Tag: inspiration comes from strange places

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What Is Long, and What Is Not.

“The NFL isn’t a career — it’s an experience. Most careers last 40-50 years, and people grow old in them.” — Alfred Morris

 
Two things got me thinking:

The first is that quote, at top. It’s from Alfred Morris, the rookie running back for the Washington Redskins. (That’s a photo of him sleeping on the couch. He still sleeps on the couch when he visits his parents.)

NFL players don’t usually have that kind of awareness, but Morris really seems to understand what’s happening in his life. The NFL is something most players have worked for since they hit puberty. It’s all they’ve worked for. The idea that it wouldn’t be forever is…. well, impossible.

Understanding what the NFL is — a job, an experience — and what it is not — a career, a lifestyle — is going to change everything for Morris. It’s going to let him make the most of this incredible opportunity.

But most of us can’t tell the difference between what is big, and what is not. We see a half an inch of water and we tell ourselves we’re going to drown. We hit a bump and think it’s a mountain.

We lack perspective, and that’s one thing we need most to understand the road we’re on and the places we’re headed.

There’s a second thing. I had a Latin teacher in high school, Miss Cherry. One of her quotes comes to mind now: Ars longa, vita brevis.

Art is long, but life is short.

And in high school, I remember thinking: What the hell is that? Art is long?

LONG?!

But that’s exactly what Morris is talking about, too. It’s this idea that some things are forever, and some things fade away.

The memories are long, but the job is short.

The ambitions are long, but the opportunities are short.

We work to build things that are long — but ultimately, the one thing we know is that the chances to make them are short.

Make things now, with the time you have now. To wait is to discover that now is very, very short.

Photo at top of Morris comes via the Washington Post.

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Practice Isn’t Optional.

“You really can see what makes up a winner when you put them in a lose lose situation.” — Mike Germano

 
I really like Shaquille O’Neal. I’ve written about him before on the blog. I even created a site inspired by one of his quotes.

But I’ve been reading Phil Jackson’s book about the 2003-2004 Los Angeles Lakers — the team that Jackson coached — and it sheds some interesting light onto Shaq’s behavior.

Here’s a section from part of the Lakers’ playoff run that season. Jackson had been critical of Shaq’s free throw shooting abilities. (That playoffs, he shot 109 of 254 from the line.) Here’s what Jackson had to say about one pre-game effort:

“The press made a big deal out of [Shaq’s] dedication, showing up at the arena today three hours before tip-off to work on his free throws. To me it was no big deal. That was exactly what Shaq, as a professional, should be doing.”

And… he’s absolutely right.

Where else but in sports do we hear about how hard people practice? We don’t praise the coders who spend weekends diving into the craft. We don’t compliment the writer who stays up late working on drafts that never get read.

Look: Great work only comes through hours and hours of practice. It’s not optional. And it’s not something that’s going to earn you a pat on the back.

It’s expected.

Show up early. Practice hard. Get at it.

Today’s a chance to get better.

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Say *Something* With Less.

“Be quick, but don’t hurry.” — John Wooden

 
I am guilty.

I have used 50 words where five will do. I have used entire paragraphs when words like “yes” or “no” or “I agree” would have sufficed.

Forgive me, friends. I have not always been brief.

But I am reminded, again and again, that brief can be wonderful.

Here’s Derek Sivers, who delivers a TED talk — and all the inspiration and genius that comes with it — in less than three minutes:

Here’s Patrick Ewing, a tech guy at Twitter, who manages to sum up the way I do work in a single sentence:

Here’s Joel Plaskett, who explains why growing up sucks in a song that clocks in at under two minutes:

The good old days
Well I suppose, I’m glad they’re behind us now
The only thing worse than growing up
Is never quite learning how

So that’s the first thought: We can all be more brief.

Here’s a second: There’s an expression probably you’ve heard before — “Do more with less.” But that’s not quite it.

What matters is not that you do more. It’s that you do something.

It’s not the size of the action that matters — only the action itself.

Do something. Take a baby step. Today, a simple, small thing can be truly powerful.

I’m not entirely sure what’s happening in the photo at top, but it comes via @kitkat_ch.

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Three Reasons Why Jimmy V’s ESPYs Speech Is Such An Amazing Display of Public Speaking.

“Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.” — Jim Valvano

 
I have seen Jim Valvano’s speech at the ESPYs 100 times now. Maybe more. Probably far more, actually.

I’ve seen it on TV, and I’ve watched it for inspiration on my laptop. I once saw it played on the JumboTron at Madison Square Garden — even the beer vendors stopped for 10 minutes to watch.

It is, simply, one of the most marvelous, most inspiring, most deeply human things I have ever seen.

And for people like me — namely, people who enjoy public speaking — it’s a speech that can be watched over and over. I’ve studied it. I’ve wondered: How does he command a room like that? How does he deliver a speech like that?

Three things stand out to me about the speech:

1. His Poise on Stage — People forget this, but at the start of the speech, Jimmy V tells an opening joke about Dick Vitale — and it bombs! But he presses on. His facial expressions, his voice — they never waver in this speech. He demands attention with his voice, and he commands the stage by moving left to right, pointing at the crowd, throwing his arms around. He owns that stage. He’s got a few scripted lines ready, but mostly, he’s talking off the cuff. That really resonates here.

And when the ESPN cameras try to get him off the stage, and he tells them to screw off? That’s a raw moment in which Jimmy V wins the room. That’s the moment when the speech tips from great to epic.

2. His Use of Rhetorical Devices — He does two great things here. The first is his use of the Rutgers anecdote. It takes up the middle chunk of the speech, but it’s got a killer closing line, and it really humanizes him. For a few minutes, you get to forget that this is a guy who’s dying of cancer. For a few minutes, he’s a coach — speaking to a room of athletes and coaches, and a nation of fans watching on TV.

He also breaks out two great sets of three: “If you laugh, you think, you cry, that’s a full day,” and “[Cancer] cannot touch my mind. It cannot touch my heart. It cannot touch my soul.” Orators know: If you want to connect with someone, do it with a series of three.

3. The Call to Action — And here’s what so many speeches miss. So many speakers deliver great moments. They make the audience laugh. They make the audience think.

And then they walk off.

Jimmy V doesn’t. He closes with the biggest thing: A call to action. Donate, he says, to my new foundation. Help us find a cure. It will not save my life, but it may save yours.

Who could say “no” to an ask like that?

A great speech needs an equally great call to action — something that the audience can take on once the speech is over.

The call to action is the reason why ESPN can play this speech every single year during their Jimmy V Week. Every year, even though us sports fans have seen the speech more times than we can count, Jimmy V asks us to donate.

Nearly twenty years after he first gave the speech, we still can’t say no to Jimmy V. The speech is just that great.

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When You Don’t Know The Score Of The Football Game.

“The things we create tower over us.” — Matt Dopkiss

 
I was watching an old college football game on ESPN Classic the other day. It was from the 80s.

My mom walked into the room.

“What’s the score?” she asked.

Not sure, I told her.

“How much time is left?” she asked.

No idea, I confessed.

“How many yards do they need for a first down?” she asked.

Uhhhhhh, I said.

There was no on-screen scoreboard. There was no clock. There was no yellow first-and-10 line.

I’d been watching this game for 15 minutes, and I hadn’t the slightest idea what I was looking at. I had a football game in front of me, that much I knew, but I didn’t have any context to understand it.

Early football games — and when I say early, I mean “as recently as 20 years ago” — didn’t give viewers even the most basic information on screen. And as a result, viewers like me often got left in the dark.

If you’re trying to tell a great story, the same holds true. Ask yourself: Am I giving my listeners/readers/viewers/customers the necessary context to understand my story? Do they know what’s happening? And where? And why?

Drama is great, but if your audience doesn’t know the score, they’ll be left wondering what the hell they just saw.

Give them context, and then give them a story to match.

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What Are You Looking At?

Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness.” — David Foster Wallace

 
That cartoon at the top of this post is by a cartoonist named Wally Wood, and — the title is kind of a giveaway on this — it’s a list of 22 ways to illustrate a panel in a cartoon.

Consider this: There’s only so much you can do with a cartoon. There’s only so many ways to keep a story going. There’s only so much that’s possible in a tiny rectangle.

Before looking at the Wally Wood graphic, I might have been able to name five or six ways to illustrate a panel.

But 22? I had no idea.

Point is: Whatever you’re thinking about, there’s probably another way of thinking about it. Whatever you’re looking at, there’s probably another way of looking at it.

