It's tempting to enter a field where mastery is assured, where you have a very good shot of being as good at it as everyone else.
It turns out, though, that the most exciting and productive fields are those where there's a huge gap between those that are perceived to be the very best and everyone else.
The wider the gap, the more it's worth to push through it.
When someone is frequently naysaying a proposal or a situation, it's tempting to figure out how to make them happy. What can you change to find a compromise, how can you listen to their objections and respond in a way to gain their approval?
It might be, though, that being oppositional is making them happy. It may be that the best way to satisfy their objections is to let them keep objecting.
is that nothing will ever be good enough.
But the alternative, low expectations, is sad indeed.
The internet (like life) will always disappoint us. It will always be too flaky, too slow, too insulated. It will always have errors, hate and stupidity. And we had such high hopes, the promise was so big.
This is true of just about everything, and it opens the door to the realization that we can be brokenhearted or we can use those high hopes as fuel to make the next cycle even better.
Some people persist on grading themselves on a curve, ensuring that they'll never be disappointed in what they create or in the opportunities they pass by. It's a form of hiding, not an accurate insight into what you're capable of. You deserve better than that.
When TV first was adopted, it was a magical gift. The shows united our culture and the ads fueled a seemingly endless consumer boom.
Today, though, marketers have turned television into an instrument of dissatisfaction. The shows alienate many, because they bring an idealized, expensive world into the homes of people who increasingly can't afford it. And the ads remind just about everyone that their lives are incomplete and unhappy–unless they buy what's on offer. Worse, cable news is optimized to shock, frighten and divide the people who watch it.
Social media can amplify all of these downward cycles. It's TV times 1,000.
Hence a middle class, millions of people who would be as rich as kings in any other time or place, that's angry and disappointed and feeling left behind. Victims of a media regime where they are both the user and the product.
Every time TV and social media become significant time sinks in a household, pleasure goes up and happiness goes down.
The solution is simple and difficult.
We can turn it off.
If it's not getting you what you need or want, turn it off for a few hours.
There are high-end products, like camera lenses, stereo speakers and cars where the conventional wisdom is that heavier is a signifier of better. It's so widely held that in many cases, manufacturers will intentionally make their products heavier merely to send a signal that they expect will be understood as quality.
And yet, in many cases, there are exceptional performers that completely contradict this belief. That the signal, which might have made sense before, doesn't actually hold true.
We do the same signal searching when we choose a book because it's been on a bestseller list, or a college because of its ranking, or a used car because of the way the interior smells and the door slams.
The same thing is true with the way we interview people for jobs. We think that a funny, calm person who looks like we do and interviews well is precisely the person who will perform the best. And, far more often than we'd expect, this is shown to be untrue.
We've all learned this the hard way, with charismatic people and with heavy stuff, too.
Signals are great. They're even better when they're accurate, useful and relevant.
When a new technology arrives, it's often the nerds and the neophiliacs who embrace it. People who see themselves as busy and important often dismiss the new medium or tool as a bit of a gimmick and then "go back to work."
It's only a few years later when the people who understand those tools are the ones calling the shots. Because "the work" is now centered on that thing that folks hesitated to learn when they had the chance.
And so, it's the web programmers who hold the keys to the future of the business, or the folks who live in mobile. Or it's the design strategists who thrive in Photoshop and UI thinking who determine what gets built or invested in…
There's never a guarantee that the next technology is going to be the one that moves to the center of the conversation. But it's certain that a new technology will. It always has.
It doesn't pay to say to the CFO: These numbers on the P&L aren't true.
And arguing with Walmart or Target about your market share stats doesn't work either.
You can't make things better if you can't agree on the data.
Real breakthroughs are sometimes accompanied by new data, by new metrics, by new ways of measurement. But unless we agree in advance on what's happening, it's difficult to accomplish much.
If you don't like what's happening, an easy way out appears to be to blame the messenger. After all, if the data (whether it's an event, a result or a law of physics) isn't true, you're off the hook.
The argument is pretty easy to make: if the data has ever been wrong before, if there's ever been bias, or a mistake, or a theory that's been improved, well, then, who's to say that it's right this time?
"Throw it all out." That's the cowardly and selfish thing to do. Don't believe anything that makes you look bad. All video is suspect, as is anything that is reported, journaled or computed.
The problem is becoming more and more clear: once we begin to doubt the messenger, we stop having a clear way to see reality. The conspiracy theories begin to multiply. If everyone is entitled to their own facts and their own narrative, then what exists other than direct emotional experience?
And if all we've got is direct emotional experience, our particular statement of reality, how can we possibly make things better?
If we don't know what's happened, if we don't know what's happening, and worst of all, if we can't figure out what's likely to happen next, how do take action?
No successful organization works this way. It's impossible to imagine a well-functioning team of people where there's a fundamental disagreement about the data.
Demand that those you trust and those you work with accept the ref's calls, the validity of the x-ray and the reality of what's actually happening. Anything less than that is a shortcut to chaos.
For me, it’s not “do what you feel like doing,” because that’s unlikely to be useful.
You might feel like hanging out on the beach, telling off your boss or generally making nothing much of value. Authenticity as an impulse is hardly something to aspire to.
It’s not, “say whatever is on your mind,” either.
Instead, I define it as, “consistent emotional labor.”
We call a brand or a person authentic when they’re consistent, when they act the same way whether or not someone is looking. Someone is authentic when their actions are in alignment with what they promise.
Showing up as a pro.
Keeping promises.
Even when you don’t feel like it.
Especially when you don’t.
When I started as a book packager, there were 40,000 books published every year. Every single book I did, every single one, had a substitute.
Every time we had an idea, every time we were about to submit a proposal, we discovered that there was already a book on that topic. Someone else had 'stolen' my idea before I had even had it.
The only topics I invented that had never been published before were books I was unable to sell.
No one expects you to do something so original, so unique, so off the wall that it has never been conceived of before. In fact, if you do that, it's unlikely you will find the support you need to do much of anything with your idea.
Your ideas have all been stolen already.
So, now you can work to merely make things that are remarkable, delightful and important. You can focus on connection, on making a difference, on building whole solutions that matter.
Isn't that a relief?
for a journey with stress.
You get the journey and you get the stress. At the end, you're a different person. But both elements are part of the deal.
There are plenty of journeys that are stress-free. They take you where you expect, with little in the way of surprise or disappointment. You can call that a commute or even a familiar TV show in reruns.
And there's plenty of stress that's journey-free. What a waste.
We can grow beyond that, achieve more than that and contribute along the way. But to do so, we might need to welcome the stress and the journey too.
