The forever recession
Great post by Seth Godin. We need to change with the times.
There are two recessions going on.
One is gradually ending. This is the cyclical recession, we have them all the time, they come and they go. Not fun, but not permanent.
The other one, I fear, is here forever. This is the recession of the industrial age, the receding wave of bounty that workers and businesses got as a result of rising productivity but imperfect market communication.
In short: if you're local, we need to buy from you. If you work in town, we need to hire you. If you can do a craft, we can't replace you with a machine.
No longer.
The lowest price for any good worth pricing is now available to anyone, anywhere. Which makes the market for boring stuff a lot more perfect than it used to be.
Since the 'factory' work we did is now being mechanized, outsourced or eliminated, it's hard to pay extra for it. And since buyers have so many choices (and much more perfect information about pricing and availability) it's hard to charge extra.
Thus, middle class jobs that existed because companies had no choice are now gone.
Protectionism isn't going to fix this problem. Neither is stimulus of old factories or yelling in frustration and anger. No, the only useful response is to view this as an opportunity. To poorly paraphrase Clay Shirky, every revolution destroys the last thing before it turns a profit on a new thing.
The networked revolution is creating huge profits, significant opportunities and a lot of change. What it's not doing is providing millions of brain-dead, corner office, follow-the-manual middle class jobs. And it's not going to.
Fast, smart and flexible are embraced by the network. Linchpin behavior. People and companies we can't live without (because if I can live without you, I'm sure going to try if the alternative is to save money).
The sad irony is that everything we do to prop up the last economy (more obedience, more compliance, cheaper yet average) gets in the way of profiting from this one.
Share on FacebookGod Will Provide the Food, But He Will Not Cook the Dinner
Great excerpt from the book Forget Selling on how our own perception is the window to opportunity or the road block that traps us.
An experience Gandhi had when discovering his purpose and developing his vision well illustrates the Law of Attraction. When a man arrived from a distant country and volunteered to join Gandhi, he asked Gandhi if he was surprised at his unplanned appearance. Gandhi simply replied, "When a person discovers what is right and purposeful, and begins to pursue it, the necessary people and resources tend to appear, as if attracted to the cause." Gandhi is a supreme example of influence and resonance, for he never had any official position in government or business, had no wealth, and commanded no armies. However, he influenced, mobilized, inspired, and transformed millions of people.
The power of expectation is revealed in numerous studies with varying names. Most people are familiar with the Placebo, the Pygmalion, and the Halo Effects which all verify the power of expectation and suggestion. In the 1970s, psychologist Dr. Robert Rosenthal revealed how the expectation of one can alter the behavior of another. Students of the same IQ were randomly divided into two groups and teachers were told that one group was gifted and had high IQs, and that the other group was dull and had low IQs. After only eight months, the supposedly high IQ group performed at an A level while the supposedly low IQ group performed at a D level. The only variable in the study was that of the expectations of the teachers involved.
There are numerous studies in medicine where the Placebo Effect has, in some cases, been more effective than the medication given after negative side effects of the medication were taken into account. Studies have shown that people often get better just making an appointment with their doctor. They continue to improve and symptoms subside even while sitting in the waiting room. I guess if they wait long enough, they may not even need to see the doctor. Now, that's a clever way to cut healthcare costs. In another study, doctors performed a false surgery for breast implants, and although there was no actual surgery, the breasts were increased because of the patient's expectations. In the Korean War, there was a shortage of morphine to relieve the pain of suffering soldiers. Thus, doctors gave sugar pills and suggested that their pain would soon be relieved and approximately 25 percent of the soldiers reported a reduction in pain.
Your brain is not your mind, but your mind's instrument, just as your body is the instrument through which thoughts and feelings are expressed. Your mind is the envelope of the soul. A positive, confident, expectant mind renders you receptive to creative forces. It is because of the receptive nature of this divine creative faculty that thoughts are manifested and you become unstoppable. Faith is the unseen world and thought that gives substance to things unseen. You can actually think of only one thing at a time, thus, you cannot have positive thoughts as negative words are spoken. Select your words carefully for they predict your future success.
Elizabeth Browning states, "We carry within us the wonders we seek without us." However, all of life's forces can only manifest to the degree that you confidently believe that they can and will materialize. The intricate reciprocity of your mind and the Universal Mind is the key factor to how and when we blossom. This integral relationship was confirmed by Genevieve Behrend in her interviews with Judge Thomas Troward at the turn of the century, "God will provide the food, but He will not cook the dinner." Co-dependent relationships don't work in life nor in the symbolic world. Things are symbols, and it is important to remember that the thing symbolized is more important than the symbol itself. Remember also that the mind is not fickle. If you start and end your day with a well-directed meditation, but the rest of your day is filled with fear and anxiety, you are sabotaging your success. Judge Troward continues to explain to his pupil that "will" is a thought stabilizer and holds a thought to a given purpose until it is consummated or manifested. He insisted that you get into the spirit of your desire. "The spirit of a thing is that which is the source of its inherent movement."
