Use your passions as a guide to which activities and events you should be seeking out to network11/16/2012
Shared interests are the basic building blocks of any relationship. Race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or business, professional, and personal interests are relational glue. It makes sense, then, that events and activities where you’ll thrive are those built around interests you’re most passionate about. Friendship is created out of the quality of time spent between two people, not the quantity.
There is a misconception that to build a bond, two people need to spend a great deal of time together. This is not the case. Outside your family and work, you probably can count the people you see a great deal of in the course of a month on two hands. Yet, surely, you have more than ten friends. It is what you do together that matters, not how often you meet. That’s why you have to pay special attention to where you’re most comfortable and what activities you most enjoy. Usually it’s the events and activities you excel at that you’re most passionate about. So it makes sense to make these the focus of your efforts. For me, my love of food and exercise has led to the most amazing get-togethers. For others, it may be stamps, baseball cards, politics, or skydiving that brings you together. Make a list of the things you’re most passionate about. Use your passions as a guide to which activities and events you should be seeking out. Use them to engage new and old contacts. If you love baseball, for example, take potential and current clients to a ballgame. It doesn’t matter what you do, only that it’s something you love doing. Your passions and the events you build around them will create deeper levels of intimacy. Pay attention to matching the event to the particular relationship you’re trying to build. I’ve got an informal list of activities I use to keep in touch with my business and personal friends. Here are some things I like to do: 1. Fifteen minutes and a cup of coffee. It’s quick, it’s out of the office, and it’s a great way to meet someone new. 2. Conferences. If I’m attending a conference in, say, Seattle, I’ll pull out a list of people in the area I know or would like to know better and see if they might like to drop in for a particularly interesting keynote speech or dinner. 3. Invite someone to share a workout or a hobby (golf, chess, stamp collecting, a book club, etc.). 4. A quick early breakfast, lunch, drinks after work, or dinner together. There’s nothing like food to break the ice. 5. Invite someone to a special event. For me, a special event such as the theater, a book-signing party, or a concert is made even more special if I bring along a few people who I think might particularly enjoy the occasion. 6. Entertaining at home. I view dinner parties at home as sacred. I like to make these events as intimate as possible. To ensure they stay that way, I generally will invite only one or two people I don’t know that well. By dinner’s end, I want those people leaving my home feeling as if they’ve made a whole new set of friends, and that’s hard to do if it’s a dinner filled with strangers. Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz What makes these new models so powerful is that they tap the “dark energy” (or, as writer Clay Shirky calls it, “cognitive surplus”) that’s been all around us already. It’s the ultimate market solution: open-innovation communities connect latent supply (talent not already employed in that field) with latent demand (products not already economical to create the usual way).
Every few generations, the fundamental means of production is transformed: steam, electricity, standardization, the assembly line, lean manufacturing, and now robotics. Sometimes this comes from management techniques, but the really powerful changes come from new tools. And there is no tool more powerful than the computer itself. Rather than just driving the modern factory, the computer is becoming the model for it. Infinitely flexible and adaptable, general-purpose industrial robots can be combined to create the universal Making Machine. And like computers, they work at any scale, from the mile-long NUMMI plant to your desktop. That—not just the rise of advanced technology, but also its democratization—is the real revolution. In the mid-1930s, Ronald Coase, then a recent London School of Economics graduate, was musing over what to many people might have seemed a silly question: Why do companies exist? Why do we pledge our allegiance to an institution and gather in the same building to get things done? His eventual answer, which he published in his landmark 1937 article “The Nature of the Firm,”33 was this: companies exist to minimize “transaction costs”—time, hassle, confusion, mistakes. When people share a purpose and have established roles, responsibilities, and modes of communication, it’s easy to make things happen. You simply turn to the person in the next cubicle and ask that individual to do his or her job. But in a passing comment in a 1990 interview, Bill Joy, one of the cofounders of Sun Microsystems, revealed a flaw in Coase’s model. “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else,” he observed, stating what has now come to be known as “Joy’s Law.” His implication: for the sake of minimizing transaction costs, we don’t work with the best people. Instead, we work with whomever our company was able to hire. Even for the best companies, that’s a woefully inefficient process. Makers: The New Industrial Revolution by Chris Anderson 6 Things to Improve Your Concentration “If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.” Chinese Proverb "The limits