But these do not necessarily go hand-in-hand—they often make for a risky and stressful formula.  If you want freedom, impact, or authority, let’s talk about some paths to these beyond the “go launch a business” suggestion we hear all too often.

What Part of Entrepreneurship Excites You Most?

Before you go on, consider first what’s most important to you: freedom of time/location, making an impact, or running and growing a business?  These are interrelated and far from mutually exclusive, but most of us want one more than the others.  If it helps, you can place “the thrill of…” before any of these as that may help you to see it clearly—“the thrill of independence,” “the thrill of changing the world,” or the “thrill of building a business.”  Which do you seek most?

The Danger In Going All Out

Nevermind that 90% of businesses don’t make it five years and 50% don’t make it past year one (SBA statistics).  I want to talk more about lifestyle here:

If you want to bake bread, work at a bakery.  If you want to sweep the floor, start a bakery.  In other words, if you want to practice a craft then often times that gets put on the backburner for all the other minutiae that’s involved in running a business.  Maybe you won’t have to sweep the floor, but you will have to manage projects, keep track of the finances, help with workplace conflicts, etc.  (I believe this metaphor was in Michael Gerber’s E-Myth, a great book on this topic)

If you want cash and freedom, don’t build a startup. Don’t hire a dozen employees. Don’t start borrowing a bunch of money to invest in your idea.  Being a consultant may be a good approach to banking some buck.  Selling an information product or becoming a reseller online may be a way to build recurring revenue.  (If you really want to know about how to find a market online and build recurring revenue, my good friend Clay just launched his freedom business school – and I can vouch for the program.)  The thing is, while it’s possible for there to be a (freedom) light at the end of the tunnel, most forms of building businesses take an insane amount of work to get you there.

Another Approach to Changing the World

I’m not trying to dissuade you from doing The Next Big Thing (TNBT), but I believe there are other ways to realize our dreams than by starting a business.  Here’s the gist of a recent conversation with a good friend:

Friend: I have this awesome way of [insert her special talent] that local communities really need to keep publishing alive and even thriving.

She really might have this talent—she’s been in the publishing industry forever.

Me: That’s awesome, but how is that going to scale?  How are you going to build all the other stuff needed before you can do that?

Friend: Well, I guess I’ll build a product and…

Me: So you’re going to build a platform for local news?

Friend: I’ll start with one city, like Craigslist. I’ll just have to find some people who understand the technology and I think I can figure out the business side of this as I’m studying that stuff and…

Me: Have you looked at the way Yahoo Local News and Topix.com and others are trying to do what you’re talking about?  Have you looked into all the geolocation services out there that have a hand in local?

Friend: No.

Me: I don’t want to turn you away from your idea, but what if you looked into whether there was a place for you at all these places that already have platforms?  So you could maybe kick ass doing the part you’re good at, the part you’re passionate about…rather than the grunt work and high risk part of trying to build (yet another) platform?  Or maybe you could build a plug-in for them that…

I’m not saying that this works for everyone.  But the thing is, we all get really excited about our ideas, but we don’t consider the market enough:

• What’s already out there?  This is not a 15 minute Google exercise.
• Do you want to compete with the existing companies in the space or could you possibly join one of them or offer a niche service to them?  (in which case you could immediately focus on the thing you’re good at?)

It’s somewhat naive to think we can easily land a job with authority at the incumbent or sell something to them.  But it is possible to effect change without starting from scratch or being at the top.

Just ask yourself, if impact is your goal is there a way to make the same impact without being a CEO of something that doesn’t presently exist?  Maybe you can have a greater chance of success with an existing group?

(and for all you 20-somethings who rushed to join not-for-profits at 25k per year as an office manager—this is not what I’m talking about—more on that later)

And as for Freedom…

Well, changing the world and finding extra time or money for oneself don’t always go hand in hand.  If you read The Four Hour Workweek, you’ll see that the types of businesses Ferriss advocates aren’t always in line with solving the world’s biggest problems.

But those aren’t for everyone—we all have loans to pay, mouths to feed, and ambitions outside of work.  Freedom businesses may be the best path to that—it’s not the traditional approach to entrepreneurship, but it is a valid one.  (Again, Clay’s program is one of many to learn more about that.)

The only point I want to leave you with on this is that the fastest way to freedom or reliable revenue is not to go out on your own trying to build something big.

