awolski - learning to master the art of living

Leading the way on sustainability

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:28:00 +0000

Anyone that knows me well knows I'm a massive Google fan. For me, it's hard to imagine life without Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and the plethora of other products Google build; they're the bread and butter in my attempt at an organised world. Whatever Google does, it seems to do so well. I never have any issues with any of the products, and things just seem to get better and better as features roll out week on week, month on month, year on year. If they'd have me, on be on their payroll in a shot.

But one of the things I admire — and that inspires me — most about Google does is their focus on, and commitment to, sustainability. This video shows a little of what I mean:

Watching that video makes me want to work for Google, or a company with the same values, even more. To be a part of the drive towards a better community, a better world. They're sticking their money where their mouth is. Yes they have a lot of money and can afford to invest in all of the green projects they do, but so can a lot of companies. And so can all of us as individuals too.

Watching this video makes me want to march into the offices of big wigs at my company and show them what we could be doing, what is possible. I want them to know how inspired I am by it, and how inspiring it would be to the rest of the employees at the company. I want to show them how much of a difference it would make, not only to the company internally and the morale of everyone involved, but to the image of the company on the outside, to the rest of the world. People want to make a difference. People want to try new and exciting things and know they're are contributing to the greater good. We humans can be a lazy bunch, but when we're inspired and committed to something we believe in, we can be unstoppable and powerful.

I ride to work everyday. Initially I started riding to save money because the cost of petrol is becoming ridiculous, and in my opinion will become unsustainable at some point in the not-too-distant-future. I ride to work because there are showers available and the facilities... facilitate it. But a lot of people aren't able to, and are forced to take the un-green option because they're not encouraged and/or their companies don't make it an option. Businesses, not matter how big or small, and individuals too, need to take a leaf out of Google's book and get inspired, get inventive, and start working towards sustainability.

Notes on The Power of Now

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 21:49:00 +0000

Last week I finished reading The Power of Now, by Eckharte Tolle. The Power of Now is a book about living in the present moment, because, as the book explains, the present moment is all we ever have. It explores how we as humans spend our moments worrying about what has happened in the past, and what might happen in the future, struggling and fighting against what we have in the current moment:

Accept — then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.

Tolle explains how we have become all consumed by our thoughts and our mind, and how we seek to define ourselves by and in them. I've read a number of books lately with a similar theme, exploring the idea that our thoughts are in effect killing us, and that the only way to achieve a level of peace an happiness in our our lives is to surrender them. In order to do this, we should spend more time in a meditative state, or in activities which create a fully immersed experience, sentiments observed by Tolle:

The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now — that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of the personality.

There are a number of related themes throughout the book: anxiety about the future and worrying about the past, meditation and focus, breathing, awareness of the the light and energy that surrounds you. The author also explains how we define and judge ourselves and others in our thoughts, which he describes as the egoic mind:

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. The mind in itself is not dysfunctional. It is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are. It then becomes the egoic mind and takes over your whole life.

As long as the egoic mind is running your life, you cannot truly be at ease; you cannot be at peace or fulfilled except for brief intervals when you obtained what you wanted, when a craving has just been fulfilled. Since the ego is a derived sense of self, it needs to identify with external things. It needs to be both defended and fed constantly. The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.

I thought the book was helpful and insightful. In certain parts it was a little difficult to read; some of the concepts and definitions, which are capitalised throughout the book, — Being, the Now, and Presence, — get a little convoluted and hard to follow. But the right amount of repetition, explanation and examples gets the message across in the end.

Here are a few more of my saved Kindle snippets I saved:

If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally... If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity.

And the Buddha taught that the root of suffering is to be found in our constant wanting and craving.

Nothing that is of value, nothing that is real, is ever lost.

So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action — just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord.

Don't let the crowd cloud your Why

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 06:16:00 +0000

When you are disciplined enough to follow through on your goals — getting up early, working out, eating healthy etc. — the resistance, and the views of others, try bring you back to the crowd. You begin to question why you force yourself out of bed on those cold mornings when everyone else is tucked up nice and warm, when you're mind is working its tricks in an attempt to keep you in bed. You question why you put yourself through the physical workouts when everyone else is sitting on the couch; wouldn't it be nicer to be relaxing? You ask yourself ‘what would be the big deal if I joined in gulping down those chips, chocolate and takeaway?’

Maintaining the commitment and the driving force that got you started on your goal is tough. Not because what you have to achieve today is any harder than what you had to achieve yesterday, or the day when you decided to create a better life for yourself. It's tough because you lose sight of why. Why is the key question that needs to remain rock solid, crystal clear in you mind. When you lose the why, you lose your way.

There are forces working against you constantly to try and cloud the why, the reason you set out on your path to a better life. The crowd is one of them. The crowd who long ago lost their drive, and the reasons they started to improve their lives in the first place; who forgot why they wanted to give up smoking, why they wanted to lose weight, why they should get up early and make the most of their day. The crowd will see you on your path to improvement and try to drag you back in. They've tried to do what you're doing in the past, and they'll be the first to tell you that it doesn't work; and they'll give you reasons and stories why. You have to be on your guard and continue to remind yourself why you started, to cling on to the reason why you are working towards your goals, or else you'll be engulfed and lose your way.

Maintaining the clarity of why is the key to achieving your goals and living a more enriched, rewarding and happy life.

