TELNET

You know it.

Black screen.

Green Letters.

Kind of like The Matrix, but far less entertaining.

At least I never saw “blonds, brunettes and redheads” while staring into the screen. Well, maybe that’s not true but they were reflections of people walking behind me while I continued to be lost in the pixels.

Twenty-one years ago today, it was my first visit to the offices of my first soon-to-be-called-dot-com-industry job.

We sold TELNET software for the Macintosh–these days it seems that the term Macintosh is as cool as a pair of sequined bell-bottom pants. I’m supposed to say Mac–to government contractors and Fortune 1000.

The punchline is that we sold this software against some stiff competition. That was a public domain TELNET application written by our own CTO while still in college.

You think your market is tough? Give away a free version of your product and sell directly against it for $100s a copy. Go ahead. I dare ya.

It’s time for a new year. On a cosmological scale, the distinction is quite arbitrary. Next month is also the anniversary of the rotation around some random point in the universe too.

This is as good a time as any though to make a change.

What are you going to do? With your job, your business, your service, your products. Whatever.

How would you sell yourself against a perfect replica of your offering that’s made available for free? It’s a perfect replica so you can’t change the features in your commercial version. Even if you did, the reality is usually those differences are nothing more than window dressing.

And yet, maybe window dressing is the clue.

What’s the difference between a storefront with well-maintained, fresh displays that are constantly tweaked without actually changing anything about the products offered and a store with some dusty old sign in the window that’s two seasons out of date?

The answer is simple, business A gives a crap.

How would your business change if you put a little life into it? I mean the kind of life that doesn’t require the proverbial mirror placed under your nose to see if you’re breathing.

What if the only thing you did differently this year was to do what you did in 2011, but do so on purpose and with purpose.

Same hours.

New energy.

New impact.

The other guys aren’t wearing kid gloves and waiting for you to get on your feet before engaging in some “friendly competition.” They don’t matter anyway. Chances are you’re the biggest risk to your own wants and dreams.

I’m not going to use the cliche about getting out of your own way. I instead advocate getting behind yourself and pushing yourself into oncoming traffic. Try playing your life like you’re the main star of Frogger for a while. It may not be a good way to live your life 24/7 but how do you think you’re ever going to level-up if you don’t stick your neck out and take a real, intelligent risk?

Step up.

Step out.

Make a difference.

Act like you really care.

“Watch your thoughts for they become words. Watch your words for they become actions. Watch your actions for they become…habits. Watch your habits, for they become your character. And watch your character, for it becomes your destiny!” –Margaret Thatcher

If you haven’t seen The Princess Bride, you may want to call up a friend and have them apologize for not making you watch it. Seriously, what’s your excuse? Netflix delivers to caves…probably.

Whether you’ve seen it or not, please allow me to set the stage.

Early on in the movie, we meet Westley, the poor farm boy and Buttercup, his part time antagonist, and true love. She repeatedly asks him to do things, and he always complies.

He doesn’t endure.

He’s not being submissive.

His actions are driven by a higher power that never runs out.

It carries more energy than any force of nature.

Each time she asks him to do something he says, simply, “As you wish.”

If subtitles could appear in thin air, the translation would be: “I love you eternally.”

Sadly, Westley is taken from us—presumably meeting his death—and Buttercup’s heart is broken.

Buttercup becomes Princess Buttercup and is set to marry the evil D.B. Prince Humperdinck—and she is to be killed on their wedding night, with the country of Guilder to be blamed for it—until a mysterious figure comes on the scene to save her.

The Dread Pirate Roberts

[cue dramatic music]

The Dread Pirate Roberts takes on expert swordsmen, battles wits with evil geniuses, dukes it out with giants, dodges geysers of flame, and triumphs over unusually large rodent-like creatures and other challenges of endurance and patience all in the name of one thing.

The quest for indoor plumbing?

No! It’s still exactly the same force that guided his repeated water-fetching efforts from before.

Love

Whether as Westley, the poor farm boy, or the Dread Pirate Roberts, he is always driven by one, single force.

Love

Such a creative force can move mountains.

Its source has no limits.

With a wind like that at your back, there’s no limit to where you can go and what you can do.

What’s fueling your passions?

Who you are, what you do, & how you do it—some call it your personal brand—are all driven by something. Hopefully it’s a creative force that naturally seeks to grow. One that will always endure.

Negative and destructive forces can’t drive you for long. They’ll burn you out eventually. Such things don’t last. That’s what makes them destructive.

My advice: seek the creative powers like love as your source of power.

Maybe you don’t feel like working with it today.

That’s ok.

Find a way to give practice to what fuels you anyway.

Every day.

