Recently I’ve come to notice that I procrastinate on a response to these ‘boomeranged’ emails and I’ve been searching for the reason why. Beyond the surface level procrastination of avoiding correspondence because I don’t enjoy sending email, it seems certain justifications go off in my head for this procrastination. The biggest of which involved my sense of time elapsed since I last spoke to the person.

It shocks me to look at the reminder and come to realize it’s been weeks since my last message. That last message usually contains a statement along the lines of ‘I’ll follow up in a few weeks’, and even though those weeks have passed, I feel as if it can’t actually be. Because of TeachBoost and the constant, never-ending to do list of growing a young company, my weeks blend together and time seems to travel at warp speed. I’ve started to wonder – is that simply relative to my vantage point? For the other person – did those 2 weeks feel like 2 days or 2 months?

It’s more the latter for my mother, of course. As I find myself realizing that it’s been two weeks since we last spoke beyond a text message, it feels more like only several days. Inevitably I will receive a call in the next day or two, with a small mention of ‘her lost son’ and the guilt will arrive yet again at my unawareness of the speed at which the days pass.

I’m just a few months into my shift from an engineer mindset, rooted with logic and (attempted) rational behavior to a relationship driven role. I need to continue to squash the procrastination techniques of letting time dampen the importance of a response. With each passing day, the excitement and energy around the original conversation lessens and I’m making a concerted effort to put myself back in the mindset of why this person is important to me. I’m trying to translate this skill to my personal life as well, as I’ve always had trouble staying in contact with those who aren’t in my local area.

My strategy going forward is two-fold: 1) make sure the reminder is at a time when I can most likely handle it, and send several at a time; and 2) immediately respond when the reminder comes in to avoid any hesitance. It ultimately comes down to trusting my judgment when I set the original reminder and realizing that life is passing quickly on the other side of the wire as well. I tend to over-analyze and risk dropping off the map completely, so removing any chance for procrastination is my proposed solution.

Through the first 2 months of my foray into recreational cycling, I’ve adapted this mantra with a slight variation: “don’t look up”. For the tough stretches – the steeper hills of central park, the series of climbs in Palisades Park along the Hudson in New Jersey, and through strong winds on the water – I don’t look up. Upon meeting challenging conditions, I gather myself, mentally prepare, and plan far enough ahead to avoid major obstacles. From then on my eyes are on the 5-7ft directly in front of me, using the brim of my helmet as a shield to the view ahead; the hard work that lies before the finish.

The applications go far beyond athletics. Whether it’s a 2 week sprint to push the new iteration of Schoolbinder, or trying to digest a large amount of material for an exam, or pushing through recovery from surgery; the best way I’ve found to get to the finish line successfully is to have a rough idea of the requirements to accomplish what seems like an insurmountable task and don’t look up.

I find it works best for larger chunks of work that can’t seem to be broken down to pieces less than a week or two in length, and with the appropriate amount of preparation. This isn’t to be taken as hard truth, but more as a guide to maintain focus. You can and need to resurface to check your progress and reassess – but keeping head down will avoid the procrastination and doubt that often encroaches when constantly checking progress.

A lot of surprising tidbits came out of The Great Twitter Secret Santa project, a number of which I find interesting because I’m fascinated by what can be extracted from a raw set of data.  From the signup trends to the traffic analytics, I learned a great deal about network effects, targeted audiences, and virility of social projects.

Signups

The infographic above (my first ever, so be kind) summarizes our sign-ups and ultimately the matching process.  We had 2,196 people sign up, where sign up is defined as providing an email address and at least starting the Twitter authentication process.  Approximately 645 of all sign ups did not fully finish the sign up process, and thus did not confirm our Terms of Service.  About half of that group did not authenticate with Twitter at all, leaving us with just their email address.

