I was sitting here, thinking of what to blog about today, and a song from Ron Hynes came on my iPod. It reminded me of a post I wanted to write, based on an experience I had a couple of weeks back. If you don’t know Ron, you can get a sense of him here – he’s one of Canada’s most iconic songwriters, and in my opinion, a national treasure. I was so fortunate to see Ron Hynes live at the Yellow Canoe Cafe a couple of weekends ago. It’s a tiny little place, and about 40 of us were treated to a delicious home-cooked meal, and a magnificent performance from this living legend. It was an amazing night. Ron Hynes has been writing music for many, many years. They call him The Man of 1000 Songs. He has a repertoire that is vast and deep. The songs that Ron writes are of such a high calibre that they are often also sung by other, more well known performers, like Emmylou Harris and Prairie Oyster – and many people don’t even know they are Ron’s tunes. Ron also co-writes a lot of his songs, with lots of different legendary performers, like Murray McLauchlin. His songs are beautiful and simple and reflective of love and life in his home, Newfoundland. On this special night, in that tiny cafe, Ron, of course, performed brilliantly. But he also did something so simple, and really remarkable. After every song he performed, he told us who he wrote the song with. It was totally his show, and they were totally his songs, from his albums. But he made a point of giving credit where credit was due. For any of you who have ever written a song (or done anything at a high creative level, for that matter), you know that it’s really hard work. It takes a lot of effort, and if you’re co-writing, it can be even more work. The creators of that work deserve every bit of the credit they are given, and guys like Ron Hynes know it. When he gives that credit at the end of each song, he’s acknowledging the efforts and contribution of the other person, and he’s being grateful for his being able to participate in the creation of something wonderful. This is blatantly clear, every time he strums the last chord of a song, and gives that credit. In that moment, we know that he fully appreciates the opportunity he has had to create something amazing with another songwriter. That makes him a great performer, but moreover, it makes him a great person. The online world is moving at lightning speed. Information whizzes by us so fast, that we barely have time to react, let alone fully absorb it. And often, we forget about the people who are behind this information. Sure, we retweet things, attributing the post back to the originator. We post the name of the author when we link to their blog post. We give that credit, but are we really paying attention to WHO we are giving credit to, or are we simply tuning that part out, in an effort to spread information as quickly as possible? As you go through your day today, stop and think for a moment before you blindly hit that retweet button. I challenge you to stop for a minute and, before you comment on a blog post, to go and read the author’s about page. Even if you’ve read it before, go read it again. Then, while you’re reading and sharing, consider the person behind the information. Be grateful for the circumstances that have connected you to them in this space, at this moment. You might just find that your whole online experience will start to change. [photo by doug88888]
Shaping Your Online Adventure
I used to love Choose Your Own Adventure books. You know, the ones where you would read a few pages, then be presented with a set of options. You’d choose one, and then flip to the page of the book it told you to and keep reading. Those kind of books never got boring, and there was always something new to experience around every corner. I would spend hours, days, reading those books. Choose Your Own Adventure. Not unlike the Web, eh? We are constantly being bombarded with information on how to make the most of your online experience. I spend countless hours working with my students and my clients on how to get the most of the Web and social media. Suggestions, recommendations and advice abound, and they are all great. But ultimately, you get to choose what page to turn to next. The problem is, it can be hard to know where to start. With a Choose Your Own Adventure Book, you always start at the beginning. Well, the Web doesn’t really have a beginning. There’s no big red “X” on the map saying “Start Here”. So, you feel uncertain, kind of stressed, and you put off starting entirely. Weeks go by and you still haven’t started your blog (or posted in months). You haven’t really found where the one conversations are that you want to be involved in. You haven’t started your Facebook page, or signed up for Twitter. Nobody is forcing you to do this stuff, not at all. You want to do these things. You’ve been shown all of the benefits of creating these spaces, but jumping off the cliff without knowing where the bottom is, is scary stuff. But what’s cool about the Web, is that you can start anywhere. Maybe it’s just a simple Google search on a topic that interests you. Maybe it’s setting up your Google Reader and subscribing to some blogs that a friend or teacher has recommended to you. Perhaps you just go and poke around in Twitter Search for a while and see what’s up. Or you watch some videos. Like the Choose Your Own