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Ahmed Eid creates iPhone/iPad apps, makes films, and is a professional photographer. He is a pretty even mix of left/right brain.

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Rams introduced the idea of sustainable development and of obsolescence being a crime in design in the 1970s. Accordingly he asked himself the question: is my design good design? The answer formed his now celebrated ten principles.

Good design:

Is innovative – The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.
Makes a product useful – A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.
Is aesthetic – The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products are used every day and have an effect on people and their well-being. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful.
Makes a product understandable – It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition. At best, it is self-explanatory.
Is unobtrusive – Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.
Is honest – It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.
Is long-lasting – It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.
Is thorough down to the last detail – Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer.
Is environmentally friendly – Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.
Is as little design as possible – Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

Source: Wikipedia

This weekend I attended the Vimeo Festival, a conference for film makers. I chose to go this year because one of my favorite film production companies, Stillmotion, was going to give a talk on the art of storytelling, a subject I have been forever passionate about but never really studied.

It was an odd feeling seeing Amina and Justin, two people I have learned so much from on the internet, in person. As they started speaking, I became focused and listened intently. While they both did an excellent job, it was Amina in particular that I connected with.

Amina is a small petite woman that is filled with passion, excitement, and love for her craft and her projects.  She spoke of living a life of purpose, and how at Stillmotion they choose even their lenses/stabilizers to best tell the story of the people they are documenting. Of how you make decisions only to fulfill that purpose, and nothing else.

That is when I realized that I have been doing it wrong. I spent most of the last three years learning the tools, but not connecting the tools to my sense of purpose. I have been studying HD film making and with much practice. The lighting, camera settings, white balance, focal lengths, rack focus, etc. What I have not been doing is using the tools to create work that I am proud of. I have not been using them to create a piece of art that actually moves someone, and pushes them to action. I chose what to buy next based on what I thought I needed, not because I actually needed them to make a film.

What Amina really drove into my mind was the idea that your purpose should drive what you choose to do.  At Stillmotion, they are passionate about telling authentic stories, and so all of the decision they make must tell the stories of the people they document better. It always starts with the people in the stories.  As Amina puts it “A day is nothing. People are everything.”

She spoke of being present. About entering a room, closing your eyes, and really feeling the vibe, and understanding with your heart what your eyes could never tell you.

She spoke of listening above hearing, and of feeling above seeing. Every ounce of her body spoke directly to us. It was profound. I left dumbfounded, not by the material she presented, but at who she was, how she lived, and how she made her decisions.

I read many self help blogs that speak of living a life of passion, being present, etc.  Reading about these things has done me a lot of good, but actually seeing someone live it taught me things that reading simply could not.

So to Amina and the Stillmotion team, thanks for being so awesome. I will commit to shipping one quality short film that I am proud of by the end of 2012.

 

“Not to be preachy about it, but discipline is everything for a working writer, at least for this one. I can’t just wander around fields of flowers or sit brooding in coffee houses waiting for the muse to land on my shoulder and whisper in my ear. That would nice, but it ain’t gonna happen. I treat writing like a factory job – the whistle blows and I’m at work. This thing always comes down to someone sitting down with some kind of writing instrument and getting it done.”

Discipline is everything…true in any field I think.

Don Winslow

facebook-posters-the-hacker-way-done-is-better-than-perfect + high-res version

Action is King.

You don’t get a good idea out of the blue. You get a good idea amidst many bad ones. Work on something, and you’ll see that you will change direction multiple times before you produce soemthing you are proud of.

There is no proud work without the willingness to do un-perfect things first.

Focus on contribution, not entitlement.

Focus on outcome, not output.

Sort for what is needed, not what is requested.

Go towards big decisions, even without authority.

See your circumstance as illusory and temporary.

I just finished reading Rework by 37Signals. Rework was one of those books that described an ideal company to work in, where the focus of their products is always on the core basic essentials, where people aren’t bothered by long, life sucking meetings, and where people are free to work wherever they want, as long as they get their work done.  Reword is a glimpse into how to build an awesome company while keeping everything simple. Here are some tweets from the book:

 

HBS study: People who succeed are 34% more likely to succeed again. People who fail once are 60% likely to fail again. Learn from success, not failure. #Rework

Business plans are really business guesses. Must be able to improvise. #Rework

Decide what you will do this week, not this year. #Rework

Ramping up doesn’t have to be the goal. Small businesses are agile. #Rework

Workaholics aint heroes. #Rework

Starters. You don’t need MBA…just an idea, a bit of confidence, and a push to get started. #Rework

