Walks of My Life

Some people ask, “What if I haven’t found my true passion?” It’s dangerous to think in terms of “passion” and “purpose” because they sound like such huge overwhelming ideas. If you think love needs to look like “Romeo and Juliet”, you’ll overlook a great relationship that grows slowly. If you think you haven’t found your passion yet, you’re probably expecting it to be overwhelming. Instead, just notice what excites you and what scares you on a small moment-to-moment level. If you find yourself glued to Photoshop, playing around for hours, dive in deeper. Maybe that’s your new calling. If you keep thinking about putting on a conference or being a Hollywood screenwriter, and you find the idea terrifies but intrigues you, it’s probably a worthy endeavor for you. You grow (and thrive!) by doing what excites you and what scares you everyday, not by trying to find your passion. ~Derek Sivers

A troubled teenager named Bobby was sent to see his high-school counselor, John Murphy. Bobby had been in trouble so many times that he was in danger of being shipped off to a special facility for kids with behavioral problems. Most counselors would have discussed Bobby’s problems with him, but Murphy didn’t. MURPHY: Bobby, are there classes where you don’t get in trouble? BOBBY: I don’t get in trouble much in Ms. Smith’s class. MURPHY: What’s different about Ms. Smith’s class? Soon Murphy had some concrete answers: 1. Ms. Smith greeted him at the door. 2. She checked to make sure he understood his assignments. 3. She gave him easier work to complete. (His other teachers did none of the three.) Now Murphy had a roadmap for change. He advised Bobby’s other teachers to try these three techniques. And suddenly, Bobby started behaving better. We’re wired to focus on what’s not working. But Murphy asked, “What IS working, today, and how ...

You can buy attention (advertising). You can beg for attention from the media (public relations). You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales). Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a Facebook page. Most organizations have a corporate culture based on one of these approaches to generating attention (examples: Procter & Gamble primarily generates attention through advertising, Apple via PR, EMC via sales, and Zappos via earning attention on the Web). Often, the defining organizational culture is determined because the founder or the CEO has a strong point of view. When the CEO comes up through the sales track, all attention problems are likely to become sales problems. Chances are that you’ll have to work on your boss to get him or her on board with option four. Since most organizat...

“Social media” facilitates direct engagement with consumers to an unprecedented level, fundamentally shifting the concept of customer service. No one expected the CEO of Pepsi to ring their doorbell or call on their birthday. It wasn’t feasible. But now, the cost of interaction has plummeted. I can thank someone by texting “thnx” from my cell phone between meetings, or hang out on Ustream answering questions, or send an @ reply on Twitter. All at minimal cost. Every CEO and business must recognize that customer service is now their primary business. What was unreasonable becomes essential; the empowerment of the individual consumer affects every brand. In this world content creation becomes imperative, the initial engagement. When you are transparent and engaging, the result is what I call the “thank you” economy. I gave away information for free—online videos and keynotes with content similar to my book. Monetizing that scenario sounds difficult but wasn’t. Peop...

Analog computing, once believed to be as extinct as the differential analyzer, has returned. Digital computing can answer (almost) any question that can be stated precisely in language that a computer can understand. This leaves a vast range of real-world problems—especially ambiguous ones—in the analog domain. In an age of all things digital, who dares mention analog by name? “Web 2.0” is our code word for the analog increasingly supervening upon the digital—reversing how digital logic was embodied by analog components, the first time around. Complex networks—of molecules, people, or ideas —constitute their own simplest behavioral descriptions. They are more easily approximated by analogy than defined by algorithmic code. Facebook, for example, although running on digital computers, constitutes an analog computer whose correspondence to the underlying network of human relationships now drives those relationships, the same way Google’s statistical approximation to meani...

Nobody has the answers. Nobody is listening to you. Nobody is looking out for your interests. Nobody will lower your taxes. Nobody will fix the education system. Nobody knows what he is doing in Washington. Nobody will make us energy independent. Nobody will cut government waste. Nobody will clean up the environment. Nobody will protect us against terrorist threats. Nobody will tell the truth. Nobody will avoid conflicts of interest. Nobody will restore ethical behavior to the White House. Nobody will get us out of Afghanistan. Nobody understands farm subsidies. Nobody will spend your tax dollars wisely. Nobody feels your pain. Nobody wants to give peace a chance. Nobody predicted the Iraq War would be a disaster. Nobody expected the levees to fail. Nobody warned that the housing bubble would collapse. Nobody will reform Wall Street. Nobody will stand up for what’s right. Nobody will be your voice. Nobody will tell ...