So What?  And Tying It All Together

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about lessons-learned in business.  I get paid to offer business advice and I organize a group to help entrepreneurs succeed (come to our next event Oct 29th!).  But the first step is not to just start your business.  The first step is to figure out whether you want to make an impact, find more freedom, or just build a business.  Then the next step is to figure out what’s already out there.

Putting those two steps together you have all kinds of options for what type of career is for you and whether it makes sense to go it alone or to join something else that’s already off the ground.

(I went off on a little tangent earlier about the unrealistic not-for-profit change-the-world path, and that’s because just joining a company is not the best way to make an impact there and beyond.  The best way is to build rapport with the exact company you want to be involved with and use the tactics in Charlie Hoehn’s Recession Proof Grad free eBook to land a respected job where you get to make the impact you want to make.  Seriously grab that eBook.)

So don’t just build TNBT.  Do what’s right for you.

Flickr photo credit: futureshape

Normally $50, I’m able to offer both mine and Joe’s analysis, along with the survey results, as a free PDF to Technotheory readers.  Read on for a couple snippets and a link to download the full article.

Creating the survey was fun, though I wasn’t surprised with the direct survey results, so I wanted to see if there were any correlations in the data.  Since I know little about regression analysis and sample sets, I contacted Zoë Thorkildsen (an economist/statistician who is looking for full-time or contract work right now—contact me for info on getting in touch, she’s in DC) and we discovered some fascinating correlations like this one from page one of the article:

Users with more than 100 messages in their inbox are…

• Less satisfied with the quality of their finished projects
• More behind on their projects
• Less likely to know what tasks they need to work on at the start of a workday

There were other interesting correlations about the way people prioritize their time, when they finish projects, and how much time they spend working after hours.  You can download the full article from Cutter Benchmark Review here (my article is pages 13-19 and all of the survey results are included.  Joe’s article, which really digs into the data, is also included).

                                  Download it here! – use code PERSPROD

While I think you’ll love the article (it’s amazing how much an editor can improve one’s writing!), here’s a snippet I wanted to make sure made it to Technotheory.  It’s my explanation of The Critical Path, a topic I’ve been meaning to explore here:

–The remainder of this post is from the article.  For much more, download it!

When analyzing the research data above, I touched on the urgent-versus-important prioritization.  A technique for visualizing and clarifying the most important items is plotting out the critical path.

Urgent tasks are ones that ought to be completed in the immediate future, like a memo due this afternoon. Important tasks are ones that will have a serious impact on your position or your company, like migrating staff to a new accounting system in which your company has already invested. There are times when an important task becomes urgent. There are times when an urgent task feels important. But to get my head past these nuances, I like to think of a third category called critical tasks.

My company has a software application, and if we don’t launch its next version, then we will go out of business. Thus, my critical objective — my most important goal as the company’s leader — is that we launch and that we do it in the fall. The tasks that get me much closer to launching our application are what I consider to be critical, as they’re on the critical path to the company’s (and my) success. It’s important to identify both your critical objective (or if you have two or three, what they all are) and the tasks that will get you there. Your critical objective is likely the accomplishment you’ll write down on your résumé some day as something you’ve done. It’s the item that takes a lot of work but will be transformative for you or your company. To determine your path to your most critical objective(s) follow these steps:

1. Grab a sheet of paper and spend five minutes brainstorming every task that you need to complete. List the small things and the big things, crucial tasks, and incidental tasks. List everything.
2. Grab another sheet of paper, this time lengthwise, and write out your most critical objective on the right side in the center (see Figure 1; while for ease of reading we’ve presented an example in a more formal way, yours may certainly be handwritten). If you have two critical objectives, write them both (one at a third up from the bottom of the page and one two-thirds up).
3. Draw an arrow (or arrows) from the left side of the paper pointing to the critical objective(s).
4. Using the list of tasks you brainstormed, plot the ones that will get you close to your critical objective on the line. Treat it like a loose timeline, with the tasks that must be completed first further to the left.

What you’ll likely find is that there’s a very small percentage of your responsibilities that are essential enough to be on your critical path. Every day you’ll want to make sure you make some progress on those responsibilities. They’re not just important, they’re necessary. What you’ll notice is that on the days where you address those critical tasks you’ll feel like you’ve made progress; you’ll feel like those are the best days at work. On the days where you get things done that aren’t on that path, you may actually feel worn out because, to some degree, you didn’t get the bigger project closer to the end point.