We then identified matches between the 1,550 or so left in our confirmed pool.  A match was defined as a another participant of TGSS that you follow and also follows you.  After determining all possible matches and over 700 did not have matches.  We were a bit disappointed by the large number of people who did not have matches from the onset, but given the nature of relationships on Twitter, it was to be expected.  Prior to this project, I suspected most Twitter users did not connect with the same group of people they would on a network like Facebook, given that it requires both individuals to execute a “linking” action and personalities are more obfuscated with Twitter.  While I can’t say with certainty that this is the case, patterns of matches amongst my group of friends who participated seem to suggest it to be true.

Left with 828 people who had at least one match, we were able to connect 530 individuals with one of their matches.  The remaining pool could not be matched because all of their possible matches were taken by the time the algorithm attempted to choose their secret santa.  I tested several methods for choosing matches, including matching randomly, or with the person with the highest/lowest number of matches, and used the best case scenario, which gave us our final numbers above.

We were hoping to include a higher percentage of those that joined, but a significant portion we had no control over (though we did send multiple reminder emails with match counts) and the remaining unmatched pool was a natural consequence of the selection rules.  As a result, we made the decision to have a “secondary pool”, for which participants were required to opt-in through an email.  The secondary pool ended at 166 people, who we matched according to the number of people they both followed.  It turned out to be a good middle ground to avoid randomness while still allowing a higher number to participate.  Interesting finding related to the secondary pool: far more support messages and deadbeats were observed as compared to the original gift exchange, even though it was roughly a quarter of the size.

Analytics and Coverage

Thanks to the help of a friend, we were the subject of a Mashable article and eventually featured as the headline story of ABCNews.com’s technology section.  As someone who’s spent a fair amount of time on Google Analytics hawking visitor counts and traffic sources for my other sites, I was glued to analytics for hours observing trends and figures.  Below is a screenshot of the traffic numbers we saw over the 10 or so days we ran the project.

Mashable

The Mashable article was our first major piece of coverage, coming about a week after we originally launched the site. While I hadn’t gave it a thought earlier, Mashable is just about the perfect major blog to drive signups; their demographic is comprised of social media directors, general digital enthusiasts, as well as entrepreneurs.  Their Twitter account has over 2.1 million followers – a monumental reach (and on the social network that we needed!).

As you can see above, we converted an astounding 52% of visits from Mashable (those that clicked through the article), as compared to 16% from Twitter and 14% from Facebook.  Having read countless case studies on conversion rates and observing the rates in my own projects, I was shocked at the Mashable numbers, and even fairly surprised at the overall conversion rate of about 20% for the site.

ABC News

The other fairly surprising bit from our traffic numbers came from our coverage on ABCNews.com.  Perhaps we overhyped the ABCNews spot amongst ourselves because it involved video content and ABCNews is such a major household name as we expected rather large numbers on par with Mashable traffic.  Overall, we saw 106 referrals from ABCNews.com to both the Great Twitter Secret Santa and The Great Secret Santa (Facebook version, for charity).  We converted 16%, about on pace with other referring sites, but the overall traffic from the coverage paled in comparison.  I attribute this completely to demographics – the readership of ABCNews technology is a much different crowd than the technology enthusiasts reading Mashable and our traffic logs confirm this.

Other Fun Bits

A little gem we realized about halfway through: in some ways we conducted a social media experiment on a set of people who spend a great deal of time trying to spread their ideas or products through social media.  As someone who has isn’t the biggest fan of the underlying motives behind social media and advertising, it was both interesting and mildly humorous to reverse roles and observe their behavior.  Granted, this is a bit of an assumption based off of a bit of random sampling of the people tweeting about the project, as well as the network of people connected to both Regan and Theo.  But it’s a hunch that has a small amount of backing.

The match determination process examined the followers and those following for each participant and compared those two sets with the participant pool.  A great majority of our signups were from people who had a higher number of followers than the number of people they followed – signaling a strength of presence on Twitter (even after removing outliers like Mashable and other major outlets).  As shown in the infographic at the top of this post, the average participant had 649 followers and only followed 461 (again, Mashable removed from this calculation).  These numbers are somewhat expected as this experiment favored people with strong networks on Twitter, otherwise they wouldn’t be matched given the selection process.

