I meant to have this guide up a few weeks ago, but time slipped away and I didn’t quite manage to get it out. I’ve been sensing pre-SXSW freakout from some of my friends, so I’m going to go ahead and put this out anyway.

If you happened to be reading this on twitter, you’ve already seen most of these, but I know that there are plenty of people on a plane today that didn’t have a chance to join that conversation.

There are a few things that I’d like to preface this guide with:

1. This will only be my second trip to SXSW. I’m not a seasoned veteran – but I have a good memory and I’m a people-watcher.
2. This guide is called a Maven’s Guide because I’m primarily a maven ala The Tipping Point (affiliate link): I’m an information and idea specialist.

Were I primarily a Connector or Salesman, then I’d approach SXSW differently, and one of the biggest things I learned last year was that people approached the event with completely different expectations and orientations.

In other words, if you’re showing up to SXSW to party hard, you’ll probably want to augment this guide with one that’s written from someone who shows up to party hard.

3. When I say SXSW, I mean SXSW Interactive. The Film and Music culture is different. Also, #sxswi is the twitter hashtag you’ll want to follow for SXSW Interactive.

There are three main reasons people go to SXSW: People, Panels, and Parties. As you can probably tell, I’m going to be focusing on the first two.

So, without further ado, here are a few questions that people have asked me or that I asked last year:

Question: What’s the most compelling reason to go to SXSW?
Answer: You get to meet and befriend a bunch of cool people and see what’s going to be happening in the next 3-12 months.

In short, were it not for SXSW, I wouldn’t have met the great people that I now talk to weekly, and I won’t name names because I’ll probably forget somebody and kick myself. Additionally, SXSW got me thinking about a lot of Big Ideas that played out for the six months following it.

Question:What should I wear?
Answer: It’s completely casual – T-shirts and pants/jeans are fine. It’s really easy to overdress, even for women, and the only thing worse than being slightly underdressed is being so overdressed that you make everyone else uncomfortable.

Question: Are there newbie orientation panels worth attending?
Answer: This one’s a hard one to answer. There is one on Friday at 2pm and another at 5pm, but I didn’t find those panels nearly as valuable as just finding people I wanted to hang out with and figuring it out from there.

Question: How do I sift through the impressive list of panels and figure out what’s worth going to? It’s a bit overwhelming!
Answer: The first thing that you’ve got to know is that the panels are recorded, so you don’t have to be at every one. That said, you won’t get as much out of the recordings as you will by attending them, and I know a few people who didn’t go to any assuming they’d watch the videos later only to never watch the videos.

When you’re considering panels, you’ll want to choose at most three per day unless you want to be overwhelmed by information. The creative energy of 10,000 geeks can be a bit much.

Flip through the list of panels and find a few must-see panels and leave the rest of your schedule open. Try to include one panel that’s within your area of expertise and another that’s in a neighboring area that you’d like to know more about.

Question: How do people find each other? It’s a madhouse!
Answer: DMs and text messages. And you’ll pack up once you get there.

Question: Do I need business cards?
Answer: They’re not strictly necessary. Your badges will be swipeable by smartphones this year.

Also, I learned about Contxts last year at SXSW. It’s a nifty service that allows you to send your information to other people’s phones via text messages.

Question: Where/how do people eat?
Answer: There’s a load of restaurants within walking distance downtown. Skip the in-conference vendors.

There’s a Whole Foods that’s not too far from the conference center, too. You’ll want to load up on water and snacks there.

While I’m on water, remember to drink plenty of it. You’ll be doing a lot of talking, learning, and (maybe) drinking, so it’s easy to get dehydrated. It’s hard to be your best when your brain is fried, you’re tired, and people are trying to have engaging conversations with you.

Question: Where should I stay?
Answer: If there’s still room and you can, it’s a lot more convenient to stay downtown. If you need to take a break, you can head back to your room and recharge. I also some great ideas spark last year that I lost by the time I got back to my distant hotel.

By the time you factor in renting a car and paying for parking or renting a cab and the time you’ll spend in Austin traffic, it’s better to just stay downtown.

(I know, it would’ve been better to know this about three months ago.)

Question: I’m not Internet Famous. Will I fit in?
Answer: It depends. Treat people like people and act like you belong there and you’ll be fine.

Question: I’m a huge fan of Famous Person. Should I talk to them?
Answer: Yes. Keep in mind that they’re busy, though, so be brief and non-clingy.

There’s a fine art to edging yourself into someone’s field of view so that they know you want to say something to them really quickly. If you don’t master the art, you might find yourself standing outside of a conversation for a while. On the other end, just jumping in and interrupting the conversation to say how much of a fan you are doesn’t go very well, either.

Question: Are there any places where the Cool Peeps hang out?
Answer: The one that comes to mind is the Blogger’s lounge. The Blogger’s lounge is only accessible to badge holders, so if you cheaped out on tickets, you’ll have to stand outside and hope people come out to see you. I’m talking to you, Johnny.

Question: How much are the panels targeted at big business?
Answer: Not as much as you’d think, and there are a ton of panels that don’t.

Question: How do I get the most value out of connecting with people?
Answer: Focus on quality and finding the people you really want to hang out with instead of trying to find everyone you might want to talk to. SXSW isn’t a game of Pokemon, after all.