To do great work, you need to feel like you are making a difference. Don’t sit around and wait for someone else to make the change you want to see. #Rework

Craigslist and Drudge report. Came out of nowhere and destroyed old models. You can do the same for your industry. #Rework

Scratch your own itch. #Rework

What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan. #Rework

Need to know WHY you do what you will do. #Rework

How strong you stand is how you attract superfans. #Rework

There is a world of difference between truly standing for something and having the mission statement that says you do. #Rework

A business without a path to profit isn’t a business, it is a hobby. #Rework

Build half a product, not a half assed product. #Rework

Getting to great starts by cutting out stuff that’s merely good. #Rework

Ignore the details early on. #Rework

Decisions are progress. When you put decisions off, they pile up. #Rework

Get into the rhythm of making choices. #Rework

It is the stuff you leave out that matters #Rework

Gear doesn’t matter.  It is tempting for people to obsess over tools instead of what they are going to do with these tools. #Rework

The tone is in your fingers. #Rework

You can’t just make one thing. Byproducts. #Rework

Once your product does what it needs to, get it out there. #Rework

Impose deadlines. Create focus. #Rework

Best way to develop is through iterations. #Rework

Do everything to remove layers of abstraction. #Rework

Get the chisel out and start making something real. Anything else is a distraction. #Rework

Don’t copy, invest yourself into your product. #Rework

Pick a fight with a competitor. Having an enemy gives you a great story to tell customers. #Rework

It is not worth paying much attention to the competition. It will become an obsession. #Rework

 

http://bigthink.com/ideas/25283

Some advice from Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) on how to control and destroy any creative block.

Transcript below:

Question: Why do some people get creatively blocked?

Rainn Wilson: I think “creative blocks” come from people’s life journeys.  If you don’t know who you are or what you’re about or what you believe in it’s really pretty impossible to be creative. So I think a lot of times when people have “creative blocks” and I know my share of friends do as well if they’re at just some stuck point.  They’re not sure what to do with their lives or their writing or their photography or their filmmaking or whatever it is that they’re doing.  I think the best advice is you have to change your life up completely; to go on a trip, to go spend a year being of service.  Be willing to take some major drastic action to get you out of your comfort zone and go inside, not outside.  Our society is all about focusing on the externals, “These people like me, I’m successful because of these people, they view me as being good and we need to take that vision and instead of expanding it outwards we need to look inside ourselves.

I think meditation helps greatly with creativity.  It doesn’t…. If it’s a pure expression of yourself no matter what it is or what medium, it’s going to shine.  It’s going to resonate.  You could look inside of yourself and you could have a canvas and you could paint a dot in it, but if that is where your creative purpose is taking you then it needs to be that dot.  Again, we’re so focused on the externals about like well he did this and he already did this and tons of people are already doing that, I need to do something new and you’re just looking outwards all the time and you’re not taking that time and that is what… a trap of technology is to just always have our vision somewhere else, somewhere else, in the future, looking outside of ourselves. And I think taking the time in the morning to connect with your breath, that’s where the purest impulse comes from.

Question: Is creativity for everyone?

Rainn Wilson: Creativity is absolutely for everyone.  I firmly believe this.  I think if you’re the driest accountant with the plastic pocket pen protector it’s in how you interact with the world.  There is artistry in everything that we do and there is expression in everything that we do and you see that in the game of chess as you…  I used to play a lot of chess and competitive chess and study chess and as you get to the grandmasters and learn their styles when you start copying their games like the way they express themselves through…  The way Kasparov or Bobby Fischer expresses themselves through a game of chess is it’s astonishing.  You can show a chess master one of their games and they’ll say “Yeah, that is done by that player.”

So it doesn’t matter.  It’s again, about that yearning to transcend.  There is a surrender to a power greater than one’s self as every artist or scientist or thinker talks about a certain point when it’s no longer like their brain.  It’s like the ideas are like streaming through them and that can happen with anyone.  If you’re a janitor you can do it through your work or on the side or how you are with people, but this is the mission of Soul Pancake is to show that everyone is an artist.  Everyone is creative in their own way and that that creativity is a great thing.  It’s a human thing and it needs to be nurtured and it can help us go down life’s path and help us to become deeper, richer, more satisfied human beings.

 

 

Hugh is one of my favorite authors. He is blunt, witty, and gets to the core of an issue with a few words and a comic.