If you made it this far – congratulations on being as big of a data nerd as me – and I hope you found these findings/numbers interesting.  As I said in the last post, this project far exceeded my expectations and I’m really proud of what we were able to throw together.

If there’s anything else you’re curious about regarding the project, drop me a line.  And if you didn’t get matched, had a grinch, or something went wrong, we’ve learned a lot this year and hope to improve by leaps and bounds for next holiday season – so stay tuned!

The Great Twitter Secret Santa was an idea brought to me by Theo and Regan to take the basic concept of a secret santa gift exchange and twist it a bit to incorporate people from all over the world through social networking.  Their intention was to pair mutual followers together to exchange gifts – all the while observing some of the cool interactions between those who may only know each other digitally through Twitter.

As a developer and rather vocal critic of Twitter I met the project with skepticism, but the workaholic in me generally doesn’t have the word “no” in its vocabulary.  I decided to take on the project assuming it to be a few extra hours to build something that may reach a small group of people

I threw together an initial design and prototype in about a day and a half – then had a two week sprint to launch the startup I work for and we almost decided to scrap the Great Twitter Secret Santa.  Running on fumes over the weekend, I managed to work out some of the kinks and we made the app live on December 2nd.  The first draft was rough, barely tested, and generally rushed.  I was okay with it – if it did well, then I could shore it up.

The following afternoon Regan shared it with his network on Twitter; and for about 2 hours the three of us were glued to HootSuite, watching word spread, signups grow, and people get genuinely excited about the idea. In reality, the few hundreds tweets that spread that Thursday afternoon barely caused a ripple – but it’s invigorating and incredibly motivating as a developer to observe even a small amount of buzz about something you’ve built.

It was at around 500 people that I realized I should probably solidify the code a bit.  I finally optimized (marginally), ran a few sanity checks, and discovered a rather obscure mistake I had made that caused a few miffed signups.  It was seemingly random, couldn’t be replicated locally or on the live site, and I just about wrote it off.  Then I get a tweet from someone at Mashable inquiring about the site. Oh shit.

Two Issues.  First, the “seemingly random” bug that occurs for 1-2% of visitors will be a nightmare from the traffic Mashable will send our way.  Second, we’re running the site on a server with 256mb of memory through Rackspace cloud hosting.  We won’t last more than 5 minutes with a setup like this.  Panic sets in.  I try to compose myself, pull down the code from Mercurial and start digging.  Through purely dumb luck, I pinpoint the issue while setting up the development environment and managed to patch it.  Bug fixed.

That leaves the hardware issue.  I hop on the Rackspace administration panel, fire up a live support chat, and in 10 minutes (and virtually zero downtime!) I have the most powerful machine Rackspace can provide for $1 an hour.  (Aside: I use Rackspace for 3 separate projets and I can’t praise them enough for the incredible service and support they provide).  Both problems solved 30 minutes before the article hits Mashable.  Crisis averted.

Throughout the next week and a half we accumulated signups in spurts, our browsers constantly refreshing, tracking the “santa” counter and continuing to be surprised at the growth.  We had some fun with the TG_SecretSanta account and kept the conversation going as much as we could.

The site wound down leading up to our cut off date of December 12^th, leaving me to deliver the matches on the 13^th.  I tweaked the site to close the signups automatically at 3pm (after all, I had other holiday festivities to attend to) and spent most of the 13th determining matches through a series of trial and error approaches to arrive at the most possible matches.

Night transitioned to early morning, and with the help of Regan and Theo the matches were mailed (thanks Mailchimp!), those who weren’t matched were notified, and we established a secondary pool for those who couldn’t be matched.  I’ll save the actual results and numbers breakdown for another post).