I’d suggest keeping that piece of paper near you at your desk. If necessary, you can draw up a new one every month as your responsibilities shift. You’ve probably heard of the concept of the “critical path,” but time and again I’ve seen people’s eyes light up when they actually grab a sheet of paper and go through this exercise. Visualizing your tasks and identifying those tasks that will truly move you forward can really change your perspective.

–

Do you have any thoughts or questions about identifying your critical path?  If you’re interested, there’s much more in the Cutter Benchmark Review article (with more awesome illustrations), download it here.

Flickr photo credit: CarbonNYC

When I look at who I value most, the top of the top are thoughtfulness personified, and they’ve been that way all along.

Let’s start with Aaron (pictured above), who I spent today working alongside.  We met at a big group lunch in Austin in 2008.  The restaurant service was exceptionally bad and, sitting outside, I was fairly thirsty.  Someone I hadn’t seen before went in and brought everyone water.  I asked him for a refill of my coke and he replied that he’d go ask inside at the bar.  I figured out later that this was Aaron and he wasn’t a waiter but a fellow tech business owner.

When he moved from Honolulu to Washington that year I looked for every chance I could to help him out.  It wasn’t a tit-for-tat sort of thing, it’s that there aren’t many people who just exude warmth and a want to make your life more pleasant.  It was so obvious that I wanted someone like that in my life.

Many people deliver.  You hire them to do a job and they do it.  If you’re lucky they do it well—they don’t miss things and there’s little need for additional follow-up.  That’s great.

But some people don’t just deliver, they want you to succeed with what they’ve provided you.  They document the deliverable in a way that wasn’t required.  They offer a phone call to walk you through it.  They call back a week later and say, “I just thought of a way to improve it…and here it is.”

There are kind people and fair people and intelligent people.  I’ll do business with them and be friends with them.   But someone who’s thoughtful, who goes above and beyond for me, you can’t beat that.  You can have a respectful argument with a kind person.  You can take genuine exception with a fair person.  You can appreciate the perspective of intelligent people (and we often rate intelligence a bit too much.)  But it’s very hard to find fault with someone who’s thoughtful—while they may be on their side, they’re also on your side.  How can you take exception to someone who’s looking out for you as much as they are themselves?

It’s not about going above and beyond, though it may be.  It’s not just about being honest and respectful.  It’s about making it clear that you’re on their side and are interested in making things easier for them.  It’s a way of approaching people and problems.

Be thoughtful.  You may not succeed at everything, but you’ll never fail with the people involved.

Don’t.  Here’s what to do next to create a great experience for your audience and panelists alike.  Disagree?  Let me know…

If you’re jumping in here, you might want to check out part 1 of this article which has the Step 1 and Step 2… And now:

Step 3. Getting on the same page, and deciding on a panel format

Once the list of panelists is finalized, I like to send out a few ideas for the panel via email or a wiki (depending on how techie the panel is), and schedule a call—hopefully 3-5 weeks before the session.  In an ideal scenario I’d have some ideas up and ask the panelists to brainstorm some of their ideas (by editing the wiki) prior to the call.

On the call we’ll make sure we all know each other’s backgrounds, discuss some of the key points we’d like to hit in the session (I’ll take notes, which will go on the wiki), and brainstorm the most important thing for this call: the format of the session.

Panels don’t have to be “moderator asks a question, panelist answers it.”  There are many options for the format, and they vary based on:

• Audience involvement
• Speaker preparation
• Whether the topic is primarily educational (you need answers) or controversial (you want disagreement/back and forth)
• How important staying on topic is
• Depth of time or attention necessary for each topic
• All sorts of other things: how fun you want the session to be, how tired your audience is going to be at that time, how the room can be setup, etc

I can’t go into how each of these play a role in your panel format, but the actual panel format will likely consist of some combination of the following:

• Introductions (either by moderator or panelists)
• Formal, scripted presentations (3-10 minutes each, with or without slides)
• Planned Moderator Q&A (questions that the panelists are prepped for)
• Improvised Moderator Q&A (surprise questions that you as the moderator either planned or just came up with in response to the discussion)
• Filtered Audience Q&A (someone gathers questions from the audience before the session, often via note cards or email, and then the moderator chooses which ones to ask)
• Unfiltered Audience Q&A (an audience member poses a question to the panel), either throughout the session or at the end
• Audience Interactive Exercises

When choosing your format, consider the variables I mentioned in the first list, as each of these formats lends itself to certain amounts of preparation and a particular dynamic during the session itself.

