Month: January 2019

The wonderful thing about children is that they have no problem drawing outside the lines.

They don’t know any better. (Which is good.) They haven’t succumbed to peer pressure to water down their work for the masses. They don’t hide from publishing it. And best of all, they don’t care what others think. (Proof is usually hanging on the fridge.)

Next time you see a child drawing outside the lines, resist the first impulse to correct the behavior.

We think of children as immature adults, the reality is adults are atrophied children.

Art knows no boundaries. Adults do.

We hear about the different hats that a CEO or a Project Manager might wear throughout the day. A far more accurate metaphorical description (that everyone wears) is a mask.

The mask we wear to hide from our emotions:

The disdain of a dead end job.

The drudgery of doing the same thing we did yesterday but faster and cheaper.

The frustration of a boss that doesn’t care.

Annoyance, anger, irritation, vexation…all hidden from those we work with.

Because no one grows up wishing they’ll be an accountant or a boss or in sales…

We’re born with promise, wishing we can defy gravity, change the world, do things that we can be proud of.

And along the way we lose that and hide these side effects behind a mask.

It’s unlikely you’ll ever be as good on the guitar as Eric Clapton.

You’ll never write a horror novel as strong as Stephen King.

And you’ll never be as elite at anything as Donald Bradman was to Cricket.

Your work is always mediocre when you compare it with others because there is always someone else out there that is better than you.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. It means you should try even harder to carve out your space.

Stop comparing and start producing. The more you produce the better it gets.

Hugh MacLeod started doodling on the back of business cards and made it into one the most popular blogs on the internet.

Scott Harrison went from being a club promoter to a philanthropist with no money, no education and no resources. Just a dream of clean water for all.

Abbey Ryan creates one oil painting a day and sells it online.

The lesson: You don’t have to play the guitar as well as Clapton to write something that you can be proud of.

In the digital age, one great picture is worth far more than a 100 mediocre ones.

Blog posts are the same way. Along with Facebook posts, or news article, or websites…

A lifetime of material is being produced every single day on the internet. There is more information available than ever before in human history. More than what could ever be consumed.

No one wants to read your mediocre work.

So, make better art.

Happiness is often defined by fulfilling your dreams.

But the older I get the more I realize it’s about fulfilling someone else’s.

That’s what this blog is.

A labor of love.

To help others see and level up.

This is my 1,000 blog post.

Thank you for your support.

The writer couldn’t write without readers.

Keep making a ruckus.

The worst kind of person to have around is the one that works overtime to place a false limit or ceiling on everything and everyone.

So why does someone go out of their way to do this?

Because of how it makes them feel.

Think about it. If we were to flip “If I can’t do it, nobody can” to “If I can’t do it, everyone else can” What does that say about the person’s character?

I’m convinced one of the biggest challenges we face today is switching from this fixed mindset to a growth mindset, moving from a fixed pie, half empty attitude to one full of endless possibilities.

If we could change how we see the world including how we see each other, what could be accomplished?

Is this really what it’s all about?

Living up to the expectations of our parents, teachers, bosses, culture…

Playing within the constructs, boundaries and rules of others?

You will always find those who think they know better than you.

Trust yourself.

Perhaps you’re here at this time in this moment because you’re the only one that can navigate through this torrential storm.

It’s not fair. And it might not be your job but if you don’t step up, who will?

125 years ago, the Singer Sewing Machine was the most complicated consumer product on the market.

Each part had to be hand-crafted by an expert in order for each part to fit correctly. It was painstaking slow to replace a single piece.

That all changed with Henry Ford’s Assembly Line and Fredrick Taylor’s Scientific Management.

As the culture moved towards standardization, eventually corporations figured out that they can save a buck by hiring the lowest skilled workers, creating a system of interchangeable parts and interchangeable people.

(Marx predicted this would be a problem for anyone who didn’t own the means of production.)

So, where does this leave us?

It turns out the market is shifting again. The work that is most valuable is the work that can’t be written down into a simple set of instructions. What’s valued isn’t digging the ditch you are told to dig but the emotional labour of doing work that might fail. What’s valuable is putting on a show, doing work that creates change.

The market now values highly skilled work again. That’s a problem if you are doing work that can be easily duplicated.

The answer then is to become the Linchpin of your organization. To do the work that others are afraid to do. To make big promises, and yes, keeping them.

I can’t tell you how to become a Linchpin. That’s the point. There is no map, no step-by-step set of instructions to become the person we can’t live without. But what I can tell you is that we’ve been highly skilled craftsman before. It’s in our history. So, we can do it again.

 

The good news for every change maker: You don’t have to solve all of the world’s problems.

Much easier and much more efficient to focus on solving your world’s problems.

Your world as defined as: The sphere of your influence. The 150 people that you connect with. The geographic locations you can drive too. The tribe and community you build online. The people you can touch.

That is how ideas spread. That is how culture changes.

One by one. Little by little. Drip by drip.

Not everyone. Just someone.