Adventure books, you pick the path you want to go down. You let your curiosity get the best of you for a while and you just choose the next thing that catches your attention or holds your interest. All the while, you keep your mind open to the experience, step by step. Every day you spend some time with it. Eventually, you work your way into a comfortable groove. More of the names start to become familiar. You learn who the key players are. You form opinions, and ideas about things. Then maybe you turn a page, and here’s where you decide you want to say something. So you comment on a blog post here or there. You open a document and start typing your own post. You turn on your web cam and say a few words. You take that step from consumer to creator. The point is, every step of the way, you get to choose. Have an experience for a while, then click a link and go in another direction. It doesn’t always have to be 100% focused, but it helps if you’ve started by knowing what you want to ultimately achieve. The Web is the ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure book. The question is, which path are you going to choose? [photo by majcher]
Rethinking Your Online Life
Our lives are divided three ways now. It used to be that we had our work, and our life. They were distinctly separate, never to cross. But nowadays, we’ve got a third aspect to our existence – our online life. This third life falls somewhere in the middle of the other two, resting not entirely on the work side of the fence, and spilling over into the life side as well. This is causing much consternation among many of us. The lines between work time and life time are blurring and the grey area seems to be ever-widening. We are becoming ever more protective of our “life” time, taking extended technology sabbaticals and stepping away from our evil smart phones. Our work life is becoming closely guarded too – we’re shutting off the social media and unplugging from our email, in the hopes that it will turn us into some sort of productivity super hero. The problem is, we’re drawing so many lines in the sand that we’re ultimately not really getting what we need to out of that big, blurry grey area called the online life. And that means we’re missing out on some tremendous opportunities. You know how sometimes, you need to sit back and re-think your career, or the way your non-work life is going? You are willing to take time to really figure out what you want in those areas, to reflect, regroup, and make changes when necessary. It’s central to your happiness. But how often do you reflect on your online life? Let’s face it. This whole online thing has really sideswiped us. 15 years ago it wasn’t a big deal. Today, it’s one of the bigger deals going, and for the most part, we weren’t prepared for it at all. It’s changed a lot of aspects of both our work and our lives. Yet we tend to gloss over it, not really give it too much thought, until it’s bombarding us from all directions. Then, completely overwhelmed, we run screaming from the room. We shut down, take extended sabbaticals, and look the other way. And then we wonder why the Web is not working for us. So what if we took that same level of reflection and applied it to this new, third aspect to our lives? What if we started to strive to achieve not only work/life balance, but work/life/online balance? Here’s something I’ve been pondering: I remember a few years back when my friends started having kids, they would go one of two ways. Either they had a baby and then I rarely heard from them or saw them anymore, or they had a baby and I heard from them and saw them more often. Both were equally busy with their new families, but it was their perspective of what being a new parent meant to their lives that was different. The ones who became totally absorbed with this dramatic life change were doing so because they were trying to fit their lives to this new child. The ones who seemed to have more of a life after baby was born were doing so because they were fitting their baby into their lives. Neither were bad parents. They just handled it differently. It’s the same with the online life. You’ll find that even though there is no space in your life, that much like a baby, you can’t just ignore your online life and it will go away. You need your online life, because it will help you be more successful in your business. You need your online life, because it will help you advance that cause that’s important to you. You need it because it’s a source of connection with people that matter to you. Whatever the reason, it’s there, and you can’t deny it. But if you try to fit your existing life into the online life it’s not going to work, because you’re trying to change everything because of one thing. That’s why you’re overwhelmed. If you make everything about your online life, then everything else suffers. The work/life/online balance is thrown right out the window. What if you took the approach of the parents who work to fit their baby into their life instead of the other way around? Suddenly you’re able to step back and see everything in perspective – all aspects of your work life and your life life at once. Then you have this third bit, your online life, which you can see for what it is – like a new baby, it is something new that is designed to enrich your life, not take control of it. Then, you realize that, in addition to everything else you have going on, you can still find the time to devote to your online life’s care and attention. And, your online life begins to survive and thrive because the rest of you is so balanced. Devotion to your online life is still a lot of work, but it’s made possible because you’re taking care of the other pieces too. In other words, everybody wins. Like it or not, this is a new era. You can ignore the online world all you like, but it’s not going to go away. And if your personal or professional success is in any way dependent on your efforts out here on the Web, then you owe it to yourself to figure out how that balance is going to work, don’t you think? [photo by bruce…]