Share on FacebookDesign with Intent
Awesome PDF book that will make you think about all sorts of aspects in your business.
Neat idea, free PDF... will differently (definitely) make you think. HT to Lucas.
Share on FacebookMarketing to the bottom of the pyramid
Marketing to the bottom of the pyramid
[this short essay (long blog post) is inspired by and related to this video. You can engage one without the other, but they go together.]
Part 1: The bottom is important.
Almost a third of the world's population earns $2.50 or less a day. The enormity of this disparity takes my breath away, but there's an interesting flip side to it: That's a market of more than five billion dollars a day. Add the next segment ($5 a day) and it's easy to see that every single day, the poorest people in the world spend more than ten billion dollars to live their lives.
Most of that money is spent on traditional items purchased in traditional ways. Kerosene. Rice. Basic medicines if you can afford them or if death is the only alternative. And almost all of these purchases are inefficient. There's lack of information, high costs because of a lack of choice, and most of all, a lack of innovation.
There are two significant impacts here: first, the inefficiency is a tax on the people who can least afford it. Second, the side effects of poor products are dangerous. Kerosene kills, and so does dirty water.
Part 2: The bottom is an opportunity (for both buyer or seller).
If a business can offer a better product, one that's more efficient, provides better information, increases productivity, is safer, cleaner, faster or otherwise improved, it has the ability to change the world.
Change the world? Sure. Because capitalism and markets scale. If you can make money selling someone a safer item, you'll make more. And more. Until you've sold all you can. At the same time, you've enriched the purchaser, who bought something of her own free will because it made things better.
Not only that, but engaging in the marketplace empowers the purchaser. If you've got a wagon full of rice as food aid, you can just dump it in the town square and drive away. You have all the power. But if you have to sell something in order to succeed, it moves the power from the seller to buyer. Quality and service and engagement have to continually improve or the buyer moves on.
The cell phone, for example, has revolutionized the life of billions in the developing world. If you have a cell phone, you can determine the best price for the wheat you want to sell. You can find out if the part for your tractor has come in without spending two days to walk to town to find out. And you can be alerted to weather... etc. Productivity booms. There's no way the cell phone could have taken off as quickly or efficently as a form of aid, but once someone started engaging with this market, the volume was so huge it just scaled. And the market now competes to be ever more efficient.
Part 3: It's not as easy as it looks
And here's the kicker: If you're a tenth-generation subsistence farmer, your point of view is different from someone working in an R&D lab in Palo Alto. The Moral Economy of the Peasant makes this argument quite clearly. Imagine standing in water up to your chin. The only thing you're prepared to focus on is whether or not the water is going to rise four more inches. Your penchant for risk is close to zero. One mistake and the game is over.
As a result, it's extremely difficult to sell innovation to this consumer. The line around the block to get into the Apple store is just an insane concept in this community. A promise from a marketer is meaningless, because the marketer isn't part of the town, the marketer will move away, the marketer is, of course, a liar.
Let me add one more easily overlooked point: Western-style consumers have been taught from birth the power of the package. We see the new nano or the new Porsche or the new convertible note on a venture deal and we can easily do the math: [new thing] + [me] = [happier]. We've been taught that an object can make our lives better, that a purchase can make us happier, that the color of the Tiffany's box or the ringing of a phone might/will bring us joy.
That's just not true for someone who hasn't bought a new kind consumer good in a year or two or three or maybe ever. As a result, stores in the developing world tend to be stocked with the classic, the tried and true, because people buy refills of previous purchases, not the new.
No substistence farmer walks to a store or stall saying, "I wonder what's new today? I wonder if there's a new way for me to solve my problems?" Every day, people in the West say that very thing as they engage in shopping as a hobby.
You can't simply put something new in front of a person in this market and expect them to buy it, no matter how great, no matter how well packaged, no matter how well sold.
So you see the paradox. A new product and approach and innovation could dramatically improve the life and income of a billion people, but those people have been conditioned to ignore the very tools that are a reflex of marketers that might sell it to them. Fear of loss is greater than fear of gain. Advertising is inefficient and ineffective. And the worldview of the shopper is that they're not a shopper. They're in search of refills.
The answer, it turns out, is in connecting and leading Tribes. It lies in engaging directly and experientially with individuals, not getting distribution in front of markets. Figure out how to use direct selling in just one village, and then do it in ten, and then in a hundred. The broad, mass market approach of a Western marketer is foolish because there is no mass market in places where villages are the market.
The (eventual) power of the early adopter
This gentleman is a swami, a leader in his village. He owns a d.light lantern. Why? He could fit all his worldly positions into a rollaboard, and yet he owns a solar lantern, the first man in his village to buy one.
For him, at least this one time, he liked the way it felt to be seen as a leader, to go first, to do an experiment. Perhaps his followers contributed enough that the purchase didn't feel risky. Perhaps the person he bought it from was a friend or was somehow trusted. It doesn't really matter, other than understanding that he's rare.