Taking the road less travelled

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:26:00 +0000

Not long ago I watched Bowling For Columbine again, and then shortly after I watched SICKo (both documentaries by Michal Moore). I read a few comments from the trailers of the SICKo movie and one of them really struck me (grammar not corrected): "I don't believe in democrats, liberals or whatever because it seem the priority of most of the countries around the world is money (stock markets, military, police states). I feel there should be new parties with human interests as a priority such as: health, food, compassion, shelter, happiness, love, co-operation.”

As I said, this really struck a chord. We've all heard the prophecy before - that money won't make you happy - but we all spend most of our lives, time, energy and focus on obtaining it. Individuals and governments alike.

Whilst I was away on my honeymoon I began to experience a kind of inner peace, happiness and understanding that I have never had before. I got it by reading and finding comfort in the words of wise men: Seneca, Marcus Aurelius. I now know I have a decision - and the subsequent actions - to make. I can continue to pursue money as a means to getting me to a place where I am happy. Or I can go the other way and pursue happiness and contentment in simplicity, friends... nothing but my own time and thoughts.

I have a voice deep down inside me somewhere telling me that if I take the former, I'll keep chasing the next pay rise, thinking it will be enough, but that chase will lead me to my deathbed having missed all the good bits in life. The blinkers for money I wear will prevent me from feeling happy, alive, at one with myself.

You're at the crossroads. Pursue the career, the extra time at work and travelling to different countries and talking about stuff that doesn't interest you one iota. Or take the other path. The path less travelled. The path in which you work less, where you have more time to spend with your family, with your friends, with your community - with yourself and your thoughts.

Travelling light

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 21:26:00 +0000

I'm not sure whether I developed the habit of packing for ‘what if scenarios‘ or if I've always had it, but up until recently I've definitely been guilty of overpacking. I'll take along a whole load of stuff for a series of imagined events and situations that, in reality, are never likely to occur: A spare pair of jeans and a couple of extra t-shirts just in case one of them gets dirty or trashed; a spare pair of shoes so I have a choice of what to wear; wet weather gear just in case it's wet, warm weather gear just in case it's hot. All of it adds up. I think a lot of people subscribe to a similar way of thinking when it comes to packing for holidays or travel. This just-in-case mentality results a bulging, heavy luggage; and I hate carrying a heavy luggage.

This last weekend I travelled to London to catch up with a few friends, working from a café on the Friday. Normally when I'm in London I'll stay with different people each night, which means lugging my day pack around with me each day on tubes, trains and buses. It sucks when my day pack is rammed. So this time I decided to keep things to the bare minimum. No what-if-items. Nothing just in case. I only packed what I knew I would use, and nothing more. The list included (not including what I was wearing, which was 3/4 jeans, a t-shirt, cardigan, undies, socks, shoes, sunnies, wallet and phone):

1 t-shirt
1 shirt
1 wet weather jacket
2 pairs undies
2 pairs socks
Thongs (for feet)
Deodorant
Toothbrush
Laptop and power cord
Keys
Phone charger
A book

That list would normally be twice as long (and in hindsight I could have gone even lighter with a bit of research and planning, ditching the wet weather jacket and phone charger).

Travelling light means you have less decisions to make, because if you don't have something when you get to your destination, then there is no decision to make (and it seems to me people have a hard enough time making decisions anyway). If you really need something you can always borrow or buy when you get there. Travelling light gives you a feeling of being more free. You're responsible for less, you have less to lose, and subconsciously you have less on your mind. You have less to carry, and your arms, shoulders and back don't ache after long periods of travel.

How often do you hear people say ‘I hate packing!’ People hate packing because it becomes an ordeal when there's too much to fit in and not enough room to fit it; too many decisions to make as a result of superflous just-in-case scenarios. It becomes an organisational nightmare and just about requires a project manager to figure out what goes where and in which order. The solution is to take less. If in doubt leave it, and save yourself a bit of time whilst packing, and a decision when you get to your destination. What's the worst that could happen? - chances are it probably won't happen; and it won't be that bad if it does. Less is definitely more.

Best bits of Walden; Or, Life in the Woods

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 07:03:00 +0000

I've just finished reading Walden; Or, Life in the Woods; it only took me two months! I did find it a difficult read in places, as any book written in the 1850s might be. The language is a lot different to that which we are used to speaking in the 21st century. But hidden in the long paragraphs and verbose descriptions of his surroundings are almost too many brilliant nuggets of wisdom to keep track of. Early on I had to grab a highlighter and a pen and make notes of all the passages and quotes that struck me like lightning bolts with their wisdom. At times it felt like I had the highlighter to the paper for pages on end without lifting it off. It made for slow going, and will make a tough read for the next person to read this particular copy.

The book is written by David Henry Thoreau who was born and wrote the book in Concord Massachusetts. On the advice of a friend the help him concentrate more on his writing, Thoreau moved to the woods, built himself a small hut on the shores of Walden Pond, and began an experiment in simple living. For two years he lived in the woods and earned enough to sustain himself by growing beans and fishing, spending his days thinking, reading, being, walking, exploring... simply ‘being’. Strap yourself in, as the rest of this post is made up of the many, many — there are lots of them — fantastic quotes and passages which I made not of while I read (categorised somewhat): self-improvement, living in the present, wealth, learning, truth, honesty and virtue, travel and freedom, waking up early, simplicity, news and gossip, property and ‘things’, food and drink, making a living, and other words of wisdom.