Don’t get locked into your own perspective. Get out and listen — to friends, to critics.

Let them help you figure out what you’re really dealing with. Let them show you a new side of the problem.

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Why Ellen DeGeneres Embraced the Struggle.

“I’m so grateful that I struggled.” — Ellen DeGeneres

 
Those are the words of someone who’s really, truly learned what it’s like to see bottom. Look at her resume, and you’ll find that Ellen DeGeneres has been low places:

• She got into comedy by accident.
• She worked crappy nightclubs and bars. (Once, she worked a restaurant that had the words, “Soup of the Day: Broccoli, and Ellen DeGeneres” on the chalkboard outside. Her name was below the soup.)
• She made it to “The Tonight Show,” where she was the first woman ever to get called over to sit on Johnny Carson’s couch after performing stand-up.
• She made some movies that flopped.
• She got her own TV show.
• On that TV show, she confessed that she was gay.
• The ratings tanked, and her show was cancelled one season later.
• She couldn’t get a job in TV or movies for three years afterward.

And then somewhere in the 2000s, things just started to click. She was in “Finding Nemo.” She got her own talk show. And all that work just started to spin itself into success.

Ellen said those six words at top — “I’m so grateful that I struggled.” — at an award ceremony being held in her honor at the Kennedy Center last month. Sometimes, award ceremony acceptance speeches ring hollow, but this one hit home. And it got me thinking:

What would it be like to be on stage accepting that big award without the lifetime of struggle?

What would it be like to reach success without the bumps and the roadblocks and the failures? Would it mean as much?

What would it be like if Ellen hadn’t been willing to suck for a very long time?

When Ellen said she was thankful for the bad times, she meant this: The struggle is when you find out whether or not you’re willing to put in the work. Over the years, after all the criticism and the pain, Ellen found that it was worth it to keep putting in the work — and I think our world is better for it.

Nothing great comes in this world without a lot of work and a lot of struggle.

Embrace the struggle. Embrace the pain.

It’s the stuff that’s molding you and guiding you toward something really amazing.

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The November Edition of The Awesome File.

Every month, I put together a list of 10 things to inspire you to do better work. This is The Awesome File.

Inside this month’s Awesome File: Advice! Struggle! Hurricane photo porn! That dude from ‘Inception’ covering Lady Gaga!

1. LEARN: From Jack Donaghy.

If you’re a ’30 Rock’ fan, you already know that Jack Donaghy’s one of the best characters on TV. But it turns out that he’s also offered up some pretty good business advice over the years. These lessons in business management are pretty excellent.

2. REMEMBER: ‘Note to My 25-Year-Old Self.’

And here’s some advice from the real world. It’s from Evonne Benedict, a journalist out in Seattle. She’s got 15 pieces of advice for herself at age 25. I think no. 14 — “Listen. Ordinary people have extraordinary stories if you take the time to listen to them.” — is especially fantastic.

3. READ: ‘The Struggle.

But even if you’ve got that advice in mind, you’ll need to remember something else: It won’t be easy to do great work. Ben Horowitz, an entrepreneur and VC, explains why in this really excellent post, “The Struggle.”

4. WATCH: Derrick Rose Returns.


If you do fight through the struggle, remember that you’re going to get something in return: Your very own comeback story. Here’s Derrick Rose’s, for his return to the Chicago Bulls. It’s pretty epic.

5. CONSIDER: The Sabbatical.

People who do the work — you, included — work damn hard. You hustle. You push. You create.

But oftentimes, you don’t spend enough time stepping back from the work to consider the present — and the future.

Here’s a post that got me thinking: “The Career Value Of A ‘Pointless’ Sabbatical.” It’s a really good example of how time off can be the restart button you need.

6. USE: This Awesome New Conference Call System.

And speaking of bad segues: Once you start working on that awesome new thing, you might have some other team members to work with. Consider using Speek for your conference calls. It’s awesome, it’s free and it’s ridiculously easy to use. It’s changed the way I think about conference calls.

7. STARE: These ‘Star Wars’ Posters.


I’m blown away by how gorgeous these “Star Wars” posters are. They’re by Olly Moss, and they’re just amazing. Why can’t the movies companies themselves make posters this amazing?

8. SCROLL: Through These Hurricane Sandy Photos.

I love a good Internet hack, and this one was really good: Instacane, a website for Instagram photos of Hurricane Sandy. Definitely worth a few minutes to scroll back through the storm that was.

