Monthly Archives: November 2011

Time Heals Wounds. Or Bad Memory? I Forget.

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An old adage: “Time heals all wounds.” Not necessarily true if the variables of your life do not change. Good luck trusting the clock to wipe away your woes if your environment, friends, job, problems, and goals stay the same. It’s easier to get over an ex if you never see him or her; it’s particularly difficult to get over the ex if he or she is your neighbor. Your woes won’t leave you alone if they live next door.

The solution? Mix it up. Try new things. Keep busy. Move your life forward. Let someone else break your heart. After all, new wounds help you forget old wounds. I slap mosquito bites for the very same reason (addressing bites directly with a scratch only makes the irritation worse). Fresh pain makes the old pain seem far less imminent and important. Before long, you forget the old pain ever existed.

With enough practice and endurance, you can learn to move on without inducing new pain. Mosquito bites go away faster if you ignore them entirely. How about a new adage? “Selective memory heals all wounds.”

6 Outsider Misconceptions About Denver

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While living in Los Angeles for five years, I was asked many (really dumb) questions about my hometown. Below are the most common misconceptions outsiders shared with me about Denver, Colorado (and yes, these are all real and recurring assumptions):

1. Denver is perpetually buried in several feet of snow.
Hardly. We have over 300 sunny days annually (just short of Miami and more than San Diego). The average annual snowfall in the metro area is 57.5 inches, it lands sporadically six months out of the year, and only 40-50% of it sticks. With the average winter temperature above freezing (between 34 and 51 degrees, depending on the month), the snow that sticks melts in a few days.

2. Most people in Denver are cowboys and dress accordingly.
I can think of five people who wear cowboy boots and zero people who wear cowboy hats casually. Yes, Colorado maintains a lot of agriculture and has rich cow-town history. But the large majority of people do not dress or act the part.

3. Everyone skis.
I don’t. I know many people who never have. It’s really expensive.

4. Columbine High School is the main high school in Littleton.
Jefferson County, Columbine’s home district, has 22 high schools, serves nearly 85,000 students, and blankets a 700 square-mile area with half of a million people. Columbine isn’t even in the Littleton Public School District. Just because the school was televised 12 years ago doesn’t make it the masthead for an entire town.

5. Denver is a violent city.
Two high school students and a few scruffy wildlife hunters do not make an entire city “violent.” The funny part? These assumptions were made by people living in South Central Los Angeles. Denver had 33 murders last year. Los Angeles? 291.

6. Denver is in the mountains.
Seriously? Look at a map. Denver is easily 20 miles away from the nearest hill, let alone the depths of the Rocky Mountains. Do Southern Californians take geography?

Humility Goes A Long Way

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Want something from someone and think you deserve it? Do not boast or nag. No one responds well to ego. And whether you deserve it or not, you haven’t gotten it yet. The first step to getting something you think you deserve is to think you don’t deserve it. By humbling yourself, you inadvertently raise the stakes and fight harder for what you want. If you humble yourself enough, the fight will be clean and the other party will join your team. Before long, people will come around to your perspective and merit. The key to getting what you want is inspiring others to genuinely believe you deserve it.

Why Do Choices Scare People?

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Most people hate too many choices, in part because they are afraid to make the wrong one. I enjoy choices and the analytical process of breaking them down (anyone who shares a fine meal with me will understand this). Sometimes, however, too many choices get out of hand – you end up narrowing them down to a select few personal choices of your own (when overwhelmed, my defaults for Thai food are Panang Curry, Pad Thai, Pineapple Fried Rice, and Tom Yum Soup). From a consumer-facing position, assume your customers are terrified by choices and help them make the appropriate one. A series of options, binary logic, or a game of twenty questions can go a long way for narrowing things down. If gamified, the decision-making process can even be fun. As a consumer, know what you like, why you like it, and be flexible enough to discover new choices based on the key components of things you enjoy. Either way, choices do not have to be scary. Be prepared to help people get through them or be prepared to get through them yourself.