to multitasking are clear when one realises that learning is done by reading or listening to the information being relayed, this information then needs to be reasoned and subsequently it needs to be memorised. The ability to capture the information in the first place is directly proportional to how much attention you provided. With constant interruptions it is simple to see that lack of attention requires the inefficient revisiting of ideas that have already been reasoned and greatly hinders any momentum in the thinking process which ends costly in terms of time. Baldwin effect (Baldwin effect- a theory in evolutionary biology suggesting a selection process in learnt abilities that make them innate in future generations) applied to attention and memory (see “Did Meditating Make Us Human?” by Matt J. Rossano). The brain is believed to function on different frequencies with each corresponding to a state of mind. These are classified as follows: 1. Delta- up to 4Hz, associated with deep sleep. 2. Theta- 4-8Hz, associated with drowsiness. 3. Alpha- 8-13Hz, associated with relaxed awareness. 4. Beta- 13-30Hz, associated with being alert and active. 5. Gamma- 30-100+Hz, associated with cross modal sensory processing. It is the Alpha frequency that we should aim to attain for the purposes of learning. The techniques should be practised daily, preferably 3 times a day, consisting of two long sessions and one short. Technique 1- Mantras Mantra chanting is a very popular technique in eastern traditions which was popularised in the west during the 1960s. The idea is to repeat a phrase, prayer or syllable over and over either vocally or in one’s mind. Technique 2- Letters Visual techniques are favoured by many, given most people’s tendency to rely on this modality (compare how much time you spend on TV or PC versus smelling flowers). However, the technique presented here relies on the ability to picture a letter with the inner eye, an ability that some find difficult at first. Technique 3- Breathing Breathing techniques play a key role in the meditative practices of Indian Yoga and Chinese Qigong. There is a great deal of variety in the teaching approaches and some conflicts depending on the branch of the art practised. The subject is deep and the subtleties of each technique can take a long time to master. The aim of this manual is to be practical yet effective, hence the technique introduced below is the one that has shown to be the easiest to master whilst being valuable in terms of the results produced. The technique is sometimes called “Buddhist breathing” or simply “abdominal breathing” and the procedure is as follows: 1. Set an alarm to ring after 10 minutes. 2. Sit comfortably with your feet flat on the floor and your hands resting on your thighs, eyes closed. 3. Breathe in whilst allowing your abdominal area to expand, breathe out whilst pushing your abdominal area in. 4. The breaths should be slow and natural, you should not force your stomach in or out, the movement should be without tension. 5. Progress slowly and do not tense, begin with 5 seconds for the in breath and 5 seconds for the out breath and allow for longer if you are able to do so (7-10 seconds for in and out); the key point is not to tense and not to force it to happen. This movement is very natural (it is how one breathes as a baby until early childhood) and can be relearned with practise. Tension defeats the purpose and can have undesirable effects. 6. When thoughts intrude (and they will), just let go. When they come back, let go again and again without reacting, without analysing the reason why the thoughts recur. Just let go and focus on the abdominal area moving in and out with your breathing. At the beginning, the physical method needs to be learnt. With 10 minutes every day, a reasonable comfort with the technique can be attained in 2-3 months, but each person is different and timelines should not be the gauge. It is whether you feel relaxed and focused that should signal whether you are progressing along the correct path. Technique 4- Countdown We tend to use numbers frequently in our everyday life and the notion of countdown tends to solicit an expectation of an event to follow. This technique is simple to complete and involves a dynamic audio and visualisation processes which progress according to your thoughts. The procedure is as follows: 1. Set an alarm to ring after 10 minutes. 2. Sit comfortably with your feet flat on the floor and your hands resting on your thighs, eyes closed. 3. Begin with 100 and slowly countdown to 1 waiting approximately 3 seconds between each number. Try and picture the number (black number on white background) as well as saying it in your mind (not out loud). 4. Do not count the seconds between each number, just get into a comfortable rhythm and count down. 100...99...98...97 etc (counting in your mind and visualising at the same time). The slower you count down the better. 5. When thoughts intrude (and they will), just let go. When they come back, let go again and again without reacting, without analysing the reason why the thoughts recur. Just let go and focus on the countdown. 