B minor

I was honored to be invited to speak at Ball State University earlier this month, as part of the David Letterman Distinguished Professional Lecture and Workshop Series. I spent a wonderful day on campus hearing from a student body and a faculty that are truly engaged at cracking the leading edge of media evolution. It was a wonderful experience.

My lecture ran long, though, and I wound up having to fold my “advice” section into the Q&A. I promised I’d post the slides I skipped and some notes, so here they are. I consider these my “rules for the game of life.”

I’ve written out some notes under the slides (which didn’t make the translation to slideshare too well, apologies):

1. Learn What Makes Your Heart Sing

I can’t stress this enough. You will never truly succeed (my definition: be happy) doing something that doesn’t make you truly come alive. This means you are doing something that you lose sleep thinking about. This means you wake up with a spring in your step, because you can’t wait to do more of whatever it is that you do. Do not settle for something because it’s what pays the bills or because it’s what other people think you should do. Find what makes your heart sing and do that.

2. Forget Balance

Balance is a marketing gimmick. It’s a hamster wheel invented to keep us buying things and trying things, hoping to reach an unattainable goal. Balance is what people who hate what they do from 9-5 convince themselves they need in order to be happy. True story: balanced people don’t change the world. It’s okay if you don’t aspire to change the world. It’s okay if your greatest aspiration is to raise a kick-ass family (that’s an AWESOME aspiration!). But find one thing and do it well. Stop trying to be well rounded and balanced – you’ll just be so-so at everything you try if you do that.

3. Board of Directors

Have a personal board of directors. Know the people that will give you good advice. Know the people who will always comfort you. And also know the people who will push you outside your comfort zone. Stock your life with 5-10 of these people and check in with them frequently. Use them as a barometer to make sure you haven’t gotten lost down a rabbit hole somewhere along the way. Above all, make sure you have a mentor on this board. The people who move along in their careers the fastest are those with mentors – people above them who champion them and help guide them along. Standing in the corner and hoping for an awesome opportunity or the next promotion never worked for anyone – find someone who will help you grow, and then pay that mentorship forward.

4. Create

The saddest thing I ever heard was someone who said, “I’m not a creative person, but….” Human beings are, by nature, creative. Just look around you. How much of our daily lives are governed by things and experiences that human beings created? People get lost in the “I’m not ready” or “I don’t have a good enough X, Y, or Z” arguments. BS. Go make stuff. Make it every day. Ira Glass says you’ll spend years making crap. That’s okay. Eventually what you make is going to rock, but it’s only going to rock if you start making something every day right now.

5. Abandon the Plan

Never, ever spend more than 15 minutes thinking about your 10 year plan. It’s far more important to spend your time learning what makes your heart sing or creating things. A 10 year plan is only useful if it helps you put the next 2 stops on your roadmap. Otherwise it’s useless. Ask anyone right now if they envisioned themselves in their current place 10 years ago. I certainly didn’t. Steve Jobs said that the dots all make sense looking backwards, but never looking forward. Stop trying to plan. Always make sure you have options, and always choose the one option that is most interesting to you at the moment – this is a recipe for success and happiness.

6. Fail

Fail early, fail often. If you go through life too afraid to fail, you’ll also probably never win. John Shedd said, “A ship in a harbor is safe. But that’s not what ships are built for.” Get over your ego. Do not fear bruises. Embrace the scars. You will fall down, but you will pick yourself back up. If you’re lucky, your friends will help you get back up. But you can learn more in a year of trying something and failing than you ever would in 10 years playing it safe.

7. Know Your Story

Learning how to tell your story is essential. It will help you get a job – because you will be able to articulate your passions and your narrative to someone succinctly. But more importantly, knowing your story and getting good at telling it will help you understand yourself. Identifying patterns of excitement and occasions of success will help unlock the things that make your heart sing. When you can tell your story effectively you can also paint your failures as an education. And when you become comfortable that your story is good in retrospect, you’ll learn to stop worrying about the future, because whatever happens, it will become part of your story – and it will be a great story – because it is yours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A friend observed, this weekend: 

“People talk a lot less now. We text, email, IM. But we don’t talk. As Siri takes hold of the next wave of advancement, what if we find ourselves talking to devices more than we talk to other people?”

Scary thought.

As more of our human interactions are mediated by technology, it becomes increasingly difficult to discern subtext, motive, and voice. I find more and more people I know trying to structure more intimate human interactions into their routine lately. I like this. It seems healthy.

But I continue to get weird reactions when I offer that I’d like to structure more “downtime” into my routine. I define downtime as quiet, reflective time – spent mostly alone, mostly unplugged. For me this manifests as time writing, walking, drawing or playing the piano. It is time where the primary focus of my attention is driven by me, not by a device or another person. I like this. It seems healthy. But it seems to put off some people.

Not only do I find the constantly-”wired in” trend to be unhealthy, I actually find it to be counterproductive.  The mind fatigues easily. Constant stimulation, constant attention – this stuff is taxing.

Consider this: I do some of my best thinking in the shower. Why is this?

I’ve read several explanations on this, ranging from speculation about hyper-oxygenation to standing in one place for a while. But the explanation I most buy into is this:

Showering is a routine. It is a routine we are intimately familiar with and one we do not need to think about. The fact that we don’t need to think about it is critically important. Our conscious mind – the one with which we evaluate and make decisions – is silenced by the routine. Because we don’t actively need to think, our subconscious mind is allowed to kick into gear and drive our thinking all over the place. We are truly creative in this time. I do my best thinking and creating during and immediately after periods of downtime.

Imagine if we built more time into our lives for this type of thinking.

Imagine if we “rehearsed” this behavior.

We’d have to start first by letting go of the need to be connected all the time. We’d also need for others to let go of the expectation that we be connected all the time. But we might find ourselves being a little more creative if we do. (And maybe we’ll start actually talking to each other more, too.)

I was quoted in a New York Times article about giving up cable TV this morning:

Bradley Lautenbach, 28, who recently moved to Los Angeles to work at Disney, found enough alternatives to allow him to turn back the technological clock on his TV.

“I’ve always had cable. It’s the thing you do when you move to a new place: call the company and set it up,” he said. Not this time. Instead, he got an antenna and now watches over-the-air news and sports, complemented by episodes of shows like “Entourage” that he buys from iTunes. “I don’t miss cable at all,” he said.

- Rabbit Ears Perk Up for Free HDTV [NY Times]

It’s been fun getting emails from friends all day. One of these days I will write a full post about my decision to quit cable and how I consume media now.