Webocracy (The Path to Fixing Our Government)

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We can no longer blame it on Gen-Y pessimism alone: the American public has fallen out of favor with the United States Government. With the public approval rating of Congress down to 9%, there is an impending need for overhaul. Legislation is wrought with wasted time, private interests, and partisanship. More critically, the legislative process no longer moves as fast as the systems it governs. The business and technology landscapes are changing so fast that no bill can keep up. And they are changing due in a very large part to the same platform we need to embrace to optimize our nation: the Internet.

Albert Wenger inspires me with his thoughts on Wikipedia, Occupy Wall Street, and the Possibility of an Open Congress (I’ve been enjoying Albert’s blog – for tech lovers out there, I encourage you to keep up with it). I think the idea of an “open-sourced government” is very romantic and worth exploring. The thought of communities online authoring bills together through an iterative platform like Wikipedia or Google Docs sends shivers up my spine. Nothing could be more true to democracy than millions of people collaborating together on the laws that govern them. Online, everyone can have a voice. Money, class, race, and stature play negligible roles. Everyone can work together and focus on the job at hand. Everyone can work together for the common good. I want to see a community online like that. I want to be a part of it. I want to have input. A multiple choice ballet is not enough anymore. It’s time to migrate the future of our nation forward. It’s time to build a Webocracy.

Outside Congress and legislation, does anyone else have other ideas for open-sourcing different aspects of our government?

Put It On Paper First

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Before spending lots of money or time realizing your “vision,” put it on paper first. Unless you can afford to waste resources or fail miserably, it’s far better to outline and iterate your project in writing. Pens and paper are cheap. Payroll, equipment, and building blocks are not. That’s why people started using blueprints, screenplays, sketches, budgets, business plans, outlines, storyboards, and recipes. By mapping your vision, you liberate ideas from your skull onto a medium others can review. On paper, you can objectify your idea better and collect feedback from peers who can help you.

Yes, this may be a fundamental concept. “Duh, Craig, of course you should plan things on paper.” But it kills me how many people jump into the deep end without thinking first. And it amazes me how much time I’ve wasted getting dirty without a plan. Hours and hours of design, coding, and crafting to get me nowhere when I could have realized project faults on the page early on. Trust me, put it on paper first. It’s not a real idea until someone can read or see it – including you. Thank you, Mark Godwin, for reminding me of that.

Call People With Your Phone (That’s What It’s There For)

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Random calls work like magic. Through cold-calling old friends in an effort to “stay in touch,” I’ve discovered great collaborators, learned things I could never imagine, and been offered jobs. Keeping your network fresh is important. And it’s really easy to do when you find yourself bored, commuting, or waiting for laundry. Just pick up your phone. Skim through your contacts. Pick someone you have not spoken to in a while. Call the person. Don’t think about it. Just do it. Think you need a reason to call someone? “Catching up” is a perfect reason to call someone. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: stay in touch.

Create Daily

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I can think of nothing decidedly more human than creativity. The human value of creativity stems from our primordial experiences as a species when we discovered how to wield tools. Inventing and creating are spiritual endeavours. Like cleansing yourself of toxins, genuine creative output clears the heart and mind. The more often you create, the healthier and richer your humanity becomes. I blog daily and get a kick out of it. What can you do everyday to keep the juices flowing?

Change the Game

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I saw Moneyball with my father today and recommend it to anyone who appreciates numbers, entrepreneurship, the game of baseball, or sports photography (a lot of Wally Pfister’s camera work was superb). At the heart of the film, protagonist Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) needs to do a lot (build a championship team) with very little (one of the smallest budgets in the MLB) and change the game forever. Almost everyone questions, bashes, and rejects him along the way. Why try to change a game that’s been around for 150 years?

Everything changes. Politics change. Culture changes. People change. The ground beneath our feet changes. Empires rise and fall. Nothing is predictable. No one knows what the world will look like in years. But count on it being very different. You can fight it and fall behind. Or you can beat it and come out ahead. Why NOT change a game that’s been around for 150 years? It’s far more risky to preserve the game than change it. If you are not doing your part to stir things up and disrupt the world around you, you will most likely miss the train. Change the game.

Sourcing Inspiration

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Followers blame their situation for not finding inspiration.

Leaders blame themselves for not finding inspiration within.

Which one are you?