Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?: And Other Provocations, 2006-2012 (7 page)

Beats law school.

If you wake up every morning at six, give up TV, and treat this list like a job, you’ll have no trouble accomplishing everything on it. Everything! When you do, what happens to your job prospects?

In the 260 weeks from 1966 to 1970, there were only
thirteen
musical acts responsible for every #1 album on the Billboard charts.

In the 260 weeks that accounted for the first half of the 1970s, it was 26. (Hat tip to John Marks for the stat.)

Sometimes, we define a golden age in a market as a time of stability, when one or a few giants capture all of our attention. AT&T telephones, Superman comics, Beatles records, IBM computers,
The New York Times
… and now Google. Choices are easy, the market grows without a lot of effort, and we marvel over the ease of success. Ironically, the success of these winners attracts quixotic entrepreneurs, people who set out to challenge the few who are winning. While we might root for these underdogs, it turns out that they’re not the ones who usually change everything. The powerful are still too powerful.

The real growth and development and the foundations for the next era are laid during the chaotic times, the times that come
after
the leaders have stumbled. Harry Chapin didn’t trip up the Beatles, but the breakup of the Beatles allowed Harry Chapin his chance. The next golden ages of journalism, of communications, of fashion, of car design—those are being established now, in a moment when it’s not so crowded at the top.

The very best time to launch a new product or service is when the market appears exhausted or depleted. There’s more room at the top and there are fewer people in a hurry to get there.

One of the most common things I hear is, “I’d like to do something remarkable like that, but my xyz won’t let me,” where “my xyz” = my boss, my publisher, my partner, my licensor, my franchisor, etc.

Well, you can fail by going along with that and not doing it, or you can do it, cause a ruckus, and work things out later.

In my experience, once it’s clear that you’re willing to do something remarkable (not just willing, but itching, moving, and yes, implementing) without them, things start to happen. People are rarely willing to
step up and stop you, and are often just waiting to follow someone crazy enough to actually do something.

I’m going. Come along if you like.

It’s natural to seek reassurance. Most of us want to believe that the choices we make will work out, that everything will be okay.

Artists and those that launch the untested, the new and the emotional (and I’d put marketers into all of these categories) wrestle with this need all the time. How can we proceed, knowing that there’s a good chance that our actions will fail, that things might get worse, that everything won’t end up okay? In search of solace, we seek reassurance.

So people lie to us. So we lie to ourselves.

No, everything is not going to be okay. It never is. It isn’t okay now. Change, by definition, changes things. It makes some things better and some things worse. But everything is never okay.

Finding the bravery to shun faux reassurance is a critical step in producing important change. Once you free yourself from the need for perfect acceptance, it’s a lot easier to launch work that matters.

The lizard brain adores a deadline that slips, an item that doesn’t ship and, most of all, busywork.

These represent safety, because if you don’t challenge the status quo, you can’t be made fun of, can’t fail, can’t be laughed at. And so the Resistance looks for ways to appear busy while not actually doing anything.

I’d like to posit that for idea workers, misusing Twitter, Facebook, and various forms of digital networking is the ultimate expression of procrastination. You can be busy, very busy, forever. The more you do, the longer the queue gets. The bigger your circle, the more connections are available.

Laziness in a white-collar job has nothing to do with avoiding hard physical labor. “Who wants to help me move this box?” Instead, it has to do with avoiding difficult (and apparently risky) intellectual labor.

“Honey, how was your day?”

“Oh, I was busy, incredibly busy.”

“I get that you were busy. But did you do anything important?”

Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn’t mean mattered.

When the Resistance pushes you to do the quick reaction, the instant message, the “ping-are-you-still-there,” perhaps it pays to push in precisely the opposite direction. Perhaps it’s time for the blank sheet of paper, the cancellation of a long-time money loser, the difficult conversation, the creative breakthrough …

Or you could check your email.

