Listen to the ear in the field

I’m on vacation this week in Florida. As I sit by the pool, I’m reading David Lynch’s book Catching The Big Fish. If you’ve enjoyed his movies like I have, it is an intriguing read. It is also highly insightful. One of his secrets to creativity is to find the little idea and then develop …

Don’t blog yourself to death

I’ve been blogging for almost a year now. It’s hard to keep coming up with a relevant post every day, as many of my fellow bloggers already know. If you go a few days without a post, your traffic drops dramatically. I’ve also discovered that there’s only so much you can say about yourself. Often, …

OK, then at least make it gray

A few weeks ago I wrote a post calling for Google to go black to conserve energy. This post brought out quite a few comments. One in particular pointed to Google’s official blog, where a study argued that going from white background to black would actually require more energy on a user’s part. To that …

Make Monday the no-break day

Monday is one of those days where you feel like you are fighting off a pack a bees. You are snapped out of the bliss of your weekend and into the teeth of the real world and you don’t know what to tackle first. Here’s an idea: Devote Monday to handling things that would otherwise …

Check out the Young Gods

I have been a fan of The Young Gods for over a decade. I met this Swiss band when my band opened or them in Tulsa. Their style of rock mixes thunderous drumming (think Zep), aggressive sampling (think early Trent) and majestic vocals (think early Bono). The result is a rich cinematic blend of inspiring …

Find a crummy job and do a makeover on it

I just had a chance to read about Patrick Lencioni’s new business fable: The Three Signs Of A Miserable Job, and it got me thinking about how we need to be better designers of the work experience. Too many companies have dozens of jobs that are thankless, never measured, highly repetitive and soul-sucking. Think about …

Think and dial

On Tuesday, I posted about refreshing your network. Scott Cunningham posted this comment in reply: I try to call people that I haven’t spoken to in awhile during my commute home from work. A great opener is “Bob, I was just thinking of you. How are you doing?”. If you’re sincerely thinking about them, you …

Randomly refresh your network

Your network is your net worth. So why don’t you invest time in it? Think about it. Much of your future rides on one of your network contacts. Your network of personal relationships, filed in databases like Outlook or Yahoo’s Address Book, is the number one source of opportunities and solutions for you. Yet you …

Don’t let the Wookie always win

It’s one thing to work on your likeability factor, it is another to be too nice. If I’m in a crowded parking lot, and a Wookie in a Hummer wants my spot, I let the Wookie win. If I’m trying to get the last shopping cart at the grocery store and a Wookie grabs it …

Bathe yourself in the chocolate rain

OK, I’m a sucker for a good story and an unforgettable hook. You can’t buy this week’s music reco, its free via YouTube. This week I discovered Tay Zonday, a preternatural grad student with a voice that’s James Earl Jones meets William Hung. Yeah, I said it. He’s part of our instant celeb culture. He’s …