Here are some business/life lessons from his first book, “Ignore Everybody.”

1. The more original your idea is, the less good advice people will be able to give you.

2. Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships that is why good ideas are always initially resisted.

3. Your idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing.

4. The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.

5. Being good at anything is like figure skating – the definition of being good at it is being able to make it look easy. But it never is easy. Ever. That is what the stupidly wrong people conveniently forget.

6. Your job is probably worth 50 percent of what it was in real terms ten years ago. And who knows? It may very well not exist in five to ten years…Stop worrying about technology. Start worrying about people who trust you.

7. Part of being a master is learning to sing in nobody else’s voice but your own…Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won’t. Its that simple.

8. The biggest mistake young people make is underestimating how competitive the world is out there.

About to tweet lessons from #DotheWork

On the Field of the Self stand a Knight and a Dragon #DotheWork

You are the knight. Resistance is the Dragon. #DotheWork

Any act that favors immediate gratification in favor of long  term growth, health, and integrity will call upon Resistance. #DotheWork

Resistance is invisible, but can be felt. #DotheWork

Resistance has no conscious. #DotheWork

Resistance will point us away from the action or calling it doesn’t want us to do. Use this as a compass. #DotheWork

Fear never goes away. #DotheWork

Resistance is not there to would or disable, it is to kill. #DotheWork

When we fight it, we are in a war to the death. #DotheWork

After resistance, rational thought is the artist or entrepreneurs worst enemy. #DotheWork

Rational thought comes from the Ego. #DotheWork

Friends and family know us AS WE ARE. And are invested in maintaining us AS WE ARE. #DotheWork

Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. #DotheWork

Don’t think, act. #DotheWork

We can always revise and revisit once we acted. But we can’t accomplish until we act. #DotheWork

When you commit to action, the worst thing you can do is stop. #DotheWork

Be stubborn. #DotheWork

Fear saps passion. #DotheWork

When we discover our fears, we discover a boundless well of passion. #DotheWork

Start before you are ready. #DotheWork

Don’t prepare, begin. #DotheWork

Research Diet. #DotheWork

You are allowed to read 3 books on your subject. No more. #DotheWork

Research can become resistance. We want work, not prepare to work. #DotheWork

Stay Primitive. Swing for the seats. #DotheWork

“Sheet of yellow foolscap is exactly the right length to hold the outline of an entire novel” #DotheWork

Don’t over think. Don’t over prepare. #DotheWork

Discipline yourself to boil down your story/business idea/etc in a single page. #DotheWork

Is it easy? Hell no. #DotheWork

Use 3 act structure (Beginning/Middle/End) #DotheWork

No such thing as writing. Only re-writing. #DotheWork

Better to have lousy product than to have no product at all. You can always tweak later. #DotheWork

Start at the End. #DotheWork

Figure out where you want to go. Then work backwards from there. #DotheWork

Know what your venture is about. Then picture the end. #DotheWork

End first, the beginning and middle. That is your startup, your plan for…#DotheWork

Don’t listen to chatter in your head. #DotheWork

Chatter is resistance. Evil. Avoid. #DotheWork

Chatter aims at making you exactly like everyone else. #DotheWork

On your single sheet you have Beginning, middle, and end. Now fill the gaps. #DotheWork

7-8 major movements #DotheWork

Do research in beginning or end, never in prime work time. #DotheWork

Soak up what you need to fill the gaps. Keep working. #DotheWork

Fill in the gaps between the gaps. #DotheWork

One rule for first full working drafts: Get them done ASAP. #DotheWork

Don’t worry about quality. Act, don’t reflect. Momentum is everything. #DotheWork

Momentum is everything. #DotheWork

Get the first version from A to Z as FAST AS YOU CAN. Don’t think, reflect, analyze. WORK. #DotheWork

Suspend all self judgment. #DotheWork

Liberate yourself from conventional expectations. #DotheWork

Ideas do not come linearly. #DotheWork

Rational thought wants us to work from beginning to middle to end. This is why we get stuck. #DotheWork

Ideas come in their own retarded order. #DotheWork

Process: Act, Reflect. Act, Reflect. Never do both at same time. #DotheWork

Our job is not to control our idea. It is to figure out what it is and how to bring it into being. #DotheWork

Forget rational thought. Play. Play like a child. #DotheWork

Opposing of resistance is Assistance. #DotheWork

Universe responds to your energy, love for  your work, passion, and hope. It has no choice. #DotheWork