A long time ago, starting a company that made software for computers was dumb. Microsoft and Apple may beg to differ. A company that manufactures cars: dumb. Putting a college yearbook online: dumb. Limiting updates to just 140 characters: dumb. Here’s what’s easy: to recognize a really smart new business concept as just that. What’s hard is recognizing that the idea you think is just plain dumb is really tomorrow’s huge breakthrough. But what makes dumb, smart? e ability to look at the world through a different lens from everyone else. To ignore rules. To disregard the ‘why’s’ and ‘how’s’ and ‘never-succeeded-befores’. Then you need conviction, and the ability to stand by that conviction when other (smart) people look you in the eye and say, “no way, nuh uh.” So, how do you tell a good dumb idea from a bad dumb one? Good dumb ideas create polarization. Some people will get it immediately and shower it with praise and affection. Others will say it’s ignorant an...

I’ve been thinking about how big our world is and how small-minded we’ve become; how quick we are to judge and how slow to understand. Technology places the resources of the world at our fingertips, yet we have trouble seeing past the ends of our noses. For every trend there’s a countertrend worth considering. Resolve to leave the screens of your virtual world momentarily behind, and indulge your senses with a real world adventure. St. Augustine said: “The world is a book, and those who don’t travel read only one page.” My advice? Adventure calls. Blaze a new trail. Cross a continent. Dare to discover. Escape the routine. Find a fresh perspective. Go slow; gaze absentmindedly and savor every moment. Have some fun! Invest now in future memories. Journeys are the midwives of thought; Keep a journal. Leave prejudice and narrow mindedness behind. Make for the horizon and meet new people. Navigate the unknown. Observe, a...

Neoteny is the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood. Human beings are younger longer than any other creature on earth, taking almost twenty years until we become adults. While we retain many our childlike attributes into adulthood most of us stop playing when we become adults and focus on work. When we are young, we learn, we socialize, we play, we experiment, we are curious, we feel wonder, we feel joy, we change, we grow, we imagine, we hope. In adulthood, we are serious, we produce, we focus, we fight, we protect and we believe in things strongly. The future of the planet is becoming less about being efficient, producing more stuff and protecting our turf and more about working together, embracing change and being creative. We live in an age where people are starving in the midst of abundance and our greatest enemy is our own testosterone driven urge to control our territory and our environments. It’s time we listen to children and allo...

Our word is dangerously polarized. There is an imbalance of wealth and power that has resulted in widespread alienation, suspicion, and resentment. Yet we are linked together more closely than ever before ~ electronically, politically, and economically. One of the most important tasks of our generation is to build a just and viable global order, where all peoples can live together in mutual respect. We have it in our power to begin the world again by implementing the ancient principle that is often called the Golden Rule: Always treat all others as you would wish to be treated yourself. We need to make this compassionate and empathic ethos a vibrant force in private and public life, developing a global democracy, where all voices are heard, working tirelessly and practically for the well-being of the entire human race, and countering the dangerous mythology of hatred and fear. At this crossroads of history, we have a choice. We can either emphasize the exclusive a...

You are immortal. The result of everything you do today will last forever. Everything you buy, own, consume is likely to last forever somewhere in a landfill. Even the majority of the the recyclable materials you use will not be processed and these ‘green’ items will be found piled up in deep far-off valleys whether you like it or not. When our great great grandchildren finally work out how to solve the selfish errors of our time, we will be considered primitive: our  balance with our habitat ignored in pursuit of progress. But as humans we strive for progress. We will not live alone self sufficiently on our rural hectare and therefore we must bring simple common sense to everything we buy, own & consume. If they will last forever, then we must make these items as useful as they can be for as long as possible. Products needs to be kept, repaired, loaned and shared. Packaging needs to be reused and returned. That is progress. Yes, the futur...

How does news shape the way we see the world? Distorted, bloated, and not representative of what is happening. Too often, American commercial news is myopic and inwardly focused. This leads to a severe lack of global news. And increasingly, a shortage of “enterprise journalism” – journalistic depth built over time through original sources – that provides the context and enables thoughtful response. Too often, the news sticks to crime, disasters, infotainment, and horse-race politics. Many important topics such as education, race and ethnicity, science, environment, and women and children’s issues are oen less than 5% of all news combined. Much of widely-seen online news isn’t better – it’s often just re-circulates the same stories. The result: much of our news can’t be called “knowledge media” – content that builds insight about our world. It’s difficult to understand the world, if you haven’t heard much about it. But we also know many...