Social Media is Not a 9 to 5 Job
Some of you may not want to hear this. The number one challenge people tell me they have with social media is finding time to do it. They are already overworked in their jobs, and there’s simply no extra time for them to spend with all the listening and checking in and engaging that social media demands. I think we’ve got it all wrong. Social media does not exist in a 9 to 5 world. It stretches beyond the boundaries that we create for our work and our play, and therein lies the problem. We haven’t quite figured out that, just because our social media goals might be related to our work, doesn’t mean that when we clock out at the end of our “work” day, the conversation comes to a complete halt until we sit back down at our desks the next day. I’m sorry if you think that sucks. But the truth is, if you’re a marketer or communicator, an entrepreneur or a salesperson, this is an important shift you’re going to have to make, if you want to be successful in this space. Here’s an example: The other night, I was relaxing at home after a long day, when a message popped up on my screen from Twitter. Someone had posted a reply to one of my client’s accounts. My company is currently engaged as the social media coordinators for an international conference. It’s our job to read and take appropriate and timely action on any and all messages that come through social channels. And since our audience is people all over the world, those messages can come in at any time…even at 8pm on a Monday night when I’m just sitting down to watch a movie. Do I always need to respond immediately? Sometimes things can wait (though we do respond to everything within 12 hours). But in this case, someone had a question for which the answer was dependent on them making a decision to attend the conference. Had I said to myself at that point “oh well, I’m off the clock, this will just have to wait till tomorrow morning”, that person may well have decided against attending. But, at that moment, I happened to have the answer she needed. So I picked up my phone, and took 10 seconds to reply to her tweet, and she went away happy. The point of this story is that engagement doesn’t always have a schedule. The person on the other end of that tweet may have only had a limited time to be thinking about her attendance at the conference. She’s busy too. But the fact that someone was there to respond to her right away may have made a difference that worked into a positive for her, and for my client, as my positive response means she now has a positive image of them too. Had I put it off because I was “off the clock”, I may have missed the opportunity to make that impact. People often ask me how I manage to do all I do (running a business, teaching, speaking, and so on) and still have time for social media (blogging, podcasting, tweeting, and so on). The secret is, it works for me because I’m not always trying to fit it in to my work day only. I write blog posts in my head when I’m walking the dog in the morning. I tweet while standing in line at the grocery store, or during the commercials if I’m watching TV. I collect stories and links to talk about on my podcasts while drinking coffee in bed in the morning. If I had kids, I would probably write blog posts while they were napping or at their Girl Guide meeting. The truth is, social media takes time and effort. You get out of it exactly what you put into it. And if you really, really want badly enough to succeed at whatever you’re trying to do with social media, then maybe it’s time to re-think how you’re going to put in that time and effort. Maybe it means talking to your boss about shifting your work schedule to allow for time for you to spend on engaging in the “off work hours”. What if you did 35 hours a week at the office and had 5 hours a week floating for your engagement activities (your numbers may vary, of course). What if you really did decide that when the baby is napping, you’ll focus on cranking out some new blog posts or recording a podcast? What would happen if you stopped PVRing everything and spent the commercial breaks checking your Twitter feed and chatting with folks? I think you may find that your experience with social media would start to change. People act like spending time online is some sort of crime, like their leisure time is to be spent in an offline cocoon at all times, cut off from the outside world. I beg to differ. As much as it’s good to put down the technology every once in a while (balance is a good thing!), I have found that my life and my work is far richer and better because I find the time in my day to interact with people in the online world. Our world is changing. It’s not 9 to 5 anymore. And you don’t HAVE to do any of this. But take some time to think about how social media fits into your life. Because if it doesn’t, and you really, REALLY want to succeed in this brave new world, you need to find a way to make it fit. [photo by poolie]
