accordingly.

You Can’t Be All Things to All People

If Baltimore has economic problems and perceptual problems, they need a plumber and a juggler.

Maybe Dave Troy is a plumber, and he’s focused on fixing Baltimore’s tangible problems.

Maybe someone else is the juggler who can teach people to see Baltimore differently.

But expecting one person to do both is asking too much.

What do you offer that someone needs?

Why should people care about you?

Because that’s what you should do.

And nobody needs a juggling plumber.

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