As you group up, impromptu hangouts will start to happen organically. This is where the real value of SXSW is at, and you’ll want to give yourself ample time to lean into this smallish gatherings.

Question: Am I the only one that’s freaking out?
Answer: Not by a long shot. Almost every 1st timer is, too. You’re going to be okay.

Thanks to Ali Hale, Cath Duncan, Johnny B Truant, and Elizabeth Potts Weinstein for asking great questions and reminding me that I might be able to help other people by sharing these ideas and suggestions. If I missed your question, please ask it in the comments and I’ll answer it in the post.

Come up and say hello if you see me this weekend – follow me on Twitter at @CharlieGilkey to see what I’m up to. I’ll see you there!

No related posts.

Today’s post is a conversation I wish someone would’ve had with me years ago before I started my entrepreneurial journey. I may not have been able to understand it then, but it would have been nice to at least have it on the board. I’m sharing it with you so that it is something you can think about as you walk along this road.

I started along this path because I knew that were a lot of people out there who had just as many challenges  doing great work in the world as I had who hadn’t done the research, exploration, and experimentation that I had already done. I’m not a fan of duplication of effort, so I decided to share what I’d learned so that I could help others. Whether or not I ever became a giant, I wanted to give others some shoulders to stand on.

Somewhere along the path, I started reading books on business strategy and techniques, and while they helped me gain some momentum, I had to read them with a filter on because they were all about making money and selling. It seemed like every discussion focused on money and numbers – all in the efforts to pull resources from people to you.

Sometimes I would join the bandwagon, get dollar signs in my eyes, and start scheming up some plot to make a ton of money and spend my days hanging in a hammock and sipping margaritas on a beach in Maui. The few schemes I tried ended up being a waste of time and energy; in retrospect, they probably would’ve worked had my heart been in them, but it wasn’t.

Inevitably, though, I’d revert back to being me and helping people do meaningful work and flourish in their own way. That’s the core of who I am, and if that meant I had to do it on the side while I paid the bills, then so be it – I wasn’t going to sell out.

As I kept doing it, though, revenue-generating opportunities started to present themselves more and more, and because of all of the bad examples of capitalists and entrepreneurs, I always second-guessed those opportunities. I had so ingrained that being an effective entrepreneur was inconsistent with being compassionate that I felt that to sell something or make an offer was me being greedy or taking something from somebody. I thought that selling would get in the way of sharing.

I was wrong, and if my story sounds like what you’re struggling with, you’re wrong, too.

Strategy and Compassion Aren’t Mutually Exclusive

Imagine a competent, seasoned general during war. Her job is to effectively maneuver troops on the battlefield to meet certain strategic objectives. To be effective, she has to know what she’s doing; if she doesn’t, there’s unnecessary death and destruction. But since she knows that the proper end of (just) warfare is peace, she can’t neglect the human element of warfare; if she doesn’t show restraint and compassion, she’s not an effective general – she’s a bully with troops and dangerous toys.

Her difficult task, then, is to align strategy and compassion. Our task as entrepreneurs is the same in principle but different in application. (You might see parallels between the challenging task of being a parent, too.)

As I see it, the point of entrepreneurship is to help people. At its core, it’s inherently compassionate, and the more I grow and see, the more it drives home to me that an entrepreneur’s ventures aren’t about her – they’re about the people she’s helping.

At the same time, to be an entrepreneur, you have to know strategy. You have to know how to market and promote yourself. You have to learn about pricing, market trends, distribution methods, and competitive analysis. In short, you have to know what works if you want to do it for the long haul.

Actually, you don’t have to know strategy; you can hire others to manage it for you. For many creative entrepreneurs, though, this creates a frustrating chicken-and-egg scenario: to hire someone to help you figure out what works, you to have the resources, but to have the resources, you have to figure out what works. (I’ve been there, too.)

What I’d like to bring your attention to, though, is whether you’re at the strategic helm or somebody else is, it’s still a part of your business. You can’t have a successful business without it.

Compassion represents the heart of your business and strategy represents the head of your business. The best thing you can do for yourself and others is to align your head and heart. When you do, selling and sharing aren’t two mutually exclusive acts – selling is a type of sharing.

It’s All About Moderation (Surprise!)

You might be tempted to think that strategy and compassion lie on the same spectrum with strategy on one end and compassion on the other, as illustrated in this picture:

That would be an incomplete view that only perpetuates the idea that strategy and compassion are opposites. I think the more correct view is that strategy and compassion are on their own spectra, like so:

The quickest way to show that they’re on two different spectra is by asking you to think about four different possibilities:

1. Case 1: It’s possible to lack compassion and lack strategy
2. Case 2: It’s possible to be too compassionate and lack strategy
3. Case 3: It’s possible to lack compassion and be too strategic
4. Case 4: It’s possible to be too compassionate and too strategic

Case 1 is fairly common. This is the position of all the people who are just out to make a quick buck and really have no idea what they’re doing. Luckily, the market filters them out pretty quickly, but you’ll run into them before they throw in the towel.

Case 2 is also really common, especially amongst the creative entrepreneurs that I encounter a lot. This is where I started.