You won’t find yourself swashbuckling to defend what you love every day.

Some days, it’s just about fetching water…even if it’s just a glass of water.

Feed it through practice.

Nurture it always.

…and for your viewing pleasure, a small snippet from the movie.

Technorati Tags: love, personal branding, personal development

Survivorship bias is based on the claim there is a logic error in concentrating on the people or things that "survived"—or succeeded— some process and overlooking all the failures from the same system.

It’s often used to beat up on anyone who writes a book on investment or business strategy. The reality is that most businesses fail and most people who attempt to succeed at something fail (at least once) so, what’s the point of studying success if these people can’t provide a systematic, step-by-step that guarantees success.

Makes sense if your approach to the world is to blame everyone else for your life.

Y’know, because such a bias is why most people get that one way ticket to Palookaville.

I call total-BS on anyone and everyone who hides behind survivorship bias. The simple fact is that it is everywhere and applies to everything. Therefore, as a single variable solution sought out by the dimwitted and lazy of thought, it’s simply not a viable argument.

Let’s take corn. One kernel of corn, when planted, produces about 600 kernels of corn on a single ear.

What an amazing display of prosperity!

But the survivorship bias people would rather point out that most kernels of corn never grow into plants.

They’re all failures.

Therefore, the study of why a seed successfully grows from the ground is an optimistic estimation of success. It ignores the gerbillions of kernels that coulda been a contender. Clearly those evil kernels of corn are actually holding back the real secrets of their success. They’re just growing so they can spread their evil DNA.

Boo hisssssss

Does every person who studies “real hard” get a perfect GPA?

Nope.

Does every person shooting 500 foul shots a day get into the NBA?

Nope.

Does every person taking karate, and who learns all the katas, get a black belt?

Nope.

I could go on and on, but what’s the point?

If every success could be perfectly hammered into a simple step-by-step process, we would all have perfect lives and there would be no need for any self-help books. You’d just go to the Post Office and look up your solution on the wall.

Yes, survivorship bias can be used to mess with statistical data—and I do happen to grok stats—but that’s not what I’m talking about here. If you want to succeed, model success. Don’t spend your time wallowing on what is preventing you from getting there. Tag that wall with a laser and show it who’s boss.

And for your viewing pleasure: The inspirational scene from On the Waterfront.

Technorati Tags: Business, personal development, success, survivorship bias

When my friend Jill Foster asked me to be a speaking coach for some of the speakers at TEDxPotomac, there wasn’t a moment of hesitation on my part.

“I’m in.”

I had no idea who I would be coach, but I did know two things:

1. I’m a big fan of TED.
2. I love to help people learn how to—or discover how to—express themselves better so they can influence more people with their ideas.

The title of this post is from Stephen Covey’s The 8th Habit. If you haven’t read this monstrous tome, that’s it in a nutshell: Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs… It really is a great addition to the other 7 habits of highly effective people he covers in his best selling book by the same name.

Not that I’d call myself highly effective.

Moderately effective?

Mildly effective?

Hey, at least I read the book. That counts for something, right?

My experience with TEDxPotomac was a great one and I really enjoyed working with Craig Newmark and Alexandra Cousteau. I hope I helped them connect to the audience more effectively.

Working with Toastmasters International, I’ve helped a lot of people practice and develop their communications skills. It’s a lot of fun and I find it fascinating too. I find how a person speaks to be sort of like a 2-way Rorschach Ink Blot Test conveyed through words. There are many factors that impact how a person communicates. Self-awareness and a little practice can turn these factors into powerful tools or oration.

• Cadence
• Word use
• Voice control
• Repeating themes

These are just a few examples which I talk about more in other posts. They’re fascinating things to me and if you ever end up in a Toastmasters meeting with me, or hire me as a speaking coach, you now have some idea of the things I look for.

They’re elements of a one person symphony.

The motto of TED is “Ideas worth spreading,” and it’s what I love. I don’t have to agree with an individual’s message, but I respect and support their right to be heard.

Maybe you’re not scheduled for a TED talk any time soon.

I’m not either.

That doesn’t mean you don’t have a voice though.

Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs…

Technorati Tags: TED, TEDxPotomac

A year ago, I lost my dog in a tragic accident. As the neighbors helped out by literally picking up the pieces, I wrote this post.

My July 4th last year was spent at the farm as my friend Lili literally put the pieces back together so I could bury Punkie under a willow tree. Not exactly good times, but she actually has a permit for “real” fireworks so we had a good time blowing things up that evening too.

Life moves on.

The past couple of months have had some amazing highs and some fairly low, lows. Through it all though, I’m happy to say that I always seem to be surrounded by friends. Some are consistently there. Some are transient. Some appear from nowhere and seem to be exactly the kind of influence I need at the time.