After he got the lantern, he set it up in front of his house. Every night for six months, his followers would meet on his front yard to talk, to connect and yes, to wonder how long it would be before the lantern would burn out. Six months later, the jury is still out.
One day, months or years from now, the lantern will be seen as obvious and trusted and a safe purchase. But it won't happen as fast as it would happen in Buffalo or Paris. The imperative is simple: find the early adopters, embrace them, adore them, support them, don't go away, don't let them down. And then be patient yet persistent. Mass market acceptance is rare. Viral connections based on experience are the only reliable way to spread new ideas in communities that aren't traditionally focused on the cult of the new.
This raises the bar for customer service and exceptional longevity, value and design. It means that the only way to successfully engage this market is with relentless focus on the conversations that tribe leaders and early adopters choose to have with their peers. All the tools of the Western mass market are useless here.
Just because it is going to take longer than it should doesn't mean we should walk away. There are big opportunities here, for all of us. It's going to take some time, but it's worth it. [More info: Acumen]
Share on FacebookThe 10 Rules Great CFOs Live By
The following is an excerpt from Your Life & Your Money.
Your actions speak so loud, I can’t hear what you are saying.—SCOTT FEHER
1. Always take responsibility and accountability for your financial affairs. Take responsibility for your role in all your affairs, not just financial. Do not blame others. Understand that you can’t change people. You can only make the necessary adjustments and changes to better prepare yourself for your next fi nancial investment or transaction. It’s easy to blame others, but your role is the only one you can take responsibility for!
2. Master your expenses. If you don’t, you’re destined for financial failure. Manage your expenses and you’ll pay off your debt faster and have more to invest for your future. That future is in your hands. Invest wisely and you’ll be able to retire comfortably. Remember, if you can’t afford something, don’t buy it!
3. Develop a mission statement and improve it annually. It’s vital to put your individual or family mission statement on paper. It’s a commitment to you! Be true to your mission statement, and all the rest falls into place. This will force you to dig deep and fi nd out what’s really important to you and your family. Know thyself—what a present to give yourself. As you track your improvements annually, make bigger goals to achieve every year!
4. Track your expenses, taxes, and investments with quarterly reviews. Staying on top of these important items will ensure that you become and remain a duly diligent CFO. If not you, then who? Meet with your spouse quarterly to track these and any other items that are part of your mission statement. Make sure you’re making marked improvements. This is also a good time to communicate how everything is going, and to hold each other accountable to the mission statement. It’s also an opportunity to make any necessary adjustments for the next quarter. Keeping up with these items will become easier over time!
5. Read books and business journals to become financially savvy. I recommend reading one fi nance-related book every three months. There are so many great books and journals to read. I suggest that you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal or Investors Business Daily for a couple of months to get a feel for what’s going on out there in the fi nance world. You might think it’s boring, but as the CFO you need to be well-read. Read a variety of business journals to find the one that best fits your personality. Then make it a perennial daily read. I like the Wall Street Journal because it covers more than just financial topics. I know a lot of people who like Investors Business Daily better. Everyone has a favorite for various reasons. Wake up fifteen minutes earlier or spend fifteen minutes at night before bed to read, read, read!
6. Meet with all your consultants (financial advisor, CPA, insurance agent, and estate attorney) semiannually or annually. Please take this seriously. Keeping in touch with your financial, legal, and tax professionals is vital to proper planning for the following year. I recommend a meeting with your CPA and financial advisor every November to see how you can benefit from any tax advantages, such as exercising capital losses to offset any capital gains, or possibly harvesting any gains for the following year. Your CPA needs to be very proactive prior to the New Year. There’s usually very little a CPA can do for you on April 15 to implement tax strategies from the previous year. I repeat: make sure you visit your financial advisor or CPA every November to plan for the upcoming New Year! Also, visit your insurance agent every year to check that your car, home, and life insurance policies are in order, and to confi rm that all necessary insurance policies are in place. See your estate attorney every two years to make sure that your family trust is current with any new estate tax laws. If you do all of the aforementioned tasks without the help of a professional, make sure to track and check them all just as a financial or tax professional would.
7. Don’t invest in any product or service that isn’t aligned with your mission statement or that you don’t understand. As a financial advisor, I am solicited regularly by wholesalers who want me to sell different products and services. Many of these products would incur too much risk for my clients, and therefore I would not present them. If I’m interested, and the product or service is aligned with my clients’ mission statements, then I begin to research vigorously. I read through the prospectus, research online, and discuss the product with other advisors who sell it. Then I watch it for three to twelve months. There’s no rush, since I represent products and services on a large scale, and people are depending on my recommendations. Who relies on your research and investment strategy? You do. Your family does. Do your homework, and make sure that you or your advisor thoroughly research any hot stock or mutual fund tip or offer. Make sure that this hot stock or fund is aligned with your mission statement and risk tolerance no matter how good it sounds. Remember, this book is about you knowing you, and being a smart investor, not a careless gambler!