The Lost Art of Podcasting
It’s funny, you know. I see so many conversations happening about content creation that are focused around written content. It’s seems we are inundated with lessons on the best way to write a blog, and how to best leverage Twitter, 140 characters at a time. But let’s remember, podcasting has been around for a long time. While it really became popular in around 2005 (before blogging really took off), in fact, some of the earliest podcasts (delivery of syndicated audio content via the Web) date way back to 1998. Yet many people still don’t see the true value in podcasting as a channel. They think producing audio and/or video is too expensive and too time consuming, so they just stick with tweeting and pushing out a blog post once in a while. But the truth of the matter is, producing podcasts can be tremendous bang for your buck and your time. A little prep goes a long way Back in January, I was fortunate to get my first official podcasting gig, with Stefan Halley, co-hosting I Can Haz Podcast, a show about social media and online marketing. At first, I was concerned that prepping for a weekly, one hour show, along with everything else I was doing, might be too much to handle. But I soon learned that, when done right, prepping for the podcast could actually be done very efficiently. Given the topic of the show (social media in all its glory), it was pretty easy for me to incorporate my show prep into my weekly activities. Since I was already immersed in the subject matter, gathering ideas and stories to share is just a part of my week. And by the time Sunday rolls around, Stefan and I have exchanged a few emails and figured out our show. Then, it’s just a matter of sitting for an hour over Skype and cranking it out. Of course, Stefan has some work on the back end to get the show ready to publish too, but barring any technical hiccups that seems to go fairly quickly. Producing podcasts does not have to be super-time consuming. While I make a 1 hour commitment per day to blogging activities, my ICHP podcast commitment per week is probably a total of 2 hours when all’s said and done. And the reward I get from that 2 hours is significant. First of all, it’s great practice, as I’ve never really been an “in front of the mic” person. Second, it forces me to keep up on what’s happening in my industry so I can pass that on to our listeners. Third, it’s a pile of fun – recording an hour long show each week with a guy in Sweden that I’ve never met in person has been a cool experience…in 6 months we’ve gone from being complete strangers to being friends, all the while building a rapport and chemistry to give the show its own unique personality. Payoff, payoff, payoff. Batch content generation We all know that one of the most difficult things about any kind of publishing is delivering consistently. This holds true no matter whether your content is in written form, audio or video. But one of the secrets to consistency is to batch your content production. Get stuff in the can, so you can push it out consistently, and you’re never struggling for content. Now, unless you’re a super obsessed writing nerd like me, doing marathon blog writing sessions may not exactly be your idea of a good time. But what’s cool about podcasting is, depending on the format of your show, it’s far easier to batch produce stuff. I work on another podcast (though we are on hiatus right now) called The Contrarians. There are three of us (my co-conspirators are Bob LeDrew and Joe Boughner), and our goal is to produce a weekly 20 minute podcast around a randomly chosen topic that is loosely related to technology, communication, social media, or, if Joe has his way, hockey. It’s more or less just the three of us spewing our opinions and having a lively discussion, but it’s a hoot and even somewhat entertaining from what our listeners (read: Joe’s Mom) have told us. Bob, Joe and I are all busy people, so we had to strategize how we were going to manage to achieve a new 20 minute show each and every week. First, we came up with a list of about 20 topics we wanted to cover. Each topic would be thrown into a hat, and at the beginning of the episode one would be chosen for the discussion. That way we don’t have to do immense amounts of show prep. Second, we decided that we’d only get together once a month or so, and in that time we’d crank out 3 or 4 shows (depending on our level of inspiration and how delicious the Beau’s was that day). By batching our content generation, we were able to produce 4 weeks’ worth of material over our lunch break, and nobody was burnt out by the end of it. Again, Bob has a bit of packaging work to do after we record, but in general, it’s not overwhelming for any of us. Like I said, we are currently on hiatus, but look for The Contrarians; soon to be once again haunting earbuds near you. So, as you can see, with a little prep, a few inexpensive or free tools, and a list of ideas, you could start podcasting today if you so desired. Podcasting is really an underrated medium, don’t you think? (Note that I’ve provided audio examples here, but you could easily do the same thing with video. Come up with 5 ideas. Sit in front of your web cam and do 5 x 2 minute videos on each topic. Presto – 1 weeks’ worth of daily posts, or 5 weeks’ worth of weekly posts, all for about 1/2 hour of work.) (Oh, one more thing. If you’re interested in
