Walks of My Life

We love to believe that willpower determines our actions. “If I just try harder,” we tell ourselves, “I can lose that last 10 pounds.” Or save $200/month. Or improve our time management. The problem is, it doesn’t work. Willpower is important, of course, but there’s more to behavioral change than just trying harder. Think about all the things we know we “should” do: Exercise regularly, eat healthily, max out our retirement accounts, save more, travel, call Mom.... In one study, researchers tried to understand why people weren’t investing in their 401(k)s. In the first example, less than 40% of people contributed to their 401(k). But after they made it automatic—in other words, the day you joined, you’re automatically contributing a small amount to your 401(k)— enrollment skyrocketed to over 90%. We know we should fill out that paperwork—and it’s probably costing us a lot of money to not be investing— but we just can’t seem to get around to it. It t...

Getting things done is not the same as making things happen. You can… …reply to email. …pay the bills. …cross off to-do’s. …fulfill your obligation. …repeat what you heard. …go with the flow. …anticipate roadblocks. …aim for “good enough.” Or you can… …organize a community. …take a risk. …set ambitious goals. …give more than you take. …change perceptions. …forge a new path. …create possibility. …demand excellence. Don’t worry too much about getting things done. Make things happen. ~Gina Trapani

What Would Buddha Tweet? Here is our paradox. We have never had more communications tools at our disposal, and yet we have never been less effective at communicating. It’s human nature to want the shiny new things. The amateur golfer thinks that with that new titanium driver she’ll be as good as Tiger Woods. And we believe that social marketing will magically transform our mediocre messages into the word of God. Like all good Buddhists, I believe that when things become chaotic and complicated, it becomes ever more urgent to cut through the noise, simplify and hone in on what really matters. Here are three timeless principles of good cause-related communications that will be as important in ten years as they are today: heart, simplicity, and story. Heart – engage your community from a place of passion and compassion. Facts matter less. Simplicity – if you can’t tell your brand story to a 9- year-old it’s no good. Story – t...

For 2,500 years in the West, we’ve tried to settle matters, because that’s what it meant to know something. Hyperlinks have revealed that that’s really just a result of using paper to codify knowledge: Books settle matters because they’re self-contained, fundamentally disconnected from other books, written by a relative handful of people, and impossible to change after they are printed. So, our basic strategy for knowing has been to resolve differences and move on: There’s only one right answer, and once it’s known, we write it down, and go on to the next question. That works fine for a small class of factual information. But, much of what we want to understand is too big, complex, and arguable to ever be settled. The hyperlinked world—the Web—is made for this way of networked knowing. A hyperlinked world includes all differences and disagreements, and connects them to one another. We are all smarter for having these differences only a click away. The challenge now ...

Why, exactly, do humans smile? This question puzzled anthropologists for hundreds of years. The smile is instinctive, one of a thousand fascination cues we use to persuade others to connect with us. Yet from an evolutionary perspective, the smile makes no sense. In the animal kingdom, retracting the mouth corners and baring teeth is a sign of aggression. Yet in humans, this same gesture signals openness. {So why are humans different?} The answer: Bigger animals have bigger mouths, and therefore lower vocal vibrations, which conveys dominance. Smaller animals have smaller mouth cavities, and their higher voices communicate friendliness or submission. It’s why a Rottweiler’s growl is more threatening than a Pomeranian’s.* When humans smile, we pull our cheek flesh back against our teeth, which makes our mouth cavity smaller, and raises the pitch of our voice. Presto, we sound friendlier essentially turning ourselves from a big animal into a sm...

Expertise is typically over-rated. Sometimes you have to rely on feedback to grow. My first SEO website had a serious error which earned me a chastising email, which at that the time didn’t feel so good. I responded to his email and fixed the error and today, the sender does not remember writing that email and has a big promotion for my site on his website. If you care and are receptive to feedback appropriately, eventually the market will help sort things out for you. People will come across your work and suggest helpful tools and ideas. Some will be rude, some will be condescending, and some will be generous and kind. But if you keep everything in your head then you can’t expect anyone else to appreciate your genius or trust your knowledge - they don’t know it exists. Ignorance can be an advantage, and feedback an incredibly useful tool. It allows you to share the journey, which helps make writing accessible to beginners. And it allows you the courage to do...

Confidence is rocket fuel for your business life. Confident people have a come-this-way charisma that generates a following. When you possess total confidence you are willing to take risks. When you have it, you propel yourself and your team forward into the future. Problem: Most people don’t cultivate confidence – it just lands on them due to favorable conditions. I call this spot confidence. Good times make for confident people. Bad times crush them, along with their daring point of view. The secret to unbreakable confidence is a lifestyle of  motional/ mental diet and exercise. 1. Feed Your Mind Good Stuff Stop reading negative information, listening to negative people or watching cable network news. You are loading up with fear. Replace that information with studies about the future or an improved you. You’ll soon emerge as a solution provider instead of a Chicken Little. 2. Exercise Your Gratitude Muscle Gratefulness is a muscle...

Markets have been through a rough patch lately. But it’s time for us to give them a new job to do. The powerful economic forces that have trashed our planet are the only forces powerful enough to save it. So are we doing all we can to put markets to work to drive down global warming pollution —the most serious environmental problem— while there’s still time? We need to magnetize ourselves. Markets, acting like a magnet, create a pull on people and businesses. So when a market is designed to protect the environment, it attracts brainpower and capital toward green solutions, aligning private incentives with the public good. It’s all about getting the rules right. The global warming crisis, like the recent turmoil in the financial system, shows why we need to design markets well and regulate risks appropriately. A worldwide carbon market will combat global warming by pulling inventors and investors—and you and me and everyone—toward low-carbon energy solu...

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...