Up Market |
| Posted: 25 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT Fiction author Edgar Rice Burroughs was a prolific writer, publishing nearly 70 novels in his 75 years. Burroughs was the creator of Tarzan, a much better series of books than the video representations and popular culture would lead you to believe. He also wrote the story of John Carter of Mars which is finally coming out of the obscurity it never deserved. He wrote seven different science fiction adventure series besides numerous western and historical fictions. His work revels in experimentation, with the question, “What if things were very different from what we believe them to be?” In 1914 Burroughs wrote the first of a 7-book series about a fictional place called Pellucidar, where time as we know it doesn’t exist. Pellucidar’s location is revealed in the title of the first book in the series, At the Earth’s Core. Burroughs envisioned the earth as a hollow ball, with a microscopic sun at its center, another world on the inside of the shell. Because its sun never set, never moved, time was a concept unknown to its inhabitants. Fine for them, but when inventor David Innes accidentally stumbles in, it’s one of his biggest adjustments. (Burroughs is such a storyteller that, yes, it’s possible to accidentally stumble through miles of the earth’s crust to a hidden world.) I’ll come back to this timeless imaginary world in a moment. But first, let’s talk about fear’s apparent ability to alter time in our world. My Life Flashed Before My EyesWe’ve all heard it in the movies. Most of us have never been in a truly life-threatening circumstance. Those who have tell fascinating (and consistent) stories of a fundamental change in their perception of time. Specifically, time slows down. During recall, the events during incredibly short periods of time seem to have taken far longer than they measurably did. One chap described the thoughts which went through his mind when he fell off a roof. It seemed to take a long time, yet physics tells us he fell for less than one second. Experiments, though, have confirmed that during terrifying events, time does not, in fact, slow. There has to be another explanation for the apparently universal perception. This is Important, So Pay AttentionThat’s exactly what your brain tells itself all day long: this is important, so pay attention. But only to some things. Most of what we experience has little relevance. The wall across the room from me is the same as it was when I sat down; the same as it was yesterday and every day since we moved into this house. There is no value in my brain paying attention to it, according it memory space. Until my life is threatened. Now What’s Important?Our brain’s primary job is to keep us alive. Most of the time, that’s about the future. It’s about planning and preparing and slowly, methodically, executing. When our brain realizes that our existence is in immediate danger, it stops differentiating. It doesn’t take the time to decide what’s important and what’s not. The usual process of throttling input goes out the window. Anything could be important right now, so our brain opens the floodgates and lets it all in. More memories during a moment in time creates the perception that more time has passed. It turns out that we measure time, not by the clock, but by our perception of the duration of the events we remember. More memories, more time. At the Earth’s CoreIn Burroughs’ imaginary world, Innes discovers that when he’s more active compared to others in his life, more time passes for him. In one chapter, he is separated from a friend, a native of Pellucidar. Innes has a series of adventures, taking six or seven sleep periods (the only real measurement of time these folks have). Arriving at their shared apartment after what seemed a week of harrowing adventure, Innes expects surprise and excitement, but gets instead a polite nod. Inness expresses shock that his friend hasn’t missed him. While he feels he’s been gone a week, his friend has just arrived from the event where they were separated and hasn’t even had time to get hungry for his next meal yet. Time, in Pellucidar, is based entirely on the amount of activity in one’s life. So, if we measure time by the number of memories created… What if we were oblivious to our surroundings, and created virtually no memories at all? Flow in the ZoneIf you’ve ever experienced total absorption in a task, you’ve probably also experienced what artists, programmers, and others call the zone, what scientist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls flow. We’re so absorbed that what we’re doing is all that exists. We forget hunger and bodily needs. We are oblivious to our surroundings, to other people. In short, there is no input, therefore there are no memories. I believe that this total filtering of environmental input, the lack of anything memorable (literally) during flow is what accounts for the sense of timelessness which always accompanies it. No memories, no time. Time is memory.  |
| Posted: 25 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT
Every so often, I run across a colleague who has clearly found a great VA. That person is like an extension of their brain, and the two together are way stronger than the sum of their parts. But when I try to find a VA, I get string after string of duds – late work, crappy work, people who just fall off the face of the earth… What am I doing wrong? Signed, Bad VA Magnet Dear Magnet, Hiring a VA is hard. It’s just as hard, if not harder, than hiring a full-time employee. I’m not sure where people have gotten the idea that hiring a VA is easy, but the last time I checked, the people we’re hiring are people, and have the same foibles and follies that humans everywhere do. So how do you find the ones you can work with? There are a number of techniques. First, examine what failed in your previous experiences with outsourcing. Did you fail to make your expectations clear? What about your job descriptions? (If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, check out last week’s post. I’ve found that when an outsourcing project fails, 90% of the time it’s due to my own mistakes. But that said, all VAs are not created equal. If you’re hiring for a specific technical purpose, know enough about what you want done to understand the basics of what you’re requesting. Chances are that you know someone who can help you to brainstorm a question to ask your applicants about the project. Including a specific question in your job listing serves two purposes – one, it weeds out the people who don’t bother to read your listing, and two, you can be assured that the people who answer it wrong don’t have the skills needed to do the job. After including a question, the next best way to weed out applicants is to make your expectations 100% clear. Content, turnaround time, progress reports – lay them all out in your job posting and state that pay will be contingent on success. If people can’t measure up to your standards, give them the best opportunity possible to recognize it and not apply. Be prepared to enforce your standards, as well. Letting someone go if they don’t meet expectations can be hard, especially if you connected in other areas. But it’s better to let them go quickly and restart your search for someone who works for you rather than drawing out the process by giving them third, fourth and fifth chances. And, of course, once you find someone that works well, make sure you never let them go! Good luck! Kirsten Have a productivity question? E-mail it to Kirsten and get an answer!  |
| Five Ways to Get Rockstars to Collaborate Posted: 25 May 2012 02:00 AM PDT Last month on April 25 was World Malaria Day. It’s a day to refocus worldwide efforts to fight malaria, a battle that's slowly being won. But it’s also a chance to lift the veil (or net in this case) on how to engage and then collaborate with the Rockstars, those big names in your world who could help take your project from obscurity to the spotlight. Here's the connection. In September, superstar blogger Seth Godin and I published a book, End Malaria. Despite the title, the book doesn’t directly deal with malaria at all. Rather, it’s a collection of 62 leading business and productivity thought leaders sharing their very best insights, strategies and tips on how to do more Great Work – the work that has real meaning and makes a difference. And the real magic? Every cent of profit from every copy of the book – a minimum of $20 per book – went to our partner organization, Malaria No More. You’ll know many of the contributors: Tom Peters, Brene Brown, Tony Schwartz, David Allen, Dan Pink, Nilofer Merchant, David, Rock, Sally Hogshead, Mitch Joel, Dave Ramsey, Josh Linkner, Nancy Duarte… and the list goes on. If the world of business book authors could “do a Live Aid” then this was going to be it. Not only did the book come together in a record time – less than six months from conception to launch – but it hit #2 on Amazon.com and has already raised more than $300,000. Here's what we did to make it happen with these 62 Rockstars. 1. Boldly invite. It's all too easy to assume that the A-Listers are beyond your reach – as indeed sometimes they are. But a little persistence goes a long way in finding out how best to connect, and then all you need do is ask. Most people seem to never get over this simple barrier. For this project, more than 80% of the people I asked said Yes. If not you, find someone who might know them a little better than you and have them make the invitation on your behalf. 2. Start collaborating now. What made it easier to ask people is that about half of them I knew slightly from my Great Work Interview series, podcast interviews I'd been doing with the smart, cool and funky for the last four years. Find an easy way to do something now and start stringing the sticky strands of a relationship. 3. Be patient en route to the top. When I first approached Malaria No More with the concept I started with a marketing "gate keeper" who was pretty certain this would never work. But I persuaded her to set up a call with her boss – who shared her doubts but was still willing to take it another level up. The third call took us from "probably not" to "possibly…" And the final call was with founder Scott Case, for whom the only question was what other partners we could bring into the project. 4. Show them the light. Clearly, obviously, your project is awesome. Why wouldn't it be? And their participation in your project would be the cream on the cake. But equally as clearly and obviously, you're a little rabid about how awesome your project is. So make it abundantly clear why their participation in the project is all upside for them. For End Malaria it was the chance to be part of a new innovation in the world of publishing, a chance to be part of an elite tribe of contributors, and of course a chance to help save lives. 5. Respectfully nag. Getting people to say Yes is one part of the battle, but only one part. Getting them to deliver on the project is another thing altogether. Mostly people are great with deadlines, but there's always a certain percentage who adopt Douglas Adams' love of the wooshing sounds they make as they fly past. Don't despair. Keep pushing, keep nudging, keep offering to help. Like water on stone, a path gets made. Needless to say, End Malaria is still available and still saving lives. Your chance to collaborate on this project could be to pick up a copy of the book and save a life or two.  |
Dear Kirsten,| You are subscribed to email updates from Upmarket To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
Niciun comentariu:
Trimiteți un comentariu