Self-improvement as an art form

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

“Direct your eye sight inward, and you'll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be
expert in home-cosmography.”

... be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next family a tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, bu the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and the higher state to be forgotten.

Living in the present

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.

Why should we be in such a desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer?

Wealth

We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same.

Superfluous wealth can by superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

Learning, and the importance of doing so throughout your life

To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation! — why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and life.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What every body echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing on rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new... Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it.

How could youths be better learn to live by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics. If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighbourhood of some professor, where any thing is professed and practised but the art of life; — to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made...

We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows universities, with leisure — if they are indeed so well off — to pursue liberal studies with the rest of their lives.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.

But the intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant. He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in which the Catholic priests teach his consciousness, but only to the degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child.

Truth, honesty and virtue

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices. I thought that there was no need of ice to freeze them. They talked to me of the age of wine and the fame of the vintage; but I thought of an older, a newer, and purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they had not got, and could not buy. The style, the house and grounds and “entertainment” pass for nothing with me. I called on the king, but he made me wait in his hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for hospitality. There was a man in my neighbourhood who lived in a hollow tree. His manners were truly regal. I should have done better had I called on him.

“You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind, the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.”

Travel and Freedom

One says to me, “I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg to-day and see the country.” But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages... Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the morrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enought to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your acquaintance altogether.

John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, after a hard day's work, his mind still running on his labor more or less. Having bathed he sat down to recreate his intellectual man. It was a rather cool evening, and some of his neighbours were apprehending a frost. he had not attended to the train of his thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a flute, and that sound harmonized with his mood. Still he though of his work; but the burden of his thought was, that though this kept running in his head, and he found himself planning and contriving it against his will, yet it concerned him very little. It was no more than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. But the notes of the flute came home to his ears out of a different sphere from that he worked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which slumbered in him. They gently did away with the street, and the village, and the state in which he lived. A voice said to him, — Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over the fields than these. — But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect.

Yet we think that if rail-fences are pulled down, and stone-walls pile up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided... The universe is wider than our views of it.

Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day, — farther and wider, — and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.

Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living be thy trade, but they sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.

Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it breaths its own breath over again; their shadows morning and evening reach farther than their daily steps. We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character.

Waking up early

The Vedas say, “All intelligences awake with the morning.” Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour.

Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.

Simplicity

It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, an that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it e necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it as for them is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.

... and he will live with a license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a state for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper.

In short, I am convinced, both faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.

News, or more specifically, gossip

If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned down, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, — we never need read of another. One is enough.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

Property and ‘things’

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of... Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?... How many poor immortal soul have I met well nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty...

And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him.

I know of one or two families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move into the village, but have not been able to accomplish it, and only death will set them free.

Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbours have.

Cultivate property like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savage's? An annual rent... entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, Rumford fireplace, black plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodius cellar, and many other things. But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage?

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in the outward riches, none so rich in inward.

Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man's providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should he not our furniture be as simple as the Arab's or the Indian's?

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw the out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.

Food and drink

Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breaths?

Making a living

This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet.

I told him, that has he worked so hard at begging, he required thick boots and stout clothing, which yet were soon soiled and worn out, but I wore light shoes and thin clothing, which cost not half so much, though he might think that I was dressed like a gentleman, (which, however, was not the case,) and in an hour or two, without labor, but as recreation, I could, If I wished, catch as many fish as I should want for two days, or earn enough money to support me a week. If he and his family would live simply, the might all go-a-huckleberrying in the summer for their amusement.

Meanwhile, my host told me his story, how hard he worked “bogging” for a neighbouring farmer, turning up a meadow with a spade or bog hoe at the rate of ten dollars and acre and the use of the land with manure for one year, and his little broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his father's side the while, not knowing how poor a bargain the latter had made. I tried to help him with my experience, telling him that he was on of my nearest neighbours, and that I too, who came-a-fishing here, and looked like a loafer, was getting my living like himself; that I lived in a tight, light, and clean house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such a ruin as his commonly amounts to; and how, if he chose, he might in a month or two build himself a palace of his own; that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not have to eat hard, and i cost me but a trifle for my food; but as he began with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he had to eat hard again to repair the waste of his system, — and so it was broad as it was long, indeed broader than it was long, for he was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and yet he had rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things.

I could not but notice some of the peculiarities of my visitors. Girls and boys and young women generally seemed glad to be in the woods They looked in the pond and at the flowers, and improved their time. Men of business, even farmers, though only of solitude and employment, and of the great distance at which I dwelt from something or other; and though they said that they loved a ramble in the woods occasionally, it was obvious they did not. Restless committed men, whose time was all taken up in getting a living and keeping it...

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them... Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine.

Other words of wisdom

If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in the winter while it is already spring.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.

...young men who had ceased to be young, and had concluded that it was safest to follow the beaten track of the professions...

The old and infirm and the timid, of whatever age or sex, thought most of sickness, and sudden accident and death; to them life seemed full of danger, — what danger is there if you don't think of any? — and they thought that a prudent man would carefully select the safest position, where Dr. B might be on hand at a moment's warning.

I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.

I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre , that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel.

Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.

