Josh Allred's Blog

Looking the part, acting the part—you feel the part.

There’s nothing wrong with doing the little things to get you in the mood to do your best work.

But what a professional does is do the work despite how they feel.

The heart surgeon doesn’t decide to wing it with a patients chest open. They get to work cause someone needs them.

I think that same attitude we can bring to our work.

If and when are traps. It creates an unrealistic expectation that when things are just right then you can take the next step forward. The alternative is to decide which direction you want to go and head that way.

If it’s free, how does a service like Facebook make its money?

Advertising.

So who are they advertising to?

Us.

Then how do you design the product to get us to glue to ads?

Make it addicting.

There’s a thing in basketball where players will sit out trying to ride the season out to be ready for the playoffs. Preserving their bodies for competitive advantage down the stretch.

Except when you look at the greats like Michael Jordan, he played all 9 times.

I have no idea what it takes to be a professional athlete. So, this isn’t a knock on players. But the prevailing wisdom in this era of basketball is that fewer miles now means more miles later. (Preserving tread on the tire.) And I am not sure that is how we should play our cards.

Funny, I did the same with video games growing up, hoarding resources and thinking I needed them for the final boss. This is obviously different from a professional athlete. The point I am trying to make is that we tend to hoard what we have at the moment for fear of being caught in the future. We don’t want to be in that position. As a result, we play it safe today. We play with caution. But we have no idea what tomorrow looks like. However, we struggle to imagine that we could be in a better position because the “worst case scenario” is easier to play out in our heads.

Your fingerprints and your voice matter. And what you make isn’t likely going to go viral. That doesn’t mean it is any less important.

Where have all the outlaws, poets, beats, punk rockers, anarchists, and pirates gone?

Over the years, I’ve seen a decline in climbing where it used to attract misfit toys.

Instead climbing evolved. In some ways for the better and others for the worse.

I really believe the part we are missing is the mentorship component. While it is great that the barrier of entry to these sports has gone down, climbers starting out will miss steps because it’s so easy to jump in.

As a result, we see a decline in style. Emphasis on getting to the top. We also lose what the ethos of climbing was to begin with—a safe haven for the outcasts.

This can be interpreted as old man yelling at clouds but I do think we need to remember that climbing is dangerous just like anything else we do. That’s where the juice is. And adding another layer of insulation misses the point. I’m not saying “let’s climb without ropes.” What I’m saying is when we can’t take any risks, then we discover nothing within ourselves.

A mentor helps us connect the past and the present.

It’s difficult to be generous when you are tired, hungry, or angry.

Perhaps then, the most generous act we can make is to take care of ourselves first.

But, of course, if we are waiting around until we are in the mood then we miss so many opportunities to make a positive impact.

With art, we are always in a state of almost done. The reason? Because the art is never finished. Only the artist can decide when they are done. There’s always another sentence that can be tweaked, another iteration of code, another brush stroke. The trick is deciding when you are done so you can move on to the next thing.

Life is not industrialism. We need to make that clear. One of the main problems in our culture today is that we can trick ourselves into believing that if we just ran our lives like a factory, then we could be happy. For example, work out and eat to create a body as efficient as an assembly line, run your budget like a factory, consume media that gives you competitive advantage, even sleep has turned into the daily recommended maintenance.

When we make our lives like a factory, what we lose is our humanity. The goal isn’t more efficiency The goal is something else.

They say that the fall isn’t what kills you but the landing. As a result, we are hesitant to take a leap, worrying if we crash, it will all be over. We play it safe. Except the risks that we end up taking are not that dangerous anymore. These are emotional risks like innovating a system, proposing a new project, raising your hand to speak up, or standing out from a crowd. These risks are not life or death. They just feel like it. Not actual danger. So, we need to decide what kind of risks we are going to take.