In short, a fun little idea that almost never saw the light of day put us in front of the eyes of hundreds of thousands of people in our target demographic (Mashable), and became the headline story for the technology section of ABCNews.com.  It made December a little more exciting, brought a few people together to exchange gifts, reallocated some wealth to a few charities, and taught us a few things.

The most interesting points throughout the whole ordeal, at least as a developer and someone working at a startup, were the concepts and mantras continually talked about being reinforced and validated.  A few of the biggest ones are below:

1. JFDI (think Nike’s slogan).  Sleep when you’re dead; work on as much as you can.  The time you spend deciding whether to pursue a small idea would be much better spent building a proof of concept.  Let your idea prove (or disprove) itself – and you may even find something much more viable beneath the surface of your original plan.  I’m a big proponent of throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.
2. Build the minimum and reinforce as you go.  Had I spent the time to optimize and get everything perfect on the first go-round, we probably would have never launched the app.  Build what’s necessary and let your users tell you what’s not quite working.
3. If possible, work with great people who share the passion and vision that you have and you’ll navigate any issues with ease.  Frustrations occur and issues happen, but trusting the intentions of your partners and having honest conversations mitigates the potholes that pop up in any project.  I can’t thank Theo and Regan enough for the awesome job they did to help support the development side while still keeping the wheels greased on Twitter.

For the data/number nerds, I’ll be following up with the breakdown of how we fared.  By no means did we have earth shattering sign up numbers, but we noticed some cool trends with those that did sign up and the matching proved quite interesting as well.

All in all, it was a few weeks of hard work and excitement in exchange for a little less sleep than normal.  And it’s another reason why it’ll be even harder for me to say no to the next project that comes my way.

A few weeks ago a new segment was introduced entitled “What Happened to that Fail” at the NYTM. Basically, a presenter gives a short talk on their failed venture demoed previously on the NYTM stage. The inaugural subject was Andrew Mason, founder of “The Point”, a site created to harness the power of groups to get things done that normally can’t be accomplished alone. Like most entrepreneurs who cross the stage at the NYTM, Andrew presented the Point back in 2007 with high hopes of its potential to change the world and dramatically increase the power of people working towards a common cause.

After realizing that the site was just too unfocused and failing to gain traction, the team at the Point took a step back and attempted to leverage the technology they created to develop something a bit different and ideally, profitable. They took a small portion of the Point – group buying – brainstormed different ways to make it successful. I think we all realized where this was going – that small subsection of the Point became one of the fastest growing companies in business right now: Groupon.

The site went from idea to conception in about a month, beginning as a small blog called “Get Your Groupon”. “Get Your Groupon” used a small flash widget originally developed for The Point, featuring a daily deal only unlocked when a certain number of people committed to the deal. The site exploded as has been well publicized; in its 20 months of life, it’s spread to 18 countries, 150 cities, and sells 50,000 groupons a day. They’re currently amassing subscribers at the tune of 1 million people per month.

The best part of the entire interview:

Scott:

What is the “Hallmark after school special” take home message?

Andrew:

Shit that you read all the time. The biggest mistake we made with the point was being completely encumbered by this vision of what I wanted it to be and taking 10 months to build the product, all the while making assumptions on what people want that we then spent the next 10 months backtracking on instead of focusing on the one piece of the product that people actually liked. You’re way too dumb to figure out if your idea is good. It’s up to the masses. So build that very small thing and get it out there and keep on trying different things and eventually you’ll get it right.

If it hasn’t been driven home enough, failure can often provide the types of lessons that lead to future success. The Point swallowed their failure, abandoning their original goal of changing the world through the power of groups and honed in on a small segment of their original idea. They revolutionized deal discovery and amassed a $1.85 billion valuation, all by making things simpler and focusing on what people actually wanted.