6. Once you reach 90, with every thought that distracts you, let go and return to 90. For example: 93...92...91...90...89...88...thought...90...89...88...87...86...thought...90... etc. 7. Do not let the fact that you are going over and over back to 90 because of repetitive thoughts, distract or disturb you. You should also avoid analysing the thoughts-- just let go. With practise, this technique will allow you to measure your progress by realising how long you can countdown without any distracting thought. Once you have mastered the technique and can proceed to 1 easily within the 10 minutes session, begin with 200 and increase as necessary. Technique 5- 3D objects This is another visualisation technique that builds on the previous by introducing a 3-dimensional object compared to the 2-dimensional nature of visualising a letter or a number. This practise helps the development of the inner eye, which is extremely useful for memory techniques as well as mental arithmetic. The easiest objects to begin with are items that are viewed on a daily basis, Technique 6- Smell To the author’s knowledge, this technique has not been covered by previous work on the subject of meditation; it uses an important sense that is often neglected but whose significance in mental performance is substantial. The idea is to use the memory of a strong pleasant smell and to meditate only on it. Technique 7- Touch This is another technique, which to the best of this author’s knowledge, has not been made available in the literature yet. The idea is to train another modality that tends to be ignored in mental activities. The sense of touch can trigger a very relaxing response and meditating on it can train the user to solicit these responses without the physical stimulus being present. Technique 8- Relaxing scene This technique builds on the previous exercises and allows you to experience a full scene with all the feelings that your senses were able to capture. The procedure is as follows: 1. Set an alarm to ring after 10 minutes. 2. Sit comfortably with your feet flat on the floor and your hands resting on your thighs, eyes closed. 3. Try and think of a pleasantly relaxing scene that you would like to experience; a prototypical example would be sitting on a deserted beach by the water, feeling the waves wash over your body and then recede back to the ocean and the warmth of the sun sprinkling over your body until the next wave washes to the shore with a great whooshing sound. 4. You start the exercise by focusing on each individual sensation (i.e smell, touch, sound, view and taste) just once and then let go. Spend a few seconds on each modality and then move to the next step. 5. Then feel as though you are in the scene, this is now the point of focus, do not try and focus or shift from each individual sensation, instead just focus on being in the scene and experiencing the overall scene. When you are able to just feel as though you are there, the individual sensations will creep in on their own- all you need to do is maintain the feeling of being there as your point of focus. 6. When thoughts intrude (and they will), just let go. When they come back let go again and again without reacting, without analysing the reason why the thoughts recur. Just let go and focus on the feeling of being there. 7. Essentially you are focusing your attention on one feeling here, it is just that this feeling is complex and carries several modalities within it. Technique 9- Background Sound This technique aims to utilise noises that are present in one’s environment and demonstrates to the practitioner how such sounds, that may cause frustration at times, can be equally soothing if a different interpretation is takes place in the mind. Mastery of this technique would provide the practitioner with a substantially improved control of his environment, allowing it to affect him in the way that he chooses. This is a valuable tool for competitive performances or any pressure situations that take place in noisy environments. It is therefore paramount to have a specific training plan in place and basic rules to enforce compliance with the training. Most importantly it is necessary to have a tool to measure progress in order to verify whether the approach taken is effective. With concentration, measuring of progress is challenging since it is highly dependent on the environment, external factors, general mood of the day, worries/concerns recently experienced, as well as due to the difficulty in defining the unit of measurement. To achieve the task of measurement, we will use the countdown technique to plot how far down the countdown the practitioner was able to descend. This should not be done daily since such a period does not allow sufficient time for improvement; doing so fortnightly and plotting the results may be a reasonable time period. Rules 1. Train every day- the refined skill of concentration is built gradually on previous days’ progress. Missing a day can take you a several steps back and cause frustration due to apparent lack of progress. It is therefore paramount that the training is completed every day without fail; if urgent circumstances present themselves then the training can be reduced to just one 10 minute session. 2. Do not try to catch up- do not try to make up for a missed day by doing double the next day; this may overload your system and cause frustration and perhaps even make you feel as though this is a chore. It is certainly not a chore; these are relaxation exercises and should be viewed with anticipation just as much as one would anticipate a tasty meal or a good movie or finishing work on Friday. Regular practise is the key, do not overdo for the wrong reasons. 3. Measure your progress every two weeks using the countdown technique- As discussed above, progress can be measured using the countdown technique, i.e. by recording the lowest number the practitioner arrived at during the session once 10mins have elapsed. The training schedules below only include the countdown technique from week 5 onwards because it is advisable to have a month of training that does not involve any pressure of achievement. For some, this is a crucial component in gaining confidence with the ideas being taught. 