8. Don’t allow fi nancial mistakes to hinder your progress. When you do make mistakes, forgive yourself and move on. I know many wealthy people who’ve had their share of financial hardship. Meeting thousands of people in my career has allowed me to survey many different levels of wealth. The very wealthy usually learn from their mistakes, and use them as motivational steps to reach a higher level of wealth. Even in their darkest moments, they stay true to themselves and believe that they’ll improve their lot in life. On the other hand, I’ve met people who live paycheck to paycheck, and have let their past financial mistakes become their permanent life story, thereby keeping themselves from achieving financial greatness. It’s such a fine line that it’s scary. Allow yourself to make financial mistakes, and never, ever give up on you or your family.
9. Your word is your bond! Hold yourself accountable. Integrity is essential in all your affairs. When you say you’ll do something, you need to follow through. If you don’t, how will you achieve your goals? When you design your mission statement, and you and your spouse agree to hold each other accountable for taking care of each other’s assignments or chores, then it’s important to be there for one another. If you’re single, be there for yourself. In either case, it’s vital to follow through on your word and on your promises to yourself. Is there anything more important than keeping your word? Rare is the story of financial success or goodwill in which people do not keep their word.
10. Having it all depends on YOU! If you don’t take care of your financial affairs, who will? It doesn’t matter if you’re a paycheck-to-paycheck family or a very high-net-worth individual. You have to follow the laws and principles of sound financial money management or you’ll eventually end up in a place you never intended.
Lastly, I wish you all the best in your endeavors to become a quality CFO, and I pray that you fulfill all of your dreams. Always stay focused on preparation, and the rest will fall into place. Your future is up to you.
If not you, then who?
Share on FacebookAvoid the Blame Game—Take Responsibility for Your Financial Affairs
The following is an excerpt from Your Life & Your Money
We must become the change that we want to see in the world.—Mahatma Gandhi
We live in an age of delusion. It seems to be the inherent nature of mankind.
Our biggest delusion is a sense of entitlement. It permeates our country. People delude themselves into believing everything is fine while engaging in behavior that’s definitely not fine. Then, when something goes wrong, they stand there blankly and do nothing about it, expecting somebody else to pick up after them! Everywhere you turn, people are blaming everybody else for their problems.
Look around. It’s everywhere—in our neighborhoods, schools, big business. There’s the chain smoker who sues the tobacco company. Or the overweight, overfed cheeseburger eater who sues the hamburger chain, claiming that their food made him fat. Or the guy who drank too much, left the bar and then crashed his car, who blames the bartender for serving him too much alcohol.
Are you kidding? The next thing you know, the government will be bailing out all the homeowners who double- and triple-dipped into their home equity and are upside down, plus the brokerage houses that bought lousy loans and the banks that accepted those loans. Oh, wait—that’s happening too!
Worst of all are our politicians. They believe they can print money and manufacture prosperity.
I’m not making this up, it’s true. What in the heck is happening? And why is it happening? The answer is simple: it’s much easier to blame others than to take responsibility for yourself.
The Delusional Trap
We delude ourselves when we’re uncomfortable with accepting things the way they are as opposed to the way we want them to be. When we act on the way we want things to be instead of how they actually are, we make bad financial decisions and create painful problems that often end up hurting many others.
People become ensnared in the delusional trap when they create financial trappings in their lives without noticing or acknowledging or, even worse, deliberately ignoring reality. They’re afraid to face their financial lives head—on with brutal honesty. They’ll do anything to avoid the consequences, often at the expense of other people or businesses, and when it’s too late, they take down a lot of innocent people with them.
Every time someone claims bankruptcy, overspends on credit cards and repeatedly refi nances their home, they are lying to themselves and being negligent and disrespectful of their fellow humans.
As my dear friend Willy M. Nieman put it, delusional thinking is defined as:
1. Telling yourself a lie
2. Believing in that lie
3. Acting on that lie
The Sub-Prime Debacle
For a vivid example of how our entire society is ensnared in a delusional trap, look at the sub-prime debacle. As I write this, we are seeing millions of foreclosures nationwide, and it’s probably going to get a lot worse before it gets better. How did this happen? Let me give you my version:
In response to considerable housing discrimination against minorities and the poor, Congress over the years has been trying to make amends. It passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974 which made it unlawful for any creditor to discriminate against any credit applicant on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, marital status or age. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 further mandated that no lending institution could discriminate within various low-income and minority neighborhoods nationwide. Failure to comply subjects a fi nancial institution to civil liability for actual and punitive damages.
Talk about the road to you-know-where being paved with good intentions. Banks were accepting loan applications that in ordinary times they would have thrown in the trash. The reason was that as soon as the banks issued the loans, they could package them up and sell them to brokerage houses, which in turn packaged the loans and sold them as mortgage-backed securities.
The banks and securities fi rms were making so much money that they fell into a delusional trap themselves, believing the less-than-stellar securities they were manufacturing actually were sound. Nevertheless, the euphoric mood allowed many people to buy a house for the first time despite less-than-ideal (or sub-prime) credit.
