An Open Ended Question for Our Generation

January 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

What do you think is most important for us, as a generation and a nation?

Raw intelligence- What you come out of the gate with. Your baseline smarts. You either have a high IQ or you don’t. You pick things up quickly- which can be a skill in and of itself- or you struggle at first.

Skill- To become the best at what you do, you need hours and hours of practice. More time than a person who has that same ‘skillset’ but is mediocre, average, or just gets by AT BEST. Skill can be built.

Talent- Something special that comes more naturally to you than others. With consistent feeding, talent can become unstoppable and untouchable.

Realized genius- True grit and perseverance. The ability to not start out as the best or be extremely smart in all areas, but has the willingness to bleed their soul into what they fixate on and eventually super-cede others in that area.

Each trait manifests and breeds a different kind of person. Some have one trait, and some have multiple traits so tightly woven together that one could not exist without the other.

So what do you think?

Filed Under: Life

Action Journal Productivity & Stationary Obsessions

January 6, 2012 By 2 Comments

 

I am obsessed with stationary and writing utensils. Really.

You might call me a stationary snob because using yellow post it notes bothers me, and I need ones that aren’t that gross, generic color. Or, you might get weirded out by the fact that I have a pen holder at work with 15 carefully chosen pens, of which I have to rotate usage. Slightly neurotic? In the words of Sarah Palin, ‘You Betcha!’

Needless to say, when I saw this pretty little package arrive in my mailbox today, I was beyond ecstatic.

Action Journal from Behance

Note: You might notice the iPhone thumbs up. My thumb is silly and not capable of making an enthusiastic and proper thumbs up, like this guy in the picture. I SWEAR. Please see the image at the end of this post for photo proof.

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Filed Under: Productivity/GTD Tagged With: ,

First Impressions are Often the Truest

January 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I admit it. This is a post about nothing. I just feel like emptying my brain out for a little while and relaxing. This was actually just a paragraph until I really started thinking about what I was writing…

I’m a sucker for first impressions. I think what I feel about you when I meet you generally holds true to how I’ll feel about you a few days, months, years or however long from now that I’m graced with your presence in whatever form.

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Filed Under: Life

2012- The Year of “Not-Really-a-Resolution” Resolutions

December 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

First off, HELLO! Secondly, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Third, this is a really long post. REALLY. LONG. And fourth,the world is not going to end this year. But if it does, at least it ends exactly one week after my birthday.

I am cautioning you now. If your brain is yelling “ABORT, ABORT!” it’s probably best to follow its advice. This isn’t a “short and sweet”, “nicely bulleted list” with “images to break up the post and keep a reader’s attention span.” This is just me, writing.

Yesterday was the last day of 2011, and boy it was one hell of a Year. This was our first year celebrating down in Florida. We watched the Red Bull No Limits event (which is way cooler than the ball dropping, in my opinion). And it was warm. This was a very “Florida” New Years if I’ve ever seen one, so it was a little strange being around palm trees and 70 degree weather.

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Filed Under: Life Tagged With:

Good Advertising Sells, Great Advertising Steals your Soul

December 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It steals your soul in a good way. Usually.

Note: Really long ramble about psychology and advertising and random crap that spurned from the “1984″ commercial for the Mac. Only read it if you feel like absorbing my thoughts.

I had a great conversation with someone the other day about what’s missing with the new generation of marketing that’s evolved from traditional marketing/advertising. Many people view the new-ish marketing mediums as a quick way to engage users online, but they don’t really look behind the actual psyche and fundamentals of the company that’s being marketed or the people that are being marketed to. While the allure of “quick, flashy and fun” can be appealing and work to some extent, marketing and advertising will always come down to one key component- Psychology.

Enter… the rambling.

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Filed Under: Design & Advertising Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Negativity, Motivation and The Road Not Taken

December 3, 2011 By 1 Comment

Oh hey. It’s been a while since I’ve written. While I wrap up my post about removing DRM for transfer of Kindle Fire books, I figured I would take  a detour and write something related to actual, real life and close it with one of my favorite poems.

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Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Life, Productivity/GTD Tagged With: , , ,

Breathe – Clear your Mind – Write – ATTACK IT.

September 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I always struggling with simplifying things. Why is this? Because I have a tendency to want to do the best with everything (yes, this can be a bad trait at times) and often times I don’t take the time to really assess what needs to be done RIGHT this very minute.

I was reading this post by Chris Brogan that talks about saying no faster, and it really made me take a look at my life and what I’m doing at the moment to cloud it up. I think there comes a time when you need to put your priorities over things that might seem fun or interesting and just focus on what you need to do.

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Filed Under: Life, Productivity/GTD Tagged With:

Learning From Nature’s Disasters

September 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

With Hurricane Irene miraculously veering away from Florida but unfortunately careening STRAIGHT towards where my family in NY is, I started thinking about natural disasters and how they relate to life.

Hate me if you want to, but I’m completely fascinated by natural disasters. The power and immensity of any kind of earthquake, hurricane, tornado, tsunami or whatever nature throws at us is pretty spectacular. There’s something about the chaos and destruction that just makes me sit back and think about how small we really are. And once one is coming, you really can’t do anything to stop it.

You can only try to save yourself.

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Filed Under: Life

Lowballer’s Delight

July 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Sometimes I seriously want to smack the crap out of people on Craigslist.

Granted, I always list things on there and always get them sold (and fast) but the majority of lowballers in between that posting time and selling time is ridiculously high. We just listed up something on there for over $1300, and some jackass emailed me and said:

REALLY, Craigslist troll? REALLY? No thanks. It takes every inch of my willpower not to reply to this guy because once I do, he’ll have my email address. And it’s not like I have a name anybody will forget anytime soon.

So there you have it, Craigslist lowballer. I hate you. You’re on my hate-list today.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: , ,

The Benefits of Life ADD- Courage and Reinvention

July 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I came across this article on The 99 Percent about Hillman Curtis and it really inspired me and made me feel a little better about the fact that I’m interested in more than a handful of things and want to learn everything about whatever I get hooked and interested in. It took me a lot of Life ADD to get into my sweet spot right now where I get to pretty much devour everything I’m learning every single day.

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Filed Under: Life
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