My neighbours tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. They tell me of California and Texas, of England and the Indies, of the Hon. Mr. —— of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all transient and fleeting phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their court-yard like Mameluke bey. I delight to come to my bearings, — not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may, — not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating?

It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow.

I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer.

It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt... always promising to pay, promising to pay, to-morrow, and dying to-day, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility, or dilating into an atmosphere of thing and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbour to let you make his shoes, or making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank, no matter where, no matter how much or how little.

So easy it is, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give. For my own part, I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man's house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by the parade one made about dining me, which I took to be a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble hime so again.

Notes on Fear

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:36:00 +0000

“Overcoming fears leads to personal development. Confronting your fears is the hardest step to take, but doing so opens doors, not only to new and exciting experiences, but to parts within yourself you never knew existed. It doesn't matter what the outcome is - success is so subjective. You gain so much from confronting your fears, pushing through pain barriers, and continuing things you don't want to do. Not doing so leaves your mind in an eternal state of wonder, depression, confusion, inadequacy... lack of self-worth.

“This state of mind becomes your weakness, and when confronted with the same fear again, it is these weaknesses that compound and make it that much more difficult to overcome the fear.

“To realise your full potential, the limits of your mind, body and spirit, fears need to be confronted. At this point in time I believe that each time you back away from a fear, refuse to confront it, refuse to do it, you lose a piece of your life. Again, not only have you lost that experience, but the person you could be, the new part inside of you that you could have discovered will remain unknown to you, until at some stage in the future you can overcome your fear. Therefore you run the risk of dying without having fully lived.”

Fear ~ Risk ~ Discovery

These are some notes I discovered today that I had written some ten to twelve years ago - around the age of 19 or 20 - about the subject of fear. I found them in one of my old notebooks in which I used to write, philosophising about life and love. As I read I was quite surprised at how my views back then are still so in sync with my views on life now. I may not have followed my own advice at every opportunity - there have been many occasions over the years where my fears have got the better of me - but reading old thoughts like these put the intentions back in the forefront of my mind, making me more likely to confront my fears in the future.

How to f*@k up an interview... and love it!

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 21:59:00 +0000

I've been dissatisfied with my current job for a while now (since about a day after I started) so last month I thought I would throw my CV into the job site stratosphere and see what would happen. Like a chip landing on the grass by the seaside, it was attacked by a hoard of squawking ~~seagulls~~ recruiters. My ego certainly got a boost on that first day; they had all just about convinced me I was the hottest Java developer the world had ever seen (which I'm not).

After the initial flurry of activity things quietened down, until last Friday when I got a chase up call from one of the ~~seagulls~~ recruiters asking if I was still available. A mobile banking company had just relocated some of their development team from London in order to save a bit of money. After the lack of recent interest I was caught a little bit by surprise, and without stopping to think about it, had accepted a request for a phone interview at midday the following Monday.

And then my lizard brain kicked into gear. Every time I thought of the interview over the weekend my lizard brain would have me convinced it was a terrible idea to change my life: “Your job really isn't that bad.” “You're not going to be good enough for this new company.” “Don't go through with it, you're just going to make a d*@k of yourself.” Even though the outcome of the interview had no real bearing or consequence on my life, I was doing my best to psych myself out.

By the time midday Monday rolled around I'd managed to work up a little bit of confidence, and during the initial chit chat I thought I was actually doing quite well. “Hell yeah,” I thought, “I think I might even know more than him.” But it soon became evident that my interview skills were desperately lacking. The technical questions came - thick, fast and difficult - and by the end of the interview about the only question I'd managed to answer correctly was “Is that Anthony? Do you pronounce the h in your name?”

Question after question, I choked. My mind had turned to Mr Whippy ice-cream. I stumbled, I stuttered, I ummed and ahhed. I could picture him laughing on the other end of the line, I could see him calling the rest of his colleagues into his office and to join in the fun, struggling to contain the fits of laughter at the answers being heard over speaker phone. Everything that my lizard brain had warned me of, everything that I dreaded, was coming true. It was smirking ‘I told you so.’

But then I began to smile. Something clicked inside me and I began to realise that it didn't matter in the slightest, because what did I actually have riding on this interview? Nothing. What had I lost by stepping up and going through with it? Nada. In fact, I had gained, because not only had I learnt (again) that I should brush up on some technical details before an interview in future, but I had begun to see the world a little differently. Even if only briefly, the experience had removed my mind from the recent fixation on my career, and I was thinking about other things, like how some of my answers were so terrible they were funny, and that the weather was brilliant and summer was on the way. I relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the morning. I felt good. Happy. Not bad for someone who had just butchered a job interview.

So what's the moral of the story? Try not to take things so seriously, because chances are whatever it is that you're worrying about doesn't really matter. Your lizard brain is constantly trying to get the better of you, to keep your life the same. Block it out. And be sure to have a laugh at yourself whenever you can.

Value: How do you decide what has it?

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:40:00 +0000

The value we place on things is so subjective. So inherited. So under-analysed.

I was sitting on the couch last Friday night working (sad I know). Hustle was on TV in the background. One scene in particular caught my attention: A handful of diamonds were laid down onto a velvet cloth lying on a black table. The diamonds had just been stolen from somewhere as a part of their latest con. All of the 'hustlers' were standing around marvelling at the sight of the diamonds, commenting in awe at how much they would be worth, what you could do with the money that could be made by selling them.

What struck me was the value that they associated - what we associate - with these small, clear, pretty rocks; that these particular small, clear, pretty rocks we call diamonds are worth a great deal. And the value that we humans place on diamonds, or anything else we have come to ‘know’ as valuable. It's funny, because what value do diamonds, or any other item we have come to ‘know’ as valuable - gold, silver etc. - really hold?

It is us humans that have created and spread this meaning, this perception of value.

But what are those diamonds really worth? In a world that is not run by capitalists and money, what good would they be to you? They're rocks. A little harder to find than the pebbles you kick accidentally on the street everyday, but still... What would happen if we erased everything anybody ever knew about diamonds - who would decide how much they were worth? Would you be willing to place the same level of value as those who decided? Are you now?

The richest man is the one who sees what diamonds really are. Rocks. And who can find happiness with the bare minimum. The happiest man is the one who is content when there is nothing left to take away; he whose freedom comes frome things that can't be stolen from us, but from knowledgeof how to live, how to survive. How to just 'be' happy.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exuper

Quantified Self with Android Tasker and Google Forms

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:50:00 +0000

I've been interested in quantifying various activities I do and behaviours I have for a little while now, especially after hearing about the Quantified Self and guys like Nicholas Felton and his Annual Reports. I think the saying ‘you can't manage what you can't measure’ holds a lot of value, and knowing in quantifiable terms what aspects of your life are having a positive or negative affect on your happiness (or productivity or whatever) can be powerful thing.

I wanted to setup a simple way to keep track of a few things as easily as with a click of a button on my phone. I know there are applications out there like Daytum, but I don't want to have to type every time I want to add an item (plus Daytum doesn't have an Android application). So I got to thinking and came up with a basic way of keeping tracking of single instance items using Google Forms and the Tasker Android application. Eventually I'll get around to writing my own app to do this, but for now the Tasker/Forms method does the job nicely.

As a bit of a background, I've used this setup to start automatically tracking what time I wake up each morning. I find that I'm happier and more productive when I'm getting up early, so in order to help quantify this metric, I've created a Tasker profile that submits a Google Form when I unplug my phone in the morning, auto-magically recording the time I woke up. The best part about keeping the data in Google Spreadsheets is that it allows you the flexibility of creating your own charts, visualising and manipulating the data as you please. Here's how I did it:

Set Up the Google Form

Create a new Google Form.
Edit the first question and ensure the Question Type is set to Text.
Give the field a Question Title of whatever you like.
Delete the second question, you won't be needing it.
Save the Form.

Make note of the link at the bottom of the page - the one indicated by ‘You can view the published form here:’, especially the part after formkey=. You'll need these details later when setting up the task in Tasker.

Create a Task in Tasker

After performing the following steps with Tasker in Android you should end up with a screen similar to this:

Open up Tasker, select the Tasks -> New Task.
Give the task the name of the item you want to track. I'm tracking my wake up times so I called the task Wake Up
Now select Add Action -> Net -> HTTP Post
Enter the following details in the HTTP Post fields:

Server:Port = spreadsheets.google.com (this could be spreadsheets0.google.com or sreadsheets1.google.com, depending on the the actual link of your form)
Path = fromResponse?formkey=<insert form key> (the form key is the part of the url you copied earlier after the formkey= part of that url)
Data = entry.0.single=<item name> (insert whatever you like here - this will identify the instances of the item you are tracking in the spreadsheet)

Select Done.

If you like, you can add a Notify Action to your Task to confirm that your submit has succeeded. I have one and set it up as follows:

On the same Task dialogue select Add Action -> Alert -> Notify
Set the title and select a icon that suits your tracked item. Personally, I set my to 'You woke up at %TIME' (the time the Task executes will be inserted into the %TIME variable).

Add a Shortcut to the Home Screen

Now in order to use the Task you can add shortcut to the Home Screen (I'll let you figure out automatic submitting via a profile on your own):

Long press the Home Screen.
Select Shortcut -> Task.
Select the task you've created (play with the options if you like), and...

Your done! One button press to keeping track of anything in your life, with all the power of Charts in Google Spreadsheets to help you visualise and make sense of your data.

It's Not as Cold as You Think

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 21:27:00 +0000

I rode to work today. The air was as cold this morning, around 2-3°C, as it was on any other winter morning that I thought it too cold to ride to work, or play sport outside. The air yesterday on the ride up to Castle Coch was even colder. And yet with only a pair of skins and a couple of layers on top the rides were fun, life-injecting; not the miserable, bitterly freezing experiences I imagined. Most, if not all things turn out to be so: not as bad, terrible, devastating as how we play them out in our mind before they occur. Keep this in mind the next time you visualise an experience in your head before it happens. And dismiss it, because when you're actually in the moment, it won't feel nearly as bad as what you pictured.

The transition to riding is part of my quest to simplify my life. After reading Letters From a Stoic recently, the idea to simplify my life was brought back to the forefront of my attention. David Henry Thoreau is cementing the idea in my conscious with passages like this from his book Walden: Or, Life in the Woods:

“Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!”

So I recently bought some wet weather cycling gear to get me through the cold, wet, winter days and this morning I began my journey ~~toward~~ along a more simple life. A slower, less stressful, more environmentally friendly commute to work. Not nearly as bad as I thought.

Silence: (Potentially) the Difference Between Achieving Your Goals and Failing

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:36:00 +0000

I'm a big fan of TED: Ideas worth spreading and I am subscribed to TED RSS feed. I love how inspiring and insightful some of the speakers are, and could happily sit and watch one video after another for hours. An interesting, albeit short, video popped up this afternoon with Derek Sivers talking about how telling everybody your ambitions can actually make you less likely to achieve them. This turned out to be pretty relevant to me right now as I was in the process of composing a post about my goals for the next 6 weeks before I get married.

It's funny how simple realisations like this can slip through the cracks of your subconscious without being recognised and stored for later use. But when they are brought to your attention, you can immediately recall examples in your life where you've applied the principles and got the results. For me, one example really sticks out. For this we go all the way back to 1995.

I had been trying out for the ACT Under 16 Australian Football team that was to compete in the Australian Championships in Perth. This was a big deal for me, as I'm sure it must have been for the rest of the boys, so I was hell-bent on making the side. Although I never thought I was a walk up start, I was playing some good football in the local league and thought I stood some sort of chance.

I was destroyed when I received a letter informing me I wasn't successful; that I wasn't good enough. I remember crying. Lots. I couldn't believe they didn't think I was in the best 22-25 kids in the state. I was even more devastated to find out the next day, through a friend that had made it, that they had filled the last couple of spots with under 15 kids that hadn't even been training for the side. This made me pissed off, and morphed my sadness into anger.

So I set myself a goal quietly to shove it up the selector's asses. I set out to win the Under 16 league (the league from which most of the side was chosen) Best & Fairest award, kind of like the Brownlow Medal for juniors. I wanted to be able to bump into one or all of the selectors at season's end, look them in the eye, and have them know they'd made a mistake, that I should have been in that side – and that I had the medal around my neck to prove it. I wanted apologies. I wanted deep regret. I wanted them on their knees, wrapped around my ankles begging for forgiveness. So, I pinned the rejection letter to the cork board in my bedroom and highlighted the section that said I wasn't good enough. I read it over and over again, and I trained and played my guts out for the rest of the year.

At the end of the season I was invited to the ACTAFL Junior League Best & Fairest Awards. And I won it. And then I went on to win it the following year too.

I didn't announce my goal to the rest of the world, not even to my Mum. I think if I had have I would have let myself fall into a false sense of achievement, as mentioned in the video above, that I'd already in some way done what I wanted to do. That somehow just having the goal was in itself an achievement. But since then, I don't know how many times I've announced I'm going to do something and not followed through, simply for the fact that in announcing your goals your mind somehow tricks you into thinking it is already done.

So stop talking about what you're going to do; people are much more interested in, and inspired by, what you've already done.

Review of Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 09:49:00 +0000

Gary Vaynerchuk, is a smart guy. He is a proven, incredibly successful entrepreneur and has a shizen load insight, drive and passion; just watch a video of him and you'll see what I mean. And I would hazard a guess that he is as passionate and enthusiastic (bonkers) in real life as he is in his videos 24x7. Heck, his dream is to own the New York Jets, and I wouldn't put it past him. Check that - he'll have done it inside the next 15 years.

I published a post a couple of days ago about why only having a résumé isn't good enough anymore, inspired by the first 40 or so pages of his book, Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion. It is fair to say I was pretty impressed at this early stage of the book, and I was looking forward to being wowed for the remainder.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I was also surprised; surprised that, according to Wikipedia ‘in the first weeks of its release Crush It climbed to #1 on the Amazon Best Seller list for Web Marketing books. It also opened at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list and #7 on the Wall Street Journal Bestseller List.’

To me, this just goes to show that sometimes content isn't always king, and that hype can get you to the top, even if only briefly.

Crush It! is kind of like a ‘How I became successful’ story flipped on its head and spat out as a ‘How you can be successful’ guide. And it is very specific. I felt like I was being spoon fed the content of a social media for dummies book. Vaynerchuk is so specific that in one section of the book he actually lays out 13 point plan, as if you were laying out a five year old's clothes for the day. In order to become successful the way that Vaynerchuk has, you should - nay, must - follow his guidelines. He even begins the list with:

“Let's say you start on a Monday. So on Monday, the first day of the rest of your life, you do the following:”

And then he proceeds to itemise your route to success, which includes things like:

Go to GoDaddy.com and try to buy your name, as in firstnamelastname.com...
Next, start a Wordpress or Tumblr account. This is the blog sit that is going to host the domain you just bought.
...
...
Create a Facebook fan page.
Open a Twitter account with your domain name.

My guess is that if you lack the creativity to come up with a domain name for your business, you may just struggle with what comes after this step in an entrepreneurial venture, i.e. everything. (I wonder if anyone has ever taken up his offer to email him at gary@vaynermedia.com if they really ‘can't come up with anything appropriate or all your top ideas are unavailable... and we'll brainstorm together”).

I was even more surprised to see the enthusiastic reviews that were mashed together into a video compilation; it seems to me these people are all trying to mimic what Gary V does and is, and unfortunately most of them come across as nothing but fake. Is it just me or does it seem like they're all just hopping on the merry-go-round of creating comments on each other's pages and selling to themselves? It would be very interesting to find out who these people are how successful they've become following Gary's recipe for success. If any of you read this, please let me know.

Anyway, credit where credit is due, the book does have some pretty valid advice (enough to inspire me to write a whole blog post about why résumés stink). Here are a few quotes I underlined whilst I was reading:

“Everyone - EVERYONE - needs to start thinking of themselves as a brand. It is no longer an option; it is a necessity.”

“The messages in this book are timeless: Do what makes you happy. Keep it simple. Do the research. Work hard. Look ahead.”

“Love your family. Work superhard. Live your passion.”

“Too many people don't want to swallow the pill of working every day, every chance they get. If you're making money through social media, you don't get to work for three hours and then play Nintendo for the rest of the evening. That's lip service to hard work. No one makes a million dollars with minimal effort unless they win the lottery.”

“Anything insane has a price. If you're serious about building your personal brand, there will be no time for Wii. There will be no time for Scrabble or book club or poker or hockey. There will be time for meals, and catching up with your significant other, and playing with the kids, and otherwise you will be in front of your computer until 3:00 A.M. every night. If you're unemployed or retired and have all day to work, maybe you knock off at midnight instead. Expect this to be all consuming.”

“But patience is the secret sauce. Once you put up your site, you don't want to start and stop, back-track and second-guess. It'll make you look insecure and foolish.”

“To create an audience for your personal brand, you're going to get out there, shake hands, and join every single online conversation already in play around the world about your topic. Every. Single. One.”

“As long as you're seeing your audience grow, even modestly, over the first four or five months, you're doing what you're supposed to do.”

“Find a way to incorporate some personal stories and details into your posts. Use anecdotes from your own life to illustrate concepts. Let your personality shine so that eventually people who have no need for accounting information are coming to hear you just because it's you.”

But for me, this book was just a little too simplistic, and too good to be true. For example, in a few places Vaynerchuk suggests that we're all a chance at getting on the TV and speaking circuit. I had to laugh when I read passages like these:

As your audience grows and your blog starts to get real attention in the form of media coverage, ad revenue, and requests for speaking at functions...

... it's entirely possible that someone from The Today Show is going to ask you to talk about board games or your blog on their program.

Sure, it may happen. It happened to him. But just because it happened to you Gary, doesn't mean everyone can do it.

It is true that the cream always rises to the top, but in a cup full of cream, some of it is at rock bottom, and 99% of it doesn't even get a glimpse of the top.

Pity the Fool who Has Only a Résumé

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:17:00 +0000

I've just started reading the Crush It!: Why Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk. This was one of the 25 shortlisted books I had on my Christmas list last year, and one of the 10 or so that made it under the tree. It's taken a while for me to get around to reading it, but just 47 pages in I'm glad I finally picked it up.

I had no idea who Gary Vaynerchuk was before starting Crush It! I'd never heard of Wine Library or Wine Library TV. To be honest, it was probably a good thing I hadn't as I might have been a little turned off reading the book after watching one of his videos. Passionate but slightly annoying.

I digress...

The reason I felt inspired to write this post was because Vaynerchuck, and the writer who transcribed his dictated words, flat out convinced me to. I had an immediate urge to start thrashing out what he calls a “personal brand” (I was lucky my Macbook wasn't in the vicinity as I was in the bath and I've read somewhere that water and Macbooks don't play nicely, especially when attached to a human). A personal brand, digitally speaking, is your online persona; the content that's returned when someone Google's your name. Your blog. Your Tweets. Your social media footprint. I didn't have (a good enough) one, and 47 pages into Crush It!, I had to have one. Right. Now.

“Hold it, you might want to reassure me, my résumé is awesome. Tell me this: Is it a pdf of a tidy list where you've worked and for how long, with a couple of strategic bullet points highlighting what you did in each job? Yeah? You're toast. Keep your pdf so that the HR department has something for their files, but otherwise traditional résumés are going to be irrelevant, and soon. Even if they're not yet, that résumé you're so proud of looks exactly like the ones being waved around by the other three hundred analysts in your city currently hunting for jobs.”

Cop. That.

And the man is right. If I owned my own business and was looking to hire a smart, driven person to help the company grow, I'd be more likely to hire the smart, driven person whom I already feel I know through reading years worth of insightful blog posts, over the smart, driven person who handed me two A4 sheets of paper. I've heard it said before, that the blog is the new résumé, but I never read too much into the theory. I couldn't see it clearly enough wearing the other shoes, the employer's shoes. The shoes that count.

I've started a blog numerous times before - personal ones, professional ones, then another personal one - but I could never keep them going for long. They never lasted for more than 5 or 6 posts. I think trying to separate my thoughts, my life, into sections was 95% of the problem. You shouldn't have to divide yourself up and write differently for each different aspect of your persona, especially when it is a personal brand you're trying to build. But the more I read, and the more I grow - personally and professionally - the more I understand the need to sell myself, to prove what I'm really about and what I'm capable of. And you can't keep doing that by trying to shrink the font to 11, then 10.5, because you can't get it all in the standard 2 pages.

So here we go, the beginning a new, improved ~~résumé~~ personal brand.

Review of Linchpin by Seth Godin

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Wolski) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:14:00 +0000

Seth Godin is a machine. He has written twelve bestsellers and (probably) thousands of blog posts dating back to January 2002. I must have subscribed to and unsubscribed from his blog at least five times solely because I simply can't keep up with the sheer quantity and depth of his blog posts. The man will sometimes post six times in a day. He is a machine. The man ships.

