It’s not approval or R&D or coming up with the funding.
The hardest part of any project we do is convincing people to use it.
Which is why it’s much easier to build products for your customers rather than finding customers for your products.
No design is done. No blog or Tweet is ever flawless. No sonnet is ever complete.
Because it’s never perfect.
We build off the history that has come before us. Raise the bar and the standard for those who come after.
If what we are striving for is perfection and, yet, never achieved, then shouldn’t we redefine what perfect is?
Perfect is according to spec. Perfect is what we need in the moment, in the now. Perfect is having the device work the way we want it to.
And what we can strive for is solving a problem we don’t even know exists yet.
Until then, let’s hope that things like pacemakers and traffic lights keep working perfectly.
Finding the answers is easy.
In a world where access is right in your pocket, answers are instant, there is little value in memorizing the facts and formulas. We can just look it up. Fast and with extreme accuracy.
So, why do we put so much value in memorizing when the War of 1812 was? Why do we value competence over curiosity?
That’s a good question. We are seeing a shift in our economy. Slowly, we are moving from being told every step we need to take to the emotional work of drawing our own map.
With all the answers right at your fingertip, the trick is to ask questions the rest of us are not asking. The kind of questions we are too afraid/naive to ask.
Once you see what other can’t, it’s difficult to unsee it. What then? Will you have the guts to act?
Great things start with great questions. Not the other way around.
Where do all the good ideas come from?
How come I can’t write or design or paint like the greats?
If you want to write, you must type. If you want to paint, you have to paint. If you want to design, you’ve got to design.
There’s no way around this. You must sit where your aspirations want to be.
How many hours are you willing to work on your craft?
No one bats an eye when a basketball player practices in the gym. Writing, designing, painting…all the same thing.
By sitting at your desk typing, you are giving yourself a chance to do something great and something daring. Nothing more.
Es Devlin didn’t design stages for Kanye West or U2 or Beyonce because she applied on Indeed.com. No, she was sought after because of her reputation. Because of her body of work.
How did she develop this type of following? How does anyone become a stage designer for the biggest acts in the world?
Like all of us, she started small. Eventually, she won an award and got some recognition for the incredible, generous work. She built trust and attention with every interaction.
And then, she got to do it again. Over time, a little bigger.
You don’t apply for your dream job, you create it.
Great designers understand that being completely authentic isn’t the experience most of us are looking for.
The magic of Charlie Brown wasn’t that the drawings were life-like or that you could hear everything the parents said.
No, Charles Schulz left enough room for interpretation and imagination. He gave us enough of a framework to connect. The magic was the rudimentary drawings and the muffled sounds.
The work you do doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to be honest.
Recently, a dear friend of mine sent this thoughtful email:
Hey Josh,
I wondered if I could get your thoughts on something. This is something that has been weighing on my mind lately and I’m trying to get a grasp on my thoughts. After hearing some of your comments today I feel that you will have great thoughts on this topic.
Each day it seems the world gets harder and harder. People around us each day are going through struggles, struggling with depression, feeling anxious, getting addicted to things, making bad decisions or just simply get lazy. I often ask myself “How can I help prevent this in the lives of those around me?” or “What can I do to positively impact those around me?” – I’ve gotten one glaring, overwhelming answer:
“Learn how to build a deeper connection with the people around you.”
If we truly want to make a difference in someone’s life we need to understand how to effectively build a connection with them. We are all different. We communicate in different ways, we think using different processes, our minds process things differently, our emotions are all different – so if I truly want to make a difference I need to understand how to communicate with different types of people.
The Platinum Rule
There is a widely known “golden rule” which we all know – “Treat others how you want to be treated.” This is a great rule to live by. It promotes kindness and love towards others. But I’ve recently learned something known as “The Platinum Rule” which states – “Treat others the way they want to be treated.” Let me expound:
If I treated everyone how I want to be treated, I would walk around all day telling people how great they are, cracking jokes, having light conversation and enjoying groups of people (which is usually what I do). That is how I would want others to treat me. However, that may not be how S wants to be treated. S may want more one-on-one interaction with deep conversation and less “fluff.” I treat him how I want to be treated it will likely not build a connection and may even result in a bad relationship between S and myself. If I truly want to build a connection with S, I need to be able to understand how to communicate at his level, then be dynamic enough to communicate that way.
Another example – I have two children. I love them both more than I could ever explain. One day W will start to make his own important choices. As I watch him progress and learn I will need to understand how to effectively communicate with him. Does he react well to discipline? Does he need to be talked to calmly? Does he need to have things broken down for him into structured lessons? Does he need me to motivate him? Does he want me to preach to him or listen to him? etc. The way I interact with W will surely have to be different from how I interact with M. But if I want to build a deep connection with them and make a difference in their lives I will need to understand who they are and how they respond to different communication styles.
The following matrix (that I tried to explain today) is used to group people into 4 personality groups. This has been useful for me to understand people’s personalities and how they may want to be “treated.”
My question for you is two-fold:
How can we build a meaningful connection with the people we care about?
