Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?: And Other Provocations, 2006-2012 (8 page)

In my experience, people skip all of these questions and ask instead: “What can I do that will be sure to work?” The problem, of course, is that there is no
sure
, and even worse, you and I have no agreement at all on what it means for something to work.

When are you going to start acting like it?

The idea that you are a faceless cog in a benevolent system that cares about you and that can’t tell particularly whether you are worth a day’s pay or not, is, like it or not, over.

In the long run, we’re all dead. In the medium-long run, though, we’re all self-employed. In the medium-long run, the decisions and actions we take each day determine what we’ll be doing next.

And yet it’s so easy to revert to “I just work here.”

What story do you tell yourself about yourself?

I know that marketers tell stories. We tell them to clients, prospects, bosses, suppliers, partners, and voters. If the stories resonate and spread and seduce, then we succeed.

But what about the story you tell yourself?

Do you have an elevator pitch that reminds you that you’re a struggling fraud, certain to be caught and destined to fail? Are you marketing a perspective and an attitude of generosity? When you talk to yourself, what do you say? Is anyone listening?

You’ve learned through experience that frequency works. That minds can be changed. That powerful stories have impact.

I guess, then, the challenge is to use those very same tools on yourself.

One approach to innovation and brainstorming is to wait for the muse to appear, to hope that it alights on your shoulder, to be ready to write down whatever comes to you.

The other is to seek it out, will it to appear, train it to arrive on time and on command.

The first method plays into our fears. After all, if you’re not inspired, it’s not your fault if you don’t ship, it’s not your fault if you don’t do
anything remarkable—hey, I don’t have any good ideas, you can’t expect me to speak up if I don’t have any good ideas.

The second method challenges the fear and announces that you’ve abandoned the Resistance and instead prepared to ship. Your first idea might not be good, or even your second or your tenth, but once you dedicate yourself to this cycle, yes, in fact, you will ship and make a difference.

Simple example: start a blog and post once a day on how your favorite company can improve its products or its service. Do it every day for a month; post one new, actionable idea each and every day. Within a few weeks, you’ll notice the change in the way you find, process, and ship ideas.

There are three stages of preparation. (For a speech, a product, an interview, a sporting event …)

The first I’ll call the beginner stage. This is where you make huge progress as a result of incremental effort.

The second is the novice stage. This is the stage in which incremental effort leads to a not-so-visible increase in quality.

And the third is the expert stage. Here’s where races are won, conversations are started, and sales are made. A huge amount of effort, off-limits to most people, earns you just a tiny bit of quality. But it’s enough to get through the Dip and be seen as the obvious winner.

Here’s the myth: The novice stage is useful.

If all you’re going to do is go through the novice stage before you ship, don’t bother. If you’re not prepared to put in the grinding work of the expert stage, just do the beginner stuff and stop screwing around. Make it good enough and ship it and move on.

We diddle around in the novice stage because we’re afraid. We polish (but not too much) and go to meetings (plenty of them) and look for deniability, spending hours and hours instead of shipping. And the product, in the end, is not so much better.

I’m all for expertise. Experts, people who push through and make something stunning—we need more of them. But let’s be honest: if
you’re not in the habit of being an expert, it’s unlikely that your current mode of operation is going to change that any time soon.

Go, give a speech. Go, start a blog. Go, ship that thing that you’ve been hiding. Begin, begin, begin, and then improve. Being a novice is way overrated.

Where, precisely, do you go in order to get permission to make a dent in the universe?

The accepted state is to be a cog. The preferred career is to follow the well-worn path, to read the instructions, to do what we’re told. It’s safer that way. Less responsibility. More people to blame.

When someone comes along and says, “not me, I’m going down a different path,” we flinch. We’re not organized to encourage and celebrate the unproven strivers. It’s safer to tear them down (with their best interests at heart, of course). Better, we think, to let them down easy, to encourage them to take a safer path, to be realistic, to hear it from us rather than from the marketplace.

Perhaps, years ago, this was good advice. Today, it’s clearly not. In fact, it’s disrespectful, ill-advised, and shortsighted. How dare we cheer when a bold change-maker stumbles? Our obligation today isn’t to spare the feelings of our peers and shield them from future disappointment. It’s to establish an expectation that of course they’re going to do something that matters.

If you think there’s a chance you can make a dent, GO.

Now.

Hurry.

You have my permission. Not that you needed it.

I think laziness has changed.

It used to be about avoiding physical labor. The lazy person could nap or have a cup of tea while others got hot and sweaty and exhausted.
Part of the reason society frowns on the lazy is that this behavior means more work for the rest of us.

When it came time to carry the canoe over the portage, I was always hard to find. The effort and the pain gave me two good reasons to be lazy.

But the new laziness has nothing to do with physical labor and everything to do with fear. If you’re not going to make those sales calls or invent that innovation or push that insight, you’re not avoiding it because you need physical rest. You’re hiding out because you’re afraid of expending emotional labor.

This is great news, because it’s much easier to become brave about extending yourself than it is to become strong enough to haul an 80-pound canoe.

1. For the money
   
2. To be challenged
   
3. For the pleasure/calling of doing the work
   
4. For the impact it makes on the world
   
5. For the reputation you build in the community
   
6. To solve interesting problems
   
7. To be part of a group and to experience the mission
   
8. To be appreciated
   

Why do we always focus on the first? Why do we advertise jobs or promotions as being generic on items #2 through #8 and differentiated only by #1?