Case 3 is probably the example that most of us think of when we think of all the types of entrepreneurs that we don’t want to be. There’s a large army of marketers who know exactly how to press your buttons and it’s not at all clear that they actually give a damn whether they’re helping you or not – what matters is that their pockets are lined. Maui’s expensive, after all.

Case 4 is an interesting one and it requires taking things to extremes. What I’m imagining is that it’s the people who are so focused on strategy and compassion that they lose the ability to be grounded in the reality of the individuals they’re dealing with. These people can be big dreamers and great strategist, but since they no longer deal with individuals, they’ve lost that true connection with themselves and the people they’re helping.

I’d like to pause here because it’s probably not clear how you can be too compassionate. Has someone ever tried to help you but bungled it up because they weren’t listening to what you actually wanted or needed? Have you ever done the nice thing and given somebody some “help” only to have it make the situation worse because it fed into the same patterns that caused them to need help? If you’ve seen something like these examples, you’ve experienced compassion taken to an extreme.

Similarly, few things are more interesting than talking to a blogger whose readers are almost demanding that she give them something to buy just because she’s given them so much that they can no longer receive her goodness without feeling guilty. Most of the people I’ve talked to and coached through this situation had trouble seeing that sometimes the best way to help people is to give them a way to buy into the help. (Yes, this does happen, and yes, you can go wrong by trying to either force or resist it.)

The challenge of aligning strategy and compassion is figuring out the moderate way that works for you. Obviously, I can’t help you figure out exactly how to do that in a general post like this, and, really, that’s part of the journey that we’re all on. As your resources and opportunities change, you’ll have to continually reevaluate what the best steps are, too.

For example, a recent challenge that I had to face was not being able to respond to most of the comments on this blog while do everything else that I thought would be more valuable that responding to those comments. My belief is that writing a post like this has better compassionate outcomes than focusing on responding to comments, as much as I’d like to. It’s taken me a while to recognize that placing my efforts on activities that help more people is both the most compassionate and most strategic thing that I can do.

You Don’t Have to Choose Between Being Broke and Helping People

When I talk to people about compassion, I always have to remind them that being compassionate also extends to taking care of yourself. If you can’t and don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of others. As I’ve said before, your happiness counts.

Taking care of yourself doesn’t mean doing whatever you can to get as much as you can from others – that’s one side of the egoist zero-sum game that so many people are already caught into. On the other hand, denying what you and your loved ones need is just invoking another zero-sum game with you being the loser. True compassion is about finding the win-win scenarios that are almost always possible.

You can’t do your best work with and for people when you’re worried about how you’re going to pay your mortgage. If there are sound business principles that align with your compassionate principles that would help you pay the mortgage, everyone loses out if you don’t bring them to fruition. Your current clients/customers aren’t getting the best out of you, your loved ones aren’t getting the best out of you, and you’re not as happy as you could be. That’s a lose-lose situation that you wouldn’t wish on somebody else, so why do you force it on yourself?

And what people don’t talk about often enough is that as your business gains momentum, you’ll be more able to be compassionate without having to worry about the outcomes. Because you don’t need the sale, deal, or business, you’ll be able to do share your gift without worrying about the outcomes – which has the counter-intuitive effect of making people more likely to buy stuff from you or hire you since they see you without the mask of worry, insecurity, or anticipation.

My own experience bears this out: since people are buying the stuff that I’ve decided to sell, I’m able to leave a lot of value on the table without worrying about it. I can be a weirdo and help people now more than I ever was before, but it’s only because I’ve aligned my compassionate thinking with sound strategic thinking.

You don’t have to choose between being an effective entrepreneur and being a creative, compassionate person. You can be both once you see that your head and your heart doesn’t have to be at odds.

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Ali Hale from Aliventures.

I‘m a woman, and I care about productivity. So today I want to start reaching towards some answers to the question Charlie posted in What If Women Cared About Productivity? (You might like to read or re-read that post – it’s from December 2008 – so you know where I’m coming from here.)

Perhaps I’m not the best person to address this issue. I’ve never been especially girly. Over the years, I’ve had more male friends than female ones. I hate buying shoes. I live in jeans and t-shirts. I listen to thrash metal. I enjoy roleplaying games and computer games. I make my money in a bloke-dominated area: websites, blogging and ebooks.

I can’t give you the definitive female view on productivity, any more than Charlie can speak for every man on the planet. I can, however, try to give it as I see it, and explain where the current trends in productivity-advice fall short.

Macho Productivity

There’s a certain strand of productivity which is unmistakably macho. It reeks of sweat and testosterone. It looks a bit like this:

Today (Friday) is a perfect day to “embrace the suck,” because most people will be moaning “Oh, I’m so glad it’s the weekend and I can finally stop working” (or, for the 7-day-a-week-ers, “Oh, man, don’t I ever get a day off?”).  Don’t complain.  You are stronger than that, damn it.  Embrace the suck, do it anyway, and bask in the fact that you are, as I said, an a$$-kicker like no other.

(Dave Navarro, Embrace The Suck: How To Hate What You Do And Love It, Rock Your Day)

or like this:

To want it more means to do more. To work harder and to be prepared to do whatever it takes to get what you want. It’s one thing to say you want to retire at age 50, or you want to run a 10K race in less than an hour. But what are you really willing to do to make this happen? How badly do you really want it?

