Ravings of a Madman

I can’t really explain my fascination with the mechanical, the physical.  But, it’s there - perhaps because I constantly live in the world of virtual bits and bytes, I am always astounded and enraptured by amazing things that are NOT virtual, things you can touch, things you can hear and feel.

There are an amazing amount of virtual things that are amazing as well, each day growing more and more, but I do find that my attention is truely captured by the physical realm.  Whether that be my seeds growing in the garden, or a clock in Cambridge I find my attention being firmly diverted by it.

So, this clock in Cambridge, you ask   Here is a Youtube video from the inventor of the clock, talking about it.  I do really enjoy the titles at the beginning.  Fecit = Latin for “I did it”… so if it was a sculpture, he sculpted it, etc.
My garden?  Well, it’s currently going through rebellion from neglect.  It seems something else from the physical world demanded attention “Work”.  You can generally find the most up to date info about my garden here: MyFolia for vonBarky, but the most up to date info is woefully behind given current “Work” issues.

“I’m amazed at how pessimistic the average person is. I’ve come to realize in my career is that the difference between people who gets things done and those who do not is this pessimism. I’ve always been attracted to the folks who say “what if we could…” or “what if you.” When I hear people talk like that I get engaged. When I hear “that’s been done already….” and “that will never work…” I want to walk away from the conversation. I guess that means I’m delusional on some level, and I’m realizing that the best products and companies out there are typically lead by delusional people who hire people who are very obsessive about details–but who are also dreamers.” - Jason Calacanis
I think this concept is at the crux of the question “Why are a few people so successful, and why is the rest of the world stuck in a rut?”  If you’re problem solving figuring out the best way to get to your goals, then you have a much better chance of attaining them.  I find much of the time I don’t know how I’m going to get from point A to point B, just that theoretically it’s possible.  When I was growing up, my father always told me that “anything you want to do or be, you can.  You just have to work hard enough to get there.”  That statement can have a profound effect on the direction your life and business takes if you take it to heart.

Step 1 when approaching a goal or problem should be with the attitude of “How can I figure this out?” rather than approaching it from the standpoint of “There is no way this is going to work.”

We live in a world where lemonade is made from artificial flavoring and furniture polish is made from real lemons
Alfred E. Neuman

“Don’t let assholes rent space in your head.” From an article about internet trolls and how to minimize their effect.
When we are confronted by a negative person or event we have a choice. We only have a limited supply of intellectual capital - brainpower and we are constantly faced with a choice of what to spend it on.

What did you spend your brainpower on today? The guy who cut you off on the freeway? The big bill that just came in? The boss who said no to your vacation request?

Or, did you spend it on figuring out your next step to get you closer to your dreams? How you were going to spend more time doing what you enjoy with your loved ones?

I’m constantly amazed at how many people spend their time concentrating on what went wrong, rather than the good things in their life at that moment. We are only as productive and happy as we allow ourselves to be. Usually, the thing holding us back isn’t the external events that happen to us. It’s the way we react to them.

Just read a great article in Fast Company about James Dyson…. sorry… SIR James Dyson.  He’s definately my new hero.  I’m sure you’ve heard of his company which makes the Dyson vacuum.  It is the best selling vacuum in the USA and he is a pretty rich guy in Britain (now).
Takeaways

• His vacuum took 5126 failures over 15 years and he spent his life savings before he finally hit upon a design that worked.  His words: “But I learned from each one. That’s how I came up with a solution.”
• “But if you want to discover something that other people haven’t, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that’s very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path.”  Iterative process is where it’s at.
• Design and Engineering should be taught as one discipline.  Hear, hear.
• Rather than the way schools currently teach (theory first, practical second), teach the practical elements of engineering to kids - that will make kids want to learn the theory.  I’ll never forget my dad showing me mixing one colorless liquid with another colorless liquid and a bright, gorgeous red color coming out of it for 15 seconds or so.  And then it went back to colorless.  If he had tried to teach me about the chemicals and how they bond and react first, it would have went in one ear and out the other.  SHOW me what happens, and then I was all about finding out WHY it happened.  Exploit the natural curiosity of kids (or adults for that matter) and you have one of the best teaching tools out there.
• Perseverance - “A lot of people give up when the world seems to be against them, but that’s the point when you should push a little harder.”

You can read the Fast Company article Failure doesn’t suck Part 1 and Part 2.

