Josh Allred's Blog

Never share a meme without first looking up the source. Any quotes can be easily verified by simply typing it into a search engine.

All links and articles should be read before sharing.

Fact check any urban legends. Snopes has been around since 1994.

Become an active consumer. Passive consumers scroll through their feed being told what is happening. Instead, pick a topic of interest and read a book about it. Find other topics that you are interested in and then Google it.

You only need 10 minutes on Twitter per day to stay informed. Every minute after that is a waste. The less social media you use, the better you feel.

Pick up a book on a subject you are interested in learning about. The average American reads only one book per year after high school.

Understand what cultivation theory is and how it works in our culture today.

Why do so many Type A personalities work on Wall Street? Understand how people sort each other (including ideas).

Understand what system thinking is. How do debt systems come into play?

As a rule, you should ask yourself who is benefitting from this? As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Follow the money.

In 2013, The Washington Post was sold to Jeff Bezos. It’s great that the paper found a way to survive with the many accolades it has received over the years. However, you now can’t read the Washington Post without understanding that it is sympathetic toward big businesses. What sort of back door deals come into play when a politician is sympathetic toward Amazon? What happens when someone challenges them? Once you begin to see the conflicts of interest, you can’t unsee them.

Everyone has biases and prejudices. Including you. If you were taught what someone else was taught, grew up the way they did, experienced what they experienced, you would probably act the same way.

Information comes to us in a map already drawn, a story already told. We don’t use the information to change our mind, we use it to amplify a voice in our head. We click to confirm not to change our narrative.

When is the last time a tweet changed our mind? They never do.

Progress doesn’t often look that linear.

In fact, when we zoom out enough, you can see that it typically comes in surges.

A 30-day fresh food diet.

Training for a marathon.

Cramming for finals.

One sprint after another.

In between, there is recovery, a plateau, as you get ready to go again.

Not often, we will find a way to just take things one day at a time, with one subtle change after another.

It’s a long view approach when most of us desire to have results quickly and painlessly.

If you have the discipline, a linear approach will help you always take steps forward towards progress in between the surges.

There are many that complain about what else 2020 can throw at us.

It’s true, 2020 has been full of many challenges. But are we really satisfied with continuing down the road we were going down in 2019?

Instead of complaining and wishing for things to go back to the way they used, why don’t we do something about it to make it better.

Your first attempt is likely not going to be your best attempt.

Try again.

Just because you can’t imagine it, doesn’t mean you don’t dare to make it.

Write the future you want to live.

Make things better by making better things.

Everything changed after the WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. That is what historic moments do. Life was happening one way and is now shifted on a different trajectory.

Here’s the thing, historic moments make historic people.

Like Dr. Li Wenliang who sounded the alarm early about COVID-19 and then not much later died from the virus. And now you have scientists working around the clock for developing a vaccine. A vaccine that no one was interested in producing just a few months ago.

We don’t like to think of ourselves as revolutionary people because we are not part of the Renaissance. But in a roundabout way, this is what is going on here. We are at the start of a revolution in the way we work, the way we go to school, the way we interact with other people—nothing will be the same.

While COVID-19 has clearly closed a lot of doors, there is a smaller one that is opening. One where a few can go through who are looking to make a difference. But we have to be clear here, you don’t have to develop the next Salk Vaccine to make a difference. You can still choose to walk through this door and help those around you in a big way.

Later we will look back and say, “Where were you when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic?” What we should be asking is How did you contribute during this moment?

How will you be remembered?

Woody Allen used to say, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”

Everyone has plans. And everyone wants to know about them.

People want to know what you are studying, where are you going to work after graduation, when are you going to settle down, when are you going to have children…

2020 has changed everyone’s plans. And has made us look quite ridiculous to think we had this much control over our lives.

In these times, it is an act of courage to say, “I don’t know what I am doing yet. I am taking it day-to-day.”

Day-to-day isn’t someone without direction. Day-to-day is saying that you are surveying the field.

We don’t have to consume in order to be productive. Observing and having the ability to pivot is a great place to be.

Before COVID-19, there were plenty of folks making noise about a digital revolution. Sadly, working from home was just too much responsibility to give to the masses.

And then, all of a sudden, the pandemic forces us to work from home. In a matter of weeks, all of a sudden we are doing it.

For many, it has created more time and opportunities when you start factoring in things like a commute.

While what we do during this downtime is what ultimately defines us, it is also important to remember to not beat ourselves up for not being in go mode all the time.

You can’t sprint forever. No matter how much you try.

Instead of beating ourselves up, learn how to shift gears. Know when to sprint and when to slow down. When you need to perform and when you need to prepare.

Your speed is a choice. No need for guilt or shame behind the decisions you make. Moving slow is not weakness.

Be deliberate.

Every marathon runner at the start of the race is feeling great. Optimistic about the challenge ahead and the ability to meet it.

As the race goes on, your bum knee gets sore, your get thirst. The narrative changes. You have to come up with a game within a game.

Run to this _____________ (mile marker, tree or post), don’t think about the rest of the race yet. Just get there. Other parts of the race, you find your flow and you feel like you can accomplish anything.

It turns out, other projects have the same ebb and flow. You start out feeling pretty good but not too long you have push through the dip.

There is no shortcut through dips. It requires grit, imagination, a narrative that people like us can do stuff like this.

There are not many tricks to go through tough situations. But finding a game within a game, another purpose while things are falling apart, can be sufficient to help you on the push.

You did it!

That book you always wanted to write, it’s done.

The business you started is now thriving.

The habit you wanted to kick is gone.

Now?

Start something else.

Today.

The work is never done.

That is what professionals do.

Keep going.

They say that a person is smart and people are dumb.

That’s because everyone views themselves as a rational actor.

Our narrative has us believe that we are victims of outside forces—circumstances out of our control that has led to our shortcomings.

Yet, people are simply not as malicious as we think they are.

We develop stories and watch for the behavior to amplify it.

Incompetence is the narrative about how others inconvenience us.

Einstein said that compound interest was the eighth wonder of the world.

If it works in your favor, it can be a wonderful thing. 2 dollars turns to 5 dollars, then to 10 dollars, and then to 100, and so on.

If you are on the debt side of this equation it is almost impossible to get out. However, consumer debt isn’t the only debt system we have created over the years. There is also intellectual debt.

Intellectual debt is this idea that we trust the system that has been built once we have seen how it works and ignore why it works. And like any other debt system, it grows exponentially. So, if you are not paying attention you can get lost in the noise rather quicky.

So, what is going on right now? What do people mean when they say that the system is working exactly how it was designed to be?

Let’s go back a couple hundred years when the 13th amendment was ratified after the Civil War. It states that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Emphasis is mine. That’s sentence is a problem though because once we introduce this into the structure you now have a loophole that policymakers can exploit. And that is what has been happening for a long time keeping the cancer of slavery alive.

Since 1865, we have moved from slavery to convict leasing to disenfranchisement to Jim Crowe and to the modern problems of today. Mainly, declaring the war on drugs as a criminal problem instead of mental health issue, the prison industrial complex and the militarization of police forces.

The data is completely clear. 1 and 3 black Americans will be incarcerated in their lifetime. By contrast, 1 and 17 white Americans will be incarcerated.

The gap is simply too large for anyone born without advantage to ever catch up anymore. We may not have built the system but too many of us have benefited from it.

We cannot stand in ignorance any longer. We have to see why the system is working this way in order to change it. Now is the time.

HT 13th.