Here’s the full clip. [Funny aside - this was directly after Meetup founder Scott Heiferman smashed an iPad with a sledgehammer]

Aries outlines the attitude and mentality towards death from the middle ages to the modern view on mortality, highlighting several of the key turning points during the time period in question.  His book takes the form of four essays, beginning with “Tamed Death” – a period of solemn acceptance of a necessary threshold – to the modern take he calls “Forbidden Death” – the widespread view that the effects of death should be minimized as much as possible.

Perhaps the most striking correlation between the treatment of death and economic transformation crops up when comparing the nature of western society to its view of mortality.  A plausible relationship exists between the level of commercialization (and subsequently, individualism) and the view towards the deceased.  During the Roman civilization, the level of commercial activity and trade between different providences was astoundingly high as compared to the years that followed its demise.  Aries does not comment much on the attitudes toward death during this particular time period, but explains the nature of burial grounds for the dead.  Historians have discovered that Romans engaged in the practice of marking graves with the names of the deceased, a measure carried out to maintain the identity of the dead.  This practice all but disappeared following the collapse of the Roman civilization, corresponding with a complete collapse of continental trade in Europe from the chaotic country sides.  Quality of life decreased dramatically, most of the population lived in fear, and the level of individualism became virtually zero as religion grew to be the central theme of the average person.

After several centuries, numerous innovations in technology and very gradual commercialization influencing even slower urbanization became a catalyst for the return of the importance of the individual.  At the same time, religious themes began to transform to a stronger approach, an attempt to maintain devout faith to the Church  as the fear of God diminished in society.  Aries describes a radical shift in thought concerning the time of death.  Before the 12^th and 13^th centuries, death was considered a long, expectant sleep, awaiting the Second Coming.  Upon the Second Coming of Christ, those who were devout to the Church would awaken in a “heavenly Jerusalem” while those who were not followers were never to wake again, damned to non-existence.  Just before and throughout the 13^th century, the idea of the “expectant sleep” transitioned to a judgment upon death, with an analysis of a “good/bad deed balance sheet” that dictated the faith of the deceased.  This development coincided with the shift of Jesus as a “feminine” and loving figure to a vengeful and judging force that occurred in the 14^th century with St. Augustine.  It’s more than conceivable that the thematic shift in religion was a response to quell the growing commercialized and individualistic culture that the Church opposed vehemently.

The Protestant Reformation would further alter the view on religion and consequently the attitudes of Europeans toward death.  Protestantism, unlike Catholicism, supported the rise of commercial activity, citing a deep religious connection between man and his work.  To succeed in an occupation was to succeed in God’s calling, providing motivation for commercialization and a direct connection between individuals and God.  Aries discusses the revitalization of marked and named graves, a return to the Roman practice of maintaining the identity and legacy of the deceased.  Again, this resurgence coincides with the rise of the individual in the 15^th and 16^th centuries.  Furthermore, since that time period, it can be argued that modernized countries have become more and more individualistic, and at the same time the attitudes toward death have continued to center around minimizing the loss of the deceased and extending the length of the human life.   While it is difficult to say with certainty that these movements are directly related to each other, mere coincidence is not sufficient in explaining the cyclical nature of both of these trends and their consequential nature.

In addition to the relation of the movements supporting individualism and the attitudes toward mortality, growing secularism can be attributed to transformations in how death was viewed.  As I mentioned before, the Middle Ages consisted of a chaotic state with a low quality of life, directly influencing the faith of those who lived during the period.  No scientific evidence attempted to explain the world around them, which left the explanations up to religion.  Additionally, their lives were spent in fear and suffering, providing a motivation for faith, as life was a means of suffering on the way to a glorious afterlife for eternity in paradise.  As commercialization gradually improved the per capita income for Europeans, individualism overtook the power of the Church and with the help of Catholic corruption led to the Protestant Reformation.  The reformation began a trend away from religion as the sole purpose for life, and eventually faith waned as time passed influencing an evolution in the feelings toward fatality.  During the Middle Ages until around the 16^th century, the deceased were buried in dirt near Churches to signify their devotion to God.  Charnel houses became the final resting place for many people, as the idea of individual tombs did not arise until much later.  The idea of a complete body was not an issue at this time period, as the deceased merely wanted their bones to be near those of the saints; whether their body was left intact structurally was of no concern.

