My office was getting disorganized, with papers spread all over the place. So yesterday I took a couple hours to clean up and organize. I used three key principles that I learned years ago. I apply these whenever I organize files, tasks or physical items. Continue reading >
What Drives You: Emptiness or Fulfillment?
What drives you? The present or the future? What you lack or what you could become? Envy or ambition? Pain or pleasure?
Friday I read a blog post with the premise that innovation and success require first being unhappy or dissatisfied. I had a similar conversation with a friend this weekend.
Now I won’t claim that dissatisfaction and unhappiness can’t be powerful drivers for change. But a requirement for change? I disagree.
Change, action, innovation, success, whatever you call it, can be driven by emptiness or fulfillment. By moving away from the past or by moving toward the future. It can be a push away from unhappiness or a pull toward mastery and perfection.
The Science of Happiness Reading List
Tonight I am hosting a TEDxAsheville Salon, presenting Martin Seligman’s excellent video on positive psychology. Afterwards we’ll discuss the video. If you’re in Asheville, you should attend.
Positive psychology studies happiness and well-being. Unlike much of psychology (but not all), it studies people who are not feeling depressed, suicidal, addicted or schizophrenic. It studies those feeling elated and satisfied with their lives.
But why?
To learn what makes people happy and to teach others to be happy.
The secret: happiness can be learned. It can be increased by practicing specific techniques, similar to how muscles grow from strength training exercises (and just like muscles, happiness is partly genetic).
Over the past year, I’ve been reading about positive psychology, well-being and happiness. As a followup to TEDxAsheville Salon tonight, I’ve collected links and resources I’ve bookmarked on the science of happiness below. Please enjoy. Continue reading >
Why Economic Developers Need Lean Startups
An underground movement stirs in isolated groups of entrepreneurs across the country. It aims to reduce failure when starting a new business, and when failure does occur, to force it to happen faster so less time and money gets wasted.
That movement is called The Lean Startup.
Started in the world of high growth Internet startups, entrepreneurs are applying its practices to all types of businesses. And just as lean manufacturing transformed manufacturing, the Lean Startup movement will transform new business development.
Economic developers pay heed. By teaching your burgeoning entrepreneurs the lean startup methodology, you can increase your success rate and reduce the impact that failed businesses have on their owners. Continue reading >
7 Reasons Business Professionals Should Learn JavaScript
Are you a business professional who uses the Internet to perform research, use web-based business software, manage your customers, prepare reports or analyze data?
Then you should learn JavaScript.
JavaScript used to be just for geeks. But increasingly JavaScript is becoming the lingua franca of the web. The skill of writing JavaScript lies where typing was in the 80s. It’s not required yet, but it gives you a competitive advantage.
JavaScript can help you:
- Add functionality to your spreadsheets
- Customize your web-based business software
- Automate your Windows applications
- Enhance your desktop
- Tailor your browsing experience
- Build database reports
- Visualize your data
Marc Andreessen wrote a recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Why Software Is Eating the World. While he focuses on software companies, software inside companies, particularly simple scripts, is having the same dramatic impact. Continue reading >
9 Awesome TED Talks
TEDxAsheville has started a weekly salon series showcasing awesome TED talks, with discussion afterwards about the talk.
In honor of my friend Pam Lewis choosing the talk for this week’s salon, I’m posting 9 TED talks that were just awesome. If you live in Asheville, register for the TEDxAsheville Salon or stop by Posana Cafe Thursdays from 5:00pm – 6:30pm.
4 Video Sites For Daily Learning
I love to learn new things every day. It generates a constant stream of ideas and helps me improve personally and professionally.
My favorite new way of learning is watching videos on my iPad while doing chores or relaxing. Tablets are portable and can stood up on a countertop or table to make watching videos easy and hands-free. I bought the Logitech Z515 wireless speaker to overcome the noise of loud chores.
What do I watch?
- TED – Talks
Always informative, often entertaining. Search by keyword, topic or feeling. Use “Show by length” to find talks that match the length of your chore. - AppSumo
If you’re in the tech/startup world, AppSumo has great deals on training videos. I grab all the free deals and occasionally buy deals. So far I haven’t been disappointed in anything I’ve watched. - Mind Tools – Videos
For professional development, Mind Tools can’t be beat. Their articles teach everything from leadership to project management to decision making. I just discovered the videos, so don’t know yet the quality of those. - YouTube – How To Channel
Search for videos using the keywords “how to”, “learn to”, “instructions”, “tutorial” and “lesson”. Combine with the keywords of your interests to find online training videos. Or surf the YouTube How To channel
Do you watch online videos to learn daily? Where have you found great videos?
Tackle Your Weaknesses
When I was two I almost drowned.
Ever since, water and I have had a strained relationship. I learned to swim when I was nine or ten, but have never liked swimming. I always keep my head above water.
Today, I swam my first set of laps. And tomorrow I plan to swim again.
Last night my friend Jason and I were talking about which exercises keep you in shape as you get older. Swimming and running seemed to be about equal. He swims 2-3 times a week. I just started running after noticing that runners seem to maintain their fitness level the most as they age.
But running has its disadvantages. And even if you run, you should cross-train. And while I recently took up biking as well, swimming was looming at me. A weakness I hadn’t tackled yet. The one that would prevent me from ever being in a triathlon, one of the ultimate tests of endurance.
Today I started to tackle that weakness.
Continue reading >
How Do You Separate Your Interests & Identities?
Today I have a question to ask: how do you separate your interests & identities?
Traditionally I’ve separated my life into three identities:
- Personal: Things having nothing to do with work
- Professional: Things having to do with my career, but not necessarily my business
- Corporate: Things directly related to my business
Online these roughly align to:
- Personal: Facebook & an old personal web site
- Professional: LinkedIn, @FastFedora & this web site
- Corporate: @LabEscape & the Lab Escape web site
While a bit complicated, this has been easy to manage.
Lately though I’ve been broadening my professional interests and sharing personal interests that have relevance to my professional life. Continue reading >
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
Steve Jobs resigned from Apple yesterday. As his era ends, people have been reflecting on key moments in his life. One moment resonated with me: his 2005 Stanford commencement speech. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I urge you to do so.
At the end of the speech, he signs off with the last message from the Whole Earth Catalog: Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.
I started reflecting on what this truly means.
To me, staying hungry means always having a mountain to climb, an ambition you’re striving toward. As we age, we often achieve our ambitions and forget to set new ones. Once you’ve scaled the mountain and discover the amazing view, you work toward building roads to show others that view or return to the base so you can scale it again.
But while expanding on our successes brings us stability, growth requires that we attempt new challenges. To be always hungry for more, and to never rest on past achievements.
Richard St. John presented an excellent TED Talk on this exact subject: Success is a continuous journey.
Staying foolish means being willing to take chances with crazy ideas. This implies a willingness to fail, as most crazy ideas will fail. But those that succeed, often succeed fantastically.
As others have pointed out, this embodies the ethos of the entrepreneur. To take on new challenges that others think are crazy, and then to succeed doing them. To do the impossible.
What things have you done that were foolish and succeeded, or only would have happened because you had a gut-level hunger to make them happen?
Recent Comments