(Alex Blackwell, How to Crack the Code to Your Life, Pick the Brain)

I’ve quoted two guys here who are very human, warm, gentle people. This is the non-extreme end of the macho spectrum.

I can see the attraction here: it’s about giving yourself the energy to power on through when things are tough. But in general, I think there’s something wrong if life is like that on anything approaching a regular basis. I feel a bit dismayed every time I read someone writing about how freaking hard they’re going to work, how little sleep they’re getting, how many hours they’re putting in. Are they really happy? Or are they just taking a grim pride in being stronger, harder and tougher than the other bloke?

All too often, it seems like kids and wives become just another item on the to-do list (and it is often “wives” in the productivity genre – I’d prefer the word “partner”, to avoid assuming that everyone’s male, heterosexual and married…) Okay, it’s better to have “family time” scheduled in the calendar or “play with kids” on the to-do list than to let that bit of your life fade out altogether – but there’s something awry about needing to treat people as yet another task.

The macho element also comes in when we start to see productivity as a race or a competition – with winners and losers. We tend to see men as being more competitive and women as more co-operative. Productivity often seems to mean being more profitable, more interesting, more relevant, more useful than other businesses … or about working harder and longer than your colleagues, or earning more money than your friends.

Isn’t there room for a model of productivity where, as friends, as coaches, as cheerleaders and encouragers, we use our time to the greatest effect, empowering others to do their best work?

Start Thinking Outcome, Not Output

Charlie wrote, perceptively, that there’s a male preoccupation with numbers and stats and metrics and things which can be counted:

Let’s be real here: males in our society get wrapped up around the countable things in life. Money, time, “contacts,” cars, women – if it’s countable, we’ll add it to the list of other things we have that are countable. (What If Women Cared About Productivity?)

Of course women do this too (I can get quite obsessed with word counts, as you’ll know if you follow me on Twitter) but I think that we inherently see “countable” things as being rather shallow. So many things in life just cannot be measured. Happiness can’t be measured or counted (shh, utilitarians…)

And when it comes to “contacts” … that just makes me shudder. Turning people into numbers inevitably de-humanises them. I have friends who I love to chat to on Twitter or Facebook, and I’m always happy when people find me through my blogging – but investing any sort of self-worth in these numbers is, frankly, a bit embarrassing.

Measuring your productivity by the number of novels or paintings or blog posts you produce is a mistake. I’m a writer. I could sit here all day typing and churn out thousands of words. They’d be crap and unpublishable. Is that productive?

The output you produce doesn’t matter. The outcome does.

Bigger Picture Productivity

“Productivity” has become focused on Getting Things Done, hacks to make using technology more efficient, and has resulted in a host of sites dedicated to coming up with [Absurd number]+[Ways to]+[Save time]+[by doing something you haven't thought about doing]. It’s old, and frankly, there are better things to talk about. (What If Women Cared About Productivity?)

When I started reading Dumb Little Man (which, despite the name, is read by plenty of women!) there were quite a few articles like this, along the lines of “20 Ways to Make Firefox Even More Amazing”.

I don’t need to make Firefox more amazing. “Saving” ten minutes a day isn’t really going to make a difference to my life. This approach to productivity is a bit like saying that if you eat one cookie less per day, you’ll lose 10lbs in a year. It might be true, but that doesn’t make it especially useful.

When I write about productivity, I try to take a different angle: partly because I’m still trying to break my thoughts away from the masculine model of productivity. I’ve written before about the dangers of productivity – especially when we start doing for doing’s sake, and we forget to be.

I’d like to see productivity come out of the factory-office mindset and into the modern world. I’d like to see us stop thinking about how many widgets we’ve cranked today, or how many emails we’ve processed, or how many business cards we’ve collected. I’d like to see us addressing the bigger picture, asking questions like:

• Why doesn’t my happiness seem to matter?
• Why do I keep over-committing myself?
• How many big goals can I realistically and sanely accomplish this year?
• What do I want more of in my life?
• Where can I recover big chunks of time by ignoring expectations?

These aren’t gendered issues. These relate to the big picture of all our lives. After all, we can get macho and masochistic about how many hours a week we work, how many products we ship, how many clients we send holiday greetings to … but is that really what we’re here for?

There is a huge amount more to be said about women and productivity, about how we need to lift productivity beyond the factory/office and into a more holistic view of who we are and who we want to be. I’d love to see this discussion extended not just into the comments but on other blogs, too.

Your turn: What if women cared about productivity? What then?

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Raise your hand if you’ve recognized too late in the day that you haven’t been doing the stuff that really matters, only to freak out, get overwhelmed, and resolve to work longer and harder – while still doing the same kinds of things that you just beat yourself up about doing.

Don’t worry, if I weren’t typing, my hand would be up, too.

This problem arises because there are two especially challenging parts of the day for us creative people:

1. Getting a great start on the day
2. Letting go at the end of the day

These two challenges are intimately related. Since we often don’t know what we should be doing, we get involved in a lot of easy to engage tasks that often aren’t the things that really matter the most. By the time we get our heads on straight, a lot of time is squandered – so we end up trying to overcompensate by working longer.

Then, at exactly the point at which it’s clear that you’re no longer able to do something without messing it up, you remember all the stuff you should’ve been doing in the first place. You know that it won’t get done no matter how hard we beat yourself up about it, yet you also can’t just let it go.