However, as death took on a romanticized role in a secularized state contrary to its previous function in society, individual coffins served as permanent and marked “housing” for the deceased, meant to maintain their identity and allow visitation by survivors of the dead.  The decline in religion coupled with the rise in per capita income would have further implications.  With better nutrition, life expectancy increased to the point where depression ridden leisure classes developed in westernized societies.  While this occurred much later, it is a consequence of the growing conflict between the individual and death (both of one’s self and others close to them) from the “lack of fulfillment” set out during adolescence.  This development is a possible economic effect of Industrialization, as many individuals no longer provide the means of production for the output they produce.  This disconnect is one explanation for the romantic transformation of death during the 18^th century, as it provided a further sense of meaning in some ways.

Ever since I’ve taken courses on economic history, coupled with the books I’ve read on behavioral economics, I’ve been enthralled with this type of analysis.  The economic influences are obvious but few tend to look at the causal, long term effects of economic change on the intellectual nature and behavior of society.  If you found this essay interesting, I highly recommend reading Aries book cover to cover.  Not only is it interesting, it’s almost therapeutic.

The debate on global warming is probably one of the most fascinating and controversial issues our generation currently faces.  It’s fundamentally divided along the usual lines: liberal vs. conservative, religion vs. science, young vs. old, brother vs. brother.  It’s clearly an important issue and there are a lot of fired up people out there that will go to the grave arguing for their cause.

As will I.  But my argument centers around something that many are missing out on, especially given the dark scary cloud hovering over the world economy.  The fact is this: investment to create a sustainable environment will greatly benefit the world economically, not to mention possibly halting the process of supposed man-made global warming.

Western consumption has fed an ever-growing global economy, and this consumption relies on several tenants, the most important of which is turnover of goods.  Materials like plastic and Styrofoam allow the cost of goods of consumer goods to decrease and contribute to the ubiquity of disposal goods.  Anyone with a high school diploma willing to look into the long term can clearly see that the amount of waste produced by western civilization is unsustainable, all factors remaining constant.  Add population growth into the equation, and it becomes a serious issue for our children.  Throw in the several billion people in places like China and India who are about to enter the middle class over the next several decades, and it becomes a devastating global problem threatening our viability to sustain life on this planet.

Let’s be clear.  I’m about the farthest thing from an environmentalist, and I love technology enough to be considered guiltier than most in the consumption department.  Hopefully that quiets you right wingers who are still with me.  But it’s hard to disprove the logic behind the argument that the amount of waste we produce needs to be curbed dramatically.

So that’s the feel good why, but what’s the economic why?  Where’s the incentive?  Innovation is the key here.  Reducing the amount of waste the civilized world produces is a daunting task.  You are not going to un-learn the consumption habits of western society, no matter how hard you try.  Recycling is effective in cutting waste and natural resource and energy consumption, but it’s not a widespread practice.  New methods and technologies need to be developed to solve this issue in creative ways.  Technologies are developed through research.  Research provides jobs.  People need jobs (especially now) to make money, and they send it right back into the economy through consumption.  It’s a beautiful cycle and encourages reinvestment and development.  That’s just the start.

Innovation cultivates smart people and also attracts them from other countries, firing off another key growth factor.  These talented individuals will further enhance innovation, start businesses, create more jobs, and trigger other positive effects.  All of this is great news for the American economy (and has huge implications on the global political climate, which is a completely different can of worms).

Lastly, it has the potential to elevate the depths of our workforce into more “thought” intensive positions as opposed to low level service positions at Walmart.  See, everybody wins.