To buy what most times were properties they could not afford by any conventional yardstick, many fi rst-time homebuyers of primary residences and rental properties used adjustable rate loans, which had low fixed rates for the fi rst two or three years of the mortgage. After that, their monthly payments increased signifi cantly.
What happened next shook the world—although anyone not deluding himself could have predicted the mess: those sub-prime adjustable loans started adjusting. For example, people paying $2,700 a month for their mortgage were receiving new mortgage payments at $3,400 to $3,600. And the monthly payments kept rising.
Borrowers began to default. Eventually, so many of these loans went into default that the capital structure of many brokerage firms, banks and hedge funds worldwide became questionable. The financial soundness of the world’s banking system and the ability to create the credit needed for the world’s daily economic functioning was being called into question.
Governments around the world had to bail out troubled financial institutions, leading to credit cutbacks and the recession we’re in now.
Everyone was deluded: the government, banks, loan brokers, securities firms and the sub-prime borrowers themselves. The problem spiraled out of control because there was so much money to be made in believing that a fantasy—taking on more debt than anyone could afford—somehow would work out.
A Solution
When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.—THE DALAI LAMA
The mortgage mess can teach us valuable lessons.
First, we must take responsibility for ourselves. Once you get the hang of it, it’s liberating. Yet taking complete responsibility for yourself is tough, which is why most people would rather blame others or deflect responsibility.
If you get anything from this book, it’s that taking responsibility for your own actions is the key to success and fi nancial and emotional well-being.
You will become empowered by taking full responsibility for your actions and for your role in all situations. If you blame and judge others without looking at your own actions, you will lose the essence of authentic accountability. It takes courage and practice to look at yourself first and foremost in all of your affairs, but it builds character in you and goodwill for your family, your friends, and your community. That’s what I call making a positive impact in your life!
Once you start taking responsibility, you’ll start noticing positive changes. You will feel empowered. You won’t waste time and energy on what someone else should have done. You will stay consistently focused on your role in all of your affairs.
By taking responsibility, you may be surprised to discover that you weren’t as much of a victim or as innocent as you initially believed. That realization is both humbling and enlightening, and it’s where your inner awareness takes place. Can you imagine how much better the world would be if all of us were accountable and took responsibility for our actions?
Let’s start wiping out the cobwebs of delusional thinking by asking a few questions. Do you overspend? Do you have a savings account that will last for three to six months in the event of an emergency? Do you know what your monthly expenses are? Do you know what you are invested in and why?
You probably don’t, and we’ll be giving you the tools to answer those questions over the course of this book. The fact is we all suffer from delusional fantasies, just some more than others. Notice how I use the word “suffer.” Suffering is usually the result of delusional thinking in any financial aspect of our lives. Some psychologists might say that this behavior is a necessary mechanism to cope with certain situations. They might be right. But when it comes to your financial affairs, nothing could be further from the truth. If you don’t meet your financial affairs head-on, you will eventually suffer. The more honest we are with ourselves in all of our affairs, not only the financial ones, the better off we will be, because we will always know who we are, what we are, and what we stand for.
It takes courage and bravery. But the rewards are worth it. If you don’t take care of your financial affairs, who will?
Share on FacebookLabor Day
Hey Guys,
I'll be off for a couple days. I am excited to take some time and write The Lost Proverb: The Virtuous Man and a couple other related posts. Hope you enjoy your nice long weekend!
- PBJ
Share on FacebookActions Not Words: The Difference Between Talkers and Doers
Awesome article by JD from Get Rich Slowly
It’s Sunday morning and I should be editing articles in advance of my upcoming vacation. Instead, I just got done playing another game of Starcraft II. Since the game was released on July 27th, I’ve played many games of Starcraft II. In fact, I’ve played at least 150 games of Starcraft II. (I know this because the game keeps track of your record. I played 50 training matches, and have since won 47 and lost 42 against human opponents, putting me near the top of my division in the “Silver League”. Plus I’ve played some single-player games.)
How much time has playing 150 games of Starcraft II sucked from my life? At about 30 minutes per game, it’s safe to say I’ve spent about 80 hours over the past month — or about 20 hours per week — building virtual armies and blowing stuff up.
Now on the surface, there’s nothing wrong with me having a little fun. I’ve been waiting for this game for almost twelve years. Plus, I’ve been working hard for the past two years, and I’ve been stressed because of it. I deserve some time off, and have intentionally been downshifting to a simpler life, one that gives me time for computer games.
However, having said that, in this case there’s a problem. Recently my game-playing — I’ve also been obsessed with Carcassonne on the iPad (getting close to the global top 100 list!) — has been obsessive, and has come at a price.
- I haven’t been cycling (though I have been going to the gym).
- I haven’t been doing my work around the house.
- I haven’t been studying my French. (One of my goals was too be able to speak a bit of French before our upcoming trip to Paris.)
- I haven’t been prepping my Animal Intelligence blog for re-launch (which is still scheduled for Wednesday!).