Genius is the act of solving a problem in a way no one has solved it before. It has nothing to do with winning a Nobel Prize in physics or completing certain levels of schooling. It’s about using human insight and initiative to find original solutions that matter.

Genius is actually the eventual public recognition of dozens (or hundreds) of failed attempts at solving a problem. Sometimes we fail in public, often we fail in private, but people who are doing creative work are constantly failing.

When the lizard brain kicks in and the Resistance slows you down, the only correct response is to push back again and again and again with one failure after another. Sooner or later, the lizard will get bored and give up.

A few months ago,
The Wall Street Journal
wrote a piece about the demise of the slush pile, that undifferentiated mass of unsolicited manuscripts from authors and screenwriters in search of a publisher or studio.

In the words of Michael Brooke, “I’m not interested in creating slush.”

If you have something good, really good, what’s it doing in the slush pile?

Bring it to the world directly, make your own video, write your own ebook, post your own blog, record your own music.

Or find an agent, a great agent, a selective agent, one that’s almost impossible to get through to, one that commands respect and acts as a filter because after all, that’s what you’re seeking: a filtered, amplified way to spread your idea.

But slush?

Good riddance.

The chances of a high school student’s eventually becoming first-chair violinist for the Boston Philharmonic: one in a million.

The chances of a high school student’s eventually playing basketball in the NBA? About the same.

In fact, the chances of someone’s growing up and getting a job precisely like yours, whatever it is, are similarly slim. (Head of development at an ad agency, director of admissions for a great college … you get the idea.) Every good gig is a long shot, but in the end, a lot of talented people get good gigs. The odds of being happy and productive and well compensated aren’t one in a million at all, because there are many good gigs down the road. The odds are slim only if you pick precisely one job.

Here’s the lesson: the ardent or insane pursuit of a particular goal is a good idea if the steps you take along the way also prep you for other outcomes, with each one almost as good as (or better than) the original. If pushing through the Dip and bending the market to your will and shipping on time and doing important and scary work are all skills you need to develop along the way, then it doesn’t really matter so much if you don’t make the goal you set out to reach.

On the other hand, if you live a life of privation and spend serious time and money on a dead-end path with only one desired outcome, you’ve described a path likely to leave you broken and bitter. Does spending your teenage years (and your twenties) in a room practicing the violin teach you anything about being a violin teacher or a concert promoter or some other job associated with music? If your happiness depends on
your draft pick or a single audition, that’s giving way too much power to someone else.

Perhaps the biggest change in your work life is one that snuck up on you.

Every morning, before you even take off your slippers, there’s a pile of incoming work. You might not think of it as work, because it doesn’t involve stuffing envelopes or making sales calls, but it’s part of your career and your job.

That email, Facebook, and text message queue is a lot longer than it used to be. For some people, it’s now a hundred or even a thousand distinct social electronic interactions a day. It’s as if a genie is whispering in your ear, “I have an envelope, and it might contain really good or really bad news. Want to open it?”

The relevant discussion here: Are the incoming messages helping? After all, most of them aren’t initiated by you, but they have the power to change your mood or your energy or even how you spend your non-electronic time. And they’re addictive. When, for some random reason, they ebb and you have a really light few hours—admit it, you check more often.

What’s up? Is anyone out there?

It’s like living near Niagara Falls and then one night it freezes. You miss the noise. Is it possible that the noise is helping you hide from the stuff that scares you?

If you’re actually going to do the work, the real work, the work of producing and shipping the things that matter, I’m afraid you’re going to have to be brutally honest about whether keeping up with this stream of electronic interactions is merely a fun habit or actually a useful lever. Once the fun habit reaches a significant portion of your day (try tracking it today), it might be time to take charge instead of being a willing victim.

Two years ago, I started taking a lot of flak for being choosy about which incoming media I was willing to embrace. What I’ve recently seen is that this is a choice that’s gaining momentum.