Yes, my hand would still be up.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Interrupting this pattern is as simple as figuring out what we need to do, doing it, and then checking at the end of the day to make sure we did it. Remember, something being simple is not the same as it being easy.

Here’s the deal, though: unless you’re good at planning your day, it’s really hard to do it first thing in the morning. It’s much easier to check email and get started on The Loop, which only serves to repeat the same pattern that we’re trying to interrupt.

So, instead of trying it that way, try what I’m calling the 10/15 Split. The 10/15 Split is basically a quick check-in and check-out process. You spend 10 minutes at the start of your day checking in and 15 minutes at the end of the day checking out.

The key to getting the 10/15 Split going is actually the evening check-out instead of the morning check-in. That’s why it gets a bit more time, but it’s also because you’re asking harder questions. That said, we’ll start by talking about the check-out first.

The 15 Minute Check-Out

The check-out is the harder of the two, but for good reason: we usually have a better perspective at the end of the day than the beginning of the day.

You know what you did and didn’t do, and you also have a good idea of the next steps you need to do keep the ball going. So, while your overwhelm might be higher, the mental cobwebs that cloud the beginning of the day aren’t there.

The 15 Minute Check-Out has three questions:

1. What did you accomplish? (Celebrate!)

Acknowledge what you did do rather than just focus on what you didn’t. Always, always, always celebrate what you accomplished – life is but a series of small steps, but if you don’t celebrate the small wins, it’s harder to build up the momentum for the bigger ones.

2. Is there anything that you need to do right now to be able to disengage?

This question answers that nagging feeling that you’ve forgot to do something. Check your Inbox and ToDo list for those things that have to happen today. Ask yourself what would really happen if you don’t do whatever you’re considering – you’d be surprised how many things can wait until the next day.

3. When do you need to do the things that you didn’t get done today?

There might be a lot of things that came up during the day that need to be done sometime soon, but they don’t have to happen today. If it needs to happen tomorrow or some specific day in the future, put it in whatever solution you have so that you’ll see it tomorrow. That way your mind can let it go and you can get some peace.

If you didn’t finish whatever you were working on today, make a note of where to start for the next time you pick it up. This is great for those creative projects that you need to maintain momentum on but might not be able to work on everyday.

The 15 Minute Check-Out serves two purposes: 1) it helps remind you that you did push the ball forward and 2) it makes it really easy to get started the next day.

The 10 Minute Check-In

If you start the 10/15 Split with the 15 Minute Check-Out, you’ve done most of the hard work – all you have to do is show up and do what you told yourself you were going to do.

Here are the questions to ask yourself during the 10 Minute Check-In:

1. Is there anything significant that’s changed between now and the last check-out?

The key word here is significant. Some events do change the course of your day. For instance, your kids might get sick and you’ll need to change your plans to be able to get them taken care of.

2. What did you plan for today?

This is where you review the plan you made yourself the day before. Remember, you probably had a better idea of what you need to do today when you did your check-out than what you do right now.

3. What are one thing are you going to start on right now?
   This step is all about setting the intention to focus on this one thing for this one period of time, rather than shuffling through a few projects and not making any real progress on any of them. Better to complete or make some real progress on one thing that shuffle through three.

You might be tempted to answer the first question by checking email and voicemail, but before you do, ask yourself what’s in there that should change your day. Did you start scheduling something? Are you waiting on something that’s related to a project you’re working on this morning? Plan on how you’re going to process email and voicemail – at this stage, it’s best to look for a few key messages that are relevant to what you need to do right now rather than just jumping on to check email.

Give The 10/15 Split A Trial Run

You might be wondering why it’s a 10/15 Split and not a 10/10 or 15/15 split. It’s a 10/15 Split because I’ve learned through trial and error with myself, clients, and friends that it’s a good balance between not giving yourself enough time and requiring too much time. It’s hard to get the right level of perspective and thoroughness in less than 10/15 minutes, and much longer than that makes it just another thing to resist.

If you raised your hand at the beginning of this post and haven’t found a reliable way to build daily momentum in a peaceful way, give the 10/15 Split a trial run for a five days. If it doesn’t work for you, then, worst case scenario, you’ve “wasted” a little under two hours, but these are the types of questions that peak performers ask themselves routinely throughout the day anyway.

I hope you’ll give this a shot and let me know how it works for you.

You can put your hand down now.

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“Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else” – Judy Garland

One of the things that comes up over and over again in my conversations with a lot of the cool, creative people that I meet is what I’m calling the Weirdo Syndrome. The Weirdo Syndrome is the love/hate relationship some people people can get from their own uniqueness.

If you simultaneously want to be a part of the crowd but know you’re at your best when you’re not, you’ve got the Weirdo Syndrome. What makes the Weirdo Syndrome so frustrating is that, deep down, you don’t want to give up the best parts of yourself to fit in, but you also don’t want your life to be so damn hard.

If you’ve got the Weirdo Syndrome, you may have wondered why everyone around you has such an easy time meeting people and making friends when it’s so hard for you. You don’t want to go out to the bar and talk about football or the weather, and if that’s what “hanging out” means, well, you’re better off staying at home and reading a book.