During my “Straight to the Brain” SXSW session, we used the following format over 60 minutes:

1. I made a five minute introduction that provided an overview of the topic (with fun slides) and ended with an introduction to the panelists.  My introductions to the panelists was no more than 15 seconds per panelist.
2. Each of the panelists presented a polished 7 minute presentation using slides/animation.  I made brief transitioning comments between each.
3. I had a long list of questions from our wiki, and I chose what we had time for…directing every question to just one panelist and often only allowing one other panelist response.
4. With about 20 minutes remaining I conducted a brief exercise with the audience.
5. I asked a couple more questions of the panelists.
6. With 7 minutes remaining, I invited questions from the audience.

The reason for this format, which was fairly structured, is we wanted to work extra hard to stay on topic and provide a compelling message to our audience.  Given that our presentation was about presentations, we wanted things to go incredibly smoothly—we had some back and forth, but it wasn’t over controversy.  While we wanted to involve the audience, we knew that our structured Q&A had been well-thought out and wanted to get through most of our questions, which we not only responses to, but had prepared visual examples.

During other sessions I’ve led, we haven’t had any formal presentations…but we still decided in advance who might be best fit for certain questions.

The important bits to note here are that these things need to happen over the phone and/or email and/or wiki prior to the day of the session:

• Agreeing on the general schedule for the session
• Deciding on the key points to provide to the audience
• Brainstorming questions together (or rather, each panelist suggesting at least a couple questions)
• Assigning various questions to specific panelists
• Developing an understanding of how much time one can spend answering a particular question
• Developing an expectation for whether or not there should be too much back and forth
• Developing an expectation for how much time is allowed for “pitching” and how much time is allowed for “introducing oneself”

Knowing who should say what, when, and for how long means that each panelists knows how to respect each other and the audience’s time.  Now it’s your job to enforce it…

Step 4. Tips for Moderating a Panel

I firmly believe that the more time you spend on the preparation before the session, the easier your job as a moderator will be.  Here are a few pieces of advice based on my own values.  First some do’s and don’ts…

Your job is to enable the panelists to provide the most value possible to the audience.  That means you are allowed to and should do the following:

• Introduce the session and the panelists
• Decide what questions are most relevant as the panel progresses
• Decide which panelists can speak: while dialogue can flow naturally, often you’ll be the “parent” who makes sure that everyone gets an opportunity to share.
• Transition between the topics
• Keep track of time: cutting panelists off when necessary by passing notes to them (my favorite approach), signaling them, or if necessary, interrupting them; and, recognizing when the agenda needs to be modified, etc.
• Paraphrase any points that you believe won’t be understood by the audience: you as the moderator are kind of like an “informed representative” from the audience—you’re curious for them, but you’re also likely more knowledgeable than the audience on the nuances of the topic at hand.
• Take care of your panelists: if one of them looks like they’re not getting an opportunity to voice their opinion, find a way to involve them; if someone’s thirsty, communicate with the event staff to get them water; if there are technical difficulties, know who to call or how to fix it.  You as the moderator are in charge and the panelists are trusting you to make them look good and keep everyone in the room comfortable enough to focus on the content.

Remember: you’re the moderator, not a panelist.  Though you may (or may think you) know more than the panelists, be very careful.  Here are some things not to do (and yes, these happen a LOT):

• Don’t talk about your background.  You can offer your title and maybe one other tidbit, but if you spend more than 20 seconds talking about you then you’re not being a good moderator.  Think of the last time you watched an interview on television—the interviewer didn’t provide their background, did they?  You are in charge, but this session isn’t about you.
• Don’t answer questions, lead your panelists through the answers to questions.  If something isn’t covered, before you try to cover it, see if you can get one of your panelists to address it by setting them up for an easy answer.  Think of yourself as a point guard—you’re bringing the ball up the court and trying to get everyone in position…but at the last second there’s a good chance you’ll dish it off to a forward who’s now in a good position to shoot.  Or if that’s not clear enough, consider yourself the coach, not a player on the court.
• Don’t take sides.  While you can control much of the way a panel progresses, you want to let your audience decide what to think on their own…don’t let it be because of some snide remark or dirty look you gave. You are neither the panelists nor the audience, you’re channeling the message of the former for the latter.  While you can clarify the message, don’t taint it.  You get editorial control in setting up the panel, choosing the questions, and moderating the time allocated…but you don’t have veto power.