Energy field you create attracts like spirited entities into its orbit. Ideas. #DotheWork

Momentum is everything. Keep going. Steven King works every day. #DotheWork

Keep working. #DotheWork

Keep working. #DotheWork

Reflect about the values. What is this about? #DotheWork

Keep refining your understanding of the theme. #DotheWork

Most creative endeavors fail due to their failure to answer the question: What is this thing about? #DotheWork

Ask yourself what is missing, then fill the gap. #DotheWork

Now we are weeks into the project. The prospect of success looms. #DotheWork

Resistance: Why did we start this project? Who encouraged us? Etc. #DotheWork

The Belly of the Beast. Welcome to Hell.  #DotheWork

7 principles of resistance and the two tests. #DotheWork

One: There is an enemy. Recognize the resistance. #DotheWork

Two: The enemy is implacable.

Three: The enemy is inside you. #DotheWork

Four: The enemy is inside you, but not you. #DotheWork

Five: The “Real You” MUST duel the “Resistance You” #DotheWork

Six: Resistance arises second. #DotheWork

Idea, then passion. The dream of the work we are excited to create scares the hell out of us. #DotheWork

Resistance is more like the pain in the ass schoolteacher who won’t let us climb the tree in the playground. #DotheWork

But the urge to climb the tree came first. #DotheWork

Seven: Opposite of resistance is Assistance. #DotheWork

Love the idea. #DotheWork

2 tests of resistance. 1. How bad do you want it? #DotheWork

Dabbling? Interested? Intrigued but uncertain? Passionate? Totally Committed? #DotheWork

If the answer is not the last one…stop…#DotheWork

2 tests of resistance. 2. Why do you want it? #DotheWork

Do it because you have no choice. #DotheWork

Attitude adjustment chamber for people who want it for any other reason. #DotheWork

AAC: Must leave at the door: ego, impatience, fear, hope, anger. #DotheWork

MIDDLE: #DotheWork

The BIG CRASH is to predicable across all enterprises that we can practically set our watches by it. #DotheWork

A crash means we have to grow. We are @ the threshold of learning something.  #DotheWork

Our greatest fear is fear of success. #DotheWork

The problem is the problem. #DotheWork

END. #DotheWork

Shipping is the critical part of any project. It takes balls of steel to ship. #DotheWork

Resistance is strongest at the finish. #DotheWork

Fear of success is the essence of resistance. #DotheWork

When we ship, we are exposed. #DotheWork

SHIP. #DotheWork

Slay the dragon once and he will NEVER have power over you again. #DotheWork

I’m currently reading Seth Godin’s new ebook, Poke the Box, and it opened my eyes to a few things I had not realized before. Ever since I read Linchpin, I have had a different outlook on taking initiative and life in general. The contention in Poke to Box is that life is a box, and you need to poke it for it to do something to you. Once if does something, you learn from it, and poke it again, learning something new and pushing yourself further with each poke. We can’t be passive and expect to be given a promotion, or expect the dream job of ours to fall from the sky and land in our lap. We must be active initiators of projects and active doers if we want to get anywhere in the fast paced world that we live in.

As with all of Seth Godin’s books, the advice is amazing but if it isn’t implemented, it is useless. It is actually worse having known what needs to be done and not doing it that not having known anything at all to begin with.

Here are some random lessons from the book:

  • Reject the tyranny of picked. Don’t wait to be pocked for a promotion, etc. Pick yourself.
  • Initiative requires curiosity. Not searching for right answer but desire to know how something works and how 2 make it better.
  • When in doubt look for the fear.
  • Remarkable demands initiative.
  • Tell your ego that the best way to ship is to let someone else take the credit.
  • Isaac Asimov wrote 400 books by typing everyday from 6 am to noon for 40 years. Train yourself to do work.
  • Oprah has started hundreds of failed ventures. That’s why she’s successful. She starts things.
  • Most important capital is instigation capital
  • Avoiding failure is counterproductive.

Here is a blurb about what the book covers and a link to download.  As is the case with all of Seth Godin’s works, this is a highly recommended read.

We send our kids to school and obsess about their test scores, their behavior and their ability to fit in.We post a help wanted ad and look for experience, famous colleges and a history of avoiding failure.

We invest in companies based on how they did last quarter, not on what they’re going to do tomorrow.

So why are we surprised when it all falls apart?