The saddest thing about the Weirdo Syndrome is how insecure it makes you. You have this really cool gift that nobody gets or understands, and because you’ve been directly or indirectly rejected, you hide that gift away. You might hate that it’s your gift and would rather exchange it for something less “unique.”

And since you’re hiding your true gift, it’s hard to be passionate about anything else. Sure, you can be good at something – maybe even better than anyone else you’ve met – but you know you’ll never be great at it. You want to care, but there’s a big difference between wanting to care so that you can get the approval of others and caring because it’s your thing, even if you haven’t cognized that until just now.

The bad news is that you can’t get other people’s clothes to fit you. You’re never going to be truly comfortable because you’ll always know that the clothes don’t fit right. Go ahead, try on as many suits made for other people as you like; you’ll always know that nothing will fit you like your clothes do.

Now, I’ve got some good news for you, too: you’re not alone. There are people out there who are just as weird as you who will value you and your gifts because they’re uniquely yours, not despite them being yours. You don’t have to hide yourself to be loved and accepted – let go of the thought that being authentically happy and being seen, loved, and valued are mutually exclusive.

You can’t be remarkable and fit in at the same time. The unique value that you bring to the world can only be done by you – and the more you try to fit in, the less remarkable you be. The more you accept and share your gifts, the more you will stand out and be able to connect with people who want to be around you for who you are. (Yes, I know, this is terrifying because that means you’ll be seen, but you’ve tried hiding out – what did that get you?)

The bittersweet reality is that you’ll never get rid of the Weirdo Syndrome, but the more you understand that your weirdness isn’t a bad thing and something to hide in the closet, the more you’ll be able to find those people who see how uniquely beautiful you are rather than how weird you are.

I’ll end this by saying three things:

1. You’re not alone. I’m a weirdo, too, and I have lot of weirdo friends.
   
2. You don’t have to hide from us.
3. You’re safe here. Welcome home.

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[This post contains a video that's about 6 minutes long. If you're reading this via email or RSS, you might have to click through to see it.]

I mentioned in the March 2010 Bonfire that the Lift Off Retreat was fantabulous, and since then I’ve been thinking about how I was going to talk about it. I realized that if I tried to write about it, it would be one really long post as I kept trying to add “and this” and “and that” to it – and the post wouldn’t convey the deep wellspring of emotion and connections that happened there.

So I decided to do a video blog about it in the hopes of actually getting it out there. Just to give you a heads up, I’ve got a busy month of conferences coming up, and giving that I process stuff by writing, I’ll have a lot to share with you. I hope you learn as much from it as I do.

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Ken Robert from Mildly Creative.

Have you ever followed a foolproof formula into a big, brick wall? Have you ever rode a sizzling hot trend right into a drainage ditch?

The next time your best laid plans meet a dead end, ask yourself this: were you chasing one in the first place?

Usually, when people talk about dead ends, they’re referring to external obstacles that would be impossible for anyone to overcome. In this instance, however, I’m talking about the obstacles within.

Interests That Leave You Disinterested

After all, it can be tempting to pursue interests that really aren’t all that interesting to you. You might try to follow the hottest trends, even though they leave you cold. Or you might opt for the tried and true and pre-approved, even though you have no passion for doing so.

This is a problem, for no matter how trendy or popular or proven a path may be, it will eventually become a dead end to you if your heart’s not in it. Your energy will wane, your level of commitment will level off, and your drive will dry up.

The Wisest Investment Could Be the Riskiest

More often than you might think, your safest bet can be to take some risks. Acting sane can drain you, while devoting your time and energy to a crazy project that engages your heart and mind can sustain you to the end.

A Novel Dilemma

For a long time, I thought I needed to write novels in order to be a real writer, but, to tell you the truth, I was never that excited by the idea. It’s one thing to spend a weekend reading a novel; it’s another to spend a year or more of your life writing one.

I wanted to tell stories, but my attempts at writing novels never went very far. My heart wasn’t in it and every run I took at it turned into a dead end. “Huh,” I said to myself, “I guess I’m not a writer.”

And yet I wrote anyway, because writing is something I can’t not do.

At first I wrote only in a journal, then I started blogging, and, after a while, I rediscovered the joy I’d experienced as a boy writing poems.

And it may seem unrelated, but I also started drawing. More on that in a moment.

Despite all of this, I still had a nagging feeling that I wasn’t a real writer. No novels? No writer’s badge for me.

I’m With Sam

But one day I saw an interview with the acclaimed playwright Sam Shepard. He was asked why he doesn’t write novels. His answer can be summed up like this: novels aren’t his thing.

I immediately felt the weight of decades being lifted off my shoulders. If novels weren’t the thing of a great writer like Shepard, I realized they didn’t have to be mine either.

I also realized there are many ways to be a writer and even more ways to tell a story. Writing a novel is just one of them.

Poems can tell stories. Blog posts, like this one, can tell stories. Pictures, songs, dances, and even businesses can tell a story.

And that’s where the drawing comes in. One of my crazy dreams, one that engages my heart and mind, is to find a way to merge drawing and writing in order to create odd little books of pictures, poems, and pieces that inspire people to free up their creativity.