I’m usually not this much of an optimist, but damn does this sound good on paper.  The barriers are monumental, and given the power of those who stand to lose in this battle, it seems close to impossible to enact.  If nothing else, though, there’s no reason to waste our dwindling supply of fresh oxygen arguing about the temperature.  It’s time to see the overwhelming positive in a united effort for sustainability on the planet, invest some money in R&D, and get some ROI before the opportunity passes.

I invite anyone who sees a problem with net-zero consumption to a duel to the death (or a friendly conversation in the comments).

This jumped out at me while reading two posts loosely related on the surface: one that analyzes why so many Ivy League graduates join Wall St firms upon graduation (link) and the other discussing the burden of consumer debt (link).  With all of the job dissatisfaction that I encounter, the advice in this post is required knowledge.

I highly suggest reading both articles in their entirety, but if you’re looking for enough to get through my post, see the footnotes here and here.

These articles work incredibly well in tandem, as debt (especially of the consumer variety) becomes an increasingly large hurdle to change your life as you age and encounter fiscally intensive life milestones.  It’s quite difficult to alter your career path if you need to support a family, and consumer debt provides that last mountain you may not be able to climb, effectively limiting you to your current situation.

Smart financial decisions are an investment necessary to provide future flexibility, plain and simple. Consider the following two scenarios. In both cases, the individuals put aside some money, but treat income increases differently.

Scenario 1: John graduates college and starts working for a major consulting firm.  He embraces the life style that his salary affords, buys the best new car he can afford and spends his weekend nights draining $12 whiskey drinks in the city.  He finances deals on his apartment furniture, has an iPhone, but still manages to save 5-6% for his 401k or other investments.  After 3 years, equally increasing his expenses with salary, John meets a girl and within 2 years he’s married.

Scenario 2: Jane graduates from the same school and John and works for the same consulting firm.  She realizes this job (and salary) may not last forever, and wants to remain flexible if life doesn’t go as planned.  She buys a used car; nice, but not extravagant.  She keeps tabs on her expenses, maintaining discipline even as she sees her annual income increase.  She also ends up with a spouse after 4 years, but has considerable savings because of her lifestyle choices.

Of the two, obviously Jane is in a better spot to take a risk and move from her high paying, big firm job to go back to school, or start a company, while still living relatively comfortably.  She can risk some time without a stable salary to pursue other opportunities.  John, on the other hand, has grown accustomed to his lifestyle.  Monthly payments and growing family aspirations require him to be risk averse.  His fiscal mistakes early on, which have now compounded, have left him for more cemented into his current employment situation.

I’d much rather be in Jane’s situation, obviously.  I may indulge in unnecessary expenses and I have my fun, but I absolutely avoid burdening consumer debt that will compound and limit my options in the future.  I treat income bumps as a savings opportunity to invest in my future, not as a means to scoring the best apartment I can afford in SoHo.

It’s all a matter of discipline and resisting the temptation of co-workers like John.  Naturally, it’s much easier said than done.

Footnotes

1) “Why do Harvard Kids Head to Wall St?” by James Kwak discusses the various methods firms employ to attract Ivy League graduates to investment and management consulting firms, namely selling the opportunity for future overachievement, large salaries, and lavish headquarter offices. To someone who has been a success their entire life, feels the pressure to live up to their potential and is potentially strapped with debt, these firms are an attractive alternative to difficult to find positions at smaller firms or seeking out that “dream job”.

2) “Consumer Debt is not Your Friend” by marketing god Seth Godin describes the overwhelming burden of consumer debt and the intense use of it as a marketing tool.  He warns that taking on debt for anything that decreases in value is a worrisome mistake, while deferring payment on expenses that increase in value (like education) is worthwhile.

Back to the top

My generation experienced the rise of sites like Facebook and MySpace while we were in college.  We were the original target market for Facebook and contributed directly to the rapid and viral success.  The value in social media lies in the ability of someone to utilize the efficiencies created by these tools as a complement to their day to day interactions with friends.  Our generation understands that social media is not a replacement for phone calls and rendezvous, but as an enabler for maintaining relationships with people all over the world, whom we may not be able to meet with easily in real life.

