Do you see your friends as fellow conspirators?

It’s weird to think that your friends might be hiding something from you, or that you might be doing the same from them. But you do, and they are.

You and your network are a system. You keep the good stuff and let it be spread through you, but you get rid of the bullshit and keep it from being heard, the same way your body weeds out and kills viruses. For example, studies have shown that political bloggers mostly link to each other, not to opposing viewpoints, leading to an audience with more polarized viewpoints on both sides over time.

Everybody is always acting as everyone else’s gatekeeper. I’m ok to introduce X person to Y, because I feel that X offers value, but I won’t introduce Z, who seems like he’s just in it for himself.

Your colleagues may not seem like filters to you, but they are. We naturally weed out what we dislike and grasp what we agree with, holding onto the stuff that strengthens our own internal arguments. In fact, we do the same with our friends, liking those that agree with us most, buffering us from those who may not agree with our worldview.

But here’s what’s interesting.

You used to hang out with your neighbours– hell, you used to know their names. But more and more, you’re hanging out with people you met online, who you met due to common interest rather than shared geography.

Friends that know through shared interest are pre-filtered, of course– they’ll agree with you because they are like you. If they weren’t, you wouldn’t have met them. But those that meet through shared geography are not, since you met them randomly, and they could be anyone. What does this mean for you and your frame of mind?

If resistance is what makes your body and mind strong, your brain is weakened by the lack of opposing forces. The same way that a body that isn’t used to the flu is more likely to get hurt by it (think 16th century Native Americans being wiped out by disease), your brain is becoming more and more out of balance, leading to over-development in one sense and frailty in another. Never mind lack of adaptability when encountering new circumstances.

You need to challenge yourself in a very serious way. Wipe out your RSS feeds and kill your Twitter followers– they are chosen by an old version of you that wanted yes-men instead of trusted advisors. If this is your kingdom, you need people that will challenge your views and, as such, keep you safe. How many people do you have like that now?

Some of the same friends I had when I was 17, I still have now. They’re very good at cutting me down to size, and I respect them for it. Do you have friends like this?

Maybe it’s time to find some.

In The Nature of the Graph earlier this week, I talked about friction– ie, transaction costs– inside groups and how they impact the efficiency of groups.

A transaction cost within a financial relationship can be a lot of things: from a broker taking 10% to a lawyer drafting a contract. We have to pay these over and over, but they allow us to deal with a much wider group of strangers than was previously possible.

Within social situations, friction takes other forms– we have to build a relationship instead of trusting a middleman. Once we’ve built it, though, it’s there forever, so costs are reduced. One could also argue that maintaining the relationship is a kind of upkeep cost, but I’m thinking that social upkeep is cheaper than paying fees over and over again.

But what happens when people don’t comply with contracts?

Legal contracts are simple– clauses are outlined and noncompliance results in consequences that are written in black and white. They’re usually pretty severe, which is why we don’t break them.

Social contracts, in contrast, have lower transaction costs, but something scarier happens when we break them– we get ostracized from the group. So in a situation where community has been built, we chance lose everything we built.

That’s the interesting thing about community. It makes things easier but it also puts us more at risk.

I would say that 1000 years ago, the community may have been weaker than the market. But that was mostly due to their shorter reach– after all, currency travels farther than favours. But now that they can be global, community is once again very valuable.

What do you think?

Have you ever noticed that, on almost all of the popular websites, the link colour is blue?

Have you ever built a web page from scratch? If not, you may not know that blue is the default colour these links appear in. You may also not know that blue links convert better, cause people to click more, than any other colour in A/B tests. Why is that?

This is an example of what some would call a self-reinforcing position. Because blue links convert better, people make them blue, which makes blue links get seen faster, and so on. It’s like the snake that eats its own tail.

Most people don’t understand how strong these positions are, especially if they’re advantageous to you. Strongest of all forces is that of compound interest, in which a start position strengthens itself and increases its lead as time goes on. But most people are still working their tails off rather than letting the lead they’ve built work for them.

