What if that thing you’ve been putting off would save the world?

Monday, April 15th, 2013

Simon Rich is a 30-ish comedy writer (maybe not quite yet, since his bar mitzvah was in 1997). Two weeks ago, I'd never heard of him. I grabbed some David Sedaris off the shelf at the library and perused the new fiction racks, and picked up Rich's novel What in God's Name. It has an organizational chart on the back cover, with God as CEO of Heaven Inc. I figured I'd already read a book this year about Hell as a telemarketing firm and, well, I was at the library. If the first few pages were awful, I'd just return it unread. Wouldn't be the first time.

The premise here is that God created this company (Heaven Inc.) to farm xenon from the earth's atmosphere. It had some side businesses, too, but one day God was bored so he decided to create humans as a diversion. He then went and dropped Heaven's unemployment rate by drawing up all these different human-related departments like prayer intake (God never actually reads the prayers) and the miracle department, where angels work in cubicles to make miracles happen.

One day, frustrated with people, God decides he's just going to extinguish the human race. Forget about his beloved NASCAR, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Yankees. Nobody was listening to his prophet Raoul (who ran around the streets of New York in his underwear with a cardboard sign dictated by God yelling at people), and he was just tired of the enterprise. So God sends his company a memo saying that in a month, all human-related departments are going to close and most people working those jobs will be laid off (but they'd still enjoy some company benefits like discounted gym memberships).

God is going to, instead, open an Asian fusion restaurant called Sola.

Craig, a miracle department employee, convinces God to save the humans if he can answer one prayer. God tells him sure, he just has to call his shot. That is, if the one you pick doesn't work out, you don't get another chance. So Craig and his cubicle neighbor, the newly promoted Eliza, get to work on picking a prayer to answer.

They find what you'd think would be an easy one. A prayer from someone named Sam that he and a girl named Laura get to be together. OK, that's not so easy at first. But take, also, that it's stapled to a related prayer: Laura wants her and Sam to be together. Also, it turns out they live six blocks apart in lower Manhattan.

Obviously the world winds up saved, but the journey's fun, so pick it up and follow along. But here's the thing.

Laura wants to be with Sam, and Sam wants to be with Laura. They have a couple of chances during that month and both just make it awkward. This is apparently a frequent complaint for angels – they keep giving humans every chance in the world to make the right choice, and they keep blowing it.

They don't know it, but Sam and Laura need to kiss to save the world. They want nothing more, anyway, and to do so would literally save the world from extermination.

That thing you've been putting off because it's a little difficult and might perhaps be uncomfortable to start? What if it would save the world if you'd just fucking do it?

Just fucking do it, then, because it might.

15.04.2013 Books, Motivation No Comments

Ebook review: How to be Legendary

Friday, September 14th, 2012

Happiness research is one of the things that pop psychology has done a lot of the past generation or so. They measure happiness through things like physiology – fatigue, stress levels, that sort of thing – and asking questions. The other thing many of these studies ask is "What would make you more happy?" Frequently the answer is something like more money or more stuff or less debt or more education or something like that.

But what people really want is more time. When follow-up studies are done after people have more money or less debt or more stuff or whatever, they're not showing increased levels of happiness. But when you give people time to pursue their hobbies and spend time with their families and friends, they're much happier.

I spent a lot of my 20s and the first few years of my 30s taking on a lot. Work, school, volunteer work, networking events – I would be out four, five, six nights a week until midnight or after, only to get up at 5am and do it all over again.

I was frequently exhausted.

And I get that way now sometimes, still, but I've done some things to make changes. I go to bed early. I set aside time for hobbies like reading, writing and recreational sports leagues.

Toward the end of getting rid of some of the sense of being overwhelmed that still creeps in, I read a lot of manifesto-type stuff. Things like TheMinimalists.com, Jeff Goins's The Writer's Manifesto, and if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know I'm a huge fan of Steven Pressfield's The War of Art and Julien Smith's The Flinch.

One of my favorites of these is one I read recently called How to be Legendary by Johnny B Truant. Here's a guy who knows what it's like to start a novel and then leave it in the closet for 12 years before picking it back up. Who wants to improve his physique and pays a personal trainer a bunch of money to tell him stuff he already knows. Who really just needed to say fuck it and do what he needed to do to spend time with his family and enjoy his life.

One of the take-away quotes for me is this (emphasis mine):

Nobody has any right to tell you that you're going in the wrong direction or that you're not doing as much as you could do. It doesn't matter what you do or how much you do. What matters is that you do the best you can do relative to what you're able to do. This is not a game of money or material rewards or traditional definitions of success. It's a game of you vs. you, and only you have any business steering your own ship.