One Step to Becoming a Better Storyteller
Think of someone you know who tells a great story. The kind of person for whom virtually everything that comes out of their mouth is in the form of an interesting story. They are the kind of people you can listen to for hours on end. Someone like Liz. Or The Dude. Storytellers do what they do inherently. It’s simply the way they naturally express themselves. They aren’t just telling you something. They are the weavers of tales. And because they are able to turn everything into a story, the things they say are compelling and memorable. Isn’t that how you’d like to be when you publish? Compelling and memorable? Well the secret is to be able to find the story in anything, and the secret to doing that? Read on. Most of us spend far too much time participating in things, and far too little time observing. We are immersed in the middle of our lives, reacting to everything. Life happens to us, and before we know it, it’s all taken place, and the details are all a blur. So when we finally sit down to publish, we come up empty handed. Our descriptions of our days are emotion-based. “I got frustrated, then angry. Then I was happy again. Then I was disappointed.”. We’re feeling our way through things. To be able to find the story, we need to become better observers. Instead of focusing on how you felt, focus on what actually happened. Once you can describe what happened, the emotion of it will follow naturally, in the form of the reactions of your readers. Here’s how. You could say: This idiot cut me off on the highway and I ended up in the ditch. He sped off, boy was I angry. It works, but it’s pretty generic. Because you’re putting the emotion first, the rest of the story sort of falls flat. You’re giving it all away, instead of revealing pieces and allowing your reader to experience the emotions themselves. If you put yourself into the observer’s shoes, something cool happens: I was driving down the highway in the middle lane. It was a gorgeous afternoon, but the sun was bright and low over the horizon, making it difficult to see. My favourite Jack Johnson tune was playing quietly on the radio, taking my mind off squinting and into serenity. I saw the red Mazda in my rearview mirror, growing larger by the second. He was moving at a fair clip. The car zoomed up to my tail, then whipped out to my left. It cut back in too fast, clipping my left fender, and sending me into a spin. Everything seemed to slow, as my car spun around and around, 3, then 4 times. When it finally halted, I was in the ditch. I wiggled my fingers and toes, blinked my eyes. I was intact. I glanced up, barely able to see out my cracked windshield, as the red car sped away. Luckily, I was able to catch the word “SPDDMON” on his license plate. Gotcha. Observing changes your entire perspective on the story, because observing is about noticing the small details. The light outside. The music on the radio. The sensation of spinning. Observing takes you from reactive to narrative in one step, and not only that, it makes the whole process of publishing – whether written, audio, video, what have you – much easier and much more fun. So, if you’re struggling with your publishing, step back and see if you’re observing or reacting. If it’s the latter, then step into the observer’s shoes for a while. You’ll find that suddenly, the stories will just appear before your eyes. Now all you need to do is hit publish. [photo by MSVG]
You’re Already Interesting
You say the biggest challenge you have when it comes to publishing consistently online is finding the time. I don’t believe that, and I say that because I’ve been there too. I think I don’t have the time to write a post, or upload a video to my blog, or crank out a podcast. I think there are other things I should be doing that are considered “real work”, so I put publishing off while I go do other more important things like check my email and watch another episode of Pawn Stars. Bull$#!&. Not publishing because you don’t have time is an excuse. I’m not interested in hearing any longer that you don’t have the time to publish. Because in actual fact, publishing doesn’t take that long. I will write this post in about 20 minutes. You might take 30, or 10. You might create a video, which literally takes 5 minutes to record and post. And everyone, no matter how busy their job is, or how many kids they have running around, can find 5 minutes, or 10, if they think they have something to say and they really want to say it. Nope, in actual fact, it’s not about time at all. You’re not publishing because you don’t think you are interesting enough. Where does this fear of not being interesting come from? I think it stems from the fact that we humans inherently compare ourselves to others. The dawn of the social Web has exacerbated this trait in us. Now, not only are we comparing ourselves to the peers and colleagues and loved ones in our presence, but we are comparing ourselves to thousands upon thousands of people in the virtual world too. We