Our economy is not static, but we act as if it is. Your position in the world is defined by what you instigate, how you provoke, and what you learn from the events you cause. In a world filled with change, that’s what matters — your ability to create and learn from change.

Poke the Box is a manifesto about producing something that’s scarce, and thus valuable. It demands that you stop waiting for a road map and start drawing one instead. You know how to do this, you’ve done it before, but along the way, someone talked you out of it.

We need your insight and your dreams and your contributions. Hurry.

 

Nike’s classic “Just Do It” slogan is the key to solving all problems related to inaction and lack of confidence.  The thought of accomplishing something great is always met with the resistance in your mind, conjuring up hundreds of excuses in all shapes and sizes as to why you should not even try.

You want to run? Why? You are comfortable now…and those cheeseburgers you eat at lunch taste so good…

Want to get a new job? Why? You are doing good in this one. Don’t forget, it is a bad economy and you might not succeed…

Want to start a business? How can you even think of that at this time? Your family needs you to work a 9-5 job. Don’t think like that. Think safety and long term.

Nike’s slogan cuts to the chase and gives you a piece of advice that literally kills the resistance and gives you the push you need to just do it.

Think of how perfect this slogan is for sports. If you wanted to start running but can’t find the time, Just Do It. Stop making excuses and Just Do It. If you were an athlete trying to get a better percentage of free throws…Just do it. Practice till you can’t anymore and it will happen.

As good as this slogan is to athletes, it is applicable just about anywhere.

Want to get in shape? Just Do It. No excuses.

Want to get a new job? Go to school? Learn a craft?  Just Do It.

Want to start a business? Just Do It.

Put your mind to it and Just Do It.

Ever since the TED conference started, I have always wanted to travel to Long Beach and attend it. TED brings together the movers and shakers of different industries and invites them each to give a 20 minute speech outlining their story and what they are doing to change the world and these talks are all free on the TED website.

When I began listening to the TED talks 2 years ago I was literally blown away with how much these seemingly ordinary people had accomplished. I went to a pretty small and boring undergraduate school, one that emphasized the importance of grades over actual learning, and in my years there and even when I began working after graduation, I had never seen such an extraordinary group of people deliver such inspiring and moving speeches. I was so inspired I told myself that I have to go to this conference. A few clicks and I was on the application page for the conference, which was very long and required 3 essays.. Application page? Essays? For a conference? A few more clicks and I read this:  Standard registrations for TED in Long Beach cost $7,500.

$7500? To attend a conference that will eventually go online, for free? No thanks…

These were my thoughts 2 years ago and when I look back at how much my life has changed in the past 2 years I understood why I thought this way and why I no longer think so.

Today, I would gladly pay $7500 to attend this conference. Here is why.

If you have any kind of entrepreneurial spirit, you understand how important it is to surround yourself with people who are better than you and with people who do. Not talk, but do.

When you surround yourself with average people day in and day out, you begin to feel and do average. You forget that you can start projects and initiatives and businesses and change the world. Instead, you start watching TV shows, live life passively, and slowly but surely, your entrepreneurial spirit begins to wither away.  You begin to ask yourself “Why?” when the thought of an interesting project creeps into your mind and quickly shrug the idea off, and think of a hundred excuses why you shouldn’t do it.  You begin to procrastinate on all of your assignments and start handing deliverables late. And this is extremely dangerous.

On the flipside, if you want to be challenged and pushed and create interesting projects that change the world, you need to surround yourself with people who share the same kind of drive, energy, and persistence. Your friends and the people you regularly associate with shape the way you think about and approach life.  There is a reason that the top CEOs of companies surround themselves with people who are better than they are at what they do. They want to feel the pressure to constantly push and break artificial ceilings they set for themselves.

Think of someone you have been really close to in the past 2 years and think about who they are, what they like, what they think about, and what they do. You will undoubtedly find that indeed, those who are closest to you influence what you like, what you talk about, what you think about, what you buy, etc, and all of these small changes they make to you ultimately change what you do. At the end of the day, what you have to show for yourself, as an entrepreneur, as a worker, whatever you are, is what you DID, not what you SAID. If you want to do more, get some friends who do more.

$7500 to be in a room with the world most innovative doers for 3 days? Of course I’ll pay. Heck, I’ll pay that number 3 times over. The motivation that one must feel when there, the inspiration, the ideas shared with the world brightest thinkers, the contacts that are made with them, all of this is totally worth $7500.

