Alexandersmap

    Tag: Seth Godin

    • Seeing the World for the First (?) Time

      “Our awareness has been stretched wider than ever in history, but often at the cost of taking away a lifetime of experiences.” – Seth Godin

      “We were the first humans who would never see something for the first time.” – Gillian Flynn

      Both of these appeared in my feed within minutes of each other this morning, in turn each pointing out the world we live in being smaller than ever before, and casting a neon glow on a topic I should explore before the muse carries it on to the next writer. Candidly I’m itching to return to writing more local history, but it’ll have to wait a bit longer. I’d be a fool to turn a cold shoulder on the muse, wouldn’t I?

      Godin laments the cost of awareness in our world of YouTube, Instagram, streaming media and, yes, travel blogging. We tend to know about things just by casually dipping our ladle into the stream of information flying past us in all directions. But sipping from the ladle isn’t immersive exploration of new places and ideas. It’s the Cliff Notes, not War and Peace. As Godin writes, there’s no excuse for being uninformed, but there’s also no good reason for being inexperienced.

      Flynn laments that media often offers a better picture of the world than going there and seeing it does. I’d say she’s partially right in that we cheat ourselves of the wonder of the new having seen it before we get there. But I disagree that the experience is better through media or that we don’t experience something substantively better being there versus seeing it on a screen. I can look out the window and see snow, or I can walk outside and understand snow.

      The crew of Fayaway are in Saba at the moment. It was nothing for me to pull up a video of people hiking up the mountain they hiked up, see the massive leaves they saw and the same view out to St. Kitts that they sent me in a text message. But a YouTube video is a very small sample of the experience they had of talking to locals, feeling the heat, getting out of breath climbing to the summit, and the exhilaration of reaching the summit and catching a first glimpse of the panoramic vista. That is their experience of a lifetime, while I’m simply aware of what it generally looked like for them after watching a YouTube video.

      The world is smaller than ever, and we’re blessed to experience the wonders of it without the cost of earning it in money, risk, sweat equity and sacrifice. But experience on a screen isn’t experiencing life, it just eliminates the surprise of knowing what’s around the corner when you can Google street view so much of this world. Surprise can be good, and surprise can be very bad. Maybe the answer is to use all this technology to mitigate the impact of the bad while minimizing the reduction of the other.

      Maybe VR will bring us closer than we’d ever imagine in the next few years. There’s enormous value in practicing on the flight simulator to get it right before you fly the Boeing 777 overseas, but you still need to get experience on the real thing after that before they load passengers on with you. Likewise, seeing what the Google street view was prior to pulling out of Edinburgh in a rental car made me more comfortable when I did it. It didn’t simulate the tactile oddness of the left hand shift instead of the right or the adrenaline rush of the first roundabout going the opposite way, but it eliminated sensory overload having seen a bit of it already.

      Humans are meant to move, and to interact and react to the world around them. Media is getting exponentially better at recreating this experience, but that doesn’t make it experience. The answer is to get out and be a part of the world, not just watch it through someone else’s lens.

    • Be Alive

      Quiet Sunday mornings are precious things.  This first Sunday morning back from vacation with no travel scheduled for the next week makes it even more so. A good time to contemplate picked-up pieces and solve the puzzle … like this Oscar Wilde quote:

      “Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”

      Which seems to pair well with this (recurring) observation from Seth Godin just this morning:

      “A few people somehow avoid these lessons [of following the rules school lays out] and become instigators, impresarios and disruptors instead. They’re not only dancing with infinity but completely unsure what’s going to work, and yet they are hooked on leaping forward.”

      There are some bold concepts to shake the complacency here. Most people try to avoid mistakes, but it turns out those mistakes are leaps forward not achieved if you don’t make them. Ironic, isn’t it? Go out on the floor and dance with infinity, or be a wall flower wishing you’d taken the risk. If I’ve learned anything in my time here, it’s that the risks can be mitigated, and the leaps are worthwhile.

      That “creeping common sense” Wilde talks about is something I’ve struggled with. But I smile at the mistakes I’ve made that have moved me forward, if only a little. Following the rules, waiting your turn, deferring to others and knowing your place each serve to bring order to society. There’s nothing wrong with making the bed, holding the door for someone else, driving safely and showing up on time for an appointment. These courtesies help us leap forward too. If you don’t weed the garden your harvest will suffer. But a little bend of the rules, an occasional left turn, a break from the norm and a few more mistakes along the way offer a bit of Miracle Grow in that dance with infinity.

