The optimism and possibility that come from training and learning in groups is a miracle. It means that, with a little effort, we can level up, become more productive and enjoy the work more tomorrow than we did yesterday.

The folks at Akimbo are offering some proven and tested workshops… here’s their schedule for signups in April:

The altMBA is the first and most powerful workshop of its kind. The July session has its Early Decision Deadline tomorrow, Tuesday. Ask someone who has done it–70 countries, 5,000 alumni so far.

The magical Podcasting Workshop, with Alex DiPalma, has enrollment beginning tomorrow. It’s now in its eighth session, and there are thousands of podcasters out in the world today because of the foundation and framework this community workshop created for them. It will clarify your thinking and help you find your voice.

And the fabled Freelancer’s Workshop begins in about a week. You can sign up today and be sure you don’t miss a thing. If you are working on your own (like most of us) this workshop will help you stop running in place and find the clients you deserve.

This might be your moment to move forward.

It’s more productive to offer directions to someone who has already decided to go on the journey.

“How do I get there?” is a much easier transaction than, “you must go.”

When there’s mutual enrollment, we call it alignment. If people in the organization are all committed to a similar destination, management becomes more like coaching. In fact, we end up calling them a team instead of a company or a division. Instead of using authority, discipline and extrinsic rewards, teams that are enrolled in the journey are more likely to look for signposts of progress. Instead of focusing on shortcuts, competition and scarcity, teams that are enrolled are more resilient, cooperative and committed.

Public school has confused us about how important enrollment can be. That’s because organized schooling is mandatory, and ‘enrollment’ is simply something that happens on paper, not emotionally.

It’s far easier to coach a spirited cricket team than it is to teach those very same kids improper fractions. That’s obvious–in the first case, they’re enrolled in the game, and in the second, they’re simply complying with as little effort as possible.

As Anthony Iannarino says, “too many leaders use their organizational authority instead of inviting people to an adventure, one with meaning, and one that will require growth. Leaders mistakenly believe everyone is motivated by money.”

There’s a hierarchy to enrollment.

At the most primitive level, it’s a desire to evade punishment, to avoid banishment, to stay alive and preserve the status quo. There are no dreams here, simply fear.

Sometimes, this evolves into a mutually beneficial entanglement between the boss and the bossed. The enrollment turns into a desire to please, a figurehead-focused loyalty and dedication that often ends poorly because there’s nothing beyond the dyad. Without external signposts, solipsism and dittoheads result.

More common and more resilient is the enrollment in the tribe. “People like us do things like this.” This is the culture we each choose to live in, the narrative of what it means to choose to be an insider. Status roles and affiliation in a perpetual dance. Enrollment in the group seems to be the dominant form of the human condition, and it’s a place where many leaders and marketers do their best work.

But peer-to-peer enrollment can co-exist with the individual’s desire for meaning and contribution. This is where dreams live and leaders come from. When people enroll in a journey to make things better through effort and contribution, they’re finding a source of inspiration and sustenance from within.

Money, cash money, is a blunt instrument used by organizations and individuals to short circuit much of the hierarchy of enrollment. The idea is that it’s a multi-purpose signifier, an easy way to say, “whatever you seek, whether it’s money for food or money to build a hospital wing, do this and you’ll get some.” And then, to make it even more brutally effective, money as an inducement is combined with the threat of banishment, with keeping someone on the knife’s edge of survival, either financial or emotional.

But money is a story, and it’s a story that is interpreted differently by different people in different moments. When we default to a simple number, we dehumanize the transaction and fail to see what people really need and want.

Where does enrollment come from? It’s certainly easier to start by hiring or leading people who are already enrolled. This is what happens with Major League Baseball calls someone up from the minors. They’re not trying to persuade this person to like baseball, and the promotion from sub-minimum wage to hundreds of thousands of dollars isn’t the lever, either. Dreams realized is enough.

But where do the dreams come from in the first place? I think it might be a combination of two things:

1. The situation/indoctrination/culture we live in.
2. The experiences we have.

Enrollment is a combination of what we do and what we’ve been surrounded by. Appropriate difficulty followed by learning. Peer support and peer pressure. Expectations understood and perhaps met. Small steps that lead to an appetite for effort and outcomes.

It’s almost impossible to manage someone to enrollment, but we can lead them there.

Qualified means that you’ve done the work, earned our trust and could be invited to join us. More than ever, our current technology and the lack of gatekeepers mean that your body of work could earn you the benefit of the doubt and give you a chance to speak up.

