Theories On Life Balance through Video Game Design

SUMMARY: I know that the path to happiness goes straight through the Mountains of Productivity, a craggy place where discipline and steadiness of action are required to maintain one’s footing. Nevertheless, I have difficulty mustering the energy to even get on the path, as much as I want to.

In this post, I identify myself as a procrastinator-perfectionist, and detail some factors that I believe are barriers to action: a lack of immediacy, a need to be convinced, and a look at “happiness” not as a question to be answered, but as an indicator of pre-existing conditions. After coming up with some ways to trick myself past these barriers, I postulate that video game design may offer an analogous methodology, to be explored in future posts.

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A Review of Tim Ferriss’ “The 4-Hour Work Week”

I had heard of The 4-Hour Work Week (T4HWW) at SXSW, where Tim Ferriss was presenting a panel on it. I was intrigued by the title (catchy!) but was skeptical; I passed on it to see something else. Then a couple weeks ago, I got a nice email from Ferriss offering to send me a copy of the book, no strings attached, because he suspected that we "shared some DNA". Newly intrigued, I agreed. I'm certainly glad I did, because I think Ferriss has saved me two years of stumbling around in the dark by providing clarifying principles to steer my life by. I've had some of these insights myself, but I hadn't been able to envision the logical culmination of change-producing action: the creation of a lifestyle that is both fulfilling and self-sustaining. What's remarkable about the book is that it presents a multitude of subjects---goal setting, time management, business, marketing, and the pursuit of happiness---firmly within the context of what Ferriss calls lifestyle design. Why burn ourselves out, deferring our enjoyment of life, when we can redefine the rules of the game and live the life we want right now? It sounds ludicrous and maybe even irresponsible, but Ferriss argues that this reaction is merely a product of social conditioning and fear. We don't need to play that game...we can beat it instead.

T4HWW is a remarkably transparent guide to achieving that lifestyle you've always wanted but didn't dare admit, rationally presented as a series of steps predicated on a fundamental rule: reality is negotiable...outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken. Amen, brother! What makes T4HWW more than the typical self-help book is that Ferriss also names the names of the outsourcers, services and brokers he's used successfully in the past to build the foundation of his automatic income-producing engine. It's all part of his meta-approach to planning and getting away with the ideal lifestyle...it's like the perfect crime!

Tim Ferriss' DEAL

A lot of self-help books follow a similar presentational arc: starting off with a good story, followed by the making an incredible-sounding claim, establishing the credibility of the claim maker, tying the claim to the reality of the reader, and then presenting the first of many mnemonic devices. In the case of T4HWW, the mnemonic is DEAL. Here's my vastly paraphrased synopsis of it:

• Definition: Figure out what you want, get over your fears, see past society's "expectations", and figure out what it will really cost to get to where you want. It can be surprisingly cheap, costing less than what you're paying now. Ferriss also provides a very personally-appealing insight regarding the nature of happiness:

The opposite of happiness isn't sadness. It's boredom.

Therefore, the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of excitement. While this sounds irresponsible on the surface, if you can precisely define how you can take care of yourself and your commitments and then create a system to take care of that for you, then WHY NOT? You too can live the "eccentric billionaire lifestyle".

• Elimination is about Time Management, or rather about NOT managing time. Instead, apply the 80/20 rule to focus only on those tasks that contribute the majority of benefit. Also apply it ruthlessly to all aspects of your life to eliminate the small minority of factors that waste 80% of your time. Forget time management, focus instead on getting the really important and results-producing tasks done. There's a difference, Ferriss says, between efficiency and effectiveness. Choose to be effective!

• Automation is all about building a sustainable, automatic source of income. This is a section that is, practically speaking, about Business and Business Management. The trick is to avoid is building a business that requires your presence, because that just burns up all your time. Ferriss made that mistake once, generating lots of monthly revenue but ended up being chained to the machine to keep it working. Ferriss now has hundreds of people working on his behalf through multiple outsourced vendors, all operating under specific instructions that are designed to not create headaches for him while depositing those lovely monthly checks. This is a fascinating section of the book, and is well worth reading for its pragmatic approach to effective management. Ferriss also provides plentiful examples and resource listings; this is a mini-book in itself on how to define and operate a profitable business.

• Liberation: Once you've successfully automated your lifestyle, liberate yourself from your geographical location and your job. It's a lot easier than you think, once you've gotten through the previous three steps. With mobility comes the ability to leverage economic advantages across the world. Living in a tropical paradise and eating at 5-star restaurants everyday can be cheaper than watching TV in your house back in the States. Incidentally, Ferriss notes that if you're in a job, your order of steps will be DELA, not DEAL, and he provides specific examples for that case. Like the time his friend spend a month in China getting married, but was just as productive as if he were working remotely so no one was the wiser.

Ferriss calls practitioners of DEAL or DELA the "New Rich" (or NR), and practitioners of the more traditional "work really hard, save up and then retire" approach as "Deferrers" (D). He identifies three key ingredients of the NR lifestyle: time, income, and mobility. With them, you can take the time to travel the slow and enjoyable way, learn new languages. Learn how to salsa dance professionally. Live fully! You've arranged for the income to manage itself with minimal decision making required from yourself because you've built decision making into the system.