In other words, you decide what you're going to do and how much you're going to do, and fuck everybody else. You're the only one who can get in your own way, so stand back and let yourself rise.

I'm going to recommend this book for anyone feeling stuck, floundering, or looking to make some change. Also, it's free, so you may as well get the book and take a couple of hours of your time to make a difference in your own life.

14.09.2012 Books, Motivation No Comments

Memorialize 9/11 by being more awesome

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

It's the 11th anniversary of the September 11 attacks against the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and an innocent field in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere, there's a memorial service going on. Somewhere, someone's still applauding Clint Eastwood for blaming Barack Obama for sending troops to Afghanistan, which actually happened in December of 2001, during George W. Bush's first year in office, in the wake of those attacks. Somewhere – a lot of somewheres, actually – someone is crying for a lost family member, friend, or stranger who died that day. And somewhere, someone at a law enforcement agency is taking credit for stopping a terrorist plot set for the anniversary that may or may not have actually been in the works (it's tough when "success" means that nothing happened).

These are all fine ways to remember 9/11. Except the Clint Eastwood thing. That was just weird.

But a lot of people forget something else that happened immediately after the planes hit the towers that Tuesday morning. A lot of young people – the supposedly disengaged, video game generation, the first to grow up with the Internet in their homes and so supposedly with no real ability to connect with other humans face to face – became part of something bigger. They stood up and joined the military, said "never again" and went off to fight Bush's battles in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another group of the same generation picked up signs and joined their elders on picket lines and in getting arrested for the sake of peace – don't go off killing the vast majority of people in those countries who had absolutely nothing to do with any of it.

People got engaged. They made changes in their lives. And some people even started living like it could happen again, to them, and they were going to achieve their dreams so that if it did happen tomorrow, they'd be able to say they'd lived out those dreams.

And now we're back to moments of silence and the two-party blame game, and we're pretty much just sitting or standing around being armchair citizens and Monday morning political quarterbacks and we're just the same group of people who got attacked 11 years ago. Only more paranoid.

It's time to get back to living our dreams, to creating things, to being more awesome. Will that make people dislike us again? Probably, but if you're going to be hated, make it because people are jealous, not because you're stupid or lazy or disengaged. Today, get ready to do something amazing, because tomorrow, someone might fly a plane into your desk.

11.09.2012 Conversations, Motivation No Comments

Allow your plan to change

Friday, September 7th, 2012

Among other books, I'm reading The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson. It's a collection of essays, some published, some unpublished, all Thompson. One of the essays is the jacket copy from his classic book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

I've read Fear and Loathing, but I read it in paperback, which means I didn't get the jacket copy when I read the book.

It's a good reminder that the book started out as an assignment for Sports Illustrated, which wanted Thompson to write a 250-word caption for a motorcycle race in Las Vegas.

That's right. It's a sports book.

It's also a true crime book. The lawyer on the trip was an L.A. lawyer Thompson was using as a primary source on an investigative news piece about a shooting by sheriffs in the Hispanic community, and because Thompson wasn't a member of that community, it was clear to the reporter the only person who wanted him interviewing the lawyer was the lawyer.

Thompson took him to the motorcycle race so that they could get out of the community and could talk.

There were plans for the trip highlighted in the book, and while maybe the objectives laid out – the investigative news piece and the race caption – were achieved, at some point for Thompson the plan changed and the book that became the legacy of that trip was something else altogether.

Just because it wasn't the plan, doesn't mean it didn't get accomplished. In fact, something bigger came out of it.

The lesson here is that you need to allow your objectives to evolve.

I saw this with some running this week. I was going to see how many days in a row I could run for 30 minutes, but it only took two days to realize that wasn't a sustainable plan. Day 1 I ran for 30 minutes and some change then couldn't get much of a resistance workout in because I was just done. Day 2 I did a great resistance workout and puttered at 17 minutes of running.

Rather than let it get to me, I've changed my goal to 120 minutes of running a week for three straight weeks. I don't care how far I go, or how fast, the cardio, joint and muscular endurance are important to me.

Day 3 I knew two things: I was returning to the tennis court for the first time in 15 months, and I was dropping my car off at the shop. So what I did was drop my car at the shop and run 15 minutes to work, then after work I ran 15 minutes back to the shop. That gave me plenty of rest and recovery time for tennis, and got me 30 more minutes for the week.

That left me 43 minutes of running to do in 4 days; an easy enough average that I could take a rest day (or 2!) and still hit my goal.

I adjusted my goal downward, yes, but certainly didn't make it easy on myself.

Start off with a plan, but don't quit when it looks like that plan isn't going to work out. Be willing to evolve with the circumstances, otherwise you're just going to keep running into a wall.

The weekend's coming. Don't forget to do something important and to make the time to create something.

