Keep your eyes open all the time. You never know what opportunities lie at the edge of your vision. Keep your mind free to all possibilities. Focus may be productive, but it has a very negative side effect: myopia. The real pros do not ruthlessly blockade distractions from their lives; they listen to all options, see everything, and train themselves to sort through variables faster than everyone else. If you want to rule the world, learn to dissect the world efficiently. Pay attention to everything and consider it all before filtering away. The email at the bottom of the list, the girl in the corner of the room, or that side panel advertisement may actually be the most important twists in your life. But you’ll never know unless your mind’s eye stays open.
Monthly Archives: December 2011
End on a Good Note
Finish the day having completed something. Finish the meal with your favorite bite. Finish the conversation with a hug and a smile. Finish happy and fulfilled.
Life is full of transitions. Each step bleeds into the next. Want to increase the odds of a great next step? End the previous step on a good note and carry that sense of accomplishment forward.
Never end on a bad note. No matter how painful, it’s worth the fight to make things right. It’s worth the energy and time to end things well.
Predictably Unpredictable
You can always count on true artists to surprise you. With a sense of regularity, the greats always deliver the same quality with a different twist. The same gets old, so it’s important to keep things fresh. We put less stock in sequels that merely re-deliver the original and our hearts into sequels that reinvent the wheel. We come to trust creators that, in any other forum, would not be trusted. And we always look forward to the next trick.
Want to be great? Learn to surprise audiences on a regular schedule.
Marry the Man or Marry the Mission
I’ve seen a lot of relationships collapse because partners failed to compete with the work or passion of their significant others. Especially in Hollywood, where living the dream and working 18 hours per day takes priority over all else. There are two different kinds of people – those who live for life and those who live for their dreams. The former tends to put people first; the latter tends to put the mission first, whatever that mission may be. There’s no right or wrong, better or worse. But when you are trying to engage in an intimate relationship with another person, it is very important to identify the type of person you are with. The disconnect comes when one party invests first in the relationship and the other invests first in the mission. You can fight the disconnect all you want to. But when a person’s love is unwavering or his or her mission is unwavering, you may never win. If the mission comes first, you need to fall in genuine love with the mission. Or move on.
Spread the Love
You would be surprised by how much easier and richer your life gets when you spend every waking minute spreading the love to other people. Give your time, help people with problems, smile, listen, hug, support, and genuinely care about others. Lend a hand anytime you can, and always put yourself second. Sounds like a lot of work, but the rewards are priceless. And timeless.
Gingerbread Martini
The holidays begin tonight.
1.5 Absolut Vodka (or better)
.25 Monin Gingerbread flavor
.5 Kahlua
.5 Baileys Irish Cream
Splash of Half and half
Shake this baby up. Best if served with a graham cracker crumb rim.
Have A Good Day
It’s a choice, not a consequence.
Put on your best smile, warm your heart, and face the hours ahead.
Enjoy it.
Two Options? Or Just One?
While people do not enjoy an overwhelming number of choices, they enjoy even less not having a choice at all. Pretty obvious day to day, but how does that apply to business, entertainment, and marketing beyond? When you give customers or audiences only one choice, they are quicker to create another one of their own: “No thanks.” By providing more than one option, you expand your chances at inspiring them to consider the options first before considering their exit. That contemplation period is irrefutably valuable to marketers looking to convert users or customers. Depending on how you position the product and alert everyone to his or her options, you at least stand a chance at starting a conversation. That’s half the battle.
Input Only Once
Human productivity thesis of the day: We should never input corroborated information more than once. If you need to plug the same numbers or text into different places, you are doing too much work (even with copy and paste). The human variable here expands the threshold for error to an unacceptable degree. Systems should be in place to automatically pull that information so that you do not need to. If said systems do not exist, do everyone else a favor and build them. I am streamlining an entire organization through Excel; you can, too. The “data entry” profession should go extinct and give rise to useful tools that save everyone a hell of a lot of time.
Product First, Everything Else Second
Why try to market, organize a business for, or sell a product if your product doesn’t even exist yet? I’ve been guilty of this a thousand times: recognize a great idea, get excited, and run outside to get everything off the ground. I’ve filed Limited Liability Corporations, printed posters, made announcements, and tried to raise money – for projects that hardly even made it on paper.
There are several problems with this. First, you’re spending a ton of time doing work that is not relevant until you have something to show for it. Time spent on “extras” means time not spent developing great content, executing ideas, and bringing your vision to life. Product is at the core of every great business and must come first (pray tell me one organism that grows from the shell inward?).
Moreover, the execution of ideas seldom aligns with the vision outlined in the first place. After facing obstacles and discovering new approaches to the same problem, the end result may look or feel nothing like the thing you set out to build. Any time you spend marketing, filing papers, and chasing investor deals for your project before you realize it will most likely be a complete waste of time. There will be a major disconnect between the core and the shell trying to promote it. Everything you did outside the lab will be invalidated by the discoveries within.
If you don’t have a product or story to tell, nothing else matters. Forget all the extra bullshit and get to the real work.
Craig Ormiston 