As the moderator, you have the opportunity to manage the relationships between the panelists…and their relationship with the audience.  You can be the host without being the center of attention, people will know who’s running the show.

If you step beyond those boundaries, you will piss off the audience.  If you don’t control the panelists, you’ll lose your credibility (and so will the panelists).  But if you do it just right, you’ll get a lot of credit, and everyone will leave informed and happy. 

Wrapping Up

I’m not the most experienced moderator out there, so when you see me emceeing next month at Ignite DC or moderating the upcoming Bootstrap Maryland session, I’ll probably do a good job but maybe not be the best.  However, I have been to a LOT of conferences and panels and I’ve seen so many things that were not even close to a good job—things that could’ve easily been avoided.  And we’ve all been to session with knowledgeable panelists who didn’t provide any real value on their panel.

I blame the moderator for those instances.  With a little preparation and an understanding of expectations, things could’ve gone better.  I hope this article helps you to avoid many of those mistakes next time (many of which I’ve made!).

Got any other crucial advice?  Or questions?  Feel free to leave it below…

But it doesn’t take that much preparation.  Here’s what I’ve been doing for the last half dozen or so panels I’ve organized/moderated.  And I’d love to hear what’s worked for you…

So, let’s assume you’re tasked with putting together and moderating a panel.  Or maybe just organizing, or just moderating.  Either way, the steps below apply (or at least they’ve worked for me).  But before we get any further, let’s be 100% clear: this panel is first about your audience, second about your panelists, and NOT about you.

Once you get your head around that and realize your job is to shut up as much as possible and try to keep everyone happy, you’ll understand the key to panels (as well as meetings, dinner parties, being a connector, and generally being a decent human being).

Don’t mind @Technosailor Aaron Brazell here on the right, even he knows when to keep quiet on a panel.

Step 1: Choosing Panelists

You think I was just kidding around when I said all that stuff in parentheses, but I wasn’t.  I’m of the opinion that dinner parties, panels, and business relationships are about connecting the dots, not just showing up.  In other words, I’d rather put together a panel that brings together perspectives from people who might not normally get to sit together.  It will provide a unique opportunity for your audience and it’ll provide additional incentive for your panelists (i.e., an opportunity to meet other thought leaders).  (Matter of fact, when I do dinner parties, I often get 12 people together who don’t know each other.  I’m weird like that.)

For example, for SXSW this past year I had the rewarding experience of connecting three people who had heard of but never met one another: Craig Ball (the god of presenting evidence in the courtroom), Kathy Sierra (the goddess of presentations when it comes to the geek community), and Cliff Atkinson (the god of PowerPoint, or at least the author of Beyond Bullet Points).  They were people who belonged on a panel about presentations, but it took an organizer (me!) to bring them together.  With the three of them there, I was able to get out of the way…

Okay, you get that.  Now here are some general tips for choosing panelists:

1. Ask yourself whether you’re looking primarily to educate or provide differing perspective.  If you’re looking to educate, you probably want people who have somewhat similar opinions on the topic at hand.  (People saying very different things make it very difficult for your audience to take action.)  Don’t worry, every panel will have some different opinions, but if the audience doesn’t know much about the topic then you want to make sure the panelists’ message is somewhat consistent.  However, if you’re talking to an expert audience, particularly if you’re looking for controversy, then differing opinions are the way to go.  There will always be education and disagreements, but as an organizer it’s important to decide how much of that you want before you select your panelists.
2. Diversity is important.  But choose your diversity wisely as you can’t meet all metrics for diversity.  For instance, when I ran an event with mostly students and 20-somethings (Bootstrap Maryland), nearly every panelist was under 40, and most were in their 20s.  I wanted the young audience to empathize with the panelists first and foremost.  I also tried to have both genders on all the panels both because I believe they may have had different ways that they arrived at their successes, and because I wanted both men and women in the audience to empathize.  You may want to have a mixture of people that are younger and older, more experienced and newer to success (and thus more familiar with today’s challenges), women and men, racially diverse, techie and business-y, creative and analytic, etc.    Diversity is important, but choose your metrics before you factor it in.
3. Feel free to invite people you’ve never met.  If you don’t know the best person for the session, find them—everyone will win from this.  Aim high.
4. Decide how active a moderator you’re going to be, as this will factor in on the number of panelists you choose.  I tend to be fairly quiet when we’re on topic and tend to talk more when we get off topic.  But generally I try to be in control without taking too much time.  Some moderators use their role as an opportunity to push tough questions.  Some spend a fair bit of time on context for questions and clarifying responses.  But only failed moderators talk as much as their panelists.  And it ruins things (particularly the energy level in the room).  Still, if you’re planning to be particularly active, you should have fewer panelists.
5. The ideal number of panelists is 3 or 4.  Fewer means it’s an interview or debate, and more means people won’t get enough opportunity to share their ideas.  If you have more people you’ll need more structure as it will become increasingly difficult to moderate a bunch of people with ideas to share.

Step 2. Contacting Panelists

Once you have your ideal group listed out, you need to reach out.  While this should be less error-prone than choosing the panelists, you still want to do this right:

1. Don’t contact all your panelists at once, go one at a time.  It takes more time this way but it lets you control the total number of panelists and better control the diversity (for instance, if you invite 3 business owners and 3 consultants and none of the business owners are available but all the consultants are, you now have a very different panel than if you had gone one at a time)
2. While it’s ideal when you can tell each panelist that you’ve secured the other panelists, you can at least use the names of the people you’re hoping to invite as an incentive (i.e., social proof) 
3. You’re allowed to ask for advice from a panelist (even one who isn’t available to participate).  i.e., “you’re my first choice for this panel, and there will be be at least 150 people who show up, but before I invite anyone else, I welcome your suggestions for additional panelists as I imagine you’ve done similar panels in the past” or “since you’re not available, I’m just curious if there’s anyone you’d recommend…clearly you have more experience with this topic than I do”
4. If you don’t know the person, reference a previous panel you’ve assembled.  It’s okay to make yourself look good, at least a little—as you are in fact selling them on an idea and you need to make them feel like it’ll be an opportunity for success.  Just try to make sure the panel is recent/relevant…
5. Give a deadline to hear back.  Put it in the subject of your email, along with the date of the presentation.  “Participating in a panel on the future of chocolate chip cookies on Oct 8 (need to know by Friday).”   A lot of people don’t read the details and thus will miss out on the opportunity while it’s still available—so make it easy for them to understand your expectations on a response

I’ve done my best to keep this advice thorough, but I want you to have time to think this over.  Let me know your thoughts on the first two steps, and next week I’ll share the last 2-3 steps: how to choose a panel format, how to get the panelists on the same page, and general tips for moderating.

If you liked this article, you can be assured my SXSW panel this year is going to rock.  Would you mind thumb-up’ing it here by end of day Friday -it takes 60 seconds.  Pretty please!

Flick photo credit: Presidents’ image by BL1961, Playground image by foundphotoslj

I’m taking a step back from productivity to pass on the most important lesson that Spain has offered me.

Last night (well, when I first wrote this post, it was last night) I tweeted the following:

There were a fair number of responses.  One of them, on Facebook, caught my attention:

That comment summed up how our country’s trust and affection have devolved over the course of my life.  Coming from a woman, and a friend from dance, was particularly poignant for me.  Didn’t make me want to come home.

There are many things I love about Barcelona, but the thing that caught my eye on my first trip was the way the dancers treated me.  People I didn’t know would smile and hold eye contact.  With every guy-girl introduction there were two kisses, and even the guys were affectionate.

This wasn’t just swing dancers, and it’s not just Barcelona.  When Tim and I went to Neffies (a small village in southern France), we witnessed something you’d never see in the US: a bunch of teenage guys, many with their shirts off, dancing together (and yes there will girls, too—it was all part of a local celebration outside).  If you’ve ever been to a high school in the US, guys hardly dance, let alone together, and they definitely won’t be touching one another.  Tim and I didn’t speak a word of French, and we had no ties to the group, but they put their arms on our shoulders and we pretended to sing along while we danced.  It was surreal.  Yep, 16 year old French boys with their shirts off made the night.