And guess what? It’s really not all that crazy after all. Danny Gregory does it. Hugh McLeod does it. So does Lynda Barry. And each one does it in their own unique way. And even if they didn’t, it would still be a great dream because it has the full attention of my heart and mind.

Now, What’s Your Crazy Dream?

What’s your crazy dream? Are you pursuing it? Or are you going after something safer, surer, more reliable? Are you finding it hard to continue?

What would happen if you didn’t have to manufacture your energy each and every day in order to keep a project moving forward? What if the energy was inherent in the projects you pick?

Sure things that have no soul are never as sure as they seem. Invoke your passion and endure some uncertainty. It’s bound to be take you somewhere.

About the Author: Ken Robert is a mildly creative guy devoted to helping others lead lives of quiet inspiration. You can find him at his blog, MildlyCreative.com.

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I tried something new in the newsletter last month and asked if people would like me to make it a blog post so they can come join the fun, and a lot of people said they’d like that. But then I thought: what should we call it?

I finally settled on bonfire (with Marissa’s help). It’s a time for us to kick back, tell tales, and share experiences in the warmth of a community of compassionate, creative folks. I hope you’ll grab a seat as I share what’s been going on for me in February, but before I start…

It’s Time For A Monthly Review

Take a few minutes to think about the following questions:

1. What were the big accomplishments from last month, and what would you like to accomplish this month?
2. What slipped last month that you’d like to either let go of or pick up this month?
3. When’s the last time that you’ve truly rewarded yourself, and when’s the next time that you’re going to do it?

On (3), set a date. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth planning to do – especially if you don’t have a habit of doing it.

If you’d like some flexible support around your goals, you might want to check out the free planners.

Now, onto…

Celebrations!

The Really Big Thing for me this last month was the Lift Off Retreat with Pam. I’ll contain my excitement in this particular post because I’ll share a more in-depth recap, but here’s a brief rundown: Community + Creativity + Compassion + Commitments to Change the World = one kick-ass retreat. You missed out if you weren’t there.

I had high expectations for the event, but it exceeded those by a long shot. All modesty aside, I’ve done some pretty awesome things in my short thirty years on this planet, but it definitely sits up there in the Top 3. There will be another one in August – start saving and get in line.

I set a goal to guest post once per week in February, and wound up writing much more than that. Some are still pending, but, in case you missed them, here’s where you can find the published posts:

1. The One Thing You Have To Know About Sales Pages
2. Mid-Launch Lessons Learned: Q&A With Charlie Gilkey
3. 8 Ways To Work Smarter and Be Happier
4. 8 Reasons You’re Not Getting Many Comments

(In case you’re curious, I wasn’t trying to stick to 8 on those last two posts. Those were just what came to mind.)

I made a lot of new connections this month – I think a lot of it had to do with releasing the planners, but the guest posting has helped. It’s so cool to meet new people and share your gifts with them. If you’re new here, thanks for coming to join the party, and I look forward to sharing with and learning from you!

The blog didn’t grow as much in February as it did in January, but that’s okay. This community has always been about quality instead of quantity, and many, many quality connections blossomed in February. That’s a win, folks!

I know I say it all the time and I hope it doesn’t dilute it, but thank you for the support you’ve given me in and the blog. Success is a social phenomenon and I can’t do this alone. Thank you for helping me share my gifts with the world.

Lessons Learned

With every success, there are new challenges and lessons-learned. Most of these lessons are one’s I already learned at some point but needed life to reinforce the message. You’ll hear me say this every month precisely because I’ve learned that there are always holes for me to fall in.

In case you didn’t know or forgot, I seriously overcommitted in January and that was a long month of renegotiating commitments with my friends and partners. I thought I’d cleaned everything up, but the second- and third-order effects of deferring, delaying, and dropping stuff came up this month. It’s always those that you don’t see when you’re overwhelmed!

Lesson Learned: It’s better to under-commit up front and plan from there than to overcommit and deal with the second- and third-order effects of overcommitment.

I used to be much more effective at email management, but I lost some of my effective habits in February, or, to be more clear, as my online presence has grown, my ability to manage email correspondence diminished at about the same time as I’d been recovering from the overcommitment. As a result, I didn’t write as much as I’d like to and my writing wasn’t as good. Holistically, I managed to keep the ball rolling pretty well, but I’m definitely looking forward to writing more.

Lesson Learned: Email is a poor slave and a great master. Be careful how much of your primetime you give it – it has a cost.

What’s In The Oven For March

This is going to be a busy month for connecting and consume, as I’m going to SxSW and Wealthy Thought Leader. We’ll also be putting our house on the market – we’re almost sure that we’re going to go the FSBO route. As a result, I’m not planning on creating a whole lot.

That said, Johnny and I will be tuning up the Jam Sessions this month so that it’s more clear what it’s all about. Here’s the short story: imagine Johnny and I talking about the ins and outs of starting your online business. Add in our friends like Naomi Dunford, Dave Navarro, Tim Brownson, and Elizabeth Potts Weinstein (and others who we’ve somehow swindled into talking to us in the future). The end result of all this is a fun, informative series of conversations that’ll help you get your business groove on.

Keep your eye out for a product that Jonathan Mead and I have been working on for the last couple of months. It’ll be focused on how to do more of the stuff that matters and less of the small stuff that you’d rather pass on.