How can we better adapt our communication to fit the needs of each individual person?I’d love to hear your thoughts.
First off, the Platinum rule is a much better rule to follow. Our most important resources we can offer others is trust and attention. Marketers (and I would argue someone who posts a cat video on YouTube is a marketer) are working overtime to steal these resources. It varies but we are exposed to over 60,000 advertisements a day. Of course, not all marketers are selfish. Good marketers help us tell better stories.
Every one of us has a worldview, an internal dialogue on how we see the world, the story we tell ourselves. Aligning someone’s story with ours is the challenge of our day. If a bunch of people were to witness a car crash, everyone would report seeing something different. Why? Because of the story we tell ourselves. We see what we want to see, while ignoring the rest.
Everyone is right. We’re right because if you were raised the way someone else was raised, was taught they were taught, you would probably act the same way. We’re right because we look for things to reinforce our worldview, not to change it.
So how do you change people’s mind? Stories are what stick. That’s why parables from the Bible have lasted after 2,000 years or why Aesop’s fables stick with us because of the universal message.
The way our brains operate is based on fear. There are two nuclei attached to our spinal cord called the amygdala. That fight or flight response can react two seconds before our neocortex kicks in. The interesting thing inside the limbic system is that it has no capacity for language. This is where the chemicals in our brains make decisions. The neocortex is trying to interpret these chemicals. In other words, this narrative has nothing to do with our decision-making. And yet, we spend so much time bargaining with this narration.
Another way to look at this is if you’re watching a football play: the QB throws the ball, the receiver catches it and the announcer says, “he catches the pass”…imagine for a moment that the announcer says, “he catches the pass” and then the player does it. That would be really cool. Of course, it doesn’t work that way. When we are arguing with this narrative, it’s like arguing with the play-by-play announcer. He doesn’t have any control of the play, he’s just narrating.
(Think about this for a minute. It’s a game changer.)
What’s kept us alive for thousands of years is this fight or flight response. Now, we don’t run away from saber tooth tigers anymore, but that is how our brain continues to operate. When we hear a tree branch snap or receive a text from our boss, our brain reacts the same way in fear. If the fear is not going away, we need to learn to dance with it. When we talk about helping people get from where they are to where it is they want to go, understand that we all act in a way that keeps us safe. This is why we avoid emotional risks. We’ve seen this with the challenge of becoming more self-reliant. There are those that rather stick with what they know (debt) because that’s what they are familiar with. Change means “this might not work.” If I change my status-quo, I would I have to admit I have been wrong this whole time. We can help bridge this gap by helping others see, “knowing what I know now, I can make this shift.”
I can go on about our opportunity to become a torch bearer, the role artists play, debt/economics, gift economies, loon noises…but this would turn into a book that I hope to write someday.
Platon is one of the most important photographers of this generation.
Even if you are unfamiliar with his name, it’s more than likely that you’re familiar with his work. He’s famous for getting close-ups of his subjects, so close that you can see their pores.
Platon has to work around these world leaders schedules, leaving very little time with them. Sometimes, he has to meet in less than ideal places, like backstage or in a tucked away room.
So, how does he get big personalities to open up, to show another side of themselves?
First, Platon invites people into his “office,” a white sheet set up and an old white crate for people to sit on. The way he explains it, everyone sits on the crate. Sometimes at the dismay of security guards, everyone eventually sits.
Platon doesn’t have something you don’t. He carries a white sheet, a white crate and a camera. The magic is his story:
That crate has had more world leaders sit on it than any other seat in the world.
That’s a story. Maybe even a right of passage.
We focus so much on the tools and tactics, we forget to craft a better story. “Step into my office” is supposed to relax people, to displace them. Of course, it’s ridiculous to ask the President of the United States to sit on an old white crate, but that’s what you do when you work with Platon.
There may be others out there who can take better portrait shots but none of them crafted a story like Platon. Craft and prefect your story and you will never run out of work.
If you were to place a slew of fleas in a jar and sealed it, the fleas will hit the top trying to escape.
After a while though, the fleas will train themselves to jump just below the ceiling. At that point, you can remove the lid and the fleas won’t escape.
Human beings live the exact same way.
After a while of hitting our ceiling, we get discouraged, we quit jumping so high. We just accept our environment and call it “the way things are.”
It’s difficult to see when your environment changes. Sure, it’s discouraging while you wait for things to move, but what’s the alternative?
The way things are, are not the way things will always be.
Lewis Hine chose to use his camera for social reform. At a time when child labor made up 20% of the workforce, his pictures helped spur a movement that changed how we saw our children. Not as cogs in a machine but as human beings.
That same opportunity lies before each of us.
You have a camera, a microphone, a keyboard and channels for distribution—all the means of production right at your fingertips—what more do you need?
You can say or do anything you want. You can choose to write a post about what you had for lunch or contribute to work that matters.
So, how are you going to use this opportunity?
Are you shedding light in dark places or are you sitting on the sidelines complaining about the weather?
You choose what to amplify.
…
“There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work.” — Lewis Hine, 1908
