What tech is

Twitter is a modern-day CB radio. Ebay is a digital flea market. Craigslist is taken straight from the classifieds.

All new technology is made from mixing and matching old and primitive tech.

Technology is a tool. Like money. Or a hammer.

You can try to run away from it. But probably fail. So the other option is to run with it.

Here are some cool tools to run with:

  • Use Last Pass to keep all your passwords safe and secure.
  • Feedly keeps every blog in one place. Cuts time from aimlessly surfing the web.
  • Evernote helps organize random thoughts.
  • First, it was Napster. Then, came iTunes. Now, we have Spotify.
  • No phone is complete without Audible.
  • Everyone is using Slack for projects.
  • Google Docs is one of the best ways to collaborate with your friends.
  • You don’t need a million-dollar investment angel to get your dream running. Use WordPress to create something meaningful.
  • Want to check if the reviews are legitimate? Fakespot has your back.
  • Dark Sky is a fun way to check the weather.
  • The name of your next project awaits with Wordoid.

Great trick

Pro-wrestling is fake. So are toupees. And the National Enquirer. (My apologies to those who are now finding out.)

It turns out there are lots of things in our world that are fake. There are many industries that thrive on tricking people into believing something is (or isn’t) real. People are willing pay to escape reality.

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” said Christopher McQuarrie.

We don’t even know what we are up against. We have become distracted. It is keeping us from being the person we were born to be – our best selves.

Technology is opening up more doors. Some of us will use these opportunities to make a difference. Others will use it to hide.

Hiding from the world makes it impossible to separate the shadows from the light.

The long tail

The theory of the The Long Tail by Chris Anderson goes like this: sell toward a large number of different niches rather than focusing on a small number of hits.

The curve is what we see in community service. Service is left to the top 20% at the Head to do 80% of the work. While the other 80% at the Tail is doing 20% of the work.

The People of the Tail  have fallen into a trap that the work they do doesn’t matter. They have tricked themselves into thinking they are not good enough. But they’re wrong.

The difference at the Head is mentality. People like us do stuff like this.

Yet, the People of the Tail have more power than they think. They are the ones that can enable the impossible. The mistake is to believe that real change is only left for people at the Head like Jacqueline Novogratz, or Seth Godin, or Donald Miller. No one is going to pick you to lead. Nobody picked them. They showed up.

Putting your efforts into The Long Tail is the key to leadership. Leaders ignore the glamour of one big hit. So if you want to lead, here’s the question you have to ask: can you get out-of-the-way enough for others to lead?

Politicians, bureaucrats, and management can’t do it. Which is why they fail to make real change over and over again. They can’t get out of their own way for the power of the Tail.

Our job as teachers, leaders, thought provokers, ruckus makers is to help the Tail level up. We need to assemble the tribe. Stand up and say follow me. Let’s go do this thing. And if it works, you go out and do it again. Then again. And again. One day you see the world is a different place from when you started. It is a world that you can be proud of.

It’s up to you to make the difference.

The long cut

Stephen King’s advice for those who want to learn how to write well is, “Read and write 4 to 6 hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can’t expect to become a good writer.”

Malcolm Gladwell adds in his book, Outliers, that anyone can become an expert in their field by deliberately practicing for 10,000 hours.

If you follow King’s advice, you can hit Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule in about five years.

Not as long as someone might think to become an expert in your field of choice.

But it requires patience. We have to decide if we are going to show up every single day. That’s what the pros do. Of course, you don’t feel like showing up today. But we promise ourselves that we will start tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and now we are looking for the short cut to make up for lost time.

So start where you are. Instead of looking for the short cut, take the long cut. The one day at a time strategy. Average work for average pay isn’t acceptable for anyone’s standards anymore. It’s not enough to make a ruckus. Turning pro is your best option.

A check up from the neck up

We have more access to information and technology than ever before. Most of us do not have to produce our own food by raising crops which means we have more time. Many of us in this country have two days for leisure activities to do what we choose. We can vote. We have cell phones. We don’t live in fear of our government. Most people around the world do not have these luxuries.

Shopping is a leisure activity for many of us. To others it is the most stressful activity imaginable. Most of us reading this blog (including myself) cannot comprehend what it means to only make four or five dollars a day; the very idea that if you mess up a purchase means someone at home suffers. In other words, if I were to leave the store and drop my eggs I would be frustrated but not crushed. If I drop those eggs only making five dollars a day, someone goes hungry at home.

If you made over $30K this last year, you are in the top 1% of income earners in the entire world. (Think about that for a minute.)

Making money is not evil and having possessions is not a bad thing. But we should be mindful of the stories we tell ourselves. Separate our wants from our needs. Shed unnecessary labels – it’s not good nor bad, right or wrong.

We all need a checkup from the neck up: we live in the safest, richest country the world has ever seen in the history of mankind. Let’s start acting like it.

Zero to one

The most difficult jump for anyone to make is going from zero to one.

  • Getting customers to buy something. (To go from completely free to a penny.)
  • Going from no subscribers to one subscriber for your blog or YouTube channel or email list.
  • Getting married for the first time, having your first kid, buying your first house.
  • Finishing your first marathon.
  • The hardest fraudulent account for Wells Fargo to create was the first one. The second account became easier to justify.
  • The first kiss.
  • From never have performed surgery to doing your first one.
  • Scoring one point in the NBA.

It’s hard for anyone to do anything for the first time.

Paradoxically, enrollment is easier now more than ever.

Why this road

If you take the road less traveled, eventually you begin to wonder why you are here to begin with.

Because the road is filled with uncertainty and doubt. No wonder it’s not popular. Otherwise, everyone would do it.

We show up because, really, what choice do we have?

There are some of us thinking about leaping. Wondering, when do we start? The answer is yesterday. And since we can’t go back. Now is the next best thing.

And some of us are wondering where to start. And the answer is to start where you are today.

What do I start doing? Should we do this or that? Well, did you figure out what to eat for lunch? Just like that, make a decision and go.

Maybe you have become distracted. If you are not satisfied with where you are, choose to go down a different road. But no one is going to show you a map on how to get from where you are to where you want to go.

Why this road? It’s not for others to decide. It’s up to you to find your own way.

You can buy some happiness

A Princeton study found that those with lower-incomes reported lower levels of happiness. However, for those making more than $75,000 a year, their level of happiness didn’t increase.

And the reason is that you have to make a trade.

You have to trade something to make more money. You could be spending (interesting word spend) more time in the office and away from your family. Which effects your relationships you have in the home. And of course, the stress that comes when your life is out of balance. Which leads to health problems.

(And around and around we go.)

Sometimes we lose sight on the things that matter most for the pursuit of more.

We can never fill our life’s purpose on the wheel of accumulation.

If making money is really important to you. (And by all means, I think you should get some money.) You should consider shifting your focus at the $75,000 benchmark.

Maybe you say I have enough. Maybe you say that anything I make now goes to charitable organizations. Maybe you look to make a significant difference in someone’s life.

And maybe we don’t wait to start making a difference. So when the day comes of “I have enough” you are already an expert in giving.

Google it

The interesting thing about millennials is that they were the last generation to grow up without Google.

Millennials (and those before them) growing up had more questions than answers. Because answering questions was expensive and time consuming.

What an opportunity for the the youth today to ask more questions.

Better yet, I think we have a responsibility to teach them to ask the right questions. The right questions lead to more possibilities.

It’s important for the youth to remember that we didn’t always have convenience. We didn’t always have access to information. It wasn’t provided by a click of a button. It didn’t happen in the speed of light.

We couldn’t simply “Google it”.