Ferriss notes that you're likely to freak out and get bogged down in a lot of soul searching before you really get settled. Is it somehow wrong to just do this? I liked his method of resolving those big life questions, which he observes tend to generate stress because they're just poorly worded. His solution:

1. Ask yourself if you have decided on a single meaning for each term in the question.

2. Ask yourself if an answer to this question can be acted on to improve things.

If the answer to either question is NO, then forget about it. Ferriss says that if you take away just one thing from his book, it's to follow those two rules; he believes that the top 1% of performers in the world live by them.

Many Insights

I could spend a long few days writing about everything that I found noteworthy in the book, but I'll just discuss some of the ones that have popped off my notebook.

PRINCIPLES

This is as much a book about Ferriss' philosophy of life as it is a guide to freedom. It's not an easy path, because we first have to rise above our preconceptions about work, responsibility, and society. THEN, once we're able to peek outside the cubicle walls to see what's really possible, we have to be BRAVE ENOUGH to do something about it. That's a tall order. Ferriss has the attitude of an enlightened hacker or game designer; he's fully aware that a lot of what we accept are rules are merely benefit-producing mass hallucinations. I first became aware of this principle when I was busy sucking at analog Electrical Engineering as an undergrad. After graduating and reflecting upon the experience, I had a burst of insight upon the nature of the field: IT WAS ALL MADE UP. The units, the processes, the conventions, the mathematics...these were merely convenient constructs that had evolved and/or stuck around out because of inertia and, in some cases, momentum. I had been seeking universal truths in the equations and the work, and couldn't perceive them. The people around me generally didn't care; they knew how to work the equations and extract the right numbers, and they were rewarded by the system with good jobs and big, stable companies. I always asked WHY all the time, and this was my undoing until I realized there was no WHY other than it was what people BELIEVED, what people had ALWAYS DONE, and that IT WORKED.

There's nothing stopping you from creating another system that works for you, except your own perception of your limitations, and (to paraphrase Ferriss) the twin bogies of science and law. But even those can be gamed: witness the existence of the applied sciences and lobbyists.

Ferriss spends quite a bit of time deconstructing the nature of fear: by defining fear, you create the means to conquer it. A lot of us know that already, but there was one aspect of it that was new to me: fear disguised as optimism...the belief that things will get better if you keep doing what you are doing now, or don't do anything. Oh crap, that's me! I've been happily pushing forward on this blogging/writing thing, producing downloadable tools, thinking that if I keep doing this, thing will get better and take care of themselves. BZZZT! That's a losing attitude; it's far better to DEFINE and then EXECUTE to a measurable plan. I've started to do that with my Groundhog Day Resolutions and Review Days, though I think a large part of my motivation might be due to my amusement with large prognosticating rodents. A return to the basics of the original Printable CEO Concrete Goals Tracker might be in order.

TIME MANAGEMENT

One of my personal hurdles has been the need for better time management; I spend way too much time doing stuff that's probably not important in the grand scheme of things, and I procrastinate on doing the really important things because they're boring. T4HWW doesn't let me off the hook, but it does through a mighty wrench into the be more efficient path toward productivity. GTD fills that need very nicely in terms of an algorithm for processing tasks and information, but in my heart I don't think I want to be just a faster data processor so I have more time "later" to do something. T4HWW emphasizes prioritization over processing:

• Apply Pareto's Principle ruthlessly to everything, and eliminate the 20% that is causing 80% of the trouble. That could be troublesome clients, answering email, whatever. Evolve methods for dealing with them.

• Apply Parkinson's Law to task planning, which is to not let tasks absorb more importance than they merit by swelling to fill all available time. There's some similarity to 37Signals approach to less leading to more effectiveness, though T4HWW takes it further to its ultimate conclusion. Ferriss also notes how Parkinson's Law and the Pareto Principle in conjunction form an interesting recursive definition of effectiveness: Limit tasks to just the important ones to shorten your working time, and shorten your working time to limit tasks to the important ones. Groovy!

• Cultivating selective ignorance means reducing the number of inputs you're getting. More inputs leads to more distraction, and distraction is the killer of effective action. Most of them don't add to your immediate goals of getting free; they just trap you where you are by sapping energy. This destroys your ability to effectively act, and Lifestyle Design is impossible.

Ferriss identifies three kinds of interruptions:

1. Time Wasters -- things that are unimportant that can be ignored. Ferriss has a lot of interesting ideas about how to get rid of meetings and unnecessary time spent answering email. He also discusses how to train the people around you; when I read this section, I realized that Ferriss had the mind of a master game designer, which is perhaps obvious in hindsight.

2. Time Consumers -- things that must get done, but take a lot of time. Personal errands, laundry, going to the doctor, etc. His solution is essentially that of GTD: batch and do not falter.

3. Empowerment Failures -- if someone has to ask you for permission or to get approval before moving forward, you've become a bottleneck. It also limits the scalability of your operation. Ferriss' solution is to analyze the reason for the failure, then come up with a policy to handle it in the future. The example he uses is handling customer service complaints; by empowering the reps to fix the problem if it costs less than a certain amount of money, customer satisfaction went up and the time burden on him was vastly reduced. This reminds me of Joel Spolsky's recent article on customer service and bug fixing.

MANAGING PEOPLE and PROCESSES

One thing I had never considered was hiring a personal assistant, or rather a virtual assistant (VA) through an outsourcing company. Apparently, they cost between $4 and $10 an hour from India, and after you find one that works well with you you can multiply your effectiveness. Ferriss provides two very powerful rules of thumb to make sure that you're not just adding undue busywork:

• Refine rules & processes before adding people.
• Eliminate before you delegate.