For the next generation of kids, this understanding may not be so clear.  My chief concern is for the less outgoing kids who now have a low risk option for meeting new friends.  Developing relationships through technology is fine, but not when it’s in an asynchronous manner.

“Social” is more of a loose description of the trend than an appropriate name.  The interactions between people on these sites are generally asynchronous in nature.  If I want to check up on a friend, I have the ability to simply log into a web site, search for his or her name, and track their most recent life events.  I see all of their photos from their latest trip to Europe.  I find out they’re no longer dating that girl from college.  In no way was I required to interact with this person to find out the most recent news about their life.  No chance of rejection.  No feeling of connection.  No risk and no reward.  No social interaction.

If a relationship was developed chiefly through this manner, it is really a pseudo relationship.  I’m no psychologist, but I’d venture to say this would have a fairly drastic impact on the social development of these individuals.

The heart of the problem is the one-sided nature of Facebook and Twitter and the increasingly low barrier to entry to gain access to personal information.  The act of “friending” a person on a social networking site has become easier than saying “hello” to a stranger for some people.  This request is the only point at which rejection can occur, and the chances are minuscule that the request will be denied if you’ve at least become an acquaintance of the person.  From this point on, you can now access whatever they choose to make public (and even some things that they don’t directly intend to publish) without them ever knowing.

All of the risks are removed.  Those who have gone through adolescence without the crutch of social networking sites have gone through the turbulent period of social development known as grades 6-12.  Facebook provides a segment of the generation an easy alternative to taking social risks, and many will give in to these temptations.  I suppose we won’t know exactly how this will affect the following generations until it may be too late, but isn’t that always the case?

You could argue that my generation experienced something similar with the widespread use of instant messaging. Just like kids now, we could hide behind a computer screen to have an acceptable and relatively risk free alternative to approaching the cute girl after class.  Until the massive growth and usage of Facebook, the conversation through a computer was at least reasonably real time and direct.  Sure, you couldn’t see the expression of the individual with whom you were speaking, or hear the tone of their voice either.  But it was direct communication that generally required immediate response, so I’ll consider that as an improvement over the way the internet functions socially today.  (And really, this is one of the most valuable features of the internet age for keeping in touch).

Call me a traditionalist, attempting to stick up for the status quo, but I’d disagree.  I merely hope that the potential pitfalls of the widespread misuse of these tools will not lead to a generation of people sitting behind screens (familiar to those who have the seen the movie Wall-E) communicating with everyone but those nearby.

Technology affords us great efficiencies, but they shouldn’t be applied to a social context.  A huge difference exists between increasing the transparency and speed of a supply chain process and allowing personal information to exchange hands openly and with little barriers.  Too many social implications and risks exist for us to allow it (stalking, domestic abuse, etc).

Today, on Hacker News, an article was posted from 2002  that’s a must read for anyone feeling frustrated by what I described above.

Link to “What Should I Do With My Life?”

Some pertinent quotes:

“People don’t succeed by migrating to a “hot” industry (one word: dotcom) or by adopting a particular career-guiding mantra (remember “horizontal careers”?). They thrive by focusing on the question of who they really are — and connecting that to work that they truly love (and, in so doing, unleashing a productive and creative power that they never imagined).”

“Your calling isn’t something you inherently “know,” some kind of destiny. Far from it. Almost all of the people I interviewed found their calling after great difficulty.”

“The ruling assumption is that money is the shortest route to freedom. Absurdly, that strategy is cast as the “practical approach.” But in truth, the opposite is true.”

“Intensity comes across as a pale busyness , while passion is meaningful and fulfilling. A simple test: Is your choice something that will stimulate you for a year or something that you can be passionate about for 10 years?”

“You’ll be a lot happier if you aren’t fighting the value system around you. Find one that enforces a set of beliefs that you can really get behind. There’s a powerful transformative effect when you surround yourself with like-minded people.”