      “… the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”

      Ultimately Wilde isn’t indicting us for not taking risks (we do enough of that to ourselves), but rather, poking us to stop wringing our hands about whether it’s the right time or the right move and to just do it already. There are only so many days in store for all of us, and who cares if it turns out to be a mistake anyway? And I think of an image of a Polish man during the darkest days of World War II begging for his life, hands raised to his chest, seeking to be understood. Next to him are two other men, resigned to their fate, which is about to be the same as the bodies of other men sprawled on the ground. I felt empathy for that guy, who was caught up in a moment larger than himself, only wanting to be understood and to live another day. And he calls to me still, Memento mori! Go on, take the risks. Live your life today, as I myself cannot. Be alive.

    • Raising the Average

      “Perfection is the enemy of action.” – Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic

      Somehow I haven’t found the time to walk five miles every day this week. Busy with stuff. Like finding excuses to not get some exercise. But somehow I’ve managed to knock off a dozen burpees every day. Granted, it’s a small token of daily fitness, but I haven’t broken the streak yet. I’ve established a cadence with burpees. It’s a form of daily ritual, a small gesture towards fitness. It won’t close the gap on its own but it gives me some measure of achievement.

      Seth Godin mentioned in an interview that he writes multiple blog posts every day, essentially building a library of possibilities to post. I have no such library. Instead I write as inspiration strikes, usually in the morning but sometimes late in the day. But I post daily to keep the streak alive, typos and all. I’m not writing a masterpiece, though I surely try. The cadence is what I’m focused on. Hopefully the content meets expectations on occasion.

      Every morning this week I’ve gotten up for the sunrise, alone to catch the sun break the horizon. There’s a feeling of hope for this new day, as there was yesterday and hopefully tomorrow. I haven’t had a perfect day yet this week, but I’ve had good days nonetheless. Perfect days are evasive creatures; I’ll take great days or even average days. Average is still pretty good when you look at how dark the world can be. I woke up today (bonus!), saw a sunrise, sipped some coffee and read a bit of meaningful prose. I’ll take that kind of start any day. Chasing perfection leads you down a path of never good enough, which leads to the darkness. I choose the light, errors and all.

      There’s a great article about Dalilah Muhammad’s world record 400 meter hurdle run in Sports Illustrated this week. She ran an imperfect race, but she didn’t need perfection to get the WR because she’d worked so hard to be at a level of performance where an average race was still far ahead of the perfect race for someone else was. There’s a lesson there for all of us. We can’t reach perfection but by continually raising the bar in our own lives we can reach levels of greatness in our pursuits. Steady improvement over time moves us closer. That seems healthier than never good enough.

    • Progress Whispers

      Scales don’t lie, and this week I added a couple of travel pounds. Sales meetings involve unnatural portion sizes repeated often, with snacks in between. And so the pants were a bit more snug than when I arrived. That seemed to be the consensus as all 90% of us immediately agreed to lose 10 pounds by a trade show in September. Peer pressure multiplied by $20 each generally does the trick.

      “Progress…. is quiet. It whispers. Perfectionism screams failures and hides progress.” – Jon Acuff

      Some words jolt you awake and help you see things a bit more clearly. Progress whispers resonated for me this morning. Progress towards our objectives is often painfully slow, and we find ourselves growing frustrated by the level of progress we might be making. Acuff makes another point in highlighting perfectionism as the antagonist to progress, undermining it with its relentless chirping.

      Steve Pressfield describes this as “The Resistance“, Seth Godin calls it our “Lizard Brain“. It’s the inner voice that tells you it’s not good enough and not yet. Godin’s advice is to start pulling the thread anyway, to learn to dance with The Resistance. To ship your work, even if it’s not perfect. The concept of shipping a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is common in nimble businesses today, but harder to dance with when it comes to writing your first novel or starting a business.

      Sales is a numbers game, and so is losing weight, writing a novel (or blog) or accomplishing any worthwhile objective. Progress whispers, and you need to break it down into the smallest increments to track it just to see any meaningful forward momentum. The 12 burpees I do every morning aren’t all that much, but they add up to 4380 in a year. I’ve noticed the change in my body even from this small amount, done repeatedly and consistently over time. So it is with sales calls, writing daily, and other accretive activity.

      Losing weight is tougher as you get older. You may say it’s because our metabolism slows down. I’d certainly say that too. But then I look at the guy I went to college with who rides his bike every day and hikes the rest of the time. His high activity level has bought him washboard abs, without sacrificing career or family. Another friend who embraced CrossFit shortly before turning 50 is now in better shape than when he was 25. No, “metabolism” is “Lizard Brain” in disguise.