4. Follow the training schedules and continue your practise even after mastery- below are simple training schedules that focus the first few months on the core techniques, those that are simplest to perform and most effective. Once mastery has been achieved you can design your own schedule or continue with the one suggested. The important point here is that training should not be stopped after the 12th week; to maintain the skill gained would require regular practise, and, with concentration, the level of mastery is never finite- there is always a deeper experience that one can strive towards. 5. Do not compare your progress with others- concentration and relaxation are not competitive sports, once ego begins to interfere with the training, all effort would have been wasted. Concentration is a means to an end; it is there to improve your ability to learn as well as to relax. Comparing progress is fraught with dangers since the person you are discussing with may have different views, may not be honest with his views or may discourage you altogether by suggesting something else to try. Schedule The schedule below requires the user to set aside 20 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes at lunch and 10 minutes in the evening. This may not be possible for all readers but it is encouraged for optimal results. If these three daily sessions cannot be completed on a regular basis then at the very least, practise once a day for 20 minutes. It should be noted that practising only once a day would result in a longer period before measurable progress takes place. This is not a bad situation if it is the only available choice, but the key is to be realistic with what is possible within one’s schedule and execute regularly on that basis without fail. It is quite simple, without memory of an event or experience, no learning can take place; and if no learning takes place no growth in ones abilities can materialise: you are left in a state of stagnation and inertia." The Manual- A guide to the Ultimate Study Method (USM); covering Speed Reading, Super Memory, Laser Concentration, Rapid Mental Arithmetic and the Ultimate Study Method (USM) by Rod Bremer Join our mailing list and we will send you one to two emails a week for 12 weeks teaching you the basic body weight exercises, nutrition guidelines, and mindset tools you need to be Indestructible. For all his legendary success and greatness as a president, Abraham Lincoln lost all the time.11/13/2012
For all his legendary success and greatness as a president, Abraham Lincoln lost all the time. Lincoln experienced numerous business, political, and personal setbacks over his life. But he never let any of his failures discourage him from pursuing his goals. Lincoln failed in business. He failed as a farmer. He lost running for state legislature. He had a nervous breakdown. He was rejected for a job as a land officer. When he was finally elected to the legislature, he lost the vote to be speaker. He ran for Congress and lost. He ran for and lost a U.S. Senate seat. He ran for vice president and lost. He ran for the Senate and lost again. And, when he was finally elected president, the nation he was elected to lead broke apart. But by this time, all the activities, experiences, and people he came to know in the process helped him set a direction for that country that will stand as one of America’s great legacies. My point is, behind any successful person stands a long string of failures. But toughness and tenacity like Lincoln’s can overcome these setbacks. Lincoln knew the only way to gain ground, to move forward, to turn his goals into reality, was to learn from his setbacks, to stay engaged, and press on!
Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz You want to be an entrepreneur? Then go meet an entrepreneur. Meet as many as you can. Seriously, that is a better plan than getting a MBA (remember I have one of those), or risking all your hard earned capital, or simply stumbling around in the dark of your ignorance. Go find a entrepreneur and work with them. Find one, and get to know them, learn from them. I suggest this for two reasons; first you are only as valuable as your network, and you need to start to build one, and second you will discover that they are no smarter than you are. You will watch them and start to think, that you can do that. That is what you want because that is good, the only difference between you and a entrepreneur, is that they took action, and once you take action, good things will start to head your way. Too often people think they just jump out of a 9 to 5 job, hustle a little, and then the money pours in, but it doesn't work like that. Running your own business means you need to understand how it all works, the better yoiur skill set, the better the odds of succeeding. It is always better to learn from someone who has masde it, learn what they know, see what works, and then move those skills to your own business. It never hurts to learn more, learn from an expert, and build your network at the same time.. D The dynamics of a network are similar to those of a would-be celebrity in Hollywood: Invisibility is a fate far worse than failure. It means that you should always be reaching out to others, over breakfast, lunch, whatever. It means that if one meeting happens to go sour, you have six other engagements lined up just like it the rest of the week. In building a network, remember: Above all, never, ever disappear. Keep your social and conference and event calendar full. As an up-and-comer, you must work hard to remain visible and active among your ever-budding network of friends and contacts.