- I’ve been scrambling to get articles ready for Get Rich Slowly.
I say I’m going to do all of these things, but I never do. Instead I play computer games. Basically, I’ve turned into the old J.D. — the J.D. of five years ago. I’ve become a Talker instead of a Doer.
Talkers vs. Doers
Five years ago, I was full of hot air. Well, that and I was clinically depressed. And lazy. This was not a good combination for Getting Things Done. I talked a lot about the things I wanted to do, but I never did them. I found reasons not to. I even had trouble keeping up my end of the household chores, which my wife found very frustrating.
I was a Talker.
Maybe you know somebody like this. A Talker seems to know the solutions to everything, has great plans on how he’s going to make money or get a new job. But the funny thing is, the Talker never acts on his solutions and his great plans. And he never gets that new job. He’s out of work or stuck in a job he hates. To everyone else, it’s clear that the Talker is full of hot air, but he believes he’s bluffing everyone along, or conflates talking with doing. When confronted, a Talker always has excuses for not getting things done: he doesn’t have time, he doesn’t have the skills, the odds are stacked against him. When a Talker does do something, he often takes a shortcut.
That, my friends, was the man I used to be.
But something changed in the autumn of 2005. I began to read a lot of books. Not just personal finance books (though, as you know, I read plenty of those), but also self-help books and success manuals. I read Feeling Good to deal with my depression, How to Win Friends and Influence People [my review] to learn how to talk with people, and so on. And gradually I began to take the advice in these books to heart.
I began to take small steps, began to be more active in my world. Instead of just talking about doing things, I did them. I stopped looking for shortcuts — I had been a huge fan of shortcuts — and started actually doing the work required to get things done. Shockingly, this worked. By doing the work, I got the expected results. By doing instead of talking, things started to happen.
I became a Doer.
We Are What We Repeatedly Do
Author Kevin J. Anderson has a fantastic post on his blog about the similarities between the Olympics and writing. Here’s a lengthy excerpt:
I’ve had many people tell me, “Oh, writing is easy. Anybody can do it if they just sit down and put their minds to it.” Here’s how the conversation goes:
Somebody at a book-signing: “I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I could write a novel.”
Me: “Oh? Why haven’t you?”
Person: “I just don’t have the time.”
Me: “Hmm. Nobody gives me the time, either. I have to make the time, set priorities, discipline myself to get my writing done each day, no matter how tired I am. I worked a full-time regular job while I wrote my first novels, scraping out an hour here or there in evenings and weekends. That’s how I’ve become a successful author.”
Person: “Yeah, right. I think you’re just lucky.”
[...]
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was five years old. I sat in my dad’s study and plunked out my first “novel” on a manual typewriter when I was eight. By the age of ten, I had saved up enough money to buy either a bicycle (like a normal kid), or my own typewriter. I chose the typewriter. I got my first rejection slip by the time I was 13, had my first story published when I was 16 (after I had gathered 80 rejection slips), and sold my first novel by the time I was 25.
I have a trophy in my office proclaiming me to be “The Writer with No Future” because I could produce more rejection slips by weight than any other writer at an entire conference. My files now bulge with more than 800 rejections. On the other hand, I also have 100 books published, 46 of which have been national or international bestsellers, I’ve got a shelf full of awards, and my work has been translated into 30 languages. I’ve written more than twelve million words, so far.
Anderson is a Doer. He doesn’t just talk about writing — he writes. He writes over and over and over again. Through the sheer act of writing, he became a writer.
People often ask me about the secret to this blog’s success. “How did you get so many readers?” they ask. “How can I do the same?”
My answer is similar to Anderson’s. There aren’t any secrets. Write and post great content on a regular basis for a long, long time. In short, you can’t just talk about building a great blog; you also have to put in the work. Simple, right? But it’s not easy.
(I appreciate the folks who come up to me and say, “You know, J.D., I don’t know how you do it. I tried to keep a blog for a few months. It was hard.” Yes, it is. It’s work, just like anything else.)
If there’s something you want to be or do, the best way to become that thing is to actually take steps toward it, to move in that direction. Don’t just talk about it, but do something. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Just take a small step in the right direction every single day.
If you want to get out of debt, take small steps toward becoming debt-free. If you want to save for a trip to Africa, save a little bit at a time. If you want to get a new job, make moves in that direction. But take action. That’s the most important step.
Action Not Words
Of course, there’s more to getting stuff than just taking action. It’s one thing to say you want to become a commercial airline pilot and another to actually do it. Here are some of the things I learned as I made the move from Talker do Doer:
- Make time for the things you want to do. One of the keys to getting things done is setting aside time for the things you want to accomplish. You have to make time to get stuff done. As the Kevin J. Anderson article I mentioned above demonstrates, you don’t just become a best-selling author or an Olympic athlete. Talking doesn’t make it so. You have to carve out time to do this stuff. You have to put your Big Rocks first and fit the small stuff in around them.
