Hacker. Human.
I am loving this video for BMW. It makes me wonder about how often we create experiences through our products, our services, our organizations, and even our blogs that leave a remnant upon that person that encounters it.
Are we doing such a great job that we’re leaving not just a momentary remnant but an indelible mark on their very lives, their very souls?
Fear can cripple you. Most of the time it’s the fear of doing something that, on the outside looks ridiculous (like what I did with my iPhone) but is functionally quite simple (deleting apps requires little brainpower or exceptional motor skills).
Very rarely are we asked to do something that is functionally difficult, thus driving the primal instincts to kick into high gear for self-preservation and survival, like jumping off a real cliff or something of that nature.
Again, most of the time, these are functionally-simple exercises and yet our fear drives us to believe that our life is over if we attempt it. I challenge you to reverse your thinking for a moment and think that you life may be over if you do not engage, if you do not complete that task, if you do not take that first step.
I’ll give you one example from my past that is (unfortunately) all too common:
My pastor has often said this, which I was reminded this morning a handful of times:
Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.
I’ve been thinking about that heavily this morning and it’s rocking my face. Meditate on it for a bit and see what happens.
Why not…
I’m in a very interesting point of my life to say the least. I’m the most focused that I’ve ever been and it’s a bit spooky. Maybe even scary.
I have fewer things on my plate than ever before and it’s freeing and yet at the same time strangely annoying – it’s like I’m begging for distraction.
It’s because of this that I’ve decided to take my level of focus to an entirely new level – I’ve gone this far I might as well go as far as I possibly can with it.
As a result, I’ve done what I thought was once impossible – I’ve effectively killed my iPhone usage to the extreme by deleting the majority of the applications that I had and relieved myself of all the ones that caused the most distraction.
My iPhone, as a result, is more like that of a glorified Motorola RAZR (I still have one of my old ones somewhere…):
Much of the work that many of us do is never seen – quite literally for some of us.
For example, the development of Pressgram is done mostly at night and on the weekends, outside the lights of my office and partners and even my own family.
It’s just me, the computer, and a few good tunes looped continuously. To the world it’ll all seem so “magical” when it will suddenly appear out of the dark and into the daylight – at this point I’ll look back at the long evenings and “binge” weekends and wish that more people could see and even appreciate all the work that was done when no one was looking.
Again, for many of us, this is our burden to bear, our joyous suffering that we endure to launch, to ship, and to create. It’s the inner battles that we struggle, and at times fail to overcome, that displays our truest art, if only to ourselves.
Have you seen or tried Gumroad?
It’s an incredibly-simple way to sell almost anything. The interface is beautiful and intuitive and setting up shop is one of the easiest and most-pleasant experiences I’ve ever had.
In fact, I was planning on migrating to their system for my eBooks until I retired them all recently. Look at these screenshots of the entire back-end and front-end experience to get an idea of how it works:
Have you ever needed to simply just *reset* things?
I have that feeling all too often. I find myself wanting to remove things from my life – it almost doesn’t matter what it is as I just feel like something has to go, something has to change, something has to be disrupted.
There are a few things though that I’ll constantly clean up that, after I’m done, provide an incredibly amount of clarity and peace of mind – here are a few things that I’ll do that’ll help me get back to this place that may be a bit different than what you may do – some of these may make you incredibly nervous:
I took my family out to dinner last night for a simple celebration regarding the completion of the Kickstarter Campaign that I narrowly survived.
I like to keep things simple, meaningful, and intimate. It’s all the celebration that I need. Nothing fancy, nothing over the top, just enough.
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the few men that I’d like to meet in the afterlife. You know how you’ve played that game before? That would be one of my answers.
I liked his work too little when I was in High School – instead of paying attention to obvious genius I was looking at girls or doing my math homework during english class; you’ve never done that before, right?
He once said these very famous words that have haunted me for many, many years:
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Especially now I am explicitly working more courageously on being me rather than what others desire and hope that I am or will become.
Despite how obvious Emerson’s quote might be to all that might read review it we all know how difficult it really is to actually do. I am finding that it requires an incredible amount of courage to be me; more courage than I thought it would necessarily require.
If you would have asked me at the end of 2012 or even in the beginning of 2013 if I had ever considered doing a Kickstarter project I would have easily answered you in this way:
Yes… hasn’t everyone?
But I did not have an inkling or desire to actually launch a project – I didn’t feel like I had the right project idea or even the right amount of interest and courage to do one, especially one that mattered deeply to me.