Every time I came back to my apartment I got a big hug and kisses from my flatmate.  People I met the week before sent SMS messages full of abrazos and besos.  Every place you entered brought you an “hola, buenos días”.

Call it what you want, but warmth and affection—cultural, familial, or romantic—feels damn good.

Swing dance in the US is less interesting to me these days because it’s harder to get a smile, to hold eye contact, to share any interest that could be misconstrued.  And most of my world is even more structured and businesslike.

I wrote back to Sally:

Affection means something even when it’s shared with many.  It may be different, but that doesn’t make it insignificant."

The busier we get, the more we dull and shorten our pleasantries.  The older we grow, the more reserved our greetings and affection become.  Think back: we weren’t always this way.  You can probably remember some specific instances where you learned to be more reserved, “not to send the wrong message.”

I’ve grown up in the class of people who stopped signing letters with Love, who separated work from life, who hasn’t hugged half their friends.

But I’m putting my foot down.  We don’t need a Facebook group for Hug Day to offer affection.  We do need more than wagging tails and wet noses.  Consider offering more affection with everyone you see regularly.  Flirt a little, smile a lot, lose your American self a little, and open your arms.

Flickr Photo Credit (for dog picture): mikebaird

So I hope you’ll take my faith in them when I ask that you to consider their book today.  I’ve learned that today’s sales will affect the long-term impact of their book’s message, so I’m taking their advice and passing along this book recommendation today.

You know I don’t write a lot of reviews here to begin with, and I’d never recommend something I didn’t put myself behind.  But this book is about building trust online, and my recommendation—even without reading the book—is how much I trust their abilities and their recommendations.

Here’s a video about the book that summarizes many of its key points, but the book itself will likely be a warmer tone and very tactical:

If you’re interested, you can pick it up here.

Of which sort are you?  It’s easy to fall into the government camp from time to time, so this is a quick reminder of how much you can do on your own.

*I worked for the government during my three years of college.  I learned the cardinal rule and cardinal sin in the government: there’s always someone else to wait on before you can start a task.  CYA is having someone to claim you’re waiting on.

Then during school breaks I worked at startups.  I had a lot of questions, sure, but when people weren’t available I just found a way around them.  I learned that when you don’t know the best path you can at least choose a good one.  Even if you guess wrong you’ll still better understand the problem.

So here I am six hours ahead of my team and clients.  Some of them forge ahead when I can’t answer a question, and some stop in their tracks.

So how do you forge ahead?

• Trust that you know how to solve the problem on your own (think of it this way: some people are indecisive when it comes to deciding what to eat—but those people don’t die of starvation when they’re on their own.  Just trust in your capability to make decisions.)
• Trust that some solution is better than no solution
• Recognize that you’ll be rewarded for taking a chance but not for standing still
• Recognize that the more independent you can be, the more flexibility and autonomy you’ll earn at work
• Just do it

I have many items in my task list which are waiting on insight from other people.  But after a day or two, I’ll just act on my own.  Those people eventually become crutches, and I know I can walk on without them.

You probably already know all this.  But the tough question to ask yourself now is this: is there something you could be making progress on if you stopped waiting for someone to push things forward?

Flickr Photo Credit: JoshSemans

But you can stay in people’s lives.  You can make enough time for a select few.  And, no matter what your decision, people will judge your actions.  This isn’t the internet, it’s the real world of real people.

I don’t know what it’s like to be special online.  If I’ve got too much going in my life now, it’s because of self-imposed projects—not 1000 people vying for my time.  And yet, when I read Chris Brogan’s The Importance of Digital Touch, in which he talks about the power of reach but the difficulty in scaling individual touch, I realized we’re all in the same boat.

Social Media Part Two: We’re All Real

If you’re new to social media, let me get a little lesson out of the way: the way you think of the tools you’re using now is completely different than you’re going to think of them a year from now.  Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and LinkedIn are not just just ways for building relationships strategically and quickly.  It’s easy to think of it as a game or sales channel, but it’s not.

The people will be so much more real than you ever thought.