see the A-list bloggers pumping out stellar posts multiple times a day and racking up hundreds of thousands of devoted followers and we don’t see how we can ever be as interesting as they are. So we back away to our corner. We look at our lives and our work and we don’t see how it could possibly matter to others. And the days, weeks, months go by, and we don’t publish. Then we use the excuse that we don’t have time, and we wonder why we’re not getting as far as we’d like with the things we’re doing. So, you need to stop, right now, comparing yourself to Jimmy A-Lister and Sally Superstar. Because when you do, you’ll realize a very, very important thing: You are, and always have been, interesting. Why? Because you’re you. And every aspect of your life’s experiences up until this point are different from everyone else’s. And that makes your story (and mine, and theirs) completely unique. And you know what unique is to people? It’s interesting. YOU’RE interesting. And because you’re interesting, it means that you have plenty to tell people about the way you are experiencing your life. Your perspective on your passions, your work, things you’ve learned, and the people you care about are one of a kind. And that makes you utterly compelling. If you really, REALLY want to publish, then you need to eliminate that thing inside you that compares yourself to others and makes you feel uninteresting. If you do that, you’ll suddenly feel a whole world of possibilities open up. You’ll have lots and lots to talk about. So find your space at some point today. Sit down. Stop comparing. Write down three things about yourself or your business that you would like other people to know about. Then create it. Then hit publish. And let me know what you come up with by linking to it in the comments below. [photo by Kevin Dooley]
How To Leave a Legacy
I’ve never been a hard core Oprah watcher, but I’ve tuned in occasionally over the years. I’ve always enjoyed watching the show from a producers’ perspective; it’s an extremely challenging format to produce, but Oprah and her team have been bringing it daily for 25 years. 25 years is a long time to do anything really well, let alone have a hit television show. I really do appreciate what she has been able to build. Now, as you probably know, the Oprah Winfrey show as we know it is ending its run. As a media entity, it doesn’t get much bigger than this in TV. Whether you’re a fan or not, you can’t dispute that The Oprah show is leaving behind a legacy, and I think there are a couple of things we can learn from Oprah and her team. Exit on a high note. We’ve all heard this one before, but how many of us actually consider our exit strategy? How many of you have had a 9 to 5 job, or a souring relationship with a client, where you waited until things got really, really bad before you finally couldn’t take anymore and had to leave? Oprah has not waited until her ratings disappeared. She’s not sliding down the slippery slope to cancellation. She decided to call it quits while still at the very top of her game. She figured out what her next step would be, and now she is taking that step. It’s easier to go out on a high, don’t you think? Yet many of us wait until we’ve slid down to the bottom, exhausted mentally and physically from being in an unhappy situation. Then we have to face the reality of having to crawl a long way back up to grab on to our next opportunity. We have to fix a lot of things and get rid of a lot of baggage, in order to really find that thing that will make us happy again. Whereas, if you leave on a high, it’s more like a step across to the next thing rather than clawing your way back up to it. What if you started to move forward when you felt it was simply time, rather than waiting for the bottom to fall out of a situation? Would exiting on a high note help you leave a better legacy? Make it about everyone else but you. I watched Oprah’s 3rd last episode yesterday. It was done in a big stadium, with tens of thousands of people in attendance. The guests who appeared on the show were a surprise to the audience and to Oprah, so there was tremendous anticipation. It was a slick production, big budget stuff. It had its fair share of cheesy scriptwriting, but that’s to be expected. It’s daytime TV. But what made the production classy was that the entire show was not really about Oprah. It was about the viewers. Every story that was told was told from the perspective of the viewers. The focus was on the influence of the Oprah show as a legacy, not just on how big a deal Oprah herself is. And that focus on the audience was very intentional. Leaving a legacy is not just about how you did. It’s about how your actions reflect in the lives of others. The secret to building a legacy is not in finding ways to make yourself more influential. The secret is in doing what you can, quietly, to motivate and inspire and drive other people to success. The secret to leaving a legacy is in what you’ve said, done, and created that has helped others to be better. The secret to leaving a legacy is to not really know you’ve done anything, until you see other people being amazing. There’s really only two things you need to do to build your legacy…stay on top of your game, and make darn sure that it’s always about other people first. Thoughts? [photo by Kevin Dooley]
Are You Afraid of Technology?