It’s your day, and
you
get to decide, not the cloud. I could go on and on about this, but I know you’ve got email to check …

There aren’t just a few options open to you; there are thousands (or more).

You can spend your marketing money in more ways than ever, live in more places while still working electronically, contact different people, launch different initiatives, hire different freelancers. You can post your ideas in dozens of ways, interact with millions of people, launch any sort of product or service without a permit or a factory.

Too many choices.

If it’s thrilling to imagine the wide open spaces, go for it.

If it’s slowing you down and keeping you up at night, consider artificially limiting your choices. Don’t get on planes. Don’t do spec work. Don’t work for jerks. Work on paper, not on film. Work on film, not on video. Don’t work weekends.

Whatever rule you want …

But no matter what, don’t do nothing.

Twenty years ago, only big companies and TV stars worried about media channels.

Oprah was on TV; then she added radio. Two channels. Then a magazine.

Pepsi set out to dominate TV with their message, and then added billboards and vending machines. Newspapers, not so much. The media you chose for spreading your message mattered. In fact, it could change what you made and how you made it. [Stop for a second and consider that—the media channel often drove the product and pricing and distribution.]

Today, of course, everyone has access to a media channel. You can create a series of YouTube videos or have a blog. You can be a big-time tweeter, or lead a significant tribe on Facebook.

Harder to grapple with is the idea that the media channel you choose changes who you are and what you do. Tom Peters gives a hundred or more speeches a year, around the world, for good money (and well
earned). But this channel, this place where he can spread his message, determines what he does all day, affects the pace of the work he does, informs all of his decisions.

Oprah lives a life that revolves around a daily TV show. Of course it would be difficult for her to write a book; that’s a life dictated by a different channel. And she’s a lapsed Twitter user because it demands different staffing and a different mindset than she has now.

This principle applies to non-celebs, to people with jobs, to entrepreneurs, to job seekers. We all spread our ideas, at least a little, and the medium you choose will
change
your ideas. If you pay attention to the world only when you need a new job (your channel is stamps, and your message is your résumé), you’ll spend your day differently than you will if you are leading a tribe, participating in organizations, or giving local speeches all the time.

We’ve come a long way from a worker having just two channels (a résumé and a few references) to a worker having the choice of a dozen or more significant ways to spread her ideas. Choose or lose.

The number of people you need to ask for permission keeps going down:

1. Go, make something happen.
   
2. Do work you’re proud of.
   
3. Treat people with respect.
   
4. Make big promises and keep them.
   
5. Ship it out the door.
   

When in doubt, see #1.

If you’re starting out as an entrepreneur or a freelancer or a project manager, the most important choice you’ll make is: what to do? As in the answer to the question, “what do you do?”

Some questions to help you get started:

1. Who are you trying to please?
   
2. Are you trying to make a living, make a difference, or leave a legacy?
   
3. How will the world be different when you’ve succeeded?
   
4. Is it more important to add new customers or to increase your interactions with existing ones?
   
5. Do you want a team? How big? (I know, that’s two questions.)
   
6. Would you rather have an open-ended project that’s never done, or one where you hit natural end points? (How high is high enough?)
   
7. Are you prepared to actively sell your stuff, or are you expecting that buyers will walk in the door and ask for it?
   
8. Which: to invent a category, or to be just like Bob/Sue, but better?
   
9. If you take someone else’s investment, are you prepared to sell out to pay it back?
   
10. Are you done personally growing, or is this project going to force you to change and develop yourself?
    
11. Choose: teach and lead and challenge your customers, or do what they ask.
    
12. How long can you wait before it feels as though you’re succeeding?
    
13. Is perfect important? (Do you feel the need to fail privately, not in public?)
    
14. Do you want your customers to know each other (a tribe), or is it better that they be anonymous and separate?
    
15. How close to failure, wipe-out, and humiliation are you willing to fly? (And while we’re on the topic, how open to criticism are you willing to be?)
    
16. What does busy look like?