- Have a goal in mind. I truly believe that the biggest reason I used to struggle with getting stuff done is that I didn’t have any sort of plan. I had no goals. Goals give you purpose. It wasn’t until I became committed to digging out of debt that I was able to actually start moving in the right direction. Part of my current problem is that I’ve recently achieved a bunch of big goals, but now have nothing planned for the future.
- Don’t take on too much. While it’s important to set goals, don’t take on too many tasks at once. I try to set just one or two major goals at a time. Any more and I find I can’t pursue any of them effectively. This year, my one goal is to lose 50 pounds. I’m on pace to do that. Why? Because I don’t have anything else on my schedule competing for time. This is my Big Rock.
- Don’t let failures deter you. This is huge. One of the reasons I used to talk so much without acting is that I was afraid of failure. I’m not sure where I learned to be afraid of defeat, but that’s the way I was. And when I did try something but failed, I’d give up. This is no way to get stuff done. Talkers let fear of failure keep them on the sideline; Doers overcome fear and move on, and when they fail, they simply try again.
- Don’t find reasons that something can’t be done; instead, find ways that something can be done. This is a pet peeve of mine. I hate when people come to me for advice, but when I give it, they tell me all of the reasons it won’t work for their circumstances. (This often happens when I suggest people take a second job to boost their income, for example.) One of the biggest difference between successful people and those who aren’t is that the successful don’t make excuses. If something looks difficult or impossible, they find ways to make it happen anyhow.
In the past five years, I’ve learned that I can do anything I set my mind to. Get out of debt? After I stopped talking and started doing, I got out of debt quicker than I thought possible. Losing 50 pounds? Well, I’m not there yet, but I’ve lost over 30 pounds since January 1st — but it didn’t happen until I stopped talking about it and started working hard to make it happen. Learning French? Well, there’s one where my talk outpaces my action right now, and it’s a perfect example of what I mean when I say actions speak louder than words. I don’t study my French as much as I should, so basically all I can do is count and tell you what color my clothes are. (”J’ai deux chemise noir.”)
For five years, my doing slowly increased until this past winter it reached a frenzied pace. I was burning myself out. I was writing and speaking and working and exercising and…well, it seemed like I never had a spare moment. This was the dark side of doing, and it’s what triggered my desire to downshift. It’s what led the pendulum swinging too far in the direction of Starcraft II.
Finding a Solution
So what’s the solution to my current problem? How can I stop playing computer games so much? How can I stop just being a Talker and become a Doer again? Well, making this public confession is a first step. But the thing that I think will really help is the “decision tree” I came up with the other day. Whenever the urge to game strikes, I’m going to ask myself the following questions:
- Have I exercised today?
- Are the house and yard tidy?
- Have I run all of my errands?
- Have I written and/or edited at least two articles for Get Rich Slowly?
- Does my inbox have fewer than 20 messages?
If I can answer “yes” to these five questions, then it’s okay to play Starcraft II or Carcassonne. But if I answer “no” to even one of these questions, I need to have the discipline to let the gaming go. I believe this will help me strike a balance. It’ll help me return to the world of Doing again. Because you know what? Life is a lot more fun as a Doer than a Talker.
Share on FacebookThe Boomerang Generation
I hear all the buzz about how we are the 'Boomerang Generation'. Here's the wiki. Here is the New York Times on 'Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?' Very interesting article on how 'growing up' is being pushed back and back. Some of the statistics are getting frightening. But pretty much, kids who go back to their parents, boomeranging, after college or as a young professional. Most parents (the older generation) use this in a derogatory sense. Oh-my-son/daughter-can't-get-a-job. Can't take care of him/herself. This generation is lazy. Your generation doesn't have the hardwork ethic, back when I was growing up.... On and on, parents rant.
Hello. Things change. Times change. It is weird to think this anyways because, mainly in Asian and Hispanic cultures, 'boomeranging' happens all the time. Actually you probably never left in the first place, so 'ranging' happens all the time! 'Skeptics' argue that parents are being enablers. 'Giving a drunk a drink'. Enabling their children to not become men or women. I do know some friends who are definitely being enabled by their parents. As they have not worked in over a year. But for the most part, friends who went back home are actually, legitimately trying to 'get on their feet'. I am not going to argue that competing with 10% unemployment is hard. I know it is.
Parents who point fingers. Talk behind their kids backs. Whispering how they wouldn't do that need to get a better picture on the global economic climate and stop demeaning their kids and start encouraging their kids to network more, apply more, and actively meet with people. I am sure the same parents who yap could easily be sifting through their own network for contacts so their kids could meet with them. Thus, adding to the likelihood that they can get a job to add the needed stream of income for them to not be boomerang kids!!! This should be temporary people!!
I worry with larger classes coming through high school in 2011 and 2012. Will America be back in 5 years when these kids graduate? Will we ever see 5% unemployment ever again? Or will it hover at 10%? I think we may see 6 and 7% unemployment but it would be hardpressed to see 5% again.
