How we watch video now
Forty years ago, Stanley Kubrick showed us 2001. The first 90 seconds are without dialogue and solid black. It's hard to imagine that working as the intro to a YouTube video today.
Instead, our finger is on the mouse trigger, ready to leave in a moment. Not only that, but instead of leaning forward, we've got our shields set to level 7, wary of what's to come. As the video begins, a series of questions arise, unbidden:
Who sent me here?
What do I expect?
The indirect investment (plural)
The investor asks, "when do I get paid back?"
The work for hire asks, "what's in it for me?"
The member of the community wonders, "what's in it for us?" Plural.
More than ever, our research, our writing, our art benefits all of us more than it directly benefits just the creator. Feed the commons.
"Leap First" is now available
An original audio production* via Sounds True, with 100% of my royalties going to the Acumen Fund.
Find it right here: Leap First.
I just got this great note from Jason Connell. I hope the recording resonates with you as much as it did with him:
Wanted to let you know that I listened to Leap First over the past two days and love it. I am amazed by how you blended business, personal development, and spirituality into one fluid recording.
Ruckusmaker day
About to be celebrated all over the world for the first time, tomorrow is annual Ruckusmaker Day.
Tomorrow would have been Steve Jobs' 60th birthday. Steve's contribution wasn't invention. Technology breakthroughs didn't came out of his workbench the way they did from Land or Tesla. Instead, his contribution was to have a point of view. To see something and say 'yes' or 'no'. To not only have a point of view, but to change it when the times demanded.
Most of all, to express that point of view, to act on it, to live with it.
There's a lot to admire about the common-sense advice, "If you don't have anything worth saying, don't say anything."
Pitchers and hitters
Hitters don't have much of an agenda other than, "swing at the good balls." No one blames the hitters when the pitcher has a hot hand and throws a no hitter.
Pitchers, on the other hand, decide what's going to happen next. Pitchers get to set the pace, outline the strategy, initiate instead of react.
When your job is in reaction mode, you're allowing the outside world to decide what happens next. You are freed from the hard work of setting an agenda, but in exchange, you dance when the market says dance. "I did the best I could with what was thrown at me..."
Finding the guts to move up the ladder is hard. When you decide to set the agenda and when you take control over your time and your effort, the responsibility for what happens next belongs to you.