Pixar has always been one of my favorite companies in the world not only because of their awesome films, but because of their relentless pursuit of excellence.

Pixar is opening a new animation studio in Canada, and here are some pointers from the video above to anyone who owns a business and wants to be the best at what they do.

“Quality is the best business plan” – John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer at Pixar.

“I believe very strongly that people should make things that they think are great and they love. When we make various projects, whether they are little short cartoon or half hour television specials, they can look at it and point out to their grand children that this is something great that they worked on. Everything we touch needs to be excellent. – Ed Catmull, President of Pixar.

Everything that you touch should be excellent.

I don’t believe that people have God given talents, that somehow you are better at something than I am because you were born that way, or that I was just not meant to do something well. Many times I see people blame their failures and non-attempts on themselves. “Oh me? I can never learn that” or “Where will I find the time?” or “Oh I tried that so many times, I just can’t do it.”

There is a hidden truth that I have lately been coming across over and over again, and that is this: If you want to succeed at something, you need to be consistent. Consistency is the ONE factor that you need to do whatever it is you want to accomplish. It will lead to the other factors that you need to be successful.

Garry Trudeau is a comic artist that has drawn a comic strip a day for 40 straight years. That is 14,600 days of drawing a comic strip a day. I think that when you decide to dedicate your life to something and spend 14,600 days doing it over and over again, it doesn’t really matter what it is – you can accomplish something amazing and amass a body of work that truly changes things.

The thing is there are definitely some days when Garry wakes up and doesn’t want to draw. As with any project we start, we begin ambitious and energetic but somewhere after the first week we begin to get lazy and doubt our ability to continue.  That is why so many our our plans end up not happening. We lose the drive and momentum we had when the project was just starting, quickly start to self destruct and soon thereafter, we quit. And we think of it as a failure. And after doing this so many times, after trying to lose weight so many times, or trying to read consistently so many times, we begin to think we just weren’t meant for it, and we never try again. And all of this is the cause of one problem: lack if discipline, which we will speak about in a future post.

Garry fought through all of that negativity.  He wrote a comic strip a day for 40 years, punching his lazy self in the face when it tried to get in his way and plowed through all obstacles.  Here is an interview with him on last weeks Colbert Report.

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Garry Trudeau
www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> Video Archive

In the beginning, Garry was not the best drawer, but with consistency he became the best. You don’t need to be the smartest at something to succeed, just the most consistent.

We can also extract this lesson from God’s Creation. Everything in nature has a consistent pattern, and that is why it works. There are no abrupt beginnings and endings to natures cycles, only super smooth transitions that aren’t even visible to the naked eye. The night eases into the day and the day eases into the night, at the same times, everyday, with no abrupt stops. Everyone of God’s creations, including ourselves, needs to follow this consistent, disciplined,  rhythmic approach to life if we really want to succeed.

-High contrast image of a tree. Shot with Canon 7D + Tamron 28-75 f 2.8 @ f2.8, ISO 100, 1/4000

Many times a week I evaluate where I am and how I feel about my current situation. What am I doing? Do I enjoy it? If not, is it at least making a difference?

Tim Ferriss of the 4 Hour Workweek suggests that it’s okay to love your work, or really loathe what it’s doing to you. But if you’re “comfortable” in your day-to-day gig, you might never do actual thinking ahead:

“So how do you break out of a comfort rut? Ferriss says, “It’s very valuable to amplify the pain. If your job is mediocre, sit down and do an exercise on paper to really run through what your life is going to look like in two, three, five years if you continue to do what you’re doing. What options are you going to have? If you don’t have kids now, but you’re going to have kids in five years, do you want to be in the same job at that point? What are your options going to be then? What is your risk tolerance going to be then?”

We need to take action to get to where we want to be. Feeling too comfortable can slowly kill you and the only way to stop it is to get out of your comfort zone.

One of the absolute BEST things I ever did was move away from my home state, NJ. I was too comfortable there. I was seeing the same people every week and was doing the same things over and over. Leaving NJ and setting up camp somewhere else forced me to think about who I wanted to be, and what am I doing to get there. I no longer had that close group of friends that always supported me.  (My wife became my best friend, and still continues to support me and I constantly thank her for that, but I was still somewhere totally foreign with no job, no community, and no support group).

The whole interview is worth a read, and it clarifies a point about Ferriss’ and other seemingly time-freeing productivity methods: the end goal is not idleness. The best thing you can do is put yourself in an uncomfortable situation and learn abut yourself through it.