Some reasons on why there is a boomerang generation:
- The 18th through 21st birthdays of this generation coincide with the economic downturn starting with the collapse of the stock market bubble in 2000. This led to rising unemployment until 2004, the same time this generation was entering the workforce after high school or college graduation. Now at rougly 10% unemployment.
- Globalization-induced phenomena like outsourcing have eliminated many jobs. Take away some of those labor jobs and the older people with families, obligations, etc take up 'lesser' more entry level jobs that the recent graduate would have filled in previous generations.
- Real wages have fallen over the last twenty years
- A college degree no longer ensures job stability
this is the easiest, if not only, way for these young adults to maintain the middle class lifestyle they anticipated. Additionally, with the recent economic crisis hitting much of the world, many young people were either laid off or could no longer afford to live on their own. Moving back home allows them the option of unpaid internships and additional schooling without the burden of paying rent at market rates (or paying rent at all). Uhhhh unless I am reading this incorrectly. We had NOTHING to do with globalization, the greedy internet and now real estate bubbles, and real wages diminishing... We were probably snacking on some goldfish, a gogurt and watching Nickelodean. Outsourcing took time. Globalization took time. Crashes take time, time for the market to go up and up, then drop. It is not OUR fault, but it is OUR problem.
This is still no excuse if you are living at home and haven't found a job in 6 months. I think 6 months is plenty of time to find a solid job, if not a career job. And you better not be complaining about cleaning up around the house if your mom or dad asks you to. I see hiring signs at fast food restaurants and as pizza delivery all the time. Money is money. Our generation has definitely felt 'entitled' to more than it should. Which is nothing. You are entitled to nothing. (you may want to repeat that again). Working is a privilege. Even if it is as a pizza boy for a season.
Share on FacebookThe World is Filled With Boys Who Can Shave
Awesome read by Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church here in Seattle called The World is filled with boys who can shave. He preached at our church this last weekend and wrote a post for The Washington Post. Totally agree and in line with my relationship series posts. Here are just some of the quotes I loved!
- Evangellyfish - hahahahahha I love it! because they have no backbone. They don't declare a major, church, theology, or fiancé. They don't want to fail and they think if they don't try, then they can't fail.
- The marketing sweet spot for many companies is young men ages eighteen to thirty-four. These guys don't know what it means to be a man, and so marketers fill the void with products that define manhood by what you consume rather than what you produce.
- The tough retrosexual guys consume women, porn, alcohol, drugs, television, music, video games, toys, cars, sports, and fantasy leagues, as if being a man is defined by how much meat you can shove through your colon, how many beers you can pound, how fast you can drive, how stinky you can fart, how hard you can hit, how far you can spit, how loud you can belch, and how big your truck is.
- The artsy, techie metrosexual types consume clothes, decaf lattes, shoes, gadgets, cars (not trucks), furniture, hair products, and underwear with the names of very important people on the waistband. For them, manhood means being in touch with one's feelings, wardrobe, and appearance.
- What happens if you walk into the church and try to find out what a man looks like? First of all, you're not going to find a lot of guys in most evangelical churches. The least likely person to see in church is a single, twenty-something male. He is as rare at church as a vegan at a steak house.
Most guys that are twenty-something and in the church would laugh at this last quote and shake-there-head-in-agreement. I know I did. You know the church outing where you are the only guy and there are like 10 other girls. Or just a few other guy friends. Always outnumbered 3-1. But after some thought, maybe the 20-something year old guy is single because he is still a boy and not a man...
I know I still have some boy-ish tendencies. I've been doing my best to shed most of them, but I still enjoy, maybe a little too much, fantasy football and fantasy basketball. I love beating my friends. Getting the bragging rights. Picking up that free agent that turns into a superstar, or drafting a sleeper that becomes an all-star. It's a badge of honor worn proudly and held over the head of the defeated, ie my friends. I could get demolished by my friend in ping pong 8 months later, but I can always bring up the fact that I beat him in fantasy. I could be getting my butt kicked in tennis, getting aced on, getting pummeled by two-handed backhands, forehanded missiles, and shrewdly placed dropshots, making me run a marathon on 0-6, 0-5, love-40. But I can always bring up how I won the fantasy championship...
For instance, I have a draft this weekend. I am getting up at 7am, on a weekend mind you, to go and get ready... I have probably done more research on fantasy football/basketball players than my Senior paper, all the classes in my major, and total time spent in lecture hall, COMBINED. You may think it's sad, but I can probably name 200+ active players in both football and basketball, their position, and most of their general statistics...sadly I don't even think I can name off the twelve disciples right now....or name 80+ countries... or name 25+ periodic elements... or name all the states and capitals...
What boy-ish tendencies are you holding onto? Are you a man or a boy, think about it. It is really easy to think you are a man but act like a boy. Delusion. I pray for more MEN, not boys, not adolescence, not dudes. I pray for myself. Please Lord, shed me from all boy-ish tendencies and help me be a producer and not just a consumer. Producing fantasy championship teams, year-after-year 