I was coming to terms with this myself in my Avoiding the online popularity contest to seek a deeper connection article.  But until one gets past that, this whole online social thing will just be a game; unfortunately, viewed that way, it’s easy to lose.

Real Presence

I’ve come to terms with the idea of being present in people’s lives at many points.  Sometimes it has to do with romantic relationships, sometimes it’s personal friendships, sometimes it’s business.  If you’re feeling voyeuristic, here’s some of my own journey through this:

• September, 2001: The setting of conversations from afar – some reflections on how important the context is for where we read/write our communications
• March, 2007: Presence, and the barometer of friendship
• April, 2007: The person and the experience – the difference between when you’re providing company and when you’re actually part of the experience
• May, 2008: Maintaining real relationships online and off: a guide to presence

Have things changed in the past 18 months when the prevalence of social networks has grown even more?  No.  The only thing that’s changed is the number of connections.

Back to Chris’ Article

Chris is keeping up with JP Rangaswami passively: he enjoys JP’s posts, tweets, and so forth.  But he’s not keeping in touch with JP, or at least he fears that his presence isn’t felt by JP—that JP doesn’t know Chris is paying attention.  Chris is afraid of “becoming a ghost” in the world of some of the friends he values.

Chris feels that it isn’t hard to touch people lightly online if there are only “a hundred or so” people, but that it’s difficult or impossible with thousands of people.

Here’s where Chris and all of us have something in common: we all are struggling to let our presence be felt by those we care about.  Sure, our number of connections may be different than Chris’s, but we all have people we care about who we’d like to hold onto.

Bringing It All Together: Reality and Real Presence

The more we recognize our online (and real life) connections as real people, and the more we show them that we still want to be in their lives, the more present we’ll be for them.  Of course, this can’t scale to thousands of people but, with Chris as the archetype, it can scale to dozens.  Here’s a table of presence I posted in the guide to online/offline presence in May ‘08:

It is possible to keep in touch with hundreds and to be present in dozens’ of lives.  (And advice on that is in the other links I provided, as well as Chris’ article.)

The point here is that most people will simply disappear, and that’s fine.  But you ought to think hard about whether you want to appear or disappear and with which people.  While I try very hard to be around those who I care about, I do make mistakes and slide out of people’s lives, too.

While I could say that the call-to-action of this post is to go out and email someone you care about, the real point is that, if you don’t, you may slip out of view.  This isn’t a game, but this is an opportunity to hold onto lifelong relationships.

Flickr Photo Credit: clagnut

All tasks are not created equal.  Those easiest to complete often deserve to be most avoided.

What should we work on first?

Meetings will often start with, “is there any low-hanging fruit for us to discuss?”  “Low-hanging fruit” refers to things that are easy to address right away—the easiest, quickest items.  If you were picking fruit from a tree, you’d presumably grab the low-hanging ones first.  And thus this analogy explains one approach to prioritizing our tasks.

It just so happens that it’s the wrong approach.  For me, the best approach is a combination between recognizing your critical path and mastering your body.

I’m overdue for a deeper exploration of the critical path here (stay tuned for a research paper, in which give some step-by-steps on this), but it’s essential the stuff that is by far the most essential for a bigger project that’s ahead.  If you actually go through the trouble of listing out all the things you have to do, you’ll find (via the Pareto Principle and being true to yourself) that most of the items on the list may seem urgent or even important, but they are not essential.  So, hold onto this thought: there are a select few items you really do need to do if you want to move forward in both your job and career.

The next key is understanding your energy levels.  There are times when you’re most creative and times when you’re least focused.  When you’re the most focused you ought to be doing the most creative tasks, and when you’re tired you ought to be working on the quick ones.

If you’re like most people, the tasks on your critical path take the most thought…and they’re not the low hanging fruit.

So instead, when you’re tired or have just a few minutes, work on your low hanging fruit. (Note: your email is NOT your low-hanging fruit—your email is a list of items that need to be processed.  Some emails contain low-hanging fruit, and some emails need to be turned into important tasks.).  But when you first get to the office or have your most energy, focus exclusively on the most essential tasks.  The low hanging fruit may be easy to address, and you may even get good at finding it.

But if you focus on the low hanging fruit you’ll never find time to make it up the tree, where you’ll find the true treasures and the best views, and where your career will advance and your days will feel worthwhile.

Flickr photo credit: Rick