And then there’s the book. Resistance and Creative Doubt tag-teamed and went guerrilla on me last month – see above – and won the month of February. It’s highly unlikely that it’ll get done this month, but letting you know what’s going on with it at least keeps me accountable. It also lets Resistance and Creative Doubt bask in glory, but that’s okay – the war is not won and I have not yet begun to fight.

Coaching Update: If you’ve been thinking about working with me and would like to do it during March, head on over to my coaching page and grab your sessions. I’ve got the capacity for two new clients who need regularly scheduled meetings and I tend to book up quickly after conferences. If you sit on the fence too long, you might be sitting there longer than you’d like.

Now It’s Your Turn!

That’s my time in front of the fire. Now it’s your turn!

What are you celebrating? What were your lessons learned? What Really Big Things are you working on? Come share with us so that we can learn and grow together. (No hard pitches, please.)

Just remember that you can change the world. I look forward to next month’s bonfire to see what all you’ve done!

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Here are March’s planners. I meant to get them out last week, but I wanted to wait until this month’s surprise was ready. Enjoy!

Release notes:

• The reception for the Premium Planners has been phenomenal! Thank you for all the feedback and requests. Speaking of requests…
• There’s now a premium version of the Blog Post Planner and Calendar. I didn’t prep them in last month’s release because I didn’t think anyone would want them. Man, was I ever wrong! Due to near-daily requests for them, I’ve bundled them up and included them on the Premium Planners page. (If you bought the All-In-One Pack, check your email – you got them for free. Thank you for supporting R&D!)

If you’d rather not wait on me to update the free planners, you might consider buying the Premium Planners. If you don’t want to buy them, that’s cool – everything but the exclusive designs will be available for free around the beginning of the month.

Monthly Action Planner

Basic idea: Projecting effectiveness further into the future requires a more holistic view of your objectives.
Use when: You’re doing your month planning and review – this planner can be used with either the Productivity Planners or the Freelancer Workweek.
For more information: The Monthly Action Planner

Download:Monthly Action Planner - March 2010 (783)

Productivity Heatmap:

Basic idea: We are more productive at some times rather than others.
Use when: You’re trying to figure out when you’re the most productive.
For more information: How Heatmapping Your Productivity Can Make You More Productive

Download: Blank Daily Productivity Heatmap (13212)

The Action Planner Series:

Basic Idea: Once you know when you work best, why not plan your weeks and days around that information? Do more work in less time by leveraging your natural rhythms.
Use when: You’re planning your day or week.
For more information: Read the Productivity Planners User Guide (4119)

Downloads:
Daily Action Planner (March 2010) (546)
Weekly Action Planner (March 2010) (489)

The Productivity Jumpstarter

Basic Idea: Sometimes we’re running around being busy but aren’t really being productive. This aid helps you stop running in circles and start making meaningful progress on your goals.
Use when: You have no idea what you should be doing and are tired of running in circles.

Download:Productivity Jumpstarter (v.2) (7074)

The Blog Post Planner and Calendar

Basic Idea: Brainstorming and planning your posts ahead of time may help you have a more streamlined, consistent, and insightful blog. Your mileage may vary, but it’s worth a shot!
Use when: You’re thinking about what you’re going to write.
For more information: The Blog Post Planner and Calendar – skip down to “How to Use These Planners” if you don’t need to be sold on why to use them.

Downloads:
Blog Post Planner (March 2010) (190)
Blog Post Calendar (March 2010) (144)
Blog Post Planner-Calendar Set (March 2010) (220)

The Freelancer Workweek

Basic Idea: Some of us work better to task than to time, and we need a planner that addresses how we work rather than making us fit how we work into it. This is a great one for freelancers and entrepreneurs.
Use when: You’re tired of time-based planners and want to get clarity on what needs to be done.
For more information: The Freelancer Workweek – skip down to “How to Use This Planner” if you don’t care about the design methodology.

Download: Freelancer Workweek - March 2010 (354)

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[If you're reading this in via email or RSS, you'll have to click through to watch the video.]

I’m going to say it up front: this is a long screencast, even for me. It weighs in at about 14.5 minutes. The star of this show is TextExpander, but Textmate also wins the prize for best supporting application.

TextExpander is a system-wide application (Mac-only) that takes a few keystrokes and converts them into longer strings. For instance, you could type em1 and it would expand that to your email address or ws1 and have it convert that to your primary website.

That’s cool enough, but in this video, we’re going to take it a bit further. I’m going to show you how TextExpander can help you write blog posts by taking a lot of the hard work out of formatting your posts. Using these techniques is some of what allows me to publish posts as frequently as I do, and they come in even handier when you want to give somebody a guest post because you can give them some lean HTML to cut and copy rather than having to make them do the work to format it themselves.

I could have made three smaller videos but I’m hoping that seeing this in context will be better than having to watch three videos.

You might wonder why I don’t write in a blog editor or directly into the Wordpress window. I’ve got two quick reasons that address those wonderings: 1) I’ve tested writing in a blog editor vs. writing in Textmate, and Textmate won (effectiveness-wise) and 2) I’ve lost enough posts and words through browser craziness to not trust the process.

I wanted to post this yesterday but the techno-gremlins were conspiring against me, so you might get two posts today.

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