      Activity over time equals identity. Athletic, writer, Rainmaker, parent, spouse and trusted friend are all identities I try to embrace. I’m a little better at a few than others but hope to make progress with each. My progress may be a faint whisper but it’s progress nonetheless. Best for me to listen for it more. Throwing $20 dollars and the threat of peer ridicule to the mix amplifies the goal a bit too.

    • Honing a Curious Mind

      I’ve been trying to figure out who is singing in the neighborhood for the last six weeks. I make a point of being outdoors whenever possible in the early morning (New Hampshire summers are very short after all). Some singers are obvious, others are more evasively unfamiliar to me. I regret that my education never included identifying birdsong. But as with many things I’ve made it a point of my adult learning path. I’m currently in the 101 level birdsong classes.

      I tried an app that analyzes bird song, but the bluebirds always sing at the same time as this character and tend to confuse the analytics. It keeps think its a mockingbird when I can hear the differences clearly. Eventually I came to the conclusion that this was a Brown Thrasher. In the process of figuring that out I’ve come to learn the songs of another half dozen birds I’ve heard in the background music but never took the time to learn about. I’m far from an expert on any of this, but the path is more vibrant.

      In the last 18 months I’ve learned about or reacquainted myself with local and world history, stoicism, transcendentalism, world religions, the power of habits, physiology, native trees, horticulture, birds, bugs, the environment and other diverse (eclectic?) side paths on the route from here to, well, there. Side paths lead to other side paths and before you know it maybe you’ve accumulated something meaningful in the old brain. You can’t write about what you don’t know about, and this cajoles me from tangential interest to deeper learning about topics. As a side benefit I’ve become better at writing too… you’ll see it eventually.

      “The discipline of sharing something daily is priceless.” – Seth Godin

    • Changing the Perspective

      There’s no place like home, but there’s a lot to be said for changing the view once in awhile. So we picked up and relocated to the Cape for one night in the middle of a work week. I’m back to work today, but with a refreshed mind. We settle into a pattern of familiarity when we do the same thing day-after-day. Routine is powerful, and can be hugely beneficial in earning compound interest over time from daily, positive habits. But sometimes the plaque buildup on our minds needs a cleansing to create new perspective on a project or problem you might be tackling. Nothing changes perspective like a system re-boot like a vacation or a sabbatical.  But those opportunities aren’t always there. Changing scenery does the trick most of the time, even when you can’t take extended time off.

      This morning I’m back to work, but the view out the window has improved, and a quick early morning walk on the beach offered its own rewards. I noticed a burst of energy in my work tasks, and I’ve seen the fog burn off, not just on the bay but in myself as well. I re-read a bit of Atomic Habits this morning as well. Something kept bringing me to this graph that illustrates the conflict between expectations and reality. James Clear calls it the “Valley of Disappointment”. Seth Godin calls it “The Dip”.  It’s the lagging measure of results to actions you’ve taken.  Whenever I start a new sales job I try to gauge the amount of runway I have available to take off.  If you aren’t selling the trendiest stuff out there at commodity prices then you need time to build demand for your product, build a channel, get it specified, wait out budget cycles and finally get it purchased for installation.

      Valleys of disappointment happen, but it’s important to see the forest for the trees.  Perspective is invaluable when you’re in the valley, and just as important when you’ve climbed out of the valley.  A little change of scenery almost always does the trick.  Sometimes that scenery is physical like the beach, sometimes it’s mental, like looking ahead instead of looking back.  Jon Acuff wrote in a recent newsletter about the ten year question.  In short, what will you look back on ten years from now and wish you’d done today?  That is what you should do.  Acuff flips the narrative from looking back with regret to fast forwarding to a future you, and looking back from there.  Fascinating exercise, and a good way to give you perspective on what is important now. So I tackled the day with new energy, new perspective and a new focus, and that was the goal all along.

       

       

    • The Dip That Matters

      I re-read The Dip, by Seth Godin.  I’m definitely in a Dip at my present job, and I have several opportunities to change being dangled in front of me.  So I figured I’d re-read this quick book to add some clarity to my thinking.  Here are my highlighted notes from my second reading of this book.  The question is, does this Dip matter?  Will slogging through it offer enough reward in the end, or am I wasting time in a Cul-de-Sac/dead end?  The question goes beyond a job of course.  The Dip can be applied to any decision.

      “Winners quit all the time.  They just quit the right stuff at the right time.”