Synopsis: Context and Content (and not really length) matters. When reviewing content or advertising, length is now one of the least important factors. It used to be content was long and advertising was short and it had to be that way. Now we get soundbytes of content. Does this mean that advertising should be longer? Absolutely not.
A blogger I respect and read religiously is Seth Godin. He posted “Longer and Shorter” today, talking about how content length was getting shorter and now, conversely, advertising can get longer.

In fact it was a post by him that got me to finally check out the Washington Post article I blogged recently about Joshua Bell’s Metro performance, even though I had seen it at least 10 times before. Why did I finally take a look at it? Because someone I respected had succinctly described the impact it made on him and I felt compelled on that second-hand recommendation to take a look at it for myself.

The other day I went and watched a pretty long commercial about Kodak, even through the beginning when it took a while to get to the point. Why? Another blogger that I follow and have liked previously had recomended it.

I left both experiences feeling satisfied with my expenditure of time. Why? Well, people I respected had recommended both items, so that got me to look at them in the first place. And, the content for both pieces was pretty compelling and thought provoking. Result? My perception of both bloggers, Kodak and the Washington Post went up and I felt like I had made good use of my time.

Seth comments that advertising should be making their ads longer and bigger. Take up more space because it’s available! I say that the same things that make ads (or content for that matter) successful STILL hold true. We look at the ads in the Superbowl because there is an expectation that the ads are going to be better than normal. CONTEXT.

If the ads don’t hold up to expectations (as is the case in several of the superbowls right after the dot-bust) our respect of the referring source AND the company who actually created the ads goes down. CONTENT. Having one without the other doesn’t help. You can have the best content or ad in the world and if no-one knows about it or is referred from trusted sources, you’re likely to have a looong haul. Likewise if you create crappy content or ads and you buy the best placement money can buy, you won’t receive alot of goodwill from it.

Where does the length of something actually start to matter? I guess if you never get to the point, or you never get your point across effectively it’s too long or too short. But really, you shouldn’t concentrate on length - concentrate on getting knowledgable, trusted individuals to review and recommend your work, and work on making the content as appealing as possible. If anything, the internet has changed the breadth of content available - making our time more and more valuable. To wit, I never had as much angst choosing WHAT I was going to read during the time I have allotted as I do now. There is just a HUGE amount of information (and ads for that matter) out there.

Seth is right about one thing. Length is no longer the obstacle it used to be. Advertising no longer needs to be constrained to 30 seconds. But I contend that length was never typically the real obstacle. Getting revolutionary ideas and information and getting it in front of the right people always was.

So, a friend of mine posted about the Virginia Tech shooting recently. I suggest if you haven’t read it yet, to go take a gander. I wanted to leave a comment there, but after trying to write it twice I decided that it would come off more as a rant… perhaps a Raving if you will and decided it would be better to just post it up here. I think near the end she comes up with some extremely pertinent points about the state of mental health treatment in the US. Where I disagree with her is in the middle of her post and the premise that getting the story out of the media will help the situation.

I believe that not talking about someone or something is the opposite way that our society should go. We already have too much pre-edited news, “sanitizing” it for the American people. We don’t see the bloody and wounded in conflicts around the world - it would be too much for the our sensitive eyes and ears. We don’t really want to see that. Except, if we only hear about things in an abstract sense then we become further desensitized to the issue. “Another 89 dead in Iraq today due to a car bombing.” has become a subnote on the news, barely newsworthy anymore, and you certainly wouldn’t see anything graphic about it. It has reduced tragic events like what’s happening in Iraq or Darfur down to a simple statistic.

I wonder if this is one of the reasons that the normal populace in other countries (say, Italy) are more impassioned about the events happening around the rest of the world. Indignant if you will. And I’m not talking just about Iraq or Darfur, I’m talking about everything. The news here SHOWS what’s going on and talks about it at length. And not some simple stat or freeze frame away from the action, but the actual explosions or beatings or whatever is going on.

If we, as the American people, firmly DO believe that the current direction our public policy has taken us is the right way, then we should be able to stand strong enough to see the effects of that policy. What happened at Virginia Tech very likely could have been avoided, had more medical attention been given to this obviously very mentally unstable individual. How are we ever going to realize how important mental health care is, if we employ tactics to remove the consequences of it from the air as soon as possible?