07.09.2012 Motivation No Comments

Create something

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012

Rodney Mullen is an icon from my youth. He was the first to do a lot of things with a skateboard. From a public eye standpoint, he was usually overshadowed by Tony Hawk, but from a skating standpoint, the two were complementary – Hawk did a lot of power moves: high air, lots of twists and spins, while Mullen did a lot of board flips and slides and tricks that take place over a short jump.

While Hawk worked on getting a little more hang time so he could get one more rotation in, Mullen worked on getting his deck to do something different, like ride on its side or do a couple of flips with a rotation while he was in the air.

But this is not about Tony Hawk vs. Rodney Mullen.

This is about creating something.

If you're the kind of person who's into presentation, Mullen's TED talk isn't going to do anything for you. But the content of the talk? Wow.

Mullen's the kind of innovator who never needed a large stage, or a drawing board, or conventional tools. He took the thing he loved doing, and did things with it nobody'd ever done.

Because he wanted to.

Because creating is fun.

So go out, and create something. Because creating's fun. Do it for the sake of creating something. Don't worry about the rest; just go out and do it. And do it with purpose. If you're not ready to create something big, create something small. Let it grow. It doesn't matter what your scale, just create.

create
Image copyright © 2012 Josh Shear. Use for free, but please credit.

04.09.2012 Cool stuff, Motivation 1 Comment

In defense of misery

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

There are an astonishing number of people in the U.S. on anti-depressant medication. There are a lot of positivity blogs out there. We've covered choosing your attitude here. There are even whole businesses dedicated to making you feel better through smiling.

Often, that positive face we put is just that – putting on a face. We sell it to ourselves as much as we sell it to others.

But we're not always happy. In fact, I think we're typically not happy: I'm betting our default feelings are somewhere between bored and content with a bit of annoyed thrown in.

Happy is further up on the spectrum, and it's the end of the spectrum we prefer to interact with people on.

There's that other end of the spectrum, though, and I think it's really useful. Let's talk about that other end for a moment.

Misery. Heartbreak. Devastation. These are really useful feelings.

They are feelings that spur people to action. They drive creativity. They drive motivation. They drive an attitude of TURN IT AROUND. Happiness just drives an attitude of maintenance. If you're there, you want to stay that way. If you're miserable, you want to get out of it.

The next time you're miserable, feed off of it. Rather than getting out of it as quickly as you can and maybe faking your way to happy – when, inevitably, you're going to just crash back down – figure out what you need to shake the misery. Put a plan together. Grow out of it. Understand it may not happen overnight. In fact, it may happen so slowly you didn't notice stops along the way. But it's a sustainable way to shake it.

Embrace where you are, not where you wish you could be. You'll get there. Just know it'll take work.

08.08.2012 Motivation No Comments

Find Your Greatness

Monday, August 6th, 2012

When I was in high school, there were two factions with regard to Nike. In one, you might shoot someone or get shot for a pair of Air Jordans. In the other, you wouldn't touch a pair of Nikes and you wrote letters to headquarters about their overseas labor practices.

There wasn't much in between.

Once we got past that time, Nike got beyond their corporate reputation and focused on their branding. They had some pretty cool ads for a while, but then they did something I love: messaging.

Like in the Michael Jordan failure ad.

Jordan isn't exactly someone we associate with failure.

"Find your greatness" is a no-brainer with the Olympics. Olympic athletes are great, and one of my favorite things about the Olympics is the ability for me to watch sports I don't get to see often. Handball. Water polo. That kind of stuff.

Great athletes play those sports, and while they might be as athletic as Michael Jordan, they'll never reach his level of fame, wealth or just general ubiquity.

With that, though, is a series of ads featuring regular people finding their own greatness. Like an overweight 12-year-old from London, Ohio, trying to drop some pounds getting into jogging.

While I see a lot of athletes in my day-to-day life (pro athletes, people who run marathons and do triathlons for fun like it's their life), more than two-thirds of the people I see are like Nathan.

They're finding their own greatness.

Let's be clear, too, that this isn't just about sport, it's about life. Your greatness is within reach, you just have to find it.

Great job, Nike. I'm digging your campaign.

06.08.2012 Branding, Motivation, Sports No Comments

Do it like it’s your life, not like it’s your job

Friday, August 3rd, 2012

We have this expression in the U.S., to do something "like it's your job." The slang dictionary has a great entry on it:

To show extreme dexterity at a certain skill, such as "That guy at KFC ate chicken like it was his job."

OK, so the example was a little weak, considering depending on why the guy was at KFC, eating chicken might actually have been his job.

But why are we using our jobs as the marker of effort and ability? Stop. Now.