Amazing stuff.

While July 4th is a day to celebrate independence, freedom and autonomy wouldn’t be all that interesting if we lived in individual caves and never interacted. It’s a time for friends and friendship.

Have a great one.

Live a story worth telling.

Say hi and leave a comment below.

When I first read Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us [AF] from Daniel Pink, I was blown away. I hadn’t heard very much about the content so I didn’t know what to expect. I just thought it was a book on motivation. I’ve worked with managers who love to create “incentive bonuses” and have had employees who even—get this—asked for bonuses when completing their assigned work on time. I’ve also worked with personal development workshops that suggest you create personal incentives as a reward for achieving a goal. If that goal is to get to 100 pushups in a single shot, that sort of incentive system seems to work fine, but I’ve always had this uneasy feeling about doing such things when creativity and problem solving is on the line.

Imagine how blown away I was to find out that a Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 2002 to psychologist Daniel Kahneman. His research, along with studies backed by MIT, the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon and the Federal Reserve, along with other studies from psychologists, sociologists and economists show that larger rewards led to poorer performance in tasks that called for anything beyond rudimentary cognitive skill.

It’s easy to miss some of the important details here. This does not say that compensation isn’t important. A person should be compensated in such a way that they are not “worried” about money and therefore can relax into the creative and problem solving tasks. In doing freelance writing, I find that getting a sufficient retainer to start seems to increase my productivity whereas having the compensation “held hostage” actually seems to lead to my mind wandering to other ways to generate cash flow.

Which is to say if you don’t pay people enough, they won’t be motivated. After that point has been reached, “bonuses” do not enhance performance in creative and problem solving jobs.

For some more info, watch this video from RSA Animate. The content from Daniel Pink would be great on its own, but is really enhanced with this creative video accompaniment.

This video from TED is also worth watching.

“This is one of the most robust findings in social science, and it’s also one of the most ignored.” –Daniel Pink

Here are some additional links to studies cited by Daniel Pink in his talks and his book.

• The Effects of Financial Incentives in Experiments: A Review and Capital-Labor-Production
• Karl Duncker’s “Candle Problem” and functional fixedness
• Economist Dan Ariely who did the MIT study

What do you think? Is this a surprise to you? Don’t believe it? Any personal experiences? Leave a comment below.

Technorati Tags: Daniel Pink, Drive, economics, motivation

There’s a new TEDx event in DC and it’s focused on the oil spill and what we can do about it. Of course, it’s very easy to yell “boycot BP” from the towers, but if you think for more than 5 seconds about how the world oil market works, that’s not really a useful solution.

Instead perhaps it’s time to open our minds and think a bit more on solutions for the short term as well as the long.

As I write this, TEDxOilSpill is on a lunch break.

You can watch the speakers live at this page:

http://www.livestream.com/tedxoilspill/

Follow the #TEDxOilSpill conversation on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=TEDxOilSpill

Check out these Flickr Oilspill Photos with Creative Commons Licensing

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kk/sets/72157624287659712/

The thing I love about TED is that not all of the speakers are rock stars on stage. They’re real people sharing their ideas. It would be all to easy to shape TED into an elitist organization that only welcomes people with more professional speaking credentials. To me that would be a violation of the TED credo “Ideas worth spreading” so kudos to the obviously nervous speakers who get on stage to give voice to their thoughts.

Did you watch #TEDxOilSpill? What were your thoughts?

Technorati Tags: TEDx

I ran into this picture while trolling along with StumbleUpon. It caught my breath and an “ohhhh” escaped my lips. It only took a split second to like this picture and I quickly made it my desktop picture.

It just clicked.

As I examine the picture some more, different elements sink in.

I like the balance of the composition,

the repeating elements of how all the houses are the same color,

the contrast with the foliage,

the blueness of the sky, and the whispy clouds,

the rustic nature of the setting…I see an aerial in the background…I wonder if they have broadband there…how’s the 3G coverage?

That’s all well and good, but when I had my first glance, I don’t think any of those things popped into my head. It was a simple, primal connection.

Ohhh nice picture.

I like red too.

Simple as that.

You may see this picture and have an entirely different experience. Whatever that experience happens to be, it’s your experience.

That’s good enough.

Technorati Tags: perception

While flipping through headlines with Feedly (ok, while ‘x’ing out dozens of articles in the blink of an eye, without reading them, using Feedly), I stopped at this Life Hack article: 11 Simple Ways To Avoid Burnout

All great ideas, but it was #5 that made me laugh.