“I’m not a techie.” Have you ever said that? Do you ever think it? Do you compare yourself to folks who seem to have their smart phones surgically attached to their thumbs, typing 75 words per minute on a teeny keyboard, and wonder how you’ll ever measure up? Do you see Twitter superstars and Facebook mavens burning up the Interwebz with their tech savvy-ness, and think you’ll never be able to achieve the same? You’re not alone. There are lots of people out there who are hesitant to embrace technology. It sort of makes sense, especially if you’re 30 or older. After all, we’ve had to grow into all these new-fangled devices. Heck, I’ve been around since before voicemail and fax machines, and before pocket calculators were mainstream. Nowadays, we’ve got smart phones and tablet computers, word processing software, graphic design tools, digital video and content management systems. It’s natural to be a little overwhelmed. Add to all this the fact that things are changing so fast these days, it’s hard to keep up. The iPod has ONLY been around for a short 10 years. YouTube has only been here for 6 years. At this pace, who knows how many new tools and technologies are going to appear in the next few years? It’s moving at lightning pace, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. So what’s a luddite to do? Be a Little Bit Scared. Fear is the great motivator, and what better way to get on that horse and start accomplishing things than if you’re at least a LITTLE afraid you’re going to be left behind? Here’s a story: When I graduated from my 2nd time at college in 1997, I’d just come through a very intensive course that gave us an amazing foundation in the design and creation of digital media, but a course that only gave us ONE DAY of HTML and web design training. You see, the Web was only starting to have the inkling of becoming a big deal at that point, and the college curriculum hadn’t quite caught up yet. So, here I was, with a piece of paper and a handful of skills that were already out of date. Every employer wanted Web skills, and I didn’t have them. I got my first job offer, and believe it or not, it was to teach web site design to a group of corporate communications types. The course was in 6 weeks. I could have turned it down, saying that I didn’t know enough about the Web, let alone have the confidence to teach it. But I don’t like to not know things. Instead of walking away from the opportunity, I went out and bought up every book on HTML, JavaScript and web site design I could find and I spent the next 6 weeks solid learning everything I could. I built a bunch of web sites, broke them good, and rebuilt them again, over and over and over until I got it. Six weeks later I was standing in front of a class of 20, scared out of my wits, but successfully showing people the ins and outs of building a good web site (by 1997 standards, that is.) Fear was my motivator. Instead of telling myself I wasn’t technical enough to learn to code a web site, I used my fear of the unknown to drive me to learn it. Was it hard? Yes, it was, especially because I am not and never will be much of a coder. Don’t let your fear of the technology prevent you from leaping into it. Don’t be afraid to break stuff (in fact, break lots of stuff. It’s the best way to learn). The more you do, the more confident you’ll become, and then you can move ahead and let the next thing up the chain scare you. Be Infinitely Curious. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but we’re not cats. What’s the difference? Cats, as clever as they can be, don’t often have the most common sense in the world (at least mine don’t). We humans, on the other hand, have the ability to have common sense. If you choose to use your common sense (because it IS a choice!), then you can be curious without being too risky. What this means is, you probably shouldn’t start poking around the code of your company web site unattended, just because you’re curious and want to overcome your fear of technology. But, you could make a copy of your site on a test server, and then poke and prod and break things to your heart’s content over there. It doesn’t mean that you should use a big client project with an imminent deadline to improve your video editing chops, but it does mean that you can make a copy of some of the raw footage and spend the weekend after the project is signed off fussing with it in Final Cut. Be curious about things. If you don’t know something, or don’t understand it, but want to, then find out. Google is your best friend. So is the library, if you’re old school. Read things. Try stuff. Play around. Figure it out. That’s really half the fun of learning something new. You’ll not only be wiser and more confident for it, you’ll have a sense of accomplishment that will only serve to motivate you more. What To Stop. Stop saying you can’t learn it. Stop saying you’re not techie enough. Stop saying you’re a luddite. You can embrace technology as well as the next person, if you’re willing to face your fear and reconnect with your sense of wonder about things. Technology is a beautiful, wonderful, glorious thing. It’s something to be celebrated for how it has enriched our lives. As for what the future holds, nobody knows. But that’s nothing to be afraid of, right? [photo by zetson]
Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
“Don’t bite off more than you can chew!”. I really dislike that expression, yet I hear it all the time. We all know about not overcommitting ourselves. We’re all learning to say “no” when we need to. But at what point does the fear of reaching beyond our limitations, of biting off more than we can chew start to hold us back? I suspect that, for most of us, that fear is pretty real. And as a result, we aren’t getting as far as we’d like. When someone sends you an email or calls you up with a request of your time, energy, or experience, what’s your first reaction? For a lot of people, they immediately think about all the reasons they can’t do it. There’s no possible way this could fit into my schedule. I don’t think I have the experience to do a good job. I’m too tired/broke/busy. I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew. To which I respond…why the heck not? Is it possible that, by not biting off more than you can chew, you’re not achieving the things you want? Is it possible that you aren’t working on your side business venture because you are afraid that, at some point, it will become bigger than you can handle? Or that you aren’t getting involved in that cause that matters to you because you’re afraid it will take too much time? What if you haven’t really done what you want to do with your social media efforts because you’re afraid you’ll fall flat on your face? So, you just bite off little bits. You play it safe. You dabble. You only apply a small amount of time, or energy, or brain power to that thing you want. And then you wonder why you’re not getting anywhere. A piece of the pie. Of course, I am not advocating that you just start saying yes to everything you’re asked to do. That’s a recipe for disaster. But what you think you can handle and what you likely can handle are two different things. So how do you go about figuring it out? It’s all about learning your limits. I tend to chunk things up, and then prioritize. I’ve got family commitments, my company work, teaching, speaking engagements, causes, and a social life. Each thing gets allotted a certain percentage of time. I like to visualize it as a pie chart. Some things take up more of the pie than others, but it swings around too (e.g. I have fewer teaching commitments at certain times of the year). Once I’ve figured out what my pie chart looks like at that moment, I take a look at all of the tasks in front of me (goals, must-do’s, and requests), and slot things into their respective places as they come up. For instance, if I’ve got 3 big project deadlines for my company, I’m hosting my nephew’s birthday party, and a new course starting in one week, I may have to forego that speaking gig I’ve just been asked to do that happens the following week, because I won’t have enough time to prep. However, if school’s out for summer, I can probably stand to load up my speaking schedule a bit more. To know your limits, you need to really, REALLY understand all the parts that make up your life. You need to know how much of each you can handle at any given time. If you can slot things in to their respective places, you’ll see where the gaps are, and you’ll know you’ve still got room left to fill them. Using this method, you’ll find that you can take on much more than you first thought, and not only that, you’ll be able to more easily strike the right balance. What are you waiting for? You have things you want do do. But nothing…and I mean NOTHING….will ever get accomplished by only taking small bites of things. You need to figure out what you really want to achieve and then take that big bite. Will it be hard? Sure. Will it make you tired? Yes. Will you have to put in the hours? For sure. Will you be scared? Yep. But nothing worth having in this world comes without a certain amount of challenge, hard work, and fear. So go. Take a big, huge bite, and savour every morsel. [photo by isox4]