9. WAIT, WHAT?: Dan Rather Brought Us The First Radar Image of a Hurricane.

This is pretty cool: Turns out that it’s Dan Rather who brought the first ever radar image of a hurricane to TV viewers, way back in 1961. It was one of his big breaks as a TV reporter.

10. !!!: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Sings ‘Bad Romance’

Nothing more to say about this. Rock out, and make some awesome happen this month.

That photo at top comes via here.

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Ideas Worth Doing > Ideas Worth Spreading.

“Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is at hand.” —Henry Miller

 
I had the privilege of going to a TED event last Friday. It was fantastic. Colin Powell gave a talk. So did a guy who marched with MLK. And an opera singer who’s had two lung transplants.

It was an inspiring day. TED promises to deliver “Ideas Worth Spreading,” and Friday most certainly did.

But that’s not what made the biggest impression on me.

No, what made the biggest impression was a conversation I had with a teacher out in the hallway between talks.

It’s a shame, he told me. We’re seeing all these great talks, but what will come from all of this?

And he’s absolutely right. Ideas worth spreading are great, but ideas aren’t worth much.

It’s the action behind them that matters.

What I’d like to see are more TED events that lead to action. Let’s get 10 speakers on the stage to pitch big ideas, and then let’s get the community behind TED to actually make something happen with one or two of the ideas.

“Ideas Worth Spreading” is good.

“Ideas Worth Doing” would be even better.

That photo at top comes via @emtier.

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The Haters Have Already Decided What They Think. So What Will You Do?

“Confidence is a little voice in the back of your head that tells you that you belong.” — Michael Gervais

 
There’s a cartoonist named Scott McCloud. He’s given TED talks and written some really influential books. “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art,” is revered within the world of cartoonists.

There’s a quote in that book that’s fascinating. McCloud talks about the cartoonist’s challenge. You’ve got a handful of panels in which to tell a full story, which means that you can’t show every action. You’ve got to pick and choose the parts you want to show.

Let’s say you’ve got a cartoon of a man at Starbucks. In panel 1, the man might be picking up his coffee from the counter. In panel 2, the man might be yelling while the coffee burns his lips.

What’s amazing is that the brain is able to put together the middle step — somewhere between panels 1 and 2, the man drank the coffee, and the coffee was too hot — even though it’s never actually shown in the comic.

McCloud explains:

”The phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole has a name. It’s called closure.”

Basically, if there’s a story being told, and there are loose ends to the story, the brain is capable of closing the loop. It takes the parts it has and jumps to a conclusion.

But what if, in our little coffee hypothetical, what we think happened wasn’t what happened. What if something else happened between the man getting the coffee and the man screaming? We never actually saw the man drink the coffee, after all. Isn’t it possible that something else happened there to cause the man to yell, but our minds had already decided what we wanted to see?

What if our minds closed the loop but changed the story along the way?

So let’s bring this back to you.

If you’re reading this post, you’re someone who’s trying to do awesome work. I salute you, creator of awesome stuff. You’re doing the work we need more of in the world.

But I’m also warning you: The haters are coming for you. Haters love to hate on awesome work.

And your work is no exception.

They’re going to come and see parts of your life’s story. They’re going to see certain things you’ve done or written or said, and they’re going to connects the dots for themselves. This is what McCloud warned us about brains: They like to finish unfinished stories.

You have no control over how they decide to close the loop on your story. It is entirely out of your control.

Haters are going to find reasons to hate. They are going to find ways to close the loop however they see fit.

Here’s more proof that McCloud is right. Jimmy Kimmel sent out a TV camera two weeks ago to document voters’ reaction to the previous night’s debate. There was only one problem:

There wasn’t a debate the night before.

And yet: Here’s 3 minutes of voters responding to a debate that didn’t happen. They took this single bit of information from the cameraman — there was a debate last night! — and whatever preconceived notions existed in their minds, and they closed the loop for themselves:

So here’s what you need to remember: Haters are going to hate. When it comes to your story, they’ve already closed the loop for themselves.

You cannot control the haters, but you can control the work you do.

Focus there. Do the best work you can.

A huge thank you to Ross Nover, who gave a talk last week at Refresh DC that inspired this post. Also: That photo at top comes via someecards.

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