Write a Manifesto

Wow, I typically use the word manifesto in the pejorative sense. Just the word manifesto makes me think of some long pedantic pontification. (what’s a ‘p’ word that means narcissistic?)

I know people who write emails so long you’d think their ISP was paying by the byte. Those are manifestos by my reckoning—low on “the point” and high on “droning nonsense I can’t follow.”

Of course, there’s Ted Kaczynki’s Unibomber Manifesto—seriously, could this thing be any more boring? The papers should have run it sooner if that’s all it took to shut him the hell up.

The United States Declaration of Independence is a manifesto. I had to look that up as an example. I happen to like that manifesto. Sure, it’s not exactly bedtime reading but it’s worth having a copy on your iPhone in case you need to win a bar bet.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) – vive la liberté – yeah that one is cool

Communist Manifesto (1848) – hated it.

The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986) – Uhm, I heard about it…yeah…

Your Personal Manifesto

Maybe a personal manifesto isn’t such a bad idea after all. At least if it ends up a turkey you’ll be dead someday and won’t care if people blog mean things about it.

Write your narrative. What are you about? What are your real values? Values that go so deep to who you are that they don’t require explanation—they just are.

A personal manifesto can help bring focus to your job, your family life and the impact you want to make on the world.

It can even help you realize—or remember—the impact you intend(ed) to make.

With the weekend upon us, it’s a great time to reflect and work on yours. Have a chat with a friend and talk through it. Make a mindmap. Get out some crayons and just draw pictures. Do what it takes to bring those ideas back to the top. They’re probably buried under layers of GoldenBuddhaSchmutz so it might take some effort to prime the pump. Don’t let any of that stand in your way though. The world is waiting for you to do what you were put here for.

Technorati Tags: goals, Maifesto, personal development

The most common question I hear from people seeking public speaking advice in and outside of my Toastmasters’ groups is “How do I get rid of the butterflies I feel every time I go to speak?” My answer is the same every time. In the eyes of the other person I see either a look of relief or a look of dread.

So what’s the answer?

First, let me explain the nature of these pesky little creatures.

What you see and what you hear travel to two different places in your brain for processing.

First, the emotional response center of your brain receives the signal. It’s programming is simple: it wants to fight, flee from, feast on or get “friendly” with the subject.

When the subject is an obvious threat (e.g., a hungry lion), this part of the brain takes over and you RUN! When our ancestors learned how to make decent weapons (and train with them), some could override this response and harness the desire to fight. They’d move in to kill what was now an inferior threat.

Second, your big neocortex gets the signal and gets to be all logical. It thinks about the existential nature of the subject. It might even wax poetic and ask “to flee, or not to flee,” if you weren’t already hightailing it to the closest cover.

That’s right, the way your brain is wired, you don’t even get to be all “high minded” until you’ve pooped your pants and you’re running full speed away or pulling your sword out of the chest of whatever you just impaled.

Back to the butterflies…

Those butterflies you feel in your stomach are a sign that your Amygdala (that’s the emotional center of the brain) has gone to work. When perceiving a threat it puts adrenalin in your blood, along with some other hormones that take very quick control of your digestive system.

What’s the threat?

In Toastmasters it’s other people watching you speak.

OMG: strangers and people I know!

At work it’s your co-workers, your boss and people who dare look at you.

RUN!

Yep, your amygdala isn’t all that smart. It can’t tell the difference between a lion and your co-worker with bad hair. It can’t even tell the difference between an avalanche that’s about to bury you and a work deadline that’s a month away.

Given the right setting, they’re all a threat so the amygdala is just trying to do its job.

It doesn’t matter how logical you want to be.

The neocortex doesn’t have even the slightest amount of control over the amygdala and the amygdala gets to take action on what you see and hear before the neocortex even has a chance to think about it.

This means that you will always have that emotional response.

You will always feel the butterflies.

Getting rid of them isn’t really an option. The only way through this is conditioning.

Look up how Police Horses are trained to see just how effective such conditioning can be.

You need to experience the fake threat repeatedly.

You need to let the butterflies go Mardi Gras on your 25 feet of intestines.

Just let it happen and come out the other side so your amygdala can see that your perceived threat was not the same as a lion. Over time you’ll still feel the response but more as a gentle reminder from your amygdala saying “hey, I love you and just want to see you safe.” Now you have the freedom to make a choice about what to do next.

You don’t NEED to run.

You don’t NEED to fight.

What do I say when people ask “How do I get rid of the butterflies I feel every time I go to speak?”

The answer is “It’s not about getting rid of the butterflies. It’s about getting them to fly in formation.”

I hope now you understand why.

Technorati Tags: Emotional Intelligence, EQ