I think you should show it. Keep it in front of us. Make us look at it. Perhaps next time we go to vote, we’ll be voting with that in mind, rather than the pothole maintenance or more road-building. Those things currently get our attention - because we’re reminded of the concequences of not spending that public money every single day.

The impression I got from the videos of this guy is he felt so slighted for so long that it eventually built up and exploded. In his case he took it out on defenseless individuals at his school, but many, many more every year just off themselves. These are symptoms of the real problem. Very generally speaking mental health treatment, both in the US and abroad, is viewed as something that you treat crazies with, people with REAL problems in their head, but normal people are just fine without any kind of mental health counseling.

Is that the right path? I’m sure every one of you at some point or another has felt as if you were on the edge of breaking - I know I have. I feel lucky that I have found the tools to deal with it when I feel like that, but so many people in the world don’t have those tools at their disposal, and as much as our parents love us, most of them have not able to teach us those tools. Our society (and especially American society) has gotten to be much more of a pressure cooker than it used to be. It’s hard to keep up, and there are many more pressures on the individual person, fragmenting each person so that you feel like you’re being pulled in 1000 different directions at once. There has to be some way to let off the steam from the pressure cooker and most people don’t have a constructive way to do it. And this doesn’t even delve into the fact that the Virginia Tech shooter probably had some sort of diagnosable mental problem that needed to be treated.

Do you want a very concise view of how bad the problem is? Take a look at this graphic from the New York Times. It lays out, rounded to the closest whole death how many deaths happen from guns each day. They took the overall numbers for 2004 (the most recent year statistics were available) and laid out how many people die each day from the different demographics. I’m sure they adjusted where the dividing lines fell to make it more striking, but even so the results are very sobering. And very different from what my preconception was of who was being killed by guns and why. A full 43% of the deaths were suicides of white males aged 26 and over, with 31% of those white males aged 40 and over. This is a symptom of a problem that needs some urgent attention.

I did find it interesting that the coverage seemed to center around who to blame for this tragedy. I think it’s a healthy conversation to have, not because it’s important to blame someone or something, but because by finding out what went wrong you can try to fix it for the future. I just wish that they actually talked about at length what the real issue is (mental health treatment) instead of their typical blame targets. Let’s go down the list, shall we? Violent video games - this MUST be it… except he never played them. But they were very quick to talk about the video games. Violent TV and movies - talking heads were espousing how it must be because of that. Except he watched WWF on Friday nights occasionally and no other TV. Let’s call it how it is - this guy needed help and he didn’t get it.

But that is a much harder pill to swallow because that puts the onus back on us. We are the ones who vote our politicians into office and vote on the bills that come up in our state and approve new funding for mental health. It’s much easier to point to an industry and say “It’s their product that’s causing all this mess.”

Jeff Cornwall writes: “We seem to have forgotten that failure, in fact, builds character. And it is the fear of failure that inhibits creativity and keeps us from learning….You will fail. Failure is a prerequisite for success.”

Fear of failure stops innovation, creates a condition of stasis, where we are afraid to change and grow.  Precisely because of that, we have to confront this fear if we are going to do great things, to succeed in whatever endeavor we are pursuing.  It is through our failures that we refine our approach, correct our course to have a more positive outcome the next time.

It is also equally as important after a failure to carefully pick apart and analyze the failure, no matter how uncomfortable it may be.  Even though no-one wants to dwell on the negative, it’s only by understanding what was done wrong that we can have a chance of avoiding the same fate with the next attempt.

One nice thing, however, is that we can start small, training our minds to re-analyze and self-correct on small, less profound things.  Then, by the time we get to life critical events and decisions, we’ve already conditioned our brain to be hyper sensitive to that feedback loop and our likelihood of succeeding becomes larger.

Here’s something I ran across recently. It’s a map of the countries you have visited that you can put on your own website/blog. I think of myself as reasonably well traveled, although it’s something I always try to improve.

So, uh, I guess I have alot of work to do. I’ve only visited 10% of the countries, and I still have left whole continents swathed in grey. Hell, I’ve been to Russia, but I feel almost embarrased to have the entire country colored red here - I only traveled to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Time to get cracking!

create your own visited country map

I recently ran across this article in the Washington Post that really touched me. I’ll probably write more about it later, but this article really embodied for me the reason why I’ve chosen this path for my life.

Do you think you would have stopped? If I was on my way to work in Southern California, I most likely wouldn’t have stopped. it really makes me glad I’ve changed my latitude (to steal a great advertising phrase).