Don't get me wrong. I work my ass off at my job. Someone else is paying me money to do so. I know if I were paying someone to do something, I'd want them to work their ass off at it.

But I'm pretty fucking awesome outside of my job, too. I work just as hard to be an amazing person and enjoy my life outside of work. There are things that are more important than work, even if you have a really important job, like firefighter or something.

Proposal: Start doing things like they're your life. If you think your life is drab, boring, not important or less than your work, reconsider your priorities and start living better, harder, faster, more. Like your life depends on it, because it does.

Do it like it's your fucking life.

03.08.2012 Conversations, Motivation No Comments

Three rules for setting goals

Monday, July 30th, 2012

As I was getting ready to start my week last week, I tweeted that my goal for the week was 30,000 NikeFuel points, which would have been my best week ever.

As you can see from the screenshot above, I did it.

[If you're not sure what the heck I'm talking about, read my thoughts on the Nike FuelBand here.]

This little success was not without some unintended consequences; I guess I didn't plan accordingly for that.

Thursday was a rest day, but take a look at that chart again – I earned somewhere in the 3500 fuel for the day. Men in their 30s who have the FuelBand (and thus probably skew toward the more active) average about 2200 a day. I had a rest day that beat the average by more than 50%.

My workout Friday was awful. I intended to run 4.5 miles and lift heavy. I quit running after 1.5 miles and then lifted about 30% lighter than normal on several fewer lifts than I had planned.

Sunday I just didn't feel like moving at all; the 1800 fuel I picked up came largely as a result of an outing to Chittenango Falls for some important stuff.

I set a goal. It was achievable but a stretch. I reached it, but didn't plan for the fallout of reaching it in the manner I reached it.

Here are three rules I'm going to follow with regard to goals from now on. Let me know if you have other tips!

1. Outline a plan that doesn't require vast amounts of recovery (whatever that recovery is from or for).
2. Be willing to miss your goal to keep more important stuff in play.
3. Have a plan beyond reaching the goal – if you do reach it, what's next? Hopefully not just more of the same, because that's just quantity, not growth.

30.07.2012 Motivation 1 Comment

How do you plan for success?

Friday, July 27th, 2012

That's an honest question. I have to admit I'm scared shitless of the idea of success.

A lot of people are afraid of failure. I'm not. I know what it looks like. I know I could fail worse than I've failed in the past, but failing is not all that difficult. It's pretty easy to look around you and figure out what the basic things you need are, and then to figure out how to get them (I understand that's more difficult for some people than for others, but stay with me here).

If I need to eat and a I have a couple of dollars in my pocket, I can find some rice and beans that, when cooked, will last me the next three or four days. If I need a job, I can walk into a coffee shop or restaurant and ask. If I need housing, a vehicle, whatever, I know where to go, and if I need help I think I've built up enough good will around me that, if people were to see my desperation, they'd have my back.

But I don't know what to do with success.

Success is relative, I understand. I live in a nice house in the suburbs with a woman I love and a dog who knows how to turn around a bad day like nobody's business. If I miss a meal, it's because I was too busy to remember to eat, not because I couldn't afford food.

I read some pretty motivational blogs. These are people who have started their own companies, and a lot of them focus on "you can do it, too!" with some regularity.

I've been saving these posts for a few days now, with the intent of writing this post and sharing them here. They don't answer the question for me, but I think they're important.

As good as it gets, from Mitch Joel. It's where I got the video of Henry Rollins talking about how he got where he is. Joel summarizes it, so if you're not in a position to watch it, go read this post. The two biggest takeaways: "Write everything down twice, show up early, shut up and listen" and "When luck comes your way, take advantage of the opportunity."

Failing to succeed, by Matt Cheuvront. This is what actually got the wheels turning on this post. Cheuvront started his own business not long after college, and I like his take on doing what you want to do, mostly because it's somewhat muted by reality. A lot of "YOU CAN DO IT!" people have a late-night television infomercial vibe about their writing. He just reminds you, "hey, if you're not happy, you have a way out." In this post, he introduces the idea that failure isn't an end, it's just a miss.

Quit doing your best, by Marc Ensign. "Oh well, I did my best" is not an excuse, writes Ensign. Don't expect a pat on the back for failure. Succeed instead. If Cheuvront got the wheels turning on this post, Ensign certainly took this opportunity to remind me that if I keep wondering what the plan becomes if I succeed at whatever it is I'm doing, I'm probably never going to succeed, and I'm never going to be great. I started, but that's never going to be good enough. Onward!

There's always someone better than you, also by Cheuvront. It's a reminder to never stop growing. Even if you do get to success, even if you do keep improving, someone will always be quicker, better, stronger, or more successful than you. Again, onward!

27.07.2012 Motivation 1 Comment

Previous Entries