This month I’m posting every day, picking the top voted reader question and answering it. With 37 votes, submitted by Andrew Holloway, is:
When do you know that you have something worth saying or teaching?
I often find myself caught between two competing thoughts: that I don’t know enough to help anyone, and that I should help anyone I can by speaking/writing to others about my experiences or how to do something. As a speaker and writer, was there a point where you felt you were “qualified” to speak or write? Did it evolve over time, or arrive at a moment?
The French Coin Drop is the easiest magic trick in the world to learn yet I never run out of people who don’t know how to do it. Even the most basic unit of knowledge will be new to many. In that case look around: if you’re the only one at the dinner table who knows the trick, guess who the best possible teacher is? It’s you. Worth is relative. If David Blane shows up yield the floor, but otherwise everyone is looking to you. Put simply something is worth teaching if the person learning it thinks it’s worthwhile.
The fear inexperienced writers have is that everything has been said already. Even if this is true, no one has read it all. You may be the first person that offers to teach them a specific skill, or tells a story in a way that they connect with. It’s Ok To Be Obvious since the person reading your work probably does not know everything you or your peers do. Oddly enough, there is always the largest market for people who can teach the basics in any skill, or tell stories that strike at the universal themes of heroes, love and loss. Experts and snobs complain about books that are too basic, but they’re in the minority on this planet. You don’t need to write for everyone, you need to write for your audience and you can’t find your audience until you start writing.
Personally I know I might have something worth saying when an idea resonates with me and stays in my mind. It could be a critique of something I heard, a powerful story, or even an interesting quote. I keep a notebook with me at all times and write these small observations down. The ones that stay in mind end up as drafts and it’s in the process of trying to write a draft that I learn if I really do have something worth sharing or not. I throw away many drafts and have many half written ones that maybe I’ll return to, but maybe I won’t. Creation is messy and accepting the mess is the biggest challenge for many people who want to make things.
I’m interested in writing and speaking about important things that go unsaid. I like to demystify, debunk and critique sloppy thinking and I try to be brave in taking on subjects that many people think are wrong but are afraid to speak up about. Even something as straightforward as How To Write A Good Bio is a radical simplification of the stupid things I constantly see people do. I try not to be a cynic, and even my critical posts like How to Call BS On a Guru are intended to elevate the reader’s thinking and not just tear down someone else’s thoughts. Even when I rant I work hard to offer an alternative.
My advice is to write and speak anyway even if you have doubts. It’s only through writing and speaking that you’ll improve your thinking and invite feedback from other people. That’s the only way to improve your judgement and craft. I’ve been doing this for years and if you like what I do it’s explained more by commitment than talent. The worst that can happen in writing is no one will read what you have to say. So what? Most writers aren’t widely read, including successful ones. But it’s through publishing and calling something finished that you invite the most useful feedback and that’s the only way to learn better judgement about both what’s worth writing about, and how to write about those things well.
This month I’m posting every day, picking the top voted reader question and answering it. With 41 votes, submitted by Carey, is:
What is your advice to a guy who truly DON’T feel a calling/urge/nudge to be any other than an average Joe who loves his family?
My interest in this question is based on the fact that there are people who are pretty average and are meant to be. They are the blue collar glue that holds society together. With all the “you can be extraordinary” hype that is flying around these days, I wonder sometimes what those kind of folks take away.
In America we’ve perverted exceptionalism to mean something selfish. Much like the obsession with productivity, we’ve inflated people’s ambitions such that everyone believes they can be exceptional at anything they wish. There is an unavoidable arrogance in wanting to be great, an attitude of “Get out of my way, I’m trying to be exceptional!” To which everyone around says “yes, you are an exceptional asshole.”
Exceptionalism is not necessarily good. The worst people in history were exceptional, that’s why they’re in history books. Stalin, Lenin, and Pol Pot all did horrible, hurtful things to other people with their exceptional talents. They were also productive, shedding light on another value we’ve twisted into meaninglessness. Exceptional and productive people contribute only if they create positive value for others. Earning vast personal wealth or being a star-athlete doesn’t make you a good person, especially if your success has come at the expense of others. There are many examples of over-achievers who were awful to their families and friends, as their obsession with becoming exceptional blinded them to their the destructive power of the own narcissism. For the fate of humanity, it’s better that you’re mediocre at doing the right things than exceptional at doing the wrong ones. It’s ok to be average if you’re using your averageness for good.
If I were stranded on a desert island I wouldn’t want “exceptional people” as companions. There wouldn’t be enough space on the island for their collective egos. I’d want ordinary, good natured, honest, hard working people who were reasonable to deal with, had faith in collaboration, and wanted to build a community more than a shrine to their individual achievements. It’s people with blue collar attitudes who have had the most resistance to the hype of over-achievement. It’s people who felt comfortable with themselves without a world record to their name or a fancy car to drive that provide the basis for civilization at all. Most all-star teams fail because there is too much ego, and the level of talent is less of a problem that wanting attitudes. In most kinds of work you don’t need that many exceptional people to do the work a team needs to do.
It has always been the salt of the earth among us, like firefighters and teachers, that make the largest sacrifices for the smallest rewards, for the greater benefit of the people around them. They don’t do it to be on the cover of a magazine, they do it because it seems the right thing to do. They are the highest form of exceptional people in that they don’t demand attention for their contributions. They’re more interested in living in a loving family, a great neighborhood, or an amazing country, than any personal achievement, which fundamentally changes the way they apply their talents and who they hope to help with them.
We are a social species and it’s clear what matters most to our own personal well being are our bonds with friends, parents, children, coworkers and neighbors. It’s our ability to share our daily experiences with them that defines a fulfilling life more than anything else we do while alive. And it’s this that is the greatest tragedy of people in pursuit of the exceptional: they believe it is their achievements that will win them the love and respect they need to feel whole, when the opposite is true as wholeness can’t be won. It’s only through the ordinary, humble participation in the lives of people around us that fulfillment can be found.
How do you overcome cynicism in an environment determined to maintain it?
You overcome a toxic environment by walking out the door. Unless you happen to be a powerful person in the organization, it is not your fault that the environment is cynical, broken, dysfunctional, toxic, demented, twisted or incompetent. Managers and executives are paid a great deal more than the average employee and the main thing that comes with that pay grade is accountability. If the place depresses you, look upwards: the people in power make it this way. If nothing changes, it is no accident. It’s uncommon for people in power to be motivated to make big changes since they like being in power and change creates risk.
On a personal level, cynicism is for cowards. To be alive in this mostly dead universe is a miracle. To be born in a time and a country with clean running water, electricity and public schools is another. To be able to read, write and think well enough to complain coherently is a third. When it comes down to it, cynics are simply not paying attention.
Progress might be improbable, but low odds are what we’ve been working with all along. Do the thought exercise: if you had to time travel to the past, what year would you pick? If you do your homework I bet you’ll discover that the year you are in, as terrible you might see it, is better in most ways than any other so far. I’m not saying it’s great, or good, but if it sucks the least we can also say it’s the best we have, at least so far.
While I am all for skepticism, and by that I mean the challenging of assumptions, I am an unrepentant optimist about the opportunities we have, simply because we are alive. We can do almost anything. The problem is most of the interesting things take significant effort to do and it’s far easier to be cynical, not try, blame others and take false pride in complaining than to put effort into the uncertainties of trying to change things.
Cognitive bias wires us for denial and avoidance. It’s not easy to keep your eyes open but that is the only way progress is possible. History tells us progress can happen but is never likely. It is never the default and not something we get for free. In the worst of all cases I’d rather be Sisyphus walking up that hill every day, thinking, pondering, trying, learning, than the nameless guy at the bottom of the hill doing nothing for all eternity and whining about it.
If you do have an ally, talk to them. Come up with a plan. Aim for small wins and use them to draw others to your cause. You may need to do most of the work at first, but their support to defend what you do, and provisioning resources, may be enough to convince peers to join in.
If you don’t have an ally, make a friend. Who do you get along with in your world that you can share your point of view with? Maybe they see something you don’t. Outsiders can’t see everything insiders can and vice-versa. If you have no friends, read. You will find friends in our histories of people who felt like you do and did something about it.
Even if you are powerful, you can only change a culture one person at a time. See how to fix a team for advice on how to lead change. All change starts small. It must be grown, not constructed.