One of the most powerful reasons to build something that lasts is because it can continue to reinforce your future projects for as long as the platform is in existence. You watch this happen over and over again– famous VCs get more traffic to their new projects than non-famous ones, bloggers getting book deals, whatever. But this isn’t a surprise.

What is a surprise is that people still refer to our culture as a meritocracy. We look at life as being about those who work hardest. But often, it’s those who know how to push the rock in the right direction… letting gravity do the work for them.

Which kind are you?

Have you ever been asked to sign an NDA?

Non-Disclosure Agreements exist because of lack of trust between parties that need to discuss a subject– in fact, that’s the nature of any contract– to provide legal recourse in the case of non-compliance.

Here’s the thing though. You introduce a contract because there’s friction in a relationship. It’s an additional social and financial cost for a situation where trust doesn’t exist. It’s also a result of living in a world where we deal with strangers in everyday life, because when we have trust, we need less contracts.

So let’s talk about these social and financial costs. Stephen M. R. Covey’s Speed of Trust wasn’t a very good book (sorry), but it was right in that sense– things can happen faster and cheaper in tighter organizations.

Turns out that Ronald Coase, a Nobel prize winning economist, talked about this in the 1937 Economica article The Nature of the Firm. The reasons people enter into firms (or purpose-oriented groups of any kind, really) is because it reduces friction– social and financial costs– and improves efficiency. Otherwise, we’d all be free agents.

Now, what happens when your social graph gets massively huge? When the number of strangers around you gets reduced due to their connecting with you en masse through social networks? Friction may not be reduced to zero, but costs are reduced a little with each individual, making it extremely easy for you to get things at a cheaper social and financial cost than almost anyone.

This is the very definition of an Agent Zero– the equivalent of the It-Girl who knows everyone at the party. She gets everything for free because she knows everyone. She may be rich, but she doesn’t need money (except maybe to keep up her It-Girl status). She just needs connections– which, it has been proven, reduce costs.

Further than this– what happens when all people get just a tiny bit more connected? Friction is reduced across the board. All middleman institutions naturally become a little bit less funded, whether they be law firms or PR companies.

We don’t need them, because we’re not strangers anymore.

I hadn’t considered this when we were writing Trust Agents, but damn, does it ever make sense. Do you have connectors in your organization? They are literally like money in your pocket. Damn.

It combines interesting factoids with tons of illustrations. Each page is evergreen content, and will probably still be looked at years in the future.

Remember those Top 10 List sites a few years ago? Well, this is its 2009 incarnation. The perfect linkbait blog, but taken to the next level. In fact it’s probably made by a guy super familiar with SEO (the smart kind). You can tell because every piece of content is designed and targeted to the audiences that love to spread content across the web, through things like Reddit and Twitter.

This is the way to think about your next project– check out the stuff you already love looking at on the web and then take it up a notch. Don’t just copy– level it up somehow.

Update: Hahahaha, oh boy was I right. Good on you Matt, I’m impressed. :)

The web has shortened your attention span. But that isn’t the problem.

Did you ever consider that the hyperlink, by definition, reduces patience? It gives us unrestricted access to information, immediately, without intermediaries. That’s why Google is the most powerful site in the world; it points directly to whatever you want it to. And that’s the power of the web– instant availability. No barriers.

The problem isn’t the short attention span this leads to. It’s the fact that the best information is never at the top– because that’s not how humans communicate.

Consider any book you’ve read this year. Now that it’s done, which pages are dog-eared? Which information was most interesting? I’m betting it wasn’t page one.

If the author was considering everyone’s attention span, it would be right there at the beginning. But that’s never how we do things.

Instead, humans tell stories– they weave tales in order to create suspense and surprise. They also sometimes write without having a point, only getting to it when they’ve been writing (or talking) for a while.

So there’s a disconnect between the way we deliver information and the way we process it.

When we absorb it, it goes into our vaults as hyperlinks do– connected, tag-like, but with no beginning, and no end. When we deliver it, we do it the way we experience events– chronologically.

This means that your shortened attention span is causing you to miss out on a lot of great stuff. It won’t let you get to the end, but the end is often where the best stuff lies.

I think the solution is to train yourself– read long books, force yourself out of your comfort zone habitually and often.

