I listen to a lot of music and a thought that just hit me (as it does fairly often) is, “Man, so many artists have the oddest sounding voices.”

And by “odd” I mean if you heard them singing on the street you’d think, “wow, this is horrible.” Or, at the very least, you’d think, “ehh, I don’t like this.” Or maybe you’d laugh. Or ignore it. (Which is probably worst of all.)

The examples that are most relevant to me right now (been listening lately) are Justin Vernon (Bon Iver – falsetto voice), Axl Rose (Guns ‘n’ Roses – whiney voice), and Liz Phair (monotone, not much vocal range).

The reason it works for these artists (and so many others) is that instead of using their unique voices as limitations they own their voices, doing everything they can with what they’ve got.

It’s a lesson we can extrapolate to many other aspects of life.

I speak Polish pretty well. I mean, I can make a doctor’s appointment and order up a gastroscopy. I can order food. I can call apartment listings and make appointments. I can hold a general conversation. (Can’t get too far into philosophy or politics or religion yet.)

And yet …

- I don’t know the months of the year.
- I don’t know how to pronounce the alphabet. (I know it, but I don’t know how to say all the individual letters.)
- I fuck up conjugation constantly.
- My pronunciation could use a lot of work.

I was at lunch today and across from me was a guy teaching two women English. It was incredibly frustrating listening to them try to learn grammar and conjugation when they barely knew how to speak a sentence. The instructor was boring and they were obviously bored. They were uncomfortable and afraid of answering questions wrong. (Questions about the English language that I would surely get wrong as well.) All in all, it was a fruitless lesson.

I see more and more why Benny gets so pissed at linguists and traditional language schools.

None of the bullshit they teach you in the beginning matters. Grammar doesn’t help you speak. Knowing January from July does nothing for you (unless you need it for a very specific, and rare, situation). The alphabet? Who cares? Conjugation? People will still understand you if you fuck up past, present, and future tenses.

Just fucking speak.

But this goes beyond language learning.

Let’s take guitar.

Do you need to know the notes on the neck to play them? Nope.

Do you need to know what notes build a G, C, D, or A chord to use them? Nope.

Do you need to know what the fuck Root-Fifth means to play a power chord? Not at all.

Do you need to know the mixolydian mode? Probably never.

Just fucking play. All the stuff above will help, of course. But trying to learn it before you learn to play will only slow your progress. Once you figure some things out on your own if you decide to learn music theory (equivalent of language grammar) it will make a lot more sense.

All this to say stop focusing on the details that don’t matter. Focus on the details that will result in the most progress. You will fuck up a lot, but there isn’t a much better way to learn than when you’re in the line of fire.

If you know me you know I’m a big Henry Rollins fan (see here and here). I don’t agree with him always, but I agree with him often.

I never share videos on this blog, but these two videos combine for only about 7 minutes and I highly recommend them.

Then read this.

Then make another excuse.

Then read this.

And make another excuse.

Then read this.

Once more, make an excuse.

Then read this.

If you can, make yet another excuse.

Then read this.

You’re out of fucking excuses.

Read this by Seth Godin then come back.

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On the one hand I wish I had this advice when I was younger. On the other hand I’ve used that advice for major life decisions and it turned out poorly.

For example, I had good grades in high school so could’ve gone to nearly any school I applied to. Only one school offered me a full academic scholarship. I chose that free school, Wayne State University in Detroit, MI, because I didn’t want to go into debt to get a degree.

My friends went to schools like Michigan State University or University of Michigan. I stuck with the cheap (free) local school. Although my school was large (over 30,000 students), it was a commuter school and there was no real campus culture. I made no real friends. I didn’t enjoy the program I was in (Computer Science). The teachers weren’t exceptional (as is the case with a lot of teachers). And, except for the year I lived in Detroit, I had to drive 25 miles each way to classes.

Does that sound like I made a good decision? Maybe. Maybe not.

If I would have approached it differently I could have made it a lot better, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind back then to make that happen.

My best option would have been to not attend any school. I didn’t learn anything of substance and I get absolutely no long-term benefit from being an Alumnus of Wayne State. (Although I do take pride in saying, “I lived in Detroit for a year. Fuck that place.”)

###

A major flaw with Mr Godin’s essay is that his ideas for what to do with the $200k you’d use for school just wouldn’t work. It’s an all or nothing scenario. You either get the money for school or you don’t get the money at all. While it would be cool for college students to have the option of either taking $200k for school or $200k for hiring Herbie Hancock for jazz lessons and concerts that’s just not how loans work. I love the general sentiment, of course, but it’s not anyone’s reality.

If you’ve ever been to SXSW you’re familiar with how much money is wasted by startups and small companies vying for the public’s attention.

There are two main types of parties. Parties thrown by people/companies who already have an audience, and parties thrown by companies trying to build an audience.