Disqualified is what happens if you make big promises but don’t keep them, or if you expose intent that isn’t in alignment with what the rest of us expect or need.

Unqualified is rare. As in, “you have our unqualified support.” Getting the benefit of the doubt long after most people would have lost our trust is a hard-won privilege. It’s hard to earn unqualified support, and if you do, careful not to waste it.

And too often, before we even begin looking at skill, we’re judging people for other reasons. That’s wrong and it’s wasteful as well. Being confused about what makes someone qualified or not perpetuates injustice.

Well, actually, “after a long slog” is a much more accurate way to describe it.

An overnight success almost never is.

Might as well plan for the journey.

If you’re designing a package, a cover, a fashion or even a meme…

The goal is to have it be recognizable from across the room.

That doesn’t mean it has to be loud or interruptive. But when we’re looking for it, we should be able to pick it out of a crowd.

‘Across the room’ isn’t about distance, it’s about the emotional gap, about clutter and about the status quo.

Being distinctive is a choice, and it’s not an easy one. Because it requires you to stand for something and to serve a specific audience, not everyone.

A visit to the supermarket demonstrates the power of this approach. Justin’s peanut butter, Pirate Booty snacks and the distinctive Coke bottle all pass the test. So do the best book covers.

But it also applies to the way Linda Oh plays the bass, your therapist answers the phone or Kenji Lopez-Alt writes a recipe.

Distinctive isn’t easy. But it’s worth it.

When the world was small, our understanding of ‘reality’ was consistent, which is why a good April Fool’s joke felt right. It tweaked the normal just enough to cause us to wonder about what else might not be as it seems.

But the onslaught of manipulated media and amplified division has pushed us away from our small circle of reality. Now we’re aware that so many people have a different lived experience than we do. And we are exposed–sometimes several times a minute–to falsehoods, scams and bullying.

The first of April was a day when we were supposed to be aware that not everything was as it seemed, that we should be on our guard. And now, exhausting as it is, every day is like that.

I’m hopeful that our culture is resilient enough to get back to the truth.

Show your work. Earn attention and build trust. Every day.

Too much spin simply makes us dizzy.

“The sun is trying to break through the clouds.”

“The virus doesn’t like it when people stay home and isolate.”

“The computer didn’t expect you to type that.”

Of course, the sun, the virus and the computer aren’t people. And genes aren’t actually selfish, and new data demonstrates that we don’t really have a lizard brain.

But these aren’t errors at all. It makes it easier to predict what a non-human is going to do if we imagine that it has motivations and preferences that are like ours.

Two problems can arise, though:

The first is when we assert human motivations that don’t actually do a good job of prediction. For example, imagining that events are motivated by some sort of unrelated specific superstition or narrative.

The second is more problematic: It happens when we personalize other people–imagining that they’re not just humans, but they’re us. “If I were you…” is not always a useful predictor, because you’re not me. And vice versa.

Everyone has their own history, their own biases and their own irrationalities. Personification is a useful shortcut if it helps us make smart predictions about others, but it’s a trap if we assume that we’re the only ones who are right.

Normal is the thing many don’t notice.

Until it changes. And then we can’t unsee how much we had failed to pay attention to.

Who’s on the short list for consideration, who is given the benefit of the doubt, who gets a head start…

We begin to notice the people that are artificially selected to seem like the right ones, who are then supposed to be better and anointed as normal.

I was thrilled that Unilver has decided to get rid of the word ‘normal’ on their personal care product labels. Because when it comes to people, normal is an artificial construct, the center of a statistical bell curve but not a standard that we ought to seek to achieve, even if we could.

Normal is a distribution, not a person.

This screwdriver, what’s it for? The one with with black oxide non-slip tips, tri-lobe ergonomic handles, and a special “Speed Zone” at the base of the handle, which allows for faster turning in low back torque applications. You know, the one with a nut bolster for added strength and versatility. What’s it for?

Can I use it to open a paint can? Well, sure you can, but you could find easier and cheaper substitutes. And you might get paint on the screwdriver, which would make it much less effective for its real job.

Can I use it to turn this Phillips-head screw? Well, possibly, but you’ll probably strip the screw.

Can I use it to stir my coffee? Well, sure, but why?

This all seems obvious.

And yet, we can ask the same questions about your website, your advanced degree, your office building… Or this meeting, that job description or the choice to work a nine-hour day. What’s it for?