But the problem there is that you may waste a lot of time on stuff that doesn’t have a point at all, or that just isn’t worth the patience you’re devoting to it.

Where is the middle ground? Is there one? What do you think?

Taylor Davidson called it “my phrase” at Tribecon, but it isn’t really mine– it’s been used many, many times before.

I started getting interested in it when I began doing Alexander Technique, which attempts to return your body to a natural, relaxed state through re-training (or “un”-training) you out of your bad posture habits.

But there’s more to it than that. The reason Alexander Technique is valuable is because it does a lot more than change posture– it also changes the way people see you, the way you project your voice, and a bunch of other stuff that is really valuable on a human level– particularly to me as a public speaker. (This is why many actors and musicians practice it.)

So I started to think: “If you’re sending non-verbal signals in person, you’re also doing it online. So how can you improve the signals you’re sending that aren’t verbal?”

If body language is a large part of what you’re showing people when you’re not speaking to them, digital body language is what you’re displaying to people on the web without speaking. And trust me, you’re sending a lot.

Let’s take the metaphor a bit further. If body language includes “stance,” what is stance on the web? It’s the way you or your company stand, what you look like, when you’re “in neutral.” What does your stance say about you, if people are just observing?

If being “tense” in real life means you look uncomfortable and frightened (which results in people feeling ill-at-ease around you), then what does tense mean in digital body language? Maybe a defensiveness in your writing and the way you position yourself vis-a-vis your market? That you’re not at ease with yourself?

People that are hunched over don’t look healthy– people with good posture do. What signals are you sending out that people assess as showing illness within your company or yourself?

Think about all of the signals you’re sending out. They’re happening all the time– they’re not just verbal, they’re everything you’re doing (or not doing). People intimate information from what they feel, and you’re making them feel it through your digital body language.

Like our body, which we often take for granted and forget about, we lose track of what our body language is telling people. But it’s vital not to ignore it like we do our body. It really is speaking volumes. Think about it.

“There is no weakness talking about failure.”

Man, I love this quote by Jon Favreau. He caught my attention at first last year while reading an article about Obama the day before I was on CBC’s Test the Nation.

You know when you see these scenes in movies– almost every movie has one– where you see someone in a weak moment, either doing something they’d never do in public, or in a moment of weakness or loneliness, something like that.

Those moments make you feel closer to the character and understand them more, don’t they? So why don’t we learn from that? Why can’t we be weak in real life?

We’ve all had those moments where we’ve broken down and told someone something we’d been keeping to ourselves, something we felt embarrassed about. We’ve also all been in a place where someone has confessed something to us. The same thing always happens– it breaks down barriers and brings people closer to each other.

You know, showing weakness in a public setting (like a blog, or on television) also displays strength. It means you’re confident enough that you can handle it, and shows people that you’re big enough to talk about your mistakes. Strong people man up to their failures. Weak people don’t.

So when and how should you admit things? Should it be strategic? I don’t know that it can be.

It can’t be planned. As I say regularly, human beings have sophisticated bullshit filters, so we can see when something is genuine. We feel it. And we also feel it when it’s fake.

So exposing your neck has to be spontaneous. But it can’t be stupid. Don’t become a train wreck, just realize that there’s a goodness in people that comes out when they see the human frailty in all of us.

Just do it. It’ll be ok.

Everybody needs a Craig Silverman.

I’ve just started going to a neighbourhood Crossfit gym. My roommate had been into the system for a while (which is like an intense, military-style workout that pushes you FAR beyond your comfort zone), and I’d been once, but I was slacking until Craig called me up last month to tell me he’d be going.

So I went with Craig that first time, and I’ve been back several times since. Why? Because he exerts just the right amount of social pressure.

It’s so important to have a support network for any change you’re trying to achieve in your life. But if you can’t have a whole group, you at least need one person– someone who will harass the hell out of you to make sure you’ll do it, especially until it becomes a habit.

So how does Craig do it? Here’s how today’s conversation Twitter went, just to give you an example:

Craig: “so 5pm today, right?”