In his book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? Godin explains what it means to ship:

“The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship. Shipping means hitting the publish button on your blog, showing a presentation to to the sales team, answering your the phone... Shipping is the collision between your work and the outside world.

Shipping something out the door, doing it regularly, without hassle, emergency, or fear - this is a rare skill, something that makes you indispensable.”

This is one of the key messages in the book. We all have the ability to become indispensable; we are all geniuses, we all can create amazing work, we are all artists. But the system has beaten the genius and the creativity out of us. We have been brainwashed into submission and we have become what they want us to be: cogs in a machine. When we surrender to the resistance, our lizard brain, we become easily replaced with another cheap lemming:

“You weren't born to be a cog in the giant industrial machine. You were trained to become a cog.”

I really got a lot out of this book. Its messages were clear, almost exhaustively explained, and most importantly incredibly relevant to me. At times it was a little repetitive and felt as though I was reading something that I was sure I read not 5 pages ago - but this is probably a good thing as it really drums home the point. And the messages really struck a chord with me, with where I'm at and with what I'm trying to achieve and get out of myself and life.

So what were the messages?

Well, for me this story was pretty poignant:

“One day, Binny Thomas stood up. She stood up, spoke up, and started doing a new job. She didn’t leave her organization, didn’t even get a new title or new responsibilities. Instead, she started doing her old job in a new way. Binny stopped going to meetings with the goal of finding deniability or problems to avoid. Instead, she started leaning in and seeking out projects where she could make a difference. Suddenly, Binny was inspired. She was looking for opportunities instead of hiding from blame. She was putting herself on the line, pushing through the dip, and making things happen. The fascinating (and universal) truth is that the opportunities came after she was inspired—she wasn’t inspired by the opportunities. Binny’s old job was just fine. She did it extremely well. She followed the map, followed instructions, did what she was told and got paid what she was worth. Binny wasn’t in danger of losing her job, but she had already given up her soul. She had plateaued, this was the end. Then she changed her mind. Six weeks later, she got a huge promotion and another, even better new job than the new job she had given herself. Binny is now running a worldwide program of motivated scholars. All it took was a choice. Binny didn’t ask for permission to do her job better; she merely decided to.”

I've been in the wrong frame of mind about my work for a long time now. Note that I said wrong frame of mind. Not wrong job. Not doing something I hate or shouldn't be doing. I let myself become a cog in a wheel, a factory worker. And as long as I continued to treat what I do in this way, as though I was a puppet to my boss, my job and my situation, I was never going to release the artist within and become passionate. Indispensable. Now and for the past few weeks I've viewed my job in a similar light as what Binny does - as an opportunity. It is an opportunity create, to be passionate, to connect with my colleagues, to solve problems and to lead.

“If you can be human at work (not a machine), you’ll discover a passion for work you didn’t know you had. When work becomes personal, your customers and coworkers are more connected and happier. And that creates even more value.”

In the last week or two I've discovered that this is fact. Fact. Stop blaming the people around you, your colleagues, your boss. Stop blaming your circumstances and your habits. Become human, connect with what you are now pointing the finger at as the cause of your suffering, and you'll see you a transformation you could never have imagined.

Linchpin is about overcoming the resistance, the lizard-brain we all have that convinces us we're not good enough. It's about being an artist and giving gifts; not an artist in the conventional sense - painting and building large brass sculptures (although this could be how you create your art) - but an artist in whatever work we do. Being creative, solving problems, connecting with colleagues and customers, with passion and honesty. Give gifts, give time, give a smile, give extra effort, go the extra mile, ship, provide value, be remarkable - not just good.

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? is well worth a read, whether you're in a rut or not. It will definitely be one that I pull from the shelf in the future to read again and get inspired. Here are a few of my favourite quotes from the book (easily exported with the help of my new Kindle, which rocks!):

“Great jobs, world-class jobs, jobs people kill for—those jobs don’t get filled by people e-mailing in résumés.”

“The only way to prove (as opposed to assert) that you are an indispensable linchpin—someone worth recruiting, moving to the top of the pile, and hiring—is to show, not tell. Projects are the new résumés.”

“If your Google search isn’t what you want (need) it to be, then change it. Change it through your actions and connections and generosity. Change it by so over-delivering that people post about you. Change it by creating a blog that is so insightful about your area of expertise that others refer to it. And change it by helping other people online.”

“Perhaps your challenge isn’t finding a better project or a better boss. Perhaps you need to get in touch with what it means to feel passionate. People with passion look for ways to make things happen.”

“One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you’ll discover that some good ones slip through.”

“Once you’ve given a name to the resistance and you know what its voice sounds like, it’s a lot easier to embrace the fact that you actually are a genius. The part of you that wants to deny this is the resistance. The rest of you understands that you’re as capable as the next guy of an insight, invention, or connection that makes a difference.”

“You must become indispensable to thrive in the new economy. The best ways to do that are to be remarkable, insightful, an artist, someone bearing gifts. To lead. The worst way is to conform and become a cog in a giant system.”

“You can either fit in or stand out. Not both.”

“Don’t let your circumstances or habits rule your choices today. Become a master of yourself and use your willpower to choose.”

Now it's time to ship by publishing this post. Shipped.