If it’s a tool, not a destination, what’s the tool for?

It doesn’t have to be expensive, all-purpose or exactly the same as the others are using. It simply needs to do the job you need it to do better than any other alternative method.

Why are some paintings so valuable?

Works by Rothko or Matisse are worth millions. The Mona Lisa is truly priceless.

There are four reasons, all working together, all quite relevant today as we remake our culture around digital goods:

Beauty/decoration. Since before the 20,000 year old cave paintings in France, we’ve been putting things on our walls. Things that are beautiful, or remind us of important stories, or simply our humanity. It happens regardless of income or culture.

Status/scarcity. When gold became revered for its scarcity, it began to show up in the decorations of households that aspired to be seen as high status. The same happened with spiritual relics and items from antiquity. A decoration that is scarce and in demand acquires a sort of cultural beauty that some people seek out.

The printing press. Until 500 years ago, no given painting (or tapestry) was seen by many people. And then, quite suddenly, images began to spread. Durer sold many thousands of the eight editions of his woodcut, and it was one of the first famous pieces of art. And the Mona Lisa? It’s so valuable because it was stolen just as newspapers (in color!) were becoming widespread. Her face was on the front page of newspapers around the world, ensuring her celebrity for generations.

While the fame and cultural currency that the printing press created was a boon for artists, art collectors and dealers, it was also a huge problem. If a print could be had for a few dollars, what good is the original? How to satisfy those that sought status from the decoration on their walls?

First and best version. And thus the last pillar. An original oil painting is truly different from a signed print, which is different from the mass market poster. People wait in line to see a famous painting. They gasp in its presence. They take selfies with it, and it elevates the way they feel about themselves and the world.

Museums exist to show us what we all own, our shared cultural heritage, the output of our culture in the form of original work created by artists with something to say.

I’ve sat in the Art Institute for hours, simply breathing the same air as a Magritte. I grew up at the Albright Knox in Buffalo, with the DeBuffet’s, the O’Keefe’s and the Still’s. The Marisol is an old friend. They were worth the trip.

There used to be museums that forbid people from taking photographs. Over time, they’ve come to realize that this is foolish, because sharing the photographs don’t take anything away from the value of the painting, they add to it (though the sometimes annoying act of the person with a flash or a shutter click is a different story).

The top of the painting market is 50 billion dollars or more a year. Wealthy people and institutions trading scarce originals, and sometimes, perhaps, exhibiting them, for the public or for people who come over for dinner. When there’s a huge signed Jill Greenberg on the other side of the dining room table from you, it’s unforgettable.

But now, we’ve taken the printing press to a whole new level. That has made some existing paintings more famous than ever. But it has also created a billion images that were never paintings in the first place.

There are millions of painters who aspire to be at the most expensive tier of working artist creating for the auction houses and collectors, but very few achieve this goal every year. And there are countless collectors who buy paintings hoping that there value will soar, but most fail to succeed.

The art market has shifted from something that supports art to something that is mostly a market. Some collectors bought art they didn’t like, simply because they were persuaded that the system would make it increase in value or that their perception of status was so shaky that they needed the next big thing. Some painters were pushed to create painting that would go up in value instead of work they believed in. Museums ended up with tens of thousands of paintings in storage. Wealthy collectors put priceless paintings into tax-free havens, simply as a hedge, not for any of the emotions that painting originally set out to produce.

And now, if you’re a fine artist, hoping to make a living selling canvases for far more than they cost to produce, beauty is insufficient. The market for this sort of status is demanding curation and approval and yes, celebrity.

And if you’re a cyber-person, intent on pushing NFTs (the abbreviation for Non-Fungible Token, unhelpful shorthand for ‘an unduplicatable digital code that’s easy to trade and speculate on’) then it’s worth noting:

Digital tokens aren’t beautiful.

Digital tokens will never make someone gasp.

No one wants to see your hard drive.

It’s quite difficult to display the status or beauty of something that isn’t connected to 20,000 years of cultural expectations, institutional embrace and design evolution. And if you can’t display your status or enjoy the beauty, then it’s simply a speculative trade.

People buy and trade stocks in order to make a profit. Most of them are largely indifferent to what the stock certificate looks like.

I think we’re always going to be hooked on status, and we’re always going to seek beauty. I’m not sure, though, that just because we can marketize and digitize something that it will inherit so many of the cultural tropes that are at the core of the human experience.