Me: “fuuuuuck FINE”

Craig: “atta girl”

There it is. Bullying? Check. Insulting? Check. Accusation of wussiness? Yup, that’s there too.

You could never treat your child like this, or your girlfriend/boyfriend like this, but you know what? Sometimes it’s necessary.

You need to be that person, or find them. You’ll be happy you did.

Oh and Craig, I hate you.

I was stopped in the subway yesterday by some rent-a-cops. It was a bit jarring.

It was at Square-Victoria metro around 2pm, and they were doing “random checks” of people’s subway passes. I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but it can be a strange feeling getting stopped by people who think they’re law enforcement, but really are not.

I’ve always distrusted police, so that didn’t help.

So I’m looking this guy straight in the eye as I pass him my card. He checks it and lets me go. No problem. I imagine this is a bit what being in a police state feels like– being able to be stopped at any time and asked for identification for any reason. I leave with my privacy feeling a bit invaded. Weird.

Papers Please

A lot of people think they hold power over you in certain contexts. I met Jessamyn West this weekend, and she talked about how she was stopped in a library in Des Moines for taking pictures. When she asked why, there was no reason– it was just “against policy.” Go figure. What happened afterwards is worth reading.

The thing is, rule makers often have good reasons for creating them. I was stopped in the subway because a lot of people are probably jumping the turnstiles or something. So it makes sense for them to check my card, I guess. (This is a bit like the RIAA piracy thing– accusing all of your paying customers of theft before a film to try and dissuade the occasional real thief, and alienating everyone else in the process.)

Anyway, the disconnect occurs when the rules are passed on to the enforcers– those who wear the uniforms, carry the badges and do the rounds. They don’t often understand why things were put into place, and even if they do, the power can get to their heads. So rules get generalized into these broad, absurd caricatures of themselves.

The reason I distrust police is precisely that– I feel like people look at rules and categorically follow them, blindly trusting that they’re being led in the right direction when they’re often being taken advantage of. If you step out of line, you’re seen as a having done something wrong even though you may actually know better. So we instead relinquish this power a little bit at a time, until it becomes habitual, destroying our personal sovereignty in the process.

The most powerful weapon against rule enforcers is the word WHY. We get trained out of using it very young because our parents get annoyed at it– and they got annoyed at it because they often don’t know the answer themselves. The real reason your parents want you to clean your room may be because they think a messy room is ugly, but they don’t say that– they’ll instead guilt you into doing it as if having a messy room is morally wrong. But it isn’t. It’s a choice.

Jumping the turnstiles is also a choice. So is saying no to rent-a-cops. So make your choices based on your own moral compass and ideas, not based on what the enforcers are telling you. That’s a hard thing, but it’s worth it.

You gotta be you.

The other week I was hanging out at a bar with a few friends and someone asked me about a project.

Basically the idea was this– how to build a community around a filmmaker so that they could thereafter fund a film project if they thought it had merit. (A little bit like Kickstarter does now.)

I explained that this was what Chris was (and is) able to do. That’s the power of the platform– to direct attention wherever you’d like it to be, compounding the chances of success for each of your successive projects.

Anyway, my friend was unconvinced. But another was like “Have you ever read his book?” (Like most good friends, almost no one there had.) :) But then Eric, the one that had read it, said something in such a clear way that it’s changed the way I think about it myself. He said:

“Listen, imagine all of your friends get phones. What are you going to do, sit around waiting for a letter all day? Or are you going to get a phone?”

I’ve now totally internalized this idea– and told Eric that I was grateful he wasn’t on the web a lot, or he would have my job. ;)

The way I think about it is this– when people think of a project they want to do, they go out and try to rouse interest and meet people that are doing it. I mean, it’s only natural, right? Go find people that can help.

The only thing is, it doesn’t work.

What does work is to build something with a large network early, before you need it. Meet all kinds of people, no matter who they are. Be generous all the time, before you ever need anything. Go where the people are beforehand, and you’ll know them well if the time comes where you’re in need.

All of this relates extremely well to careers, btw.

Think about it another way. When you go to a house party, do you just go to the fridge and grab a bunch of beer? Or do you bring your own to the party? How you’re seen will depend on what kind of person you are. Decide accordingly.

It’s so interesting.

I try to discount the many reviews of the book Chris and I wrote (both positive and negative) because I think hype can really mess up your head. It’s always better not to read your own press; I do read it, I just try not to believe it.

But this was an Editor’s Pick. So it’s kind of different and it feels special. I looked up the ones that were picked in the last few years in the same categories– here’s some of what they’d chosen in the past:

Purple Cow – So classic that Hugh McLeod did a print of it.

Blue Ocean Strategy – Amazing book, displays so clearly how to differentiate yourself. I can’t recommend this enough.

The Long Tail – Speaks for itself.

Made To Stick – I brought this book to Boston with me while we were writing ours, took heavy inspiration from its methods and model. It’s incredible.

Anyway, pretty great list, right?

It makes me kind of feel like I did something really good, that I can really be proud of. I was always happy to have completed the book obviously, but having it sit there adds a certain je ne sais quoi and makes me feel like it’ll have some staying power, which is really important. :)

Have you guys noticed yet that I love birds?

I’ve just gotten back from a few trips, including NOLA for Tribecon and up North in Quebec for BitNorth. Both were really cool events.

It’s become pretty evident over the time I’ve spent at conferences that your level of achievement is intimately connected to your social circle. I’m reading Connected right now, which strongly proves this with a number of examples, including how your friends get fat if you do, how much happier they are if you’re happy, etc.

In fact, it’s pretty crazy how much your friends (and their friends) influence you, which is why “Connected” is the perfect title for the book. But what can we do about it?

In my speech at Tribecon, what I suggest is that it’s your duty to lead your network to better achievement, whether losing weight, quitting smoking, or building a business.

What does this imply? Well, if you’re influenced by your network, but you’re first to change, it means you’ll encounter resistance, both internal and external. You won’t only make it tough on yourself (by breaking old habits), but other people’s habits will reinforce your old ones.

Second, maybe it means you need to spend more time with people that are already what you want to be like. This doesn’t mean don’t spend time with your friends, but if you want to be a writer, spend time with those that do it often. You’ll be hearing about it from them and it’ll encourage you in a number of ways. Then, you can bring that encouragement to your peer group.

Think of the way geese fly in that classic V-shape. The lead bird always encounters more wind resistance, making it easier to be in the back than the front. But if no one want to take the front, no one will get anywhere.

So all this stuff isn’t easy. Patterns reinforce themselves. Do you have any tricks to help you persevere in your goals?

The title was “Using the Web to Enhance Your Brand.” I don’t know that much about branding but the session was pretty awesome to do. To all of you that are joining from G&M.com, hello and thanks for checking me out. I have a bunch of great stuff below, and you can subscribe by RSS by clicking above.

For all y’all that didn’t get a chance to participate, we discussed a number of important issues about social media, search marketing, and how to promote a prog rock band. Oh and let’s not forget Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, and Twitter.

Hype dies. The channel does not.

The problem with your 15 minutes is that it will end. Especially if you’re renting other people’s attention, it won’t last forever. You’ll become a has-been very quickly if this is all you do.

For a long time, I didn’t blog or podcast very much. I just worked on my own stuff, in private, and didn’t develop my platform. I realized recently that it wasn’t a smart decision.

It was a mistake, because no amount of hype will ever carry you forward all the way to where you want to go. You need to own a strong, popular channel. No one will ever give you one forever. You need to build one. To do anything else is to be at the mercy of other people’s whims.

Those of you that are bloggers, think of all the PR pitches you get every day. Why are you getting them? Because people are throwing money at the problem– they’re trying to create hype instead of a platform. They’re throwing money at the problem– buying bags of smoke that often result in nothing.

Even if you do blog about one of their widgets, that hype will die. It’s inevitable. And it’ll leave them needing to throw more money at the problem next time they need more attention.

Seems like a vicious cycle, doesn’t it?

Rather than rent, the real way to freedom and power is to buy everything. Simple examples include buying a house so you don’t have to pay rent, buying a car so you don’t have to pay cabs, etc. Everyone can relate to that.

But the renting you do is leaving you at the same place you started, sometimes even digging you into a hole (in terms of money, favours, etc). The buying, on the other hand, is helping you accumulate advantage and facilitating leverage fore future projects.

The good thing is that the web allows you to buy a platform with your time– what people usually call sweat equity. Potentially, you can do that in real life, too– by building your own house, say. But the web is one of the easiest places to do it.

This is only one of the reasons why working on the web facilitates your rise to wherever you want to go. But there are many, many more.

Sometimes you come across a challenge that is very difficult for you to live with.

It could be a disability, a problem with your spouse, or any number of complicated affairs that happen to everyone, all throughout life.

The natural answer to this question is “Why me? I have enough problems, why this right now?” (Side note: You ever notice how it’s never the right time?)

Anyway, we feel like this problem is really annoying, and we don’t know how to handle it. We hope it isn’t as bad as we expected it would be, or that if we ignore it, it’ll just go away. If we’re lucky, it does.

But is that really luck?

We’re only as good as the problems we overcome. Think of those lottery winners who end up in bankruptcy– they didn’t have to struggle for the problem of managing small amounts of money, so they don’t know how to deal with massive sums, either.

It’s the same thing with any other situation you come across. Those that can’t deal with it call it a problem, while those that can don’t even consider it a problem at all. Your job is to become that second kind of person.

One of my favourite books is Man’s Search For Meaning– Viktor Frankl wrote it after getting out of Auschwitz (and many other camps) during World War II. In it, he says:

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Somewhere in the future, on the other side of your problem, there is a future version of you that’s going, “Man, I still have to deal with this problem– why won’t it go away?”

Or, along another line, there is another version of you that’s saying, “Thank God I figured out how to take care of that. I’m in such a better place now.”

The difference is choice.

So choose.

When I started to lose my hearing, I freaked out a lot.

I quit a lot of groups I went to– public speaking groups, capoeira, a lot of other stuff– because I wasn’t hearing what was going on properly anymore. Either that, or they were really loud, and I was afraid of hurting my ears more. It was tough.

That was about 3 years ago– I’ve leveled off now. Sometimes I hear new sounds, and that’s really scary. I realized that if I’m hearing new stuff, it means that there could be new sounds anytime, leading me to consider how bad this could really get. That could mean becoming isolated– after all, conversation is one of the main things that brings people together. What happens when you miss out on that?

All this brings new perspective. You’re freaking out at first because it’s so new, and the first moments where you’re suffering are always worse than whatever you become accustomed to. Eventually, you look at what’s going on in your life and you think “You know what, this isn’t so bad.”

And actually, it isn’t. I have a pretty good life.

The body does break down as we age– this much is true for everyone. I feel like for me, small parts of it have decided to go a bit early. That’s no problem. I think it’s made me more resilient and prepared for change. I know what it’s like to get old, I just have that earlier than a lot of normal people. I’m ok with this.

Tomorrow, the day after, or anytime after that, any number of terrible things could happen, without warning. We can’t focus on those possibilities, because it can paralyze us. We have to take advantage of what we have now.

I have this quote on a magnet on my fridge:

Be Thankful For This Moment– This Moment Is Your Life

Whatever your situation is, there is only one answer: “Ok, so this is how things are. This is what I have to work with. So be it.” Like, imagine you’ve been arrested. You don’t fight with the cops, you just do what you can, once you can do it, right? Getting argumentative about it will just make it worse. It’s the same with life.

Or maybe I’ve been watching too many episodes of the Wire, I dunno. It makes sense to me.

As a result of hearing loss that I’ve developed over the years, there are a few things missing from my world that are likely present in yours. What are they?

First, here’s what do I have that you do not: A loud, high-pitch ringing that is unceasing. I hear it 24 hours a day, without end. I have pretty close to state-of-the-art hearing aids to compensate for this. They’re made by Siemens, go inside my ears. Most people don’t notice them, which is exactly how I like it.

Next year, I’ll probably move to Bluetooth ones that will let me talk on the phone and hear my iPod without plugging myself in. That, I’m guessing, will be totally awesome.

Anyway, one of the things that people don’t recognize is that I can hear quite well almost 90% of the sounds around me. I can hear most frequencies fine, but here’s the real concern: the frequencies I have lost are the most subtle ones in human speech.

You may never have realized that there is very little difference to the human ear between cat and hat, but I do. All the differences between C and H are around the frequency I don’t have. So I confuse words a lot.

I compensate for this with context. A cat doesn’t go on your head; a hat does. Context is deeply important to me because it helps me make sense of what’s being said to me every day. Environmental noise like the ones that happen in bars, on the street, or in restaurants can be exhausting, because I need to concentrate to hear properly.

Another thing that I miss out on is stuff like birds, crickets, or other natural sounds. Those things, I really miss. There’s a lot of subtlety that I don’t catch because of the way I hear. Maybe one day technology will help me out with getting all this stuff back; might be a while, but it’ll be worth it.

Not sure why I decided to write about this today, but I never have before, so it’s kind of refreshing. Sometimes it’s interesting to look at life from someone else’s point of view. Maybe you learned something. Anyway, see you next time.

Check next time you’re traveling. You’ll notice every staircase, anywhere in the world, looks exactly the same.

Stand at the top. What do you see? Parts of the staircase are worn away, in two rows, going from the top to the bottom.

This is because every person coming in and out drags their feet in exactly the same manner. They walk up the side of the staircase and, after many years, you get grooves where thousands of pedestrians have walked.

Wanna know another word for the groove?

The Rut

Patterns are so easy to fall into that we don’t even notice we’re in them. Even if we do notice, we don’t really know what to change.

“Ok, everyone’s behaving this way. What do I do now?” It’s far from obvious.

There’s also all these reasons for not being different– social pressure being a huge one. “Omg, what will people think?”

Worse than that is that when someone steps out of a pattern, they usually step right into yet another pre-existing one. That’s why alternative kids all dress the same.

Or butt marks on staircases’ rails where everyone decides they’re going to slide down, instead of walk.

The World is Losing Its Wildness

There are no uncharted spaces anymore, no hinterlands, are there? 19th century explorers had the Arctic; in the 20th century they had the moon. What about us?

Psychologically it’s a bit the same. How does someone become different, become themselves? Or are we recognizing that there is no new way, only many different acceptable ways to be different? Is that a good thing?

Are you walking down a staircase? You should at least be conscious of the pattern you’re in. You may want to change it, just because. The ability to adapt is healthy. It’ll get you to think differently, even if only a bit.

Or hey, if you’re going to travel the same path as everyone else… you may as well do it without dragging your feet.

The official answer to anyone who tells you that they have a blog is (say it with me now):

“Oh, so what do you complain about?”

Man, there are so many good reasons to say this. Let’s name a few to make sure we’re on the same page, ok?

1. You don’t have to hear them go on and on about their blog. This is actually the most important reason– anyone who thinks their blog is a big deal needs to be cut down to size a little bit. If you need another topic of conversation, may I suggest how totally awesome Twitter is?
2. They won’t complain in their next post. So basically, the whole blogosphere is made slightly better every time you say it. Do it enough and I think it’ll raise the mood/consciousness of the whole planet. I’m not kidding.
3. They may stop complaining on their blog altogether. Some blogs, let’s face it, are about 50% customer service complaints, 30% top ten lists, 15% complaining about A-list bloggers, and a few other percentage points separated among the other usual suspects (your cat, etc). You don’t need a blog for this. Everyone knows complaining is what Twitter is for.
4. They may never bring up their blog again. One of the great things about this tac-nuke of a response is that it will cause people to become afraid of it– and they’ll stop bringing up their blog entirely. Try asking about someone’s non-web life instead– that way you may actually get to know them instead of trying to get out of the conversation because all they’re talking about is web crap.

Do you see the problem here? We have these stupid habits we fall back on every time we meet someone new in this space. Like “What do you do?” they’ve become the routines we use when we run out of stuff to say, but everyone uses the same ones, so all they do is bore people.

There are many other conversations we need to wipe out of tech-conference circles.

Which ones are you sick of?