His formula is not complicated, but it is rigorous. He talks to at least fifty people each day. He spends hours a week walking his company plant talking to employees up and down the ladder. If you send an e-mail to him or his assistant, you can be sure there will be a response within hours. He attributes his success to the blue-collar work ethic and sensibilities he was raised with by his father. About his more starched white-collar colleagues, he once told me that while he had learned what these people know, they would never have an opportunity to learn what he knew. How do I meet everyone I want to meet during the course of a week? Someone once remarked cynically, “I’d have to clone myself to take all the meetings you take.” “Ah, you’re onto something,” I responded. “I don’t clone myself. I clone the event.” Here’s what I mean. A few months ago, I flew into New York for a two-day business stint. There were a number of people I wanted to see: an old client and friend of mine who was the former president of Lego and was now trying to figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, the COO of Broadway Video, with whom I wanted to discuss a new branded entertainment TV show for one of my clients, and a close friend that I hadn’t seen in too long. I had two days, three people I wanted to see, and only one available time slot to see them all. How do you manage a situation like this? I “cloned” the dinner and invited all of them to join me. Each would benefit from knowing the others, and I’d be able to catch up with all of them and perhaps even get some creative input about the new TV show. My friend, who has a fantastic sense of humor, would enjoy the group and add a little levity to what might have been just a stodgy business meeting. I asked my friend to join me a half hour in advance at the hotel I was staying at for a little one-on-one time. And if the details of the project I was discussing with the COO were private, I might schedule a little one-on-one time with him after dinner. The point is I’m constantly looking to include others in whatever I’m doing. It’s good for them, good for me, and good for everyone to broaden their circle of friends. Sometimes I’ll take potential employees for a workout and conduct the interview over a run. As a makeshift staff meeting, I’ll occasionally ask a few employees to share a car ride with me to the airport. I figure out ways to as much as triple my active working day through such multitasking. And, in the process, I’m connecting people from different parts of my “community.” The more new connections you establish, the more opportunities you’ll have to make even more new connections. As Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, says: The value of a network grows proportional to the square of the number of its users. In the case of the Internet, every new computer, every new server, and every new user added expands the possibilities for everyone else who’s already there. The same principle holds true in growing your web of relationships. The bigger it gets, the more attractive it becomes, and the faster it grows. That’s why I say that a network is like a muscle—the more you work it, the bigger it gets. Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time - by Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz "How can you construct an offer that your prospects won’t refuse?
Remember, first you need to sell what people want to buy. 1. Understand that what we want and what we say we want are not always the same thing. 2. Most of us like to buy, but we don’t usually like to be sold. An offer you can’t refuse may apply subtle pressure, but nobody likes a hard sell. MAGIC FORMULA: THE RIGHT AUDIENCE, THE RIGHT PROMISE, THE RIGHT TIME = OFFER YOU CAN’T REFUSE BASICS What are you selling? ______ How much does it cost? ______ Who will take immediate action on this offer? ______ BENEFITS The primary benefit is ______ An important secondary benefit is ______ What are the main objections to the offer? Why should someone buy this now? What can I add to make this offer even more compelling? Provide a nudge. The very best offers create a “You must have this right now!” feeling among consumers, but many other offers can succeed by creating a less immediate sense of urgency. Just as what we want and what we say we want aren’t always the same thing, the way we place a value on something isn’t always rational. You must learn to think about value the way your customers do, not necessarily the way you would like them to." The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau "That's been one of my mantras -- focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."
"Picasso had a saying: 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas...I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, artists, zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world." Steve Jobs-- 1994 “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”
― Anthony Trollope Set a goal. Doing business is how you learn business. Selling daily, as a discipline, is the best way to learn. Most successful entrepreneurs make a goal and stick to it, they create benchmarks. A time goal can easily be squandered as you sit and agonize over your websites layout or your copy. Sure you were at your desk for three hours, but what did you sell? Set a goal, go for a certain number of sales or additions to your list. I have a spreadsheet that logs my goals and targets, to tell me how I am doing. I record the number of emails I get on my projects. The spreadsheet automatically tallies my daily and weekly production. I review this each week. If I’m not making my quota, I give myself a talking to and get back on track. But be kind to yourself. If you don’t make your quota one day or one week, forget about it. Get to work on your new week. Don’t give up. The main difference between successful entrepreneurs and unsuccessful entrepreneurs is persistence. There are legions of entrepreneurs who work years and years to build their business. They continue to build because that’s what they are inside, builders. That’s what you are. That’s why you’re reading this blog. Keep building. In the end, that’s the best advice there is D I like this small paragraph because it tells us something critical, all interactions on the web are marketing opportunities. Not just to sell, but to network, and to build communities.
D "Community management is marketing. Tutorial posts are marketing. Facebook updates are marketing. E-mailing other Makers in related fields is marketing. Of course, it’s not just marketing: the reason that it’s so effective is that it’s also providing something of value that people appreciate and pay attention to. But at the end of the day, everything you do, from the naming of your product to whose coattail you decide to ride (like we chose Arduino), is at least partly a marketing decision. Above all, your community is your best marketing channel. Not only is that the source for the word-of-mouth and viral marketing that you’ll need, but it’s also a safe place to talk about your own products, as enthusiastically as you want. If you’ve given people a reason to gather that serves their needs and interests, crowing about your cool new gizmo isn’t advertising, it’s content!" Makers: The New Industrial Revolution by Chris Anderson |
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