When an established person or company throws a party it builds trust and connects them closer to their already-established audiences. I went to a few parties thrown by friends and I think the way they go about it is smart. Maybe it’s not completely necessary for any of them to throw parties, but it’s not outright wasteful.

The point of these types of parties is to hang out with and meet good people, and whatever food or drinks are available are a bonus. The conversation around this type of party is, “Hey are you going to the so-and-so party? Looking forward to meeting some cool people there.”

On the other hand, there are dozens upon dozens of companies who nobody has heard of and nobody will remember that throw parties with no purpose. (Or maybe the purpose is to waste investor cash?) These parties are not cheap. Free food, free booze, venue rental, staff. It all adds up to quite a pricey bill. And there’s no return. We don’t connect with these companies. We don’t develop trust or feel part of their communities.

The conversation around this type of party is, “Hey, I hear this party has free food/drink. Let’s go!” We just want the free stuff and to have a good time with our friends who also just came for the free stuff. We never remember what company throws this type of party. And more often than not they won’t be around next year to throw another.

There’s also waste with gimmicks (examples I remember from today: bottle openers, guitar pick business cards) that are just as dumb as “we don’t care who you are we just want your free stuff” parties, but I’ve already said enough.

I’m currently at SXSW in Austin, TX reconvening with old friends and meeting new people as well. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we fall into social defaults. Not just in conversations (“So, what do you do?” aka the most boring question in the world), but in actions as well. Instead of going off to congregate with new people, we stick to our own. We stick to safety.

For the most part, I prefer to keep to myself and my people; I don’t need more friends. But I think in situations like this a little bit of both is necessary. I don’t know exactly how that plays out, but I find it interesting that this is something we struggle with.

Sometimes we’re busy, sometimes we pretend to be busy, and sometimes we simply forget to do things we want to do whether we’re busy or not.

Example, Courtney and Tammy launched a new site called YourLovelyLife.com a short while ago and I meant to share it with people. Then I got distracted and didn’t. It happens.

This morning I got an e-mail from Tammy that boiled down to: “Hey Karol! Would you mind sharing this with your people?”

Many of us are afraid to just ask.

And I know why.

Truth be told just asking doesn’t work often.

First of all, most people want to help, but they won’t. Not because they’re bad people, but because anybody in a position to help is probably inundated with requests.

I wouldn’t say I’m inundated, but I get a lot of requests and I’m very picky about what I share within my world.

Second of all, if you send a cold request to somebody it’s likely to either be ignored or denied. It probably has something to do with human nature. “Wait, I don’t know you. How do I know you’re going to treat my people well?” So on and so forth.

In this case, I’m friends with Tammy and Courtney so I’m happy to share. They also do things that align with my own life so they’re quite easy to support.

If you’re a blogger you likely pay attention to your raw numbers. RSS subscribers, e-mail subscribers, unique visitors, etc.

If you don’t know how to read the raw numbers they can be misleading. You might think you’re making a different sort of progress than you’re making. I was just reading Niall’s site progress report in which he made a comment about this ThinkTraffic.net article and wondered when he’ll reach the tipping point of blog growth.

This is what I told him:

The reason you haven’t seen a shift is because it’s not true. While there is a tipping point, it depends on many more factors than just 10k uniques and 1k subscribers as stated in that article.

I far surpassed both of those numbers on my last site (~50k uniques and combined ~7k subs) in late 2010/early 2011. By the end of 2011 the subs and uniques were both down.

What’s important to look at is where the traffic/subscribers are coming from. The more people coming from referral sources the quicker you’ll hit “escape velocity.” If most of your traffic is coming from your own promotion (twitter/facebook/e-mail list) and google then it’ll be a longer process before reaching the tipping point.

Misleading “when will I reach tipping point?” traffic sources:

• Google and other search engines.
• StumbleUpon and other “viral” traffic sources.
• Your own promotions to your twitter/facebook/e-mail followers.

I’m not saying these sources aren’t valuable. But they’re not valuable in terms of reaching “escape velocity.”

Most valuable traffic sources:

• Links from other blogs/websites.

In terms of reaching escape velocity the most valuable traffic source is the one where your peers are talking about you.

So, if you really want to figure out when you’ll reach the tipping point, remove all the misleading traffic sources above from your calculations. Then ask yourself, “How much traffic am I getting from links?” Once that traffic hits a certain point you will start to see a snowball effect of growth.

Not caring about the outcome is the best leverage in a negotiation. This is nothing new, but how often do we use it? Not often enough.

The opposite of not caring is being desperate and needy. How often do we assume this stance? Sadly, it seems more often than warranted.

Bad outcomes are not often skewed enough to the extreme to matter, no matter how much we convince ourselves otherwise. And good outcomes don’t often come from a place of desperation or neediness.

I think our mission from here on out is clear.