Anything that makes it through that filter then must follow his GOLDEN RULE #1: be both time-consuming and well-defined, otherwise you're not really doing anything. The presumes an ability to define well, of course, which may be the ultimate challenge in following all of Ferriss' course of Lifestyle Design. A lot of people have difficulty defining things, because of a discomfort with writing, or because they don't fully understand the nature of what they're doing in context of other people. I'm not sure what can be done about that. However, GOLDEN RULE #2 also dictates have fun with it, as a reminder to not be so dire. So you screwed up the first directive...big deal. That's how you learn. Ferriss provides an example of his first failed attempt to delegate a task to his Indian VA, and how he cleaned it up. It comes down to establishing metrics for success and limits; essentially, you are programming behavior in the most elegant manner possible.

CREATING AN INCOME MACHINE

This was the section of the book that got me to sit up straighter and take note, because it outlined what seems to be an excellent crash course in product test marketing, outsourcing, and fulfillment. The proof will be in my attempt to follow it, but certainly it's given me a valuable reference case study against which I can compare my own product plans.

I hadn't had the insight that the reason I wanted to create product was so I could spend more time doing something else; I was still half-clinging to the notion that my work would be my identity. Maybe instead it can be something I like that supports my adventurous lifestyle, to become an "ultravagabond" like Ferriss.

In Summary

I was just thinking that this is the rare book that I am going to recommend to all of my friends. This is probably a reflection on the kind of company I keep: I like to be around empowered, positive-minded people with dreams they're actively pursuing.

There are some challenges in implementing Ferriss' plan:

• You have to define that end game unflinchingly
• You have to be be able to communicate solutions.
• You have to be a focused, hard worker when facing all the essential tasks.
• You need to be a discerning person, otherwise you can't tell if you're moving or not

At minimum, I think one needs to be able to define a dream, and be able to measure the distance from and progress toward the goal of being one of the New Rich. Then, relentlessly following through with elimination, automation, and liberation will be possible. If you even get through one or two of these phases, I think one's life will be measurably more productive. And remember: if you can't measure it, it doesn't count.

There are some very helpful Q&A---Question and Action---sections after each chapter of the book, filled with great exercises designed to jog you out of your old perspective of fear and complacency. The entire dreamlining process, for example, is particularly delightful; it guides you through the difficult "uh, so what is it that I want to do?" part of the Definition phase.

There's lots of good stuff in the book, and I feel that my personal bar has been raised. You can listen to Ferriss' SXSW 2007 Panel Podcast for a taste, and visit the 4-Hour Work Week website for more information. It's has a kind of "marketing" vibe to it, but you can download sample chapters and order the book via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and 1-800 CEO-READ. This review just scratches the surface.

Capturing, Sequencing, and Scheming

This has been one of those gear grinding weeks in which nothing planned seemed to get done. Seemingly dozens of ideas and opportunities whizzed by me as I cursed and shook my fist like an old man. Toward the middle of the week I decided to stop fighting it and take some time to figure out what was going on.

Stuff On My Mind

It's been a tough week in the blogosphere, with many good people going through some tough times. I started to write something about it, but then came to the conclusion that I was not writing for any reason other than to engage in commentary...so I stopped. I have a weird principle about not doing or saying anything if it doesn't actually help in an immediate and tangible way, and while commentary is very interesting...it just didn't feel right. Maybe in a few weeks.

I've also been feeling a little stuck. I've had a lot of interesting conversations with people over the past few weeks, and I feel like I'm ready to shift into high gear...but I'm dragging something. It feels like the parking brake is stuck on, or that there's a flat tire, or maybe there's water in the gas tank, or maybe I'm trying to tow too much stuff at the same time, or that maybe I should make sure I have someone in the car with me before embarking on a long trip, or...well, you get the idea. I'm ready, but I'm not ready.

TV to the Rescue

A few days ago I saw an episode of The Unit, a TV show about members of an elite special forces unit. It's a strangely compelling mix of downbeat military action and women's drama program; I've found that it provides food for thought. Anyway, one of the characters is helping another through a difficult moral dilemma who doesn't know what to do, and asks for some help. "Here's what the boss tells me," he says. "If you knew the answer, what would it be?" So the other character, after a moment of doubt, writes everything down and is immensely relieved. It's a good trick.

The Master Plan

I actually came across this tip after I had done something similar on Wednesday. Fed up with not knowing what to do, I went to the coffee shop with a pad of 11x17" graph paper and starting drawing my master plan. At the right side I filled in an arbitrary goal ($100,000 a year) and then imagined what I could do to somehow achieve that. I didn't care if it was particularly realistic or not, but I figured that starting anywhere would be a good place to start. I once took a math course called "Numerical Methods" that used a similar approach; when you don't know how to solve certain kinds of functions, you take several guesses and use that data to choose new guesses, until you "converge on the solution". I remember this used to drive me nuts, because at the time it seemed that the whole point of math was to not have to guess at all. Oh, how naive I was. Anyway, I don't remember anything from that course except that the idea of starting anywhere and finding your way is actually not a bad strategy. My first master plan is just that: a guess.

Here it is:

I started from the goal, and started filling things in to the left, ending with the YOU ARE HERE thing in the upper left, which describes what I'm doing right now. I should mention this image has been edited in Photoshop to be a little cleaner than the original drawing; I was going to redraw the whole thing so it looked cooler, but I ended up fixing my computer for two days straight after it started acting up (new motherboard, more RAM, 4x faster, oh yeah :-)

The Master Plan breaks down into four categories of endeavor, which I've arbitrarily decided would each provide 25% of my source income or take 25% of my energy.