If you have no power, but have the choice, there is no shame in leaving a situation. It’s brave to quit in our culture if it’s for the right reasons. Only by leaving a bad situation do you give yourself the opportunity to create a better one.
“In this very real world, good doesn’t drive out evil. Evil doesn’t drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.” – William Bernbach
Each week I take the top voted question from readers and answer it (submit yours here). With 35 votes, this week’s winner was “Are Hospitals More Important Than Art?” submitted by awesome reader Sara Vermeylen.
Questions like this are fun, even if absurd. Like Street Smarts vs. Book Smarts, it’s a kind of false dichotomy. But like the game Zobmando where you must decide between two ridiculous choices, you can have great intellectual fun in crafting arguments for one side or the other (or both).
If survival is at stake, I’d choose hospitals. A hospital, assuming it comes with smart doctors and fancy equipment, keeps a popular healthy, lengthens lifespans, improves the survival odds of reproduction, and provides a core public service everyone needs. If everyone is sick and dying, art has limited value, and of course it’s harder for sick and dying artists to make art than healthy ones.
But art is a critical part of what it is to be human. As miserable as conditions were for our ancestors 30,000 years ago, they took time to make elaborate cave paintings. If art were meaningless, why did they bother way back then? The answer is we are both social creatures and tool makers. Central to our survival has been the ability to communicate ideas, and art is one tool for developing the ability to imagine, observe, record and communicate thoughts. Art is also a tool of expression, a way to capture ideas, feelings, memories and dreams for others to see. Art, in the form of tattoos, face-paint, and even flags, has helped us throughout history to define our identity and remind us of shared connections. Music, books, paintings and movies are forms of art we depend on to help us understand who we are and how we want to live. We are aspirational creatures and a primary way we define what is possible for ourselves is through the art our artists makes for us.
What do you think?
I’ve been working with the folks at FreshMuse on a new feature: Mind Control.
I’ve always enjoyed Q&A with you folks (see reader’s choice) – now I have a way to ensure this happens all the time.
We’ve built a beta version of Ask Berkun. You get to control my mind and pick what I write about each week.
You can:
Submit a question you want me to write about
Vote on other submissions
You get 30 votes a month (for now)
I will:
Pick the top voted question each week and write about it
It’s a BETA version. You may find bugs. If you do, please report them here as a comment.
I’m going to a conference for the first time, in part to meet an author that inspired me who’s speaking there. Do you have any advice on what to do and, mainly, what NOT to do when I meet him?
I know that I’d love to talk with him about a lot of things, but I don’t wanna bother him. To be honest, I’m a little anxious. How can I help make this more natural, without killing the authenticity? Am I already killing it by thinking about it and asking for your guidance?
I don’t know that anyone has traveled and paid for an event just to meet me, but I have had the good fortune to meet people who are fans of my work. It always feels good to meet the people who like what I do and it’s easy to be nice to them, since their purchases make my career possible. Often they’re truly fun and friendly to hang around.
But I have had some awkward experiences too where people expect a little too much from me, forgetting that the dynamic isn’t symmetric: they’ve known my work intimately for months or years, but I’ve just met them for the first time and it’s impossible for me to catch up in just an hour, much less a few minutes.
Here’s what I advise:
Set your expectations low. People who make great books, movies or games are just people of course, but in our minds as fans we build up an image that is impossible to live up to (Some of the marketing artists and makers do fuels this of course). A book or song can be perfect, but people never are. It’s worth looking over the 12 reasons you should never meet your hero as many people tell disappointing tales of meeting their lifelong idol. I myself have met some of my heroes, and I’m convinced if you set your expectations right, it can be a thrill. The trap is many people expect far too much and end up unnecessarily disappointed.
Be patient and simple. Most speakers at events are accessible directly after they give their presentation. A crowd forms near the stage and fans take turns asking questions or getting autographs. Have one thing you want to ask or say, and plan for that to be the totality of the experience. A simple “I’m a big fan of your work and it has inspired me. Thanks for doing what you do” goes a long way. No one tires of hearing this. If you want a picture or an autograph, that’s great. Or if a burning question has been on your mind, ask away. Let that be your one request. But after that, let someone else have their moment. If your hero isn’t speaking but merely attending, politely introduce yourself when you see them in a hallway and then make your request (don’t wait for a perfect opportunity, since at a big event you might not even see them more than once).
In social situations, leave them a way out. At smaller events, or if you’re lucky to spend significant time with them, always make sure they have a way to escape and that you haven’t cornered them into spending an evening with you hovering over their shoulder like a gregarious hummingbird all night long. If you do want more time with them, collaborate with another fan or two so the offer comes from a friendly group and not a solo stranger. If your hero wants to spend all night talking to you or share a meal, or have you join his/her social circle that evening, that’s great, but be polite about not assuming you’re their new personal companion.
Contact them online, before the event, if you want a dialog. Email has the tremendous benefit that recipients can respond at the time they wish. There’s much less social pressure in email, whereas at an event, there is tremendous social and time pressure on famous people. Email them before the event with a very well thought out comment or question, and/or a strong thanks for their work and how it inspired you. Mention you’ll be at the event and hope to meet them. Odds are very good you’ll get a reply if your email is thoughtful, well written and not too long. Pick one clear question to ask if you have one, rather than a litany of little ones. I get a lot of email, but the odds of getting a reply rise dramatically for the ones that are well-written, thoughtful and ask clear questions (that they know I haven’t answered elsewhere). Many blog posts here on stage.scottberkun.com/ come from reader questions, which I love to get.
Bring a copy of their book, album or whatever they make. It’s impossible for me not to notice someone in the audience who is holding a copy of one of my books. I can’t help but want to talk to them, as they’re visually putting up a flag that they’re a fan and probably want an autograph. I might feel differently if everyone in the audience showed up one day with a copy of my books (that might be a little terrifying but I’d like to find out of course). I don’t know of any musician or writer who doesn’t respond with the same undeniable joy when they see a stranger with the book or CD that took years to make in their hands.
Many of the posts I write are inspired by reader questions and requests. Smaranda Calin,one of my awesome fans, asked: what’s the role of a university education in this day and age since so much is changing?
Every generation believes they’re exceptional for the same stupid reason: they know nothing about any other generation. They might be right but if they are its by accident. We all suffer from chronocentricism, the assumption the present is special or the most important time in history. This is charmingly narcissistic when you realize every generation in history thought the same thing.
Certainly many things change quickly today, but we confuse speed with scale. The first generation to have electricity in their homes, or to switch from horses to cars dealt with a scale of change much greater than anything in the last 20 years. We still type on QWERTY keyboards and mail things to each other using mostly text, which has been true for 100 years. Upgrading from a Blackberry to an iPhone 5 certainly represents tremendous technological progress, but it’s not much of a cultural leap for most people to follow. Speed and scale are not the same thing.
The value then of a college degree comes down to two questions:
What important things change slowly that are worth learning?
Can a college degree give them to you?
Things you always need in life
There is a long list of things people hope to get from college. Most of them are things you need no matter what era you are born into.
To learn how to ask good questions
To learn how to find or develop good answers
An understanding of what happened before you were born
To develop a skill, craft or discipline
Learning to manage your time and work vs. life
Chances to build nurturing relationships with people who know more than you
Chances to build good relationships with friends for now and later
A path towards a profession
Opportunities to figure out who the hell you are
Good college experiences provide many of these. But of course there are other ways to get them.
Most attempts to measure the worth of college focus on the financials. 86% of U.S. college graduates say its worth it, but they’re biased of course since they’ve just invested more in college than anything else in their lives.
A better answer depends on how many of the things listed above you can get without college. Maybe you see clear ways to get these things through other means. Or perhaps you recognize you have no idea how to get these things. Or that you’ve lived a sheltered, protected life so far and very much need to immerse yourself in an intensely new environment perhaps geographically distant from your hometown. If that is important to you and you can’t get it any other way, college might be worth it no matter how much it costs.
Most high school students make blind choices about college because they’re too young to understand what they really want from it. They’re told “you should go” so they follow along like the good robots they’ve been in going from elementary school to high school. Or they decide, at 19, “I want to be a doctor” as if they have any clue what that means beyond TV shows and that it makes their Mom happy when they say it. A gap year is a fantastic idea and I’d bet it improves the odds people who choose to go to college get what they need. They have a clearer picture of who they are, what the world might be like when they graduate and what they want from life, all of which makes choices about college easier to make.
It depends
Like all investments, college is a bet. Depending on who you are, what you want, where you choose to go, and what choices you make while there (this never gets enough emphasis as college is four years worth of daily decisions), it may pay off and it may not. Some people go to a great school and have an awesome experience, but find it doesn’t help much seeking employment. But if they’d chosen a more practical major, they might not have had that awesome experience they did. Who knows. There are many variables beyond going to college or not going. Other people are miserable in college but stick it out anyway, and then spend their lives regretting their ‘wasted years’. College is an investment, not a guarantee.
I graduated from Carnegie Mellon University. It was a fantastic place to be if you knew exactly what career you wanted to have. If you weren’t sure, it was a miserable place. It wasn’t designed to support exploration in the way a school like Evergreen University is. Before Carnegie Mellon University I had a very rough ride. I stumbled my way through two other colleges, Drew University and Queens College spending most of my first two years making big mistakes. Those mistakes helped me sort out what I wanted and why and I was lucky to turn it around. But even so I made even more mistakes before I finished. If I were to do it again I’d interact with my professors very differently: I was paying them and I should never have feared them the way I did.
In the broadest strokes big decisions like these depend on many factors. If forced I’d say it’s worth it to go for everyone. A student can always drop out if they realize it’s not for them and that realization will help them understand what it is they should do instead. But if you never go you deny yourself the chance of discovering something clearly valued by the vast majority who have done it. I firmly believe in erring on the side of doing, rather than not doing.
Q: How has de-individualization impacted society in the recent years and will it grow or can it be stopped?
This is one of those fun but messy questions that is so loaded with assumptions there’s no way to answer it without taking it apart first.
Which societies are we talking about? There isn’t some annual meeting of nations where they all decide collectively whether this year they’re going to be more or less against individuals than last year. Each has its own trajectory and action. Some are more hostile than others, some less. Some are improving, some are getting worse. And some are getting better in some ways, and getting worse in others.
I’d say in general, around the world, freedom has progressed, but not in a straight line and not for everyone. According to wikipedia, in 1972 there were 40 democracies in the world, and 123 in 2007. The use of the word democracy has wide variance, but even so, this suggests the general trend is positive. If people can vote, and their votes influence the government, a certain kind of individualism is allowed.
The next distinction is between society and government. If we are talking government, the question becomes is the government a non-corrupt republic, where the citizens are represented effectively in the government. If everyone votes to elect representatives who limit individual rights, then that is, by proxy, the will of the people. They can choose next time to elect people who extend more rights to individuals or not.
I don’t know that a society can be against individuals, since a society is composed of individuals. If they collectively agree to restrict certain behaviors, than the individuals involved are making those choices: how can you be against yourself? All cultures allow and restrict behavior based on their shared values, and one shared value is tolerance (or not) for people who have different values. While I’m be free to a NY Yankee Fan in South Boston, the culture there would likely beat me to a pulp regularly for choosing to express allegiance to that sports tribe openly. Alternatively, if I chose to be a NY Yankee Fan in Jakarta, where few people might know what a Yankee is, I might be free to be as big a fan as I like.
If people aren’t free to move to a different society (say, a more or less conservative town in their country) then the question is less about individualism and more about mobility. They are related, as your ability to be an individual depends on your ability to find a town that accepts the you that you want to be, but mobility and individualism are not the same thing.
Freedom of expression is one way to think about individualism. The rights of free press and assembly are two good measures to look at. I couldn’t find an index value over time for this, but did find that Reporters without Borders does rank nations annually in their freedom of press (The U.S. ranks 47th this year, Finland #1). However, you could define individualism as property rights or other specific freedoms, which would change what data you’d look at answer the question.
What does individualism mean to you? And how would you measure whether a city or nation is making it easier or harder to be an individual?
In a series of posts, called ask berkun, I write on whatever topics people submit and vote for.
This week: How to speak to a bored audience
All audiences are bored. If not now, then soon. Listening is boring, and listening to boring people talk about boring work in boring ways is even more boring. As a speaker I go in thinking “these people are probably bored to death from the last speaker”, as I would be. Here’s a fun trick: next time you are in an audience at a lecture, look to your left and your right. You’ll notice how bored everyone is, even if the speaker is doing well.
The surprise is there’s a huge advantage if the audience is bored. Their expectations are low. If you do anything interesting at all, such as not suck, you will stand out. If you prepared correctly (meaning you practiced, have clear points, are enthusiastic about them, and understand why the audience showed up) you’ll seem interesting. All things equal I’d rather follow a very boring, pretentious speaker than a fantastic one.
Most speakers fail to give the audience what they came for, which is usually: practicalanswers to the questions they have on your topic, and it’s the hope of hearing these answers that compelled them to the lecture in the first place . People perk up instantly when you start giving them what they came for. If you choose this as your opening comment, you’ll have them from the start (“There are 5 things I think you want to know about X and here they are. Number 1…”).
And when they hear you answers are good, practical, interesting, and useful you will have their full attention. It’s that simple. But few speakers have good material. Few speakers have good thinking on the right questions in their material. Pretense, fear and ego blind smart people into doing stupid things, in lectures and at large.
The other challenge is it’s hard to judge an audience while you are presenting. The vibe you feel on stage can be different from what the audience is feeling. All performers know this, and prepare themselves to go on with the show with enthusiasm even if they don’t get the energy from the room they hoped for. If you go to Japan or Scandinavia, where the culture is more polite, you could be Chris Rock or Louis CK and not get much energy back from the room, despite how awesome they thought you were.
If you dig this answer, you should check out Confessions of a Public Speaker – it goes in depth on this approach and the steps you need to get it right.
How do you think that a client should be managed if they just do not want to understand the process or how things are being build? How should you react if a client always asks to shorten timings and they do not trust the people that are setting up the schedule just because they are not aware of the production process and are not willing to learn and understand?
There are only three answers.
Your process sucks. Maybe they have good reasons for ignoring your process. It’s possible they see its flaws or it’s too complex for what they need. This might not be true, but it’s your job to consider the possibility they’re right, even if they’re only 10% or 15% right. One trick is to anticipate the likely points of tension during a project before it starts, and discuss them with your client before they happen. Then when they occur, you’ve preloaded their expectations for how to handle.
You need to stand firm and, with patience and empathy, explain it better. You might be right, but if they don’t understand why, it doesn’t matter. You can’t expect people to pay extra money for what they don’t understand. The skills of teaching and persuasion are unlikely to come with whatever domain expertise you have, so go work on those. Or find another consultant who is better and involve them (watch and learn). The last option is to share the tradeoffs and let them decide: “yes, we can get it done tomorrow but we’ll have to cut one of these three features” or “yes, we can get it all done tomorrow, but the quality of each feature will drop”.
Find new clients. There are some clients not worth having. If you find one, your goal is not to do business with them again. If they refuse to respect your expertise and don’t trust you, a good working relationship is impossible (If your boss doesn’t understand this situation, as in never willing to get involved and help, start looking for a new job). The occasional big fish who is difficult is hard to avoid, but generally there’s little reason for a good firm that does good work to endure insane clients.
This week it’s: Why does transparency matter? submitted by Nick Finck.
Whenever I hear talk of transparency I think of overhead projectors. This dates me significantly, but it used to be professors wrote their lessons on sheets of cellophane called transparencies. These were thought to be clever since the clear sheets let the light through, making what you wrote on them visible.
Transparency is good for this reason. It lets you see. In management literature these days transparency is seen as good. If Rupert and Marla can see what the CEO is thinking, or what the actual revenue numbers look like, they’ll better understand why they’re being asked to do whatever they’re doing.
So Level 1 of transparency is achieving clarity. You give access to more information so people can see what is going on and why. The challenge is the more others see of how things really work, the more complex it can seem. Reality is a mess. Most people, most of the time, don’t really want to know how the sausage is made, despite what they say (e.g. Many talk about food, but are afraid to watch Food Inc.). When you open things up in the spirit of transparency it can be disruptive and confusing if not done carefully. Or if you haven’t hired people who can handle so much of the truth.
And even if the top secret plans are well thought out and explained well, you have a new problem. What happens if Rupert sees flaws in the CEO’s thinking, now that its been revealed? Is it acceptable for Rupert to ask questions? Will the CEO accept them respectfully? Will he incorporate good feedback? If not, then transparency is one way, and has limited value. If my plan as CEO is to do something very stupid, say to start a chain of hamster-burger franchises, and the world hates hamsterburgers, yet I insist on betting the company on them, transparency doesn’t help much.
The real goal is Level 2: achieving better thinking. But this doesn’t happen merely because people can see what’s going on. Better thinking happens only when leaders listen to feedback and incorporate better ideas into their plans. Being transparent and open might increase the odds better thinking happens, but it doesn’t guarantee it. Leaders still have to behave graciously when criticized, and reward people who come forward with good ideas, and not with token praise, but with the true reward of improving the plan based on their ideas.
When it comes to marketing, transparency is more contrived. If someone is selling a product or service there are some things they will never say, even if they know them to be true. They will never say “This product is not as good as our competitors”, “Our customer service sucks” or “I know this sounds cool but we know almost no one uses it after they buy it”. Wise consumers know this. We keep in mind there are a set of things marketers and sales people will never ever say. If the dynamic is sales or PR there are unsaid but fundamental limits to how transparent the message can be.
Social media rhetoric often uses the word authenticity, but it’s the wrong word to use. The web and social media have humanized sales and marketing, as the personality of human beings comes through in greater force. But that’s not the same as being authentic. Marketing is the wrong school of thought to use to determine what is authentic and what isn’t, don’t you think? The words “old-fashioned” and “home-made” appear on goods made in large, new factories, thanks to marketers and their talents.
Trust is always more important than authenticity and transparency. On the human level, to say “Fred is so transparent” means something negative. We literally mean we see through him to his untrustworthy core. The more I trust you the less I need to know the details of your plans or operations. Honesty, diligence, fairness, and clarity are the hallmarks of good relationships of all kinds and lead to the magic of trust. And it’s trust that’s hardest to earn and easiest to destroy, making it the most precious attribute of all. Becoming more transparent is something you can do by yourself, but trust is something only someone else can give to you. If transparency leads to trust, that’s great, but if it doesn’t you have bigger problems to solve.
This week: Why does faith matter? Why do people think it is important to believe in God or not? (submitted by Divya)
These are many reasons faith matters (and entire books on the topic). And I’m sure my take on all of them will get me in trouble. But ok. You guys voted for it, so here we go.
1. It’s not a choice for many. Most people on this planet mostly believe what their parents believed. For many this is fine, but for some it’s a problem, especially if you’re the kind of person who realizes if everyone only believed what their parents did, we might still be stuck in the dark ages. Or still be up in the trees in Africa, dreaming of fire.
Religious faith matters for many reasons, but one is tradition. We are social creatures and use traditions of many kinds to form families, tribes, cultures and nations. Historically there was little separation between religion and culture (The polytheism of the ancients likely had some), meaning most traditions,and cultural binding forces, were religious in nature. And we do things our parents did, from celebrating holidays, to rooting for the same sports teams (a quasi-religion), for the simple reason it’s a way for us to feel connected. Unless there is some separation between culture and religion, people will be encouraged to share their parents beliefs – or never explore what their own beliefs are. Historically religion (e.g. faith) and culture are wound up together and hard to separate.
Faith, or even the pretense of faith often found in empty religious practice (“I’m a angel on Sunday, and a devil in-between”), can serve our sense of tradition. To say “I believe X”, or ask “Why do I believe X and not Y?” when your entire family, or town, believes Z, requires tremendous courage and self-knowledge, which few have. You’d have to be willing to risk all the things you care about based on a belief – or merely an interest in exploring what you believe – it’s safer to pretend and keep your beliefs to yourself.
2. Faith can be useful. My grandmother used to say, when she did something clumsy, “the devil made me do it.” Now that’s not faith, but nor was it an apology. Hell, she didn’t even believe in the devil (and probably not in god either), so why say something like this? To believe in something larger than yourself, whether it’s a person, a team, a nation, or a god, can be empowering. It can make you feel part of something and not feel alone. In my grandmothers case, it can also give you someone to blame. To say “God has a plan” when you know for sure you don’t have one, gives relief. And relief can be useful. Feeling connected and empowered can be useful too. But the fact that faith is useful doesn’t, on it’s own, mean the thing you have faith in is real.
There’s a saying “there are no athiests in foxholes” – but that’s an awful argument for faith. A person in a crisis is capable of many things, including some bad, self-serving or even self-destructive things. I’m sure there are few pacifists and heroes and other noble aspects of people in foxholes too. A better question might be who created the need for the foxholes, and what they claimed to believe.
3. We are creatures of belief. We are good at believing things. We think in terms of stories and will invent stories to satisfy our minds, even if those stories are damn sketchy. The history of progress can be seen as us telling increasingly better stories about how things in the world work. We will never get it completely right, and have to admit the stories we believe in now (including those about science) have flaws if we believe in the idea of progress. Either way, we believe. It’s what we do.
People make fun of the guy in the movie Memento,as if, ha ha, we’re so much smarter than he is, but we’re not. We know, from optical illusions, to Cognitive Bias, that our minds don’t work anywhere near the way we think they do. Memories are incredibly fragile and unstable, despite our intense sense of their permanence. We are masters at coming up with stories to cover up the gaps, and for inventing reasons that conveniently explain, in positive terms, why things happen the we way they do. We even manipulate what we remember. We forget that we do it (it doesn’t fit our story of ourselves), but we do.
I believe in many things, because I’m human and I’m alive. It’s likely a huge evolutionary advantage to be good at believing things. Sometimes I think I’m more successful, or happier, than some other people primarily because I’m better at believing in certain things than they are (It’s hard to prove this, but I believe it anyway). But since faith is a specific kind of belief, we are entirely capable of believing faith is good for us, regardless of whether it is or it isn’t. If that’s a belief you like, you’ll find ways to tell yourself stories that reinforce your own emphasis on faith. Given the dominant history of faith, it’s the dominant story. People who choose other beliefs are the minority and therefore have to spend more time justifying their beliefs.
4. A great starting point on faith is Deism: roughly stated, it’s the idea there is an omnipotent god like thing, but he doesn’t mess much with us, and certainly doesn’t ascribe to any particular religion (as some flavors of deism go, religions, and their miracles, are inventions). Some of the U.S. founding fathers were likely deists, or had deists notions at one time or another – possibly Jefferson, Washington, Paine – as it was a popular belief among intellectuals at the time. Deism suggests you can have a kind of faith that god exists, without any other specific beliefs a particular religion asks you to have faith in. This a powerful idea, since it separates the existence of god from the ideas of any singular religion.
Even if you think deism is silly, or offensive, follow the intellectual exercise – if deists are right, then the historic origins of any religion, and religious scripture, are worthy of investigation. And if we want to investigate, it should be done by sources other than the leaders in that religion itself (who have the most to protect). Perhaps get a council of religious inquiry, led by leaders in every major belief who wish to contribute. Or academics and professors of religious history. Suddenly there are explorations that don’t discount faith as a concept, but instead examine the pieces with a clear eye.
The notion of deism led me to study the history of many religions – and this has transformed me. I wish I had studied comparative religion as a child (See this awesome chart) – I think children would see much of the idiocy adults pursue in the name of faith as hypocritical or ridiculous (As did Monty Python in Life of Brian). There is so much shared between religions, but this rarely fits the dogmatic story you hear from within any particular religion.
5. There are non-religious kinds of faith. I think faith is everywhere. We have faith in gravity, faith in our neighbor, faith our hearts will keep beating, faith our dog won’t raid the kitchen pantry when we go to work. These kinds of faith might have more evidence to back them up in daily life than religious faith, but anyone with complete certainty about anything hasn’t been paying attention. I think most people’s reasons for believing in most things is pretty damn sketchy (See Cognitive Bias). We are all creatures of faith in many ways. I know plenty of atheists who are just as dogmatic in their atheism as the born-again Christian’s they criticize.
In summary: People who are good to each other and good to themselves are very hard to find, regardless of what scripture they recite or the symbol that hangs from their neck. I have great faith in judging people by their behavior, rather than what they claim to believe, as it’s surprising how far apart they often are.
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Please be respectful in the comments – Happy to be disagreed with or corrected, but I hope you’ll do it with love. Or at least some charm.
In a series of posts, called readers choice, I write on whatever topics people submit.
This week: Helping great ideas escape your prison (e.g. research lab)
Any time you think of where you work as a prison, for you or your ideas, you’re in big trouble. Prisons are hard places for anything to escape from – that’s why they’re called prisons.
But the comparison is apt – if you were actually trying to escape from a prison, you’d start getting very smart about how the place works. You’d study the behavior of the guards, their bosses, and the prisoners who might be in a position to help you, until you understood how they work better than they do. Only then will you see the opportunities for getting out. Every prison has a black market, and that market is driven by people smart and motivated enough to out-think the system they’re in.
Questions to ask:
Have any ideas escaped at all? A research lab, in theory, has the goal of bringing ideas to someone. It could be to the VPs of other parts of a company, or to a government, to other organizations. The first question to ask is – is this true? What is the last ideas that ‘escaped’? Was it a product? a feature? A research paper? A prototype? How did they do it? Whose help did they get? Follow their trail and pick their brains for advice. If no idea has ever escaped, you have very big problems, as you might truly work in an idea prison. If so, why not go to a place more friendly to ideas, even if it pays less or has less prestige?
In the end every prison, real or metaphoric, is a series of doors, and people with keys to those doors. What are the doors and who has the keys? It is possible the doors and the keys are already yours.
Who else is interested in escaping? Go watch The Great Escape (even if it’s the 24th time). The only way these prisoners of war could escape a Nazi prison involved dozens of people working together with a shared goal. Who else do you know that wants their idea(s) to escape? Partner with them. Share notes. Conspire together to use your collective assets, improving your odds of success.
Don’t expect to be rewarded. If you think the system you are in doesn’t reward good work, and you want to do good work, why on earth would you expect to be rewarded for it? The value system you are in is the opposite of yours. It will be hard work to get a idea of yours out there, but when it happens, it’d be silly to expect everyone you just had to work around to be thrilled about it. The old quote “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.” Perhaps the only ideas that thrive are the ones your boss thinks is hers. Or for an idea to thrive it you will have to take a bad review, or give up a raise. The long history of people with good ideas often involves others not accepting them until after they’ve seen the ideas in use. You might need to sacrifice the next six months or a year, to get the idea going, placing a bet once it’s in use your superiors will reward you then.
Fail more often. There are many creative cliches around failure. “Fail faster” people say, forgetting how not fun failure is. But the spirit of this is sound. Each time you try to get an idea to escape, you have the opportunity to learn something about your research lab you didn’t know before. If you pitch a brilliant idea in front of the senior staff, and are soundly rejected, there might just be one person in the room who comes up to you after and offers to help. He’d never find you if you hadn’t ‘failed’.
In a series of posts, called readers choice, I write on whatever topics people submit and vote for. This week’s reader’s choice post: Where does our best work come from?
I think four factors explain most kinds of performance.
You are motivated
You’re assigned a task you’re both confident in and challenged by
You are well led and working for someone who respects you
You are working with people you trust
The surprise is how rare in most people’s working lives are all four at the same time. Or even three of the four.
Personal motivation even by itself is tricky for most people to master. How to pick work that will be interesting day after day, or to stay focused on the long term payoffs even if the short term experience is difficult or frustrating. The real challenge of many things (including writing books), and the reason so many people fear them, has less to do with the work, than the fear of the commitment to the work.
Good leaders (#3) and working with people you trust (#4) are almost the same thing. A good leader will push out people who betray trust (See the No-asshole rule, and what Pixar’s Ed Catmull has to say). A good leader also puts trust in their team (delegation) and encourage people who have trust to offer to lend it to their peers.
Working alone, as I generally do, demands I take care of all 4 myself. Assuming I trust myself (#4), and treat myself with respect (#3), two things that can be surprisingly tricky, my performance is gated by picking the right projects and ensuring I have long term goals that motivate me. The challenge of self-employment is making sure I provide all 4 factors – I have to be the employee and the leader all at the same time.
And if working with clients, you are in some sense picking your leader or source of respect (#3/#4).
These four items seem very simple, which is why they’re often overlooked. It’s unusual to experience all four at the same time. Great work can happen in spite of these factors, of course. And for some people the sense of overcoming a bad boss, or team, or situation, is a source of motivation – they have something to prove.
Does having a big ego help? My short answer is any energy you have can be used to help you.
Nietzsche had this notion that there are positive and negative energies you can use to motivate yourself. If you’re afraid of being picked on at school, it might motivate you to learn karate. Or if you love food, you might be inspired to do the work needed to become a chef. Love, hate, angst, curiosity, fear and even competition are all possible motivators to achieve something.
To achieve any goal involves effort, and effort involves converting a feeling into action. It’s one thing to feel inspired or enraged, but what do you do with that emotional energy? Are you able to convert it into actions you’re proud of? That ability to convert explains achievement. Some people get a lot of mileage out of a small amount of emotional energy. Others seems to have massive quantities of emotional energy, but it never goes anywhere productive. Having a big ego, if managed well, can be a useful source of energy in achieving things. To do difficult work requires fuel, and ego can burn quite well.
Fundamentally, anyone who isn’t dedicating most of their waking hours to helping others has a big ego. We are mostly self-motivated, with ambitions primarily about satisfying our own needs, and worries mostly centered on ourselves (even our desire to help others can be motivated by wanting to feel good about ourselves). Buddhism, in part, is about learning to diminish our egos – and Buddhists believe this is the path to enlightenment. I think they’re probably right. The problem is you’d need to escape many aspects of American culture in order to do it, but that’s a topic for another day.
Generally when we say someone has “a big ego” we really mean their ego is out of control, and gets in the way. They talk down to people, treat others as inferior, and their sense of self makes them unpleasant to work with. We may actually have bigger egos than they do, but we manage them better. Someone with “a big ego” is likely someone who, for whatever reason, is not self-aware enough to realize their lack of respect for others. Or worse, realizes it but either doesn’t care, or takes pleasure in making people feel bad. When I meet people like this I feel sad – they’re lost. And somewhere deep down inside they probably know it. Odds are good they’re taking it out on everyone else, as they don’t have the courage or the tools to focus that energy on improving themselves.
The goal should be to have a high opinion of yourself, and a high opinion of others at the same time. Some might define this as a healthy psychology. I admit I have a big ego in the sense I’m confident I can do some things well. Is that ambition? Confidence? Whatever word you’d prefer, it’s all tied to the ego. I do my best not to allow that sense of self to violate someone else’s sense of self. I fail now and then of course, but I’m aware and sensitive to this notion. I also know to grow I have to do things I’m not confident in. I have to put myself in situations where I’m forced to say “I don’t know” or “I’m afraid” and go to places an ego dominated mind would never have the courage to go. Being humble is healthy and creates opportunities you never find if you insist on only doing things you’re confident in.
There are many famous people who achieved big goals with big egos, and were awful to their families, their friends, and their employees. There are also many famous, successful people who were/are miserable despite all their success. Read a biography of Edison, Ford, J.P. Morgan, or any current master of the universe, and you’ll hear similar stories. In chasing an abstract dream (wealthiest man, best athlete, most famous X, etc.) they sacrificed some very obvious and available necessities for a happy, fulfilling life (friends, family, health, community,self-knowledge).
If happiness and fulfillment is the true goal, a big ego alone doesn’t seem to be the way to get it.
In the end, I think of Nietzsche, or what I recall of his notion – the more aware of our feelings we are, and the better we are at converting those feelings into useful, positive actions, the healthier and more successful we’ll be.
Travis submitted the following question, and with 30 votes it’s this week’s topic:
What specific, objective things can you do to find your “passion”? Assuming it’s possible to make a career out of pursuing your passion(s), how do you narrow that down to one or a few things?
This is a great, but strange question. I don’t think there is a way to do this. If there is I don’t know it. Most people seem passionless about their work, much less their lives, don’t you think?
Looking backwards I see I tried different things. Over the course of my life I’ve tried to spend more time doing things I liked. The magical part is twice I’ve managed to find ways making a living doing something I’m passionate about (first with software, now with writing).
My first deep love was baseball. But by age 10 I discovered basketball, and loved that more (much less standing around waiting). It was the defining passion of my life until I was 19. Why basketball? I was athletic, I was competitive, I was better than my friends, and I discovered for the first time that hard work paid off – basketball provided an endless (at the time) path of improvement if I worked hard. But had my brother never made me play basketball at age 8, I never would have discovered this thing I love(d).
I started writing in junior year in high school. We had a poetry month in English class and I wrote poetry. Turned out I loved writing it – some of it didn’t suck. And I kept writing it on my own, after the class ended. Freshman year in college we had to keep a journal for a Philosophy course, so I did that, and by the end of the course I enjoyed it enough I’ve kept it up since. These two experiences were pivotal in me becoming a writer. Had I not been exposed twice, I probably would not be writing this right now.
My story with software is simpler. I was smart. My dad got us a computer when I was 12 or 13. I liked it and it made sense to me so when not playing basketball, I was on it hours every day. I majored in Computer Science because I found it interesting and it made sense. I liked designing things, and got very lucky – I got hired at Microsoft to lead teams and design stuff. Managed to get on the IE 1.0 team, which turned out to be kind of important. I was passionate about it because it was fascinating, I was young and had power, it was thrilling to feel smart with other smart people, and I convinced myself it mattered to the world. But after a decade those passions changed, or changed shape, so I left.
I’ve never believed in the idea of a calling. I really hate that idea. Most people can be good at many different things, and live happy lives in many different ways. If you want to find your passion I’d say put yourself in different situations, with different people, and see how it makes you feel. Pay attention to you and write down your responses so you’ll remember. Some of it will bore you. Some of it you’ll hate. But with each experience you’ll have a clearer sense of who you actually are ,what you actually care about, and what you’re good at doing.
There are at least four piles of things in the world for you:
Things you like/love
Things you are good at
Things you can be paid to do
Things that are important
But only you can sort out which things go in which piles, or hopefully, all four piles.
I think growing up we’re fed so many stories about what we’re supposed to like, or enjoy, or find pleasure in, and only some of that turns out to be true. It’s implied you need a great career to be happy, but honestly most people seem pretty damn miserable, including those with fancy careers. You can’t be passionate if you’re living your parents dream and not your own, and unless you go out on your own for awhile, you are likely trying to live someone else’s dream.
My advice is simple: Pick something. Do it with all your heart. If you can’t keep your heart in it, do something else. Repeat. Few people have the courage to do this, even for a year, much less a lifetime. But my suspicion is if you ask passionate people how they make choices, this is what you’ll hear.
In a series of posts, called ask berkun, I write on whatever topics people submit and vote for. This week reader’s choice: What are your favorite books and why?
Henry Miller wrote a book called The Books in My life. I was a fan of his non-fiction writing in the late 1990s (Air Conditioned Nightmare, Black Spring) and when I found this book it blew my mind. The quantity of books he recalled fluently, and their wide range of genres. changed how I thought about reading. He crossed subjects, forms, languages, decades… he was, in essence, a kind of free-reader. I discovered Celine’s Death on the Installment plan from Miller, a book with profound effects – a) the realization some people are both brilliant and miserable b) sentences don’t have to end… Regarding Miller, I’d never seen a writer list more than a handful of favorite books, but Miller’s book was dense and deep, thick with references. I realized it’s not only okay to read widely, but a kind of necessity as a writer to be well read, as demonstrated by his example. He read lots of obscure books, by not well known writers, which liberated me from the shallow waters of bestseller lists. This post is largely inspired by this book.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, By Robert Pirsig. As a warning this is a book with major problems. It’s too long and it meanders in frustrating ways. If I weren’t assigned to read it for a freshman year philosophy class, I’d likely never have, and it’s not a book I often recommend. But it has it’s potent charms – it was the first book of philosophy I’d read that was first person and personal, and it left me with new ways to think about thinking about things and the dangers thinking about thinking can bring (I will always remember gumption traps). For this reason I’ve returned to the book many times (and read Lila too, which I enjoyed but for different reasons). In the same college course I read Crazy Wisdom, by Wes Nisker, which demonstrated how insane wisdom seems to the unwise (which i was, or still am). The combination of these two books changed me forever, and set me on a path paved with the love of wisdom. I learned wisdom and philosophy could be funny, angry, scary, fulfilling, emptying, and dozens of other things I’d never thought about philosophy before.
The Conquest of Happiness, Bertrand Russell. Not sure how or when I discovered Russell, but he’s one of my strongest influences. The best writer among the philosophers, choosing plain language, passionate charm, and clarity of thought above all else, something few philosophers have the talent, desire or courage to do. He was prolific, with many essay collections, but perhaps most memorable among them is his Why I am Not Christian. He is one of my heroes for many reasons, but with this book it was for his willingness to state what he believed despite the consequences. Conquest of Happiness is a very silly title, it’s like “how to force the boy/girl of your dreams to love you” or something – the title, but not the book, suggests a self-defeating strategy. But the book has saved me in times of depression, and was a key reading while I was figuring out how to quit my job.
The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain DeBotton is in the same Russellian category for its charmingly written take on the basics of wisdom. It’s often the first book of philosophy I recommend to people. In the same line is Leo Buscalia’s Living, Loving and Learning, a book recommended to me while drinking with a greek man I met in the youth hostel near Bannf. Between shots of whiskey, I asked for the book he thought I needed to read and that’s what he wrote down. And he was right. The book taught me that love is courageous, and most people are afraid of expressing their love, which explains in part why many people are sad. In the same pile belongs An Intimate History of Humanity by Zeldin, which made me rethink what a book was, and demonstrated chapter titles don’t have to be so boring all the time.
Technopoly, By Neil Postman. If you’re wise, you read challenging books. You’ll be uncomfortable, but it’s the only way to learn. This is the book I wish every technology lover, programmer, startup founder and tech VP would read. Postman’s Amusing ourselves to death should come with every television set, by law. His books made me realize my lust for using and making technology could not achieve many of the things I wanted out of life. It led me to books like Information Anxiety, The end of patience and Data Smog By Shenk, and on down the line through an honest view of what technology can and can not do. A design student I was on a project team with at CMU got me hooked on Postman, and I’m in his debt. Without Postman I’d likely still be working managing software development, and I’d never have become a writer.
I didn’t read much from age 8 to 18 (curiously I’ve read voraciously before and after this period – I blame girls and sports) and A Separate Peace, by John Knowles was likely the first novel I that moved me. I hadn’t felt anything that personal in a book before. Not sure what grade it was, probably early high school, but in that experience was likely one of the seeds that made me eventually want to be a writer. These days I read about 90% non-fiction to 10% fiction – most fiction tries way to hard to seem real, and I find it unreadable. Other favorite novels include Slaughterhouse 5, The Life of Pi, Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, and The Hobbit. I’m also very fond of George Saunders, and his short story collection Pastorallia, short story collections being a kind of book I typically loathe.
Enders Game, the book everyone at CMU was reading in ’92, provided a profound experience similiar to A Separate Peace (“ah ha! now i get the concept of reading for pleasure”), but for more cerebral reasons. Foucault’s Pendulum was the most complicated novel I’d read ever in a single sitting in the mid 90s, and I’ve read it more than once trying to figure out why. Hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy was Monty Python in space, and I devoured the series. I read it many times also trying to figure out the machinery. I will always remember the endings of Updike’s Rabbit Run, and Malamud’s The Natural, even though I didn’t particularly enjoy either book – the later allowed me to discover how any story can be many different stories with just a few surgical changes (e.g. the movie is a different beast).
The Night Country, by Loren Eiseley. I found this strange, scary looking book cover in the science section of a used bookstore in the mid 90s. I picked it up and and it blew me away, because although it pretended to be a science book, his magical sense of wonder was unexpected and put me on my heels. I’d go on to read many of his books (The Star Thrower, All The Strange Hours, The Firmament of Time… what great titles) paying attention to how me made everything seem interesting, mysterious and wonderful simultaneously. I’ve written about Eisley before. He was the first essayist I read, and i soon discovered Emerson, devouring his collections (I’ve read self-reliance a dozen times or more), and wandering my way towards Montaigne, Thoreau, and other classics.
The Best American Essays series, which has profoundly effected my writing (Why there isn’t a best world essays series, I have no idea). These books provide a crash course in the various short non-fiction forms there are, and gave me exposure to different writers, writing on very different topics, in very different styles. I owe a great debt to this line of books – it was part of my self-directed poor man’s creative writing / English degree.
The Seven Mysteries of Life, by Guy Murchie, opened my mind wide. I hadn’t had a reading experience that crossed so many lines, and was both brutal and loving, scientific and personal, rational and spiritual, all at the same time. Transformational. I didn’t know books could be like this. And it had these wonderful line drawings by the author that, unlike other books, had a love and soul in them I hadn’t seen before. A Scientist in the City, by James Trefill. Much of my reading used to be focused on design, design thinking, and building good things, since that was a big part of my working life. Trefill was my favorite science writer for a long stretch, and this was my introduction to him. He walks through a city, deconstructing skyscrapers, highways and landscapes from the view of the science mind.
Murchie, Eisley and Trefill all showed me how a great writer can reveal a subject more powerfully by carefully including themselves in their descriptions of the world. That it wasn’t indulgent if you used a careful hand. Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn deserve mention, as he offered a a new way to look at architecture that was fascinating, personal, real and practical, and mostly pretension free, something I can’t say about many books on architecture and design or most creative pursuits. All these books draw parallels between nature and engineering, a potent comparison for many reasons.
Dark Nature, by Lyall Watson. For many years I read lots of science books, and this was a pivotal one. It explained a scientific view of evil, or rather how there really isn’t one, and how subjective and immature my view of good and evil was. I read The Lucifer Principle, by Howard Bloom, also excellent, which doubled the potency. Both books opened up my perception to a new view of nature, one in which we have invented a system of thinking that has very little to do with the way the ecosystem of the planet functions. Good and evil, like most of our ideas, are inventions, and have varying levels of accuracy in how they map to the world. To be wise, and aware, means deconstructing the ideas I use to map to the world, and realizing not only how many different ones there are, but that they all, in degrees, inform us about the world.
John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction is simply the best book on writing ever written (Update: I read it again in 2014 and I had a harder time with it). It’s brutal, honest and somewhat cold, but pair it with Bradbury’s Zen and the art of Writing, and you’ll have all the passion and inspiration you need. I fundamentally believe good writing is good writing – whether it’s fiction or non-fiction or something in between your job as the writer is to get the reader to read the next sentence – that’s the whole story.
On a different day I’d have thought of other books, but these were the first that came to mind. I’ve been influenced by so many things I’ve read in ways no other media could possibly do, except perhaps film. And my debt to books like these is part of why it’s a honor and a privilege to write, and to be read. I hope to write things that end up on some other writer’s list someday.
In a series of posts, called reader’s choice, I write on topics people submit. This week, the topic is: how do you manage your business as a speaker, author and consultant.
My primary business is writing books. It’s writing good books that led to everything else I get paid to do. Oddly, speaking and consulting are more lucrative than writing books, but I’m not driven primarily by money. I make decisions with the primary goal of being able to write books for the rest of my life and live comfortably while I do it.
I’ve been willing to earn much less money to have much more control over my time. I love my freedom of time: I can stop working for a few days, or work very hard, whenever I want, and that is a feature of my life I don’t want to lose and is more valuable than more financial wealth.
The result is I’m one of the freest people I know. I’m not obligated on a daily basis to work for anyone. Most days I don’t have to be anywhere at any particular time. When I’m working for hire I’m often paid to travel to interesting places, meet smart, passionate people and see things few get to experience. I feel very lucky and happy and I protect my lifestyle accordingly.
In terms of ballpark revenue, it goes something like this:
Book Royalties & Freelance writing: 40% of income
Speaking fees: 50% of income
Consulting fees: 10% of my income
For the last two years I’ve earned between $100k and $120k a year.
But these numbers are ballpark – it fluctuates every year – it’s not a salary.
My goal when I quit was to earn $50k a year, a number that covered my expenses. The idea of making a living independently was terrifying as I started with $0 income. I think of $50k as the low mark for sustaining this lifestyle (See should I quit my job?)
My income varies year to year. The primary risk I have is uncertainty. I have no guarantees this will continue.
How the business works: It’s very simple. I write books. I go out on the road and work hard to promote them. When I speak, and do well, people tell others about me and the books. I have some very popular videos on youtube and that helps too. The books, if they are good, get good reviews, and sell. Requests to speak for hire or consult come in through email or the web site and I prioritize and schedule them, or turn them down if they doesn’t fit the calendar.
Unless a new book is coming out, I do little active marketing or promotion, as the frequency of speaking gigs, and the popularity of this blog, does much of that for me. If things get quiet I might tickle people who have hired me to speak before, but that has almost never happened. Things were much harder when I started, but the success of each successive book catapulted things forward.
On Book Royalties / Freelance: I have four successful books that continue to sell, but there’s no guarantee this will continue. Book sales generally trail off as the books age. Some fans don’t buy the books, and just read the blog. This is an external motivator that helps drive me to write the next one, and as I mentioned my primary love and ambition is writing books. I get occasional requests to write for magazines and take them when I can, but it’s not a consistent income source.
On speaking fees: Keynote style lectures are the most lucrative activity I do based on time. I’m typically paid $6$7k $8k, plus travel, for keynote style lectures. This is in the mid-range for what pro-speakers charge (see Chapter 3 of Confessions if you wonder how on earth anyone, me included, is worth this much or more). I take many of these gigs as it makes up for the less lucrative time spent writing.
I used to teach workshops & courses but there has been enough demand for lectures that I rarely do this anymore. I do speaking engagements for free when it’s for a good cause, if I’m a fan of the company and want to visit (e.g. Netflix) or it’s a good opportunity to promote myself and my work (Harvard, MIT, Google, etc.) and I have new book to promote.
On Consulting: For years this was much of my income, but the last years I rarely do consulting. I have the luxury of being picky about clients – often my consulting engagements are follow-ons or additions to speaking gigs. This makes sense as people know me and the trust required to be effective as an outsider is there. I little UX/design related consulting anymore, which is funny if you knew me pre-2003.
I think of consulting as ‘brain for hire’- I sit with teams, review plans, critique projects, and advise leaders on what I see based on the hundreds of other work environments/cultures/projects I’ve seen and learned from. Speaking is preferable in that it’s easier to give clients a sense of satisfaction. I can finish a lecture and know exactly how much value I just provided. When I leave a consulting gig it’s difficult to measure value (despite what major consulting firms claim) and that makes me feel less good about taking people’s money. I do like money, but I also like feeling I earned every penny of it.
On Blogging: I have rarely viewed this blog as marketing. I’d always seen it primarily as writing and connecting. Good writing markets itself, and me. So I write here mostly as an exercise in short form writing, as a way to connect, and to help get my work out there. That’s part of why there are no ads here and why I try to avoid most of the annoyances you find on other blogs. It’s just me, you and a good, honest, intelligent discussion (at least your half is – hahaha 🙂
On Agents: I don’t have one and never have [Update 2014: I worked with David Fugate on The Year Without Pants]. I’ve looked for one with each of the last two books, but couldn’t find one that I liked or that was interested in the particular book I was working on (or was interested in the long view of representing me). I’d like one, but so far it’s been way more work and frustration than writing the books themselves. I haven’t needed a speaker bureau (e.g. agent), but now and then requests come in from them for gigs I would not get otherwise and I say yes.
Secret to my success: I attribute my success to working at this for years and taking a long term view. There is no secret. Without the successful books much of this would not be possible – (good) books still provide a credibility in the world that most blogs do not (and if you want advice on writing a book, this is for you). I am an army of one, not part of consulting firm, so I only have one calendar to fill which makes me lean and agile, which helps. It’s no secret, but it does seem unusual, that I feel intensely grateful to the universe I can make a living doing what I love, writing, in this era.
But the real secret is all of the people whose name I never learn who recommend my books, blog posts, and lectures to their friends, bosses and coworkers. I wish I knew more of you, but in lieu of that, thank you. I think about you often as I depend on you – I’ll try to keep up the good work. Please let me know if I don’t.
In a series of posts, called readers choice, I write on whatever topics people submit.
This week’s reader’s choice post: My biggest professional mistakes.
I’ve been thinking about this post for weeks, as I have many mistakes to pick from.
I do try very hard to learn from them, but the ones listed below have stuck with me more than others. In some cases they are mistakes I’m likely still making now.
Here are my top mistakes:
Not staying with the same boss/group. When I was there (’94 to ’03), after a long stint on the IE team, I jumped around Microsoft every couple of years, putting my curiosity and passions ahead of climbing ladders. I wanted a diversity of experiences – I had four job titles in nine years at Microsoft – but this made it harder to get promoted and, in some cases, to earn respect in the MSFT culture. The advice I give people often is pick your manager first. A great manager will negate most other work problems, whereas an awful manager will negate most other work pleasures. Good managers get promoted and often their best people rise with them. For what I do now, my diversity of experience is an asset, but my career at Microsoft suffered for it. From an industry/career perspective, continuing to work for Joe Belfiore, Chris Jones or Hadi Partovi would have been a wiser move.
Abandoning my network. When I moved from job to job at Microsoft I basically abandoned most of the friends and contacts I’d made. I liked many of these people and built trust with them, but I was too much of a loner, and in my early 20s just didn’t understand the value of those connections and relationships until they were gone. I worked on the early days of the web, ’94 to ’99, and met tons of people at other companies and start-ups, but didn’t understand what that could have meant for my own learning, growth and connections. I still struggle with it now, as I’m very self-reliant and tend towards introversion, but there is a respect granted to people by simply indicating you remember who they are. I try to reply to every email I get and acknowledge any nod of recognition, as in a way my fan base is my extended network. But it’s a struggle.
Doubts about self promotion. My greatest struggle as an independent is how to sell myself to others while still keeping my sense of integrity and dignity intact. I believe in work and that good work gets spread more easily than the rest. But being a writer is tough – there is a ridiculous amount of competition for people’s attention and book buying dollars. To succeed I have to help it along. I know Walt Whitman sold his books door to door, and even wrote anonymous reviews of his own books. But I’m no Walt Whitman. And I don’t like people who a) are better at sales than at making whatever it is they are selling, b) who promise the impossible to create sales, or c) shamelessly inflame and hype purely to generate attention. My mistake here, given how long I’ve been online, is seeing others who have had more success, with less talent and quality of work, because they have fewer doubts about self-promotion. But I don’t think I want more book sales or web traffic if I have to lose my self-respect to get it. I know these are not mutually exclusive (e.g. subscribing to this blog or finding me on twitter could be easier), but I struggle with finding the line every day.
(Not) giving fans a way to be fans. Related to #3, I know some of you would call yourselves fans of my work. Or at least one of my books. But there’s no fan club, or fan list or any easy way for people to be rewarded for feeling this way. This is oh so dumb. I’d love to do more to reward people who are my supporters, and do more to help them spread the word, but I don’t know quite how to make this happen, in part because of #3. I am truly grateful and try to use this blog (and this reader’s choice thing) as a way to give back. But I suspect there’s more I can do. If you’re a fan, how can I help you to spread word of my work? I’m all ears. (Update: there is a berkun-fan mailing list and a Facebook fan page)
Not publishing my novel. My ambition is to write about everything. I don’t want to be just a management writer, or creativity author dude. I want to be, simply, a great writer. I want to work to be smart, honest and expressive enough to write well about almost anything, and apply the way I think about the world to as many things as possible, The only way to develop into this is to keep writing about different things (which explains the diversity of topics here). I have a novel I’ve kicked around for years, and publishing it, even by myself, even if it sucks, demonstrates I can attack writing challenges wider than what I’ve done before. One of my (now failed) goals for 2010 is to finish it up and get it out there.
Not following in Tufte’s footsteps.My primary goal is to write, and I will speak, teach and consult to make that possible. I’ve toyed with the seminar business for years, and I’ve studied what Edward Tufte and others have done. In Tufte’s case, he does the same basic full day lecture in several cities, for ~$380 per person, and fills 800+ person halls. The numbers here speak for themselves. I’m sure he started small and grew this business, as I would have to do to even attempt anything like his level of success. But managing the logistics, promotion, etc. of this has very little appeal compared to the simplicity of being a for-hire speaker at other people’s events. Once a machine like this is running, the creative costs for me would be low, and the revenue stream would be useful in driving me to take bigger risks as a writer.
Not learning to draw. I’m a visual thinker, at least some of the time.When I work with people on anything, I work at whiteboards and on big sheets of paper. But I can’t actually draw with sufficient aesthetics to warrant posting them here, or including them in books. This is a liability. But it’s one I plan to correct this year, as one of my goals for 2010 is to learn to draw. I’m working from Drawing on the Right side of the brain, and it’s going well so far.
I’m a creative lone wolf. I love the idea of an Algonquin Round Table or the Inklings, a group of creatives who meet regularly and help each other with their work. I don’t have one and never have. There are people I get feedback from now and then, but I’ve failed to build a group, or join one, that I rely on or contribute to. Writers are just weirdos, I think, and I include myself in this. We’re an annoying, arrogant, needy bunch. Most of the groups I come across are people mostly in other professions who dabble in creative pursuits, and those conversations rarely put anyone on equal footing. I’ve rarely had mentors in my life, although I do see the value and wish I knew someone I respected who was interested in playing that role. Or had a group of talent folks with mutual respect, who help each other produce more and better work.
I have some very dramatic and entertaining failures in my professional life, but they were momentary things. It’s these mistakes above that stay with me and, in some cases, are ones I’m still making. I think about them often perhaps because it’s not too late, and if I could sort them out, everyone would win.
In a series of posts, called readers choice, I write on whatever topics readers submit.
[Note: Polarizing questions are silly since rarely in life do you have to have truly binary choices. Both is often an option. But they are fun: so please assume someone took my lunch and refused to give it back until I picked a side. Also see: The false dichotomy of false dichotomies]
There is no doubt in my mind street smarts kicks book smarts ass. To be street smart means you have situational awareness. You can assess the environment you are in, who is in it, and what the available angles are. Being on the street, or in the trenches, or whatever low to the ground metaphor you prefer, requires you learn to trust your own judgment about people and what matters. This skill, regardless of where you develop it, is of great value everywhere in life regardless of how far from the streets you are.
Most important perhaps, being street smart comes from experience. It means you’ve learned how to take what has happened to you, good or bad, think about it, and learn to improve from it. The prime distinction between street smarts and book smarts is who is at the center of the knowledge. On the street, it’s you. In a book it’s you trying to absorb someone elses take on the world, and however amazing the writer is, you are at best one degree removed from the actual experience. Street smarts means you’ve put yourself at risk and survived. Or thrived. Or have scars. You’ve been tested and have a bank of courage to depend on when you are tested again. Being street smart can lead to book smarts as the street smart sense what works and what doesn’t, and adapt accordingly.
Book smarts, as I’ve framed it, means someone who is good at following the rules. These are people who get straight A’s, sit in the front, and perhaps enjoy crossword puzzles. They like things that have singular right answers. They like to believe the volume, and precision, of their knowledge can somehow compensate for their lack of experience applying it in the real world. Thinking about things has value, but imagining how you will handle a tough situation is a world away from actually being in one (As Tyler Durden says in Fight Club – “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?”).
Like the stereotypical ROTC idiot in war movies (e.g. The Thin Red Line, Aliens 2) who outranks the much more competent and experienced, but less well pedigreed sergeant, the book smart confuse pretense with reality, and only learn of the difference when it is too late. Or worse, even after the fact, they insist on seeking out more books and degrees rather than recognizing they are trying to improve the wrong skills: they are half blind by their own choice since they insist on looking at the world with only one eye.
I say all this as someone who has a deep love for books, and who has some degree of what might be called book smarts. But it’s that knowledge, used in service of street smarts, that best explains whatever I’ve achieved in life.
If survival is at stake, I’d choose hospitals. A hospital, assuming it comes with smart doctors and fancy equipment, keeps a popular healthy, lengthens lifespans, improves the survival odds of reproduction, and provides a core public service everyone needs. If everyone is sick and dying, art has limited value, and of course it’s harder for sick and dying artists to make art than healthy ones.
1. It’s not a choice for many. Most people on this planet mostly believe what their parents believed. For many this is fine, but for some it’s a problem, especially if you’re the kind of person who realizes if everyone only believed what their parents did, we might still be stuck in the dark ages. Or still be up in the trees in Africa, dreaming of fire.