      “Quit the wrong stuff.”

      “Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success.”

      “In a free market, we reward the exceptional.”

      “Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations.  Reactive quitting and serial quitting are the bane of those that strive )and fail) to get what they want.  And most people do just that.  They quit when it’s painful and stick when they can’t be bothered to quit.”

      “The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery.”

      Scarcity, as we’ve seen, is the secret to value.  If there’s wasn’t a Dip, there’d be no scarcity.”

      “Successful people don’t just ride out the Dip.  They don’t just buckle down and survive it.  No, they lean into the Dip.  They push harder, changing the rules as they go.  Just because you know you’re in the Dip doesn’t mean that you have to live happily with it.  Dips don’t last quite as long when you whittle at them.”

      “The Dip creates scarcity; scarcity creates value.”

      “The people who set out to make it through the Dip – the people who invest the time and the energy and the effort to power through the Dip – those are the ones who become the best in the world.”

      “In a competitive world, adversity is your ally.  The harder it gets, the better the chance you have of insulating yourself from the competition.  If that adversity also causes you to quit, though, it’s all for nothing.”

      “And yet, the real success goes to those who obsess.”

      “Before you enter a new market, consider what would happen if you managed to get through the Dip and win the market you’re already in.”

      “Not only do you need to find a Dip that you can conquer but you also need to quit all the Cul-de-Sacs that you’re currently idling your way through.  You must quit the projects and investments and endeavors that don’t offer you the same opportunity.  It’s difficult, but it’s vitally important.”

      “Most of the time, if you fail to become the best in the world, it’s either because you planned wrong or because you gave up before you reached your goal.”

      “The next time you catch yourself being average when you feel like quitting, realize that you have only two good choices: Quit or be exceptional.  Average is for losers.” 

      “Selling is about a transference of emotion, not a presentation of facts.”

      “If you’re not able to get through the Dip in an exceptional way, you must quit.  And quit right now.”

      “The opposite of quitting is rededication.  The opposite of quitting is an invigorated new strategy designed to break the problem apart.”

      “Short-term pain has more impact on most people than long-term benefits do, which is why it’s so important for you to amplify the long-term benefits of not quitting.  You need to remind youself of life at the other end of the Dip because it’s easier to overcome the pain of yet another unsuccessful cold call if the reality of a successful sales career is more concrete.”

      “Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can’t see it.  At the same time, the smartest people are realistic about not imagining light where there isn’t any.”

      You and your organization have the power to change everything.  To create remarkable products and services.  To over deliver.  To be the best in the world.  How dare you squander that resource by spreading it too thin.”

      “If it’s not going to put a dent in the world, quit.  Right now.  Quit and use that void to find the energy to assault the Dip that matters.”

       

    • Short Run to a Long Run

      “The short game is putting off anything that seems hard for doing something that seems easy or fun.  The short game offers visible and immediate benefits.  The short game is seductive.” – Shane Parrish

      “I hope we can all agree that the long run is made up of a bunch of short runs.  That seems obvious.  The surprising thing is that we live our short runs as if that isn’t true.” – Seth Godin

      “Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits.” – James Clear

      I was contemplating each of these quotes on their own merit the last few days as each appeared in my inbox or Twitter feed.  It’s no accident that they resonate for me; after all I’ve chosen to follow the authors of each of them.  But they say when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  I believe that to be true.  And there’s a lesson in each of these quotes that’s hard to ignore.  Daily, consistent action towards an objective.

      James Clear would argue that the goal isn’t the point, the system is more important.  And identifying yourself as someone who would take this daily action is ultimately the most critical part of the entire sequence.  For example, I’m an athlete so of course I get up at 5 AM to work out.  Or, I’m a successful salesperson so of course I make efficient use of my time, have a bias towards action and am highly knowledgeable about my products and each of the opportunities I’m working to close.

      “Only mediocrity is sure of itself.” – Paulo Coelho

      Mediocrity stems from not examining your life, your job, your process, your goals, your system and challenging yourself to improve in each.  Demanding more of yourself is hard to do if you think everything is fine.  We’re all guilty of getting comfortable in our own skin.  After all, it worked yesterday, why not today too?

      Ultimately every day is a small but meaningful part of the whole.  At my age that lesson has become very clear.  Recognizing the value in each day is earned through living.  I remember hearing that throughout my life, but you don’t really know it without the cold intimacy of accumulated time.

      “Life without a design is erratic.” – Seneca

      This is an indictment on winging it.  I’ve seen my own success in anything directly tied to how much I’ve structured action around a specific objective.  We can’t all hit the lottery, but we can all determine our identity, establish long term objectives and break that down into daily tasks that get us there.  As James Clear so eloquently puts it, we cast a vote for our own identity.

      If I live to be 100, and that’s certainly the goal, then I’ve clearly rounded the mark and it’s shrinking into the distance behind me.  Best to have clarity about where you’re going, set the sail and get to it.  There’s a lot to do.

       

    • Woodpeckers and Daily Reading

      I’m trying to establish better habits – nothing new there, I’ve written about it before.  When I’m home, my morning habit starts with helping Bodhi get up and outside for a little relief.  I drink a pint of water and brew coffee while he’s outside, and read a little.  Simple start-the-engines stuff.

      I take stock of things.  Then read a bit of Daily Stoic, and a bit of Seth Godin.  Today, both had lines that stuck with me:

      “One day it will all make sense.” – Ryan Holiday

      “Whenever you find yourself blaming providence, turn it around in your mind and you will see that what has happened is in keeping with reason.” – Epictetus

      “We get what we remember, and we remember what we focus on.” – Seth Godin

      About the time I was reading the Seth blog I recognized that Bodhi had been out for awhile and it was time to help him up the stairs.  Walking outside, I heard the loud, rapid fire rap of a pileated woodpecker in the woods.  As if in response, I heard a second pileated woodpecker (they travel in pairs) making the same loud, rapid fire rap in response.  This repeated a couple of times before I went back inside, grateful for the reminder that not everything that matters is happening in my own head.

       

    • Resistance, Habits and Progress

      Resistance, Habits and Progress

      “We’re wounded by fear
      Injured in doubt
      I can lose myself
      You I can’t live without” – U2, Red Hill Mining Town

      Bono is singing about his relationship with God with those lyrics.  I’m not inclined to embrace religion in the same way.  I’m more pragmatic I guess.  A higher power?  A creator?  I don’t know…  and anyone who says they do should be greeted with a degree of skepticism.  And yet the lyrics resonate.  They just mean something else to me;  A universal struggle against our inner critic.  Fighting the saboteur within.  Steve Pressfield calls it The Resistance.  Seth Godin describes it as overcoming your Lizard Brain.  It’s far easier to embrace distraction, and it’s easier than ever.  Fight through it.  For me that means making more outbound activity to drive business in my job, but it also means fighting for the daily habits of reading, writing and exercise.  And the struggle is real.

      I just finished reading Atomic Habits, which is a great book that I can highly recommend.  But I’ve read many books on self-improvement, compounding action over time, grit, etc.  The call to action resonates, but it’s the action that must occur now.  What I like about Atomic Habits is that James Clear breaks down the process of establishing habits into small, actionable steps.

      “Focus on the process not the result.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      “Incentives can start a habit.  Identity sustains a habit.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      Now this I believe in.  I’ve seen too many examples of identity sustaining habits.  Friends who identify themselves as hikers are off hiking every weekend, and are more fit and happy than ever before.  Friends identifying themselves as entrepreneurs who jump into the deep end and live the life of a business owner, learning and climbing as they go.  Tired but more satisfied in life for the identity they’ve chosen for themselves.

      Me?  I’m working to establish my identity as an athletic, accomplished sales professional and well-read, well-travelled, disciplined writer.  I’ve established the loyal husband, father, son and friend thing already.  And I’m proud of that.  Time to add more.  Do I want to be an accomplished sales professional?  I don’t know that I do, but I know it’s a means to an end.  Elizabeth Gilbert discusses jobs versus careers in a YouTube video I’ve watched a few times.  I’m 52 going on 53.  I don’t give a damn about career aspirations at this point in my life.  I care about being successful enough to more than cover the bills and keep the family ship afloat.

      “If you don’t get what you want, it’s a sign either that you didn’t seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price.” – Rudyard Kipling

      That’s as informative a quote as I’ve chewed on in quite some time.  I care about being a professional and my contribution to the team, but I don’t give a damn about being a VP or President of a company or any such nonsense.  No, that’s not for me.

      “No, that’s not me.” – Arya Stark, Game of Thrones

      But all that said, I believe in making progress as a professional, as a member of society, as an individual.  If we aren’t moving forwards we’re moving backwards.  So growth is a key metric in life. Being better today than yesterday.  And tomorrow better still.  Aiming for 1% improvement.  That’s tangible progression towards a goal, even if the goal is to be a better person.

      “Direction is greater than outcome.” – James Clear