In fact, unless you’re a drug kingpin or a Wall Street trader, my guess is that the other factors are at work every time you think about your work.

That needs to be the goal when you seek a job.

Bob Dylan earned the right to make records, and instead of using it
to create ever more commercial versions of his old stuff, he used it as a platform to do art.

A brilliant programmer finds a job in a small company, and instead of seeing it as a grind, churning out what’s asked, he uses it as a platform to hone his skills and to ship code that changes everything.

A waiter uses his job serving patrons as a platform for engagement, for building a reputation, and for learning how to delight.

A blogger starts measuring page views and ends up racing to the bottom with nothing but scintillating gossip and pandering. Or perhaps she decides to use the blog as a platform to take herself and her readers somewhere they will be glad to go.

There’s no rigid line between a job and art. Instead, there’s an opportunity. Both you and your boss get to decide if your job is a platform or just a set of tasks.

Go to work on a regular basis.

Art is hard. Selling is hard. Writing is hard. Making a difference is hard.

When you’re doing hard work, getting rejected, failing, working it out—this is a dumb time to make a situational decision about whether it’s time for a nap or a day off or a coffee break.

Zig taught me this twenty years ago. Make your schedule
before
you start. Don’t allow setbacks or blocks or anxiety to push you to say, “hey, maybe I should check my email for a while, or you know, I could use a nap.” If you do that, the lizard brain is quickly trained to use that escape hatch again and again.

Isaac Asimov wrote and published 400 (!) books by using this scheduling technique.

The first five years of my solo business, when the struggle seemed never ending, I never missed a day, never took a nap. (I also committed to ending the day at a certain time and not working on the weekends. It cuts both ways.)

In short: show up.

The economy will be going gangbusters.

Your knowledge will reach critical mass.

Your boss will give you the go-ahead (and agree to take the heat if things don’t work out).

Your family situation will be stable.

The competition will stop innovating.

Someone else will drive the carpool, freeing up a few hours a week.

There won’t be any computer viruses to deal with, and

Your neighbor will return the lawnmower.

Then …

You can ship, you can launch your project, you can make the impact you’ve been planning on.

Of course, all of these things
won’t
happen. Why not ship anyway?

[While others were hiding last year, new products were launched, new subscriptions were sold, and new companies came into being. While others were lying low, websites got new traffic, organizations grew, and contracts were signed. While others were stuck, money was being lent, star employees were hired, and trust was built.

Most of all, art got created.

That’s okay, though, because it’s all going to happen again in 2011. It’s not too late, just later than it was.]

No, you shouldn’t text while driving, or talk on the cell phone, or argue with your dog, or drive blindfolded. It’s an idiot move, one that often leads to death (yours or someone else’s).

I don’t think you should text while working, either. Or use social networking software of any kind, for that matter. And you probably shouldn’t eat crunchy chips, either.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing all that at work (in moderation). But not while you’re
working
. Not if working is the act that
leads to the scarce output, the hard stuff, the creative uniqueness they actually pay you for.

You’re competing against people in a state of flow, people who are truly committed, people who care deeply about the outcome. You can’t merely wing it and expect to keep up with them. Setting aside all the safety valves and pleasant distractions is the first way to send yourself the message that you’re playing for keeps. After all, if you sit for an hour and do exactly nothing, not one thing, you’ll be ashamed of yourself. But if you waste that hour updating, pinging, being pinged, and crunching, well, hey, at least you stayed in touch.

Raise the stakes.

That’s one of the most important decisions you’ll make today.

How much time and effort should be spent on intake, on inbound messages, on absorbing data …

… and how much time and effort should be invested in output, in creating something new.

There used to be a significant limit on available intake. Once you read all the books in the college library on your topic, it was time to start writing.

Now that the availability of opinions, expertise, and email is infinite, I think the last part of that sentence is the most important:

Time to start writing.

Or whatever it is you’re not doing, but merely planning on doing.

Amanda Hocking is making a million dollars a year publishing her own work to the Kindle. No publisher.

Rebecca Black has reached more than 15 million listeners, like it or not, without a record label.

Are we better off without gatekeepers? Well, it was gatekeepers that
brought us the unforgettable lyrics of Terry Jacks in 1974, and it’s gatekeepers that are spending a fortune bringing out pop songs and books that don’t sell.

I’m not sure that this is even the right question. Whether or not we’re better off, the fact is that the gatekeepers—the pickers—are reeling, losing power, and fading away. What are you going to do about it?

It’s a cultural instinct to wait to get picked. To seek out the permission and authority that come from a publisher or a talk-show host or even a blogger saying, “I pick you.” Once you reject that impulse and realize that no one is going to select you—that Prince Charming has chosen another house—then you can get to work.

If you’re hoping that the HR people you sent your résumé to are about to pick you, it’s going to be a long wait. Once you understand that there are problems just waiting to be solved, once you realize that you have all the tools and all the permission you need, then opportunities to contribute abound.

No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.

Making something is work. Let’s define work, for a moment, as something you create that has a lasting value in the market.

Twenty years ago, my friend Jill discovered Tetris. Unfortunately, she was working on her PhD thesis at the time. On any given day, the attention she spent on the game felt right to her. It was a choice, and she made it. It was more fun to move blocks than it was to write her thesis. Day by day this time adds up … she wasted so much time that she had to stay in school and pay for another six months to finish her doctorate.