1. MAKE BOOKS

I've wanted to make a book for the longest time, since I love the way books feel and smell. One of my Groundhog Day Resolutions has been to create some kind of product, and some kind of book is probably the easiest thing to make from existing content. Companies like Lulu.com and Blurb.com are out there now, making it very easy to handle both printing and fulfillment at a decent level of quality. Of course, writing a good and marketable book is the hurdle.

I wrote down some of the calculations from the SXSW panel on turning your blog into a book, where a "standard advance" of $7500 translates to selling 5000 books. That works out to $1.50 per book. To make $25,000 at this rate, that would mean selling 16,668 books through traditional channels, which might or might not happen. On the other hand, selling an e-book for, say, $9.99 cuts down the number to 2500 units sold, but the value is somewhat questionable. And I have no idea what people are willing to pay $9.99 for.

Applying the "if I knew the answer what would it be" approach, I'd pay $9.99 for a book that laid out something clearly and insightfully that would help me get my own stuff done more effectively, paying for itself in a few hours of time saved. I'd want to see great charts and handy reference lists, and be drawn into the story of someone like me who's making things happen. It would be part of a key that opened a broader awareness and community to me, and for the cost of a medium pizza I could have that forever. Wow, that advice from the TV DOES work!

2. MAKE PRODUCTS

Next on the list is the creation of some product, something that's more of an object or tool than a book. Again, the easiest thing to put together is something based on my own work like The Printable CEO. The two immediate things that I could produce are pads of Emergent Task Planner and Emergent Task Timer, write a distilled mini-booklet for them describing how they work, and pushing them out there to see if anyone buys 'em. It's not much of a plan, I know, but I gotta start somewhere. The printing costs are more up-front here, and there's the unknowns of packaging and fulfillment. If these pay for themselves and get the word out there without costing me money, I would consider that a win. I would probably learn something about marketing first-hand.

A next step would be to start creating the "productivity systems" that have been languishing on the back shelf. A simple system would leverage off custom Circa or Rollabind notebook systems, and the goal would be to create a nice system that felt good to the hand. The profit vector is not clear to me, so perhaps this is something more worth prototyping. DIYing it here might be a happy medium: selling kits made of pre-punched PCEO or related custom forms with off-the-shelf notebook systems? The kit approach might be a lot of fun; I liked what the Make people were doing with their kits at the SXSW Tradeshow this year. Kits are awesome!

3. PROJECT WORK

I'm currently doing a lot of HTML and Actionscript development, though I'm starting to shift more into what might be called "strategy". I have never been entirely satisfied by doing straight production and design work, finding it far more interesting to get into the what and why of the project in the greater context. I thought in the past that this was merely a necessary part of the design process, because I can't make a dot unless I have a clear image of the greater purpose of my work; some have found it rather tedious to deal with. On the other hand, I'm starting to embrace the idea that this is useful work, and that it's my favorite part of any project. Secondly, I've come to the conclusion that my work must always deal with individuals as individuals, not as abstractions. Otherwise, I just lose interest. I can wield a pretty broad array of digital media tools, but I don't find joy in them unless they're used to benefit an individual I can communicate with directly. That individual could be an end user or a specific person in the audience that I know. This is pretty important to me.

I've thought of a couple approaches to try defining my approach in a way that goes beyond generic labels like "strategy", "information architecture", and "experience design". These are all fine fields, but they don't quite connect with me because they lack a certain goofy enthusiasm. The two phrases I've thought of are related to the storytelling and game design threads that I keep stumbling upon during my periods of identity crisis. The first is Strategic Storytelling and Design, which has very light traction in the Googleverse and is therefore adoptable, and the second is Video Game Design applied to Organizational Process. I'll write about these later, since creating a web presence that adequately explains and demonstrates the power of these techniques is part of attracting the people who might want to use these services. It's another way of framing the creative process, the culmination of a 5 year effort to define what it is that I do. As it turns out, I always knew, but had never really had the courage to just define it for myself. I suspect that my incessantly-positive and insightful friend Senia might have planted the seeds of this in my head over the years, and I'm pretty sure rereading Jory's Living without a Net series of posts helped realign my thinking after SXSW, which itself was a huge inspiration.

But I digress...the gist behind both of these new labels is that games can create life in the real world. Usually people think it's the other way around, but I really believe that one can apply the same principles that drive great storytelling and game design in real-world scenarios. I try to do this all the time already, trying to create a spark that jumps between environment, artifact, passion, and desire. It's the basis for how I teach and explain things. It's the reason I love being alive in the world, and it's an incredibly large field to play in. I'm a game designer, and I like to tell stories, and I know a thing or two about technology, design, and human desire. Surely there is a need for that somewhere, if I have to create the need myself through my writing and design work.

4. COLLABORATION

Ah, but I can't do it all alone. I've been holding off on seeking true collaborators because, frankly, I've been afraid that it would not work out and I'd be left holding the bag. I've been burned a few times before, and this has made me a little gun-shy when it comes to pulling the trigger. But NO MORE. It's time to create some group energy that benefits everything.

With my newfound focus on design and game-driven process, I may be able to contribute a certain "vision" in certain kinds of development projects. I'm also a good listener, if somewhat scattered. I think there are five hurdles to overcome:

1. My most immediate need is a way to maintain continuity on a wide variety of disparate projects; this may mean working with interns or figuring out a way of establishing lightweight project management; a dip into some of the agile methodologies could provide some clues. However, this presumes that maintaining continuity is my responsibility.

   Now, continuity is very important in getting anything done, but equally important is direction. Continuity management takes up huge parts of my mental energy, because I tend to be obsessively detail-oriented when it comes to this stuff. However, I don't particularly enjoy doing it. An equally valuable contribution might be just one or two hours of my time listening and contributing to the development of various pieces of software and design. I may provide some writing, clarification, and design work as needed, but my responsibility would largely be writing the story we live through the application of real time narrative. If that doesn't make sense, think of it as technical or creative direction.

2. What about ownership? With multiple people contributing work that's difficult to assess for "equality of effort", how do you avoid arguments?

   Frankly, I don't want to worry about it, so I am thinking that everyone who contributes gets nonexclusive rights to the source assets and concepts, with which to do what they please. An example might be if I'm contributing design to a project, then I also get access to source code. The programmer would get access to my source design files. This might be a good way to rapidly build up my development skills by leveraging the work of more experienced developers.

3. Then there's coordination. I'm thinking that it would be cool to be involved in 3 or 4 projects at once, with many people, so how do you keep track of it all?

   This is a tough one. Email sucks. A wiki might work, though I really hate wikis because they're so ugly, and a lot of the open source collaboration tools don't do a good job of showing continuity (there's that word again...I guess I'm still hung up on it). At the very minimum, there needs to be a way for me and others to write the story of what's going on, providing a clear vision of what's happened and what might happen next. Then, there needs to be working areas for sharing files, source control, live documentation, and issue tracking. And for me to want to use it, it has to look nice. Any ideas on what that system might be? I know I'm being super picky, so feel free to tell me to get over it and just use X.

4. What of accountability and control? This has tended to burn me up in real project work, both for myself as a perfectionist and as a source of worry when responsible for the quality of others.

   Maybe the solution is to just let go and be happy if anything happens at all. Instead of a development timetable, we could take a unit approach to measuring contribution. That's just another way of saying "I'm into it" or "I'm not"; make that clear up front that people will commit when they're interested, and that they'll commit to a limited engagement to push to the next step taking no more than X hours, where X is less than 4 hours. Each of these micro contributions will be integrated into the next build or release, and the contributors who took it to that next stage each get all the assets they used to build up to that point.

5. Finally, there's qualification. Can just anyone jump in as a contributor? Is there a need for screening, or should everyone be able to join? What happens when there's a mismatch of skill levels?

   The solution I have in mind is to have a skill show and tell, where everyone who wants to contribute needs to bring a few examples of their work. If you're a coder, you need to provide a snippet of actual source code you're willing to share, WARTS AND ALL, and be ready to talk about it. If you're an application developer (a higher level of coder), then you need to show off your working app, with some snippet of code that you're particularly proud of. If you're a designer, then let's see some design examples of something you really like, and have some source files you're willing to put up.

   I think there's a few good things that will come out of this. First, people will have to have real examplesof what they can do, and these become the means through which people can select who they want to team up with. Let the person who sees the potential in someone's work be the one to make the call by seeing and asking questions. Secondly, the samples themselves becomes conversation pieces that help people start to learn about each other and the work they do. Thirdly, since people will be providing samples and chatting about their work, this is a good way for noobs (me included) to see what the bar is and know what I might need to bone up on. Say you're a designer just getting started with Photoshop, and you'd like to get in on this group collaboration thing. So you put together your photoshop sample file of "cool art" you've done, and you upload it. You also get to see how other photoshop artists are doing things, because you'll be able to download their files and read a bit about what they thought was particularly cool about it. You probably will learn something.

In the Meantime, I need to Regroup

So I have a ton of ideas that I want to launch this year. It's almost April 4th too, which is the second Groundhog's Day Resolution Review day of the year. On top of this I have a lot of outstanding projects and project work that I have not been moving quickly enough on. A significant backlog has started to build up, and I haven't come up with a good system of projecting and booking the work so there are no conflicts.

GTD is a system that probably would work well for me, but I am a little stuck on the capture and list-making side of things because I am (against the rules of GTD, I should note) prioritizing tasks and doing things out of order. I'm not sure if it's just me being unfocused (quite possible) or if I actually do have more on my plate that I'm capable of handling. Probably both :-)

There's two positive things though I have today that I didn't have last week: I have some sense of what I want to do with regards to the Master Plan, and I've also resolved, for the moment, the nature of my identity as a creative practitioner. These two things have bothered me for years, and now that they've been newly resolved I feel I can relax a bit more.

I was thinking today about another productivity thing that I've read somewhere about the various altitudes one can use to assess goals. I think this was in GTD, and I'm sure others have written about it as well: there's the "1000 foot" view, the "10,000 foot view", the "20,000 foot view", etc., of your goals and life. The closer you are, the more your experience and focus is dominated by detail that obscures the overall shape of things; have you ever noticed how much bigger a city block is when you have to walk through it? And how much stuff is there? It's really cool...but again I digress. The basic idea is that if you want to see where you're going, you need the "macro view" to help guide your actions in the "micro view". This is a fundamental principle of any kind of analysis or application of effective action. The strategic picture dominates in the big picture view, and tactical execution dominates where the rubber hits the road.

The same principle applies to Longer Term versus Short Term planning, and I decided to create a set of text files that reflected this. Short term planning can be realized in much higher resolution and surety than long term plans. Long term plans help prioritize and guide the selection of tools used in the short term. Here's the list I made in a TextPad workspace:

A TextPad workspace is just a bunch of text files that are loaded all at once. Here's the files I've created, which are numbered to enforce a sort-order from short-term to long-term plans:

• 00 To Do -- daily task continuity
• 10 Week Queued -- planned task list to be done for the immediate week(s)
• 20 Project Scheduling -- high level project planning
• 25 Side Projects -- high level personal project planning
• 30 Project Inquiries -- project pipeline, to be scheduled in 20 when ready to go
• 40 Project Possibilities -- possible projects, need to be finalized and signed
• 50 Long Term Goals -- my long terms goals, which are another form of project
• 60 Recent Contact -- people I've talked to recently, notes on what we talked about
• 70 Contacts -- people contact information
• 80 Good Ideas -- random ideas and observations, with no direction
• 90 Bad Ideas -- things that I've thought that I probably won't do, but who knows?
• Scratchpad -- a place for random jottings

The lower-numbered files are more immediate and concrete than the higher numbered files. As I come across tasks and items that I need to remember or do, I enter them in the appropriate text file. The general idea is that I have a continuum of micro- and macro-level tasks that are important to me, and that I can easily scan them. The reason I have contacts and ideas listed is that these are "ticklers"; who knows what the collision of a "bad idea" coupled with a "recent contact" will bring? It could become a good ideaor possible opportunity.

The screenshot also shows a few optimizations I've made to my Windows setup:

• The menu in the lower right is my "quick launch" toolbar. It is a simple folder named _jump with some shortcuts on it, located on my Data drive so I don't lose it if I reinstall the operating system. I find this menu is easier for me to use that the bloated Windows Start menu. To add your own, create a folder somewhere with the shortcuts you want, and then right click the Windows toolbar choosing the TOOLBARS -> NEW TOOLBAR from the menu. You'll be prompted to choose a folder. You may also want to unlock the toolbar so you can resize the folder name in case it gets mucked up (if you double click it, it will expand to the width of the toolbar, and it's a pain in the ass).

• I'm using a text editor called TextPad, which in addition to providing Workspace Files (shown in my jump menu as ^ProjectToDo.tws, has syntax highlighting. TextPad is a straight text editor, which is nice because it's not bloated and it's fast. I created a new file type, the .dtk file as shown here (it stands for "dave tracking", if you must know). They're just regular text files that I've associated with the TextPad application as a custom type. And because they're custom types, I can define a custom coloring syntax file, dtk.syn, which highlights key words and symbols in the manner I want. Here I've chosen to make the default text color a lighter gray, so that the headers (the ## symbol in column 1, which happens to coincide with the Markdown syntax I use in my blog posts) and keywords like IMPORTANT, TODO and CALL jump out. This is so I can write descriptions in my text files that are just a little easier to scan for the useful bits of information if I'm in a hurry.

So That's What I've Been Doing

I'm going to start looking for collaborators soon, and if there's anyone out there who knows of a place where this is already going on, has suggestions, or is interested in figuring this out, leave a comment and let's start a discussion.

In the meantime, I have a lot of client work to finish, and some new work to book. If you're an HTML jockey, Flash expert, Graphic Designer, business person, project manager, writer, designer, or whatever, shoot me a resume and a sample of your work. I think it would be cool to make a freelance directory that follows some of the principles I'm putting out there, maybe as a simple Wiki or something.

Patents, Clocks, and Surprise

I've been working on a project for a client in Manchester, NH, and while talking to one of his team via IM I mentioned I had made this Procrastinator's Clock a few days ago. To my great surprise, he told me that the client, Jim Logan of Emergent Technologies, had already patented a similar device several years ago! This was entirely too close a coincidence, so I wracked my memory to see if I had somehow been exposed to the idea through him, and sent him an email with a link to see what his take was on it, and wondered what I'd just gotten myself into.

Eep!

Coincidence and Luck

It appears to have been entirely a coincidence that I also came up with a similar clock idea (as have several others on the Internet, I've noted in reading the trackbacks to my original posting). Jim and I have similar interests in applying information and technology, and as he is an entrepreneurial business guy it's not surprising that he's already done something about it. It's also incredibly serendipitous that ff all the patents I might have infringed, I happened to collide with the one owned by someone I've met recently. This has given rise to an expanded conversation too...it's great when these kind of random events open doors. For example, I happened to meet Jim at Barcamp Manchester a few months ago because I was helping set up, and he happened to sit next to me in a panel after I had put my card up on the wall. It just goes to show how random encounters tend to organize themselves into meaningful relationships.

Jim didn't remember disclosing anything about this patent to me in person, but still it is freaky. I know a few other people have also had the same idea as well...it's pretty amazing that similar ideas can arise spontaneously. Emergent Technology's patent on The Random Clock is available on their website, and if you're interested in seeing some kind of physical device come out of this you know who to go talk to :-) I believe they are also looking for talented software developers to work with as well.

Patents and Principle

As a result of this strange encounter, I've also become a lot more interested in patent law and the process of invention. There was this line I read on Wikipedia that struck a particular chord (emphasis mine):

These guidelines assert that a process, including a process for doing business, must produce a concrete, useful and tangible result in order to be patentable.

These are all important ideas, and the emphasis on concrete, useful, and tangible results reminds me a lot of The Printable CEO's Concrete Goal Tracker weighted list. This list is focused on making things that can be shown to people, since I believe that things that you could see and hold are most likely to have a positive affect on the world around you. I suspect that to really understand patent law, one must understand a philosophy of innovation, which is an interesting idea. It would also be very cool to fill out a patent application just to see what it's like. It has a reputation of being a tedious process, but I like trying to explain process so maybe it will actually be kind of fun to try explaining some of my backburnered ideas. I'm one of those nuts who likes to write documentation and explain stuff, so maybe I'm missing my calling!

What Do Idea People Do?

We had an interesting lunch in Portsmouth: me, Mark Reeves and Jeff Leombruno discussing the nature of professional organizations. We were wondering what it would take to get some kind of professional organization of developers and designers going in the Portsmouth / New Hampshire area...just idle talk right now, since none of us really know what's already here already. We also chatted about what we'd expect from such an organization, and how not to let it get stale (anything but that, please). It would be nice to have a core group of people who were interested in sharing process and information on a regular basis, though this runs somewhat counter to the usual motivation of "meet and drink beer". So clearly there are some kinks to work out of the idea :-)

Bring On the Clowns

An interesting tangential conversation we had, which Mark succinctly summarizes, is the offering of value through ideas and inspiration. It's great stuff, but how do you convince people it's worth paying for? A big part of web development often ends up being about strategy and business, and we end up giving that away for free because people like to pay for what they can see and touch.

It occurs to me that the way out of this is not to sell ideas, but to sell performance. Yeah, like a clown! Don't laugh...people understand the value of a clown far more easily than they do YOUR job.

To understand the value of a real information architect / idea person, you might have to sell this as a performance. If a clown delivers laughs, then an IA guy must deliver insights and inspiration. Understanding THAT, I think, is the key to packaging ideation services.

That suggests it's time to get on the Podcast bandwagon and start thinking in terms of performance by proxy. The written word is fine, as are diagrams and other supporting media, but surprisingly it's NOT the main deliverable for an idea guy or gal. Interesting, yes?

The Pursuit of Happiness

Here in the US of A, we celebrate Independence Day on July 4th. This is a holiday I usually associate with recreational activities: picnics, barbecues, outdoor recreation, fireworks, parades and lots of 50%-off sales. It's a pretty mellow day.

The morning after, I was watching the news program CBS Sunday Morning, which ran a segment they called The Pursuit of Happiness. I realized then that there have been several threads of personal inquiry converging with respect to that pursuit: Happiness, Independence, and Community. Perhaps I've found my direction.

Happiness and Independence

Am I happy? I think I am, though there are certain frustrations I have. One of the big ones is the constant desire to be more productive, because I believe that producing more original content is my way to independence.

I used to think that the key to unlocking my productivity monster would be finding the right company. The right company would provide me with the right sense of mission, and so I've been open to finding the right opportunity. In fact, I was in the early stages of forming an business partnership with someone I know, until that person pointed out on one occasion that I didn't sound entirely committed. Oh, how I argued, until I realized that he was right: deep down, I hated the idea of giving up my identity. It was a highly clarifying but disappointing moment. We didn't pursue the relationship.

Since that moment of clarity, I've been more committed to independence as an actual path; I would say that my sense of mission is buoyed by the following statement of belief:

• Happiness will come from creating yummy original content...
• Which will create opportunities for me to be self-sufficient...
• And therefore free me to continue to do the things that I enjoy...
• Which apparently is being the author of said original content...

The lead-off story on CBS Sunday Morning connected the themes of Independence Day with Positive Psychology, a growing movement to scientifically understand the basis of well-being. Most Americans are familiar with the phrase Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; it's written right into our Declaration of Independence, and was signed by the original 13 colonies on July 4th, 1776. While "the pursuit of happiness" is one of our most basic rights, it's entitlement without guarantee. Bummer!

I haven't read the Declaration of Independence since grade school---and even then I probably wasn't paying attention---so I was surprised by its relative brevity; rather than reproduce it in its entirety, I'll paraphrase it:

1. Ok, guys...there comes a time when a group of people must, due to difference of opinion and respect, dissolve their "political union" because it just isn't working anymore.

2. Here's our opinion of what we think life is all about: we think all men are created equal, have certain unalienable rights such as Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Governments should exist solely to secure these rights, deriving their power to do so from the People, in a just manner.

3. When--AHEM--some governments fail to do that, the People have the right to tear it down and build another one. Sure, this isn't something one does lightly, but when the government refuses to deal with the issues responsibly, action by the People is necessary.

4. Let's name names: the present King of England has been a real jerk, and his form of "governance" is one-sided and disrespectful. Here's a long list of things he's done to aggravate us...see what we're talking about? And yes, we've bent over backwards to work things out in a civilized manner, but he remains a capricious, greedy, and dangerous prick. We don't think he's going to change. And you know what? We've had it.

5. So today, we're announcing the world that we consider ourselves free and independent states. We will be friends again once this is resolved, but in the meantime: COME AND GET US!

Thomas Jefferson expressed the sentiment more eloquently, of course; you can find the text reproduced over on JWynia's site in his 4th of July post.

As I reviewed the text, it occured to me that the genuine pursuit of happiness takes guts and resolve. This quote from Frederick Douglass also came to mind:

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."

I described the Pursuit of Happiness as being one of our basic entitlements, but without guarantee that we will receive it. It is, however, our responsibility to go out and get it, and the Declaration of Independence makes it clear that this is a right worth fighting for. When we make excuses about "timing", or "convenience", we are resigning ourselves to suffer an imposition of injustice, by the tyranny of our own inaction.

Independence and Community

As I said, I've been talking to people about various partnership / company scenarios. I spent many hours talking to people about what this meant to them, and the main arguments for starting a company looked something like this:

• As individuals, we can achieve only so much. As a company, we will have skills that complement each other, which will as a group allow us to offer a more complete suite of services. We will also have the credibility of being a group, which combined with our talent can attract more interesting (and lucrative) projects.
• It would be cool to work together with really talented people. People we can count on. People we actually like working with.
• It would be cool to build a company that emphasized creative facilities: a great space to work in, a place to teach, etc.

These are all fine reasons to start a company, and because I've been interested in community recently it seemed to be a great "two-for-one" deal. Except...it didn't feel right. As I talked with potential partners, I found I needed an awful lot of convincing. And if there's anything that sucks the wind out of a partnership-in-the-making, it's a lack of conviction from the person you're trying to partner with. Everyone I talked to was super enthusiastic about their company-building dreams, but I tended to ask questions like:

• What would be the company mission?
• How will we know we're fulfilling that mission?
• Who is the majority owner? In the case of an equal partnership, how would we resolve inevitable conflict of interest?
• How do you see me fitting into the operation? How do you see us working together? What do you see your role as?

And the doozy:

• What is the advantage of being in a company versus doing what I am already doing now?

The latter really was the sticking point for me because I feel like I'm finally on a path that I'm enjoying: the path of authorship. I like being personally responsible for what I say and do. The questions I asked were good ones, but they really were indicators of doubt wrapped in the cloak of due diligence. And doubt of that nature is NOT something you can tolerate from a business partner, because that indicates a lack of commitment to the whole, which bleeds energy, which is STARTUP DEATH. But I digress...just by asking that last question, I elevated myself to the level of the proposed company, and this tends to have a dampening effect on people who are excited by the very notion of creating something larger than themselves. It's probably not a bad question to ask, because when you're starting up you need to be pretty damn sure of the reason and rationale behind the decision if you're going to really sell it, but it's a real party pooper.

I like the idea of building companies, but I tend to frame the activity in terms of what's important to me, and not so much "what can we make". Here's a list of six directives that I think apply to me:

1. I want to work on my own stuff to create original properties. This is far and away more important to me than creating a company structure for the sake of having one.

2. I want to establish a reputation as a designer / developer / writer whatever. And I want to earn it with my own hands, and be personally accountable for what I put out there. That's how I think of authorship.

3. I want to create and contribute to a community of independent producers. I could join up with a community, but I have specific ideas about what I'd like to see from that.

4. I like creating sparks. For me, that means creating an empowering environment and positive energy, such that the "spark" occurs naturally. In other words, learning and teaching is important to me from the perspective of shared experience, not just for knowledge transfer.

5. If I did create a company or organization, it would exist primarily to provide the scaffolding for personal achievement and development of the individuals, in support of 4.

6. If I did create a company, it would have to be my company in that I would be the one to make the decisions. I am finally starting to accept this, and I'm also getting over the feeling that I have to apologize wanting things to be this way.

In a sense, this is my own Declaration of Independence.

Directive 6 is a completely new insight for me, and it's really the first time I've seriously thought that I may want to create a company. I have been pursuing the first 5 directives for years and never really considered the option, thinking that I was not up to the task, or that it was just too much of a hassle. These days, though, I'm more comfortable with the idea, and I must admit that with a group I could get more done. It feels a tad egotistical to think this way, because we're conditioned to think in terms of "team" and "democracy", but look at it this way: would you want a group of people voting on how you personally choose and pursue your interests? Do you want your own interests and dreams to be interpreted by some "team" with its own agenda and politics? No sir, I don't like it. The Pursuit of Happiness is, in my opinion, not about group consensus; it's about recognizing that we're all free to make our own decisions. The trick is figuring out that this is indeed within our reach, and then learning how to grasp.

So where does community fit into this? Isn't the mindset I described above counter to the spirit of community?

I think I've just figured it out: my values as I've listed them here are completely oriented toward empowering individuals, not organizations. I like to cheer people on! Persevere! Face demons! I support and applaud your efforts 100%! I think myself as a traveller on the same road.

While I don't know where this belief comes from, following through with it is incredibly important to me. It's funny I couldn't see this until I got called on my lack of commitment to the company idea. And now, I can see that this has been something of a recurring pattern when I have worked at other companies. With few exceptions, a company's underlying value was your heart and the company are one. My energies, however, are directed toward empowering the individual so they can shake free of whatever preconceptions limit their potential; company structure and management often are the limit.

I recognize, of course, that insight doesn't pay the bills. At least when one commits to a company, the company reciprocates with salary and benefits. This allows the individual to survive. This is not an automatic if one pursuits the path of freedom; think "Live Free or Die!" The Declaration of Independence, remember, was a declaration of war. If it had been a single colony declaring their independence, that would have been tantamount to declaring suicide. But when a community of like-minded individuals works together, the odds are significantly changed in their favor. So perhaps that's what I'm looking for in a community: shared values, a willingness to take action, and a belief that it will be good for everyone in the end.

Community and Happiness

In studies on happiness, everyone who was very happy could point to a strong social network of friends and family. And for all the shaking of fists and declarations of independence, all I really want is to be happy. The two are related.

If I am going to pursue the formation of a company or be part of a community of like-minded thinkers, what are my expectations? On my freelancer / idea forum, this is the pertinent rule I post:

• Don't be lame. Contribute constructively. Be respectful of each other.

And then there are my basic life beliefs:

• You can do anything, maybe badly, but that shouldn't stop you. You will be surprised by what you can do, