Month: April 2018

Hard skills make it straight forward for a hiring manager to say No.

Candidate A speaks a foreign language and Candidate B doesn’t.

Sorry, you didn’t get the job, you don’t meet our minimum requirements.

It’s that simple. And because it’s simple, it’s easy to measure.

Hard skills like programming, digging, solving a math problem, these skills are easy to teach. You can write them down into a simple set of instruction and replicate the behavior quickly.

Let’s be clear, being competent at your job is no longer good enough. Competence is no longer scarce. The easier it is to write down what it is you do, the easier (and cheaper) it is to replace you.

Soft skills, on the other hand, are hard to teach. Soft skills like connecting, listening, empathizing, persuading, storytelling, are more valuable now than ever before.

If it’s hard to measure then it’s even harder to recreate.

You can always teach someone to type faster but you can’t teach someone to be more likable.

So let’s quit calling them soft skills and instead call them what they actually are–essential.

100 blog posts that will never see the light of day.

100 blog posts that won’t resonate with anyone.

And the cost of this failure?

Almost zero.

We live in a truly remarkable period, where the cost of creating something, for shipping something into the world is practically free.

So why not try something?

When we get it wrong, we can try it again.

(Writing isn’t about producing words, it’s figuring out which ones to hold onto and which ones to let go.)

There is a 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance at predicting a perfect March Madness bracket. (In case you were wondering that is 18 zeros.)

The odds are overwhelmingly stacked against our favor.

Yet, every year, millions of people decide to play, relying on expert analysis or gut feelings. We fool ourselves into thinking that if we study hard enough, we can somehow steer chance our way.

It turns out that even the smartest basketball guru can only reduce his odds to 1 in 128 billion. Significantly better but not enough to make an impact.

Some games are simply not worth playing.

Don’t leave important things to chance, chance seems to hate us–at least that is what we tell ourselves.

You can’t ask for suggestions on how to improve and be upset about the feedback you receive.

Did you want to hear something that is different from your current worldview?

Or

Were you simply looking for evidence to reinforce what you already believe?

They say when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Except students are never ready.

You are never ready to level up, to try something you have never done before.

You are never ready to hold your child for the first time or to start a new venture.

Conditions will never be optimal, timing is never perfect.

You just do.

Often quite badly at first.

And with time you get better.

If you are waiting for a teacher to give you instructions on where to start or what to do next, you are going to be waiting for a very long time.

You’ve won the lottery if you were born into a situation with access to clean water, if you didn’t have to worry about when your next meal was coming and if you had a roof over your head.

You’ve won the lottery if you have access to education, health care and tools like a laptop and the internet.

You’ve won the lottery to be born into the safest, richest time period in human history.

And…

The circumstances you were born into may not be perfect. You may not have the life you deserve. But maybe you’re one of the lucky few that won the genetic lottery–born with more opportunities than what most of the world has.

In 2004, we were Facebook’s customers. Today, we are now their products.

Phones and apps our intentionally designed to keep us on the hook, to keep us dissatisfied just enough that we will keep going back for more.

Think of it like a slot machine only more addicting.

It’s no mistake that we get excited when someone likes are posts or that the total number of friends is posted for others to see.

And now, we have become so dependent on smart phones we think that the choices that are given to us from a quick google search are the only ones available.

Abstinence from smart phones and the internet are not the answers. But we can start demanding more from these companies. It starts with asking the right questions:

Why does my feed choose to show me these posts?

What information am I not being exposed to?

How are my “likes” shaping my feed?

By saying Yes to this, what am I saying No to?

Economies are built on scarce resources. Our attention is turning more and more scarce every day.

Each person is exposed to more than 30,000 advertisements a day while the average person checks their phone 150 times a day.

We have to be better.

The game has changed and too many of us are still playing checkers (or Plants vs. Zombies).

The other day, I had a blueberry avocado muffin. A very unusual combination.

To my surprise, it worked. It was the best muffin I have ever had. (How many of us can say they have had a memorable experience eating a muffin?)

Someone had to have the guts to be the first to try mixing blueberries and avocados together, knowing full well that this might not work.

That is what artist do. They throw away the recipe and decide what to mix and match.

What is the worst that can happen anyway? If it doesn’t work, you can try again.

There isn’t much to lose and everything to gain.

It turns out that 42% of women who have an abortion live below the federal poverty line. And when the women were asked why they had an abortion, 73% of the respondents said they could not afford to have a baby.

What if abortion isn’t a political issue but an economic one?

How would that change the conversation?

Except when you have to carry them.

They are big and heavy and awkward to handle.

Plan on staying put if you decide to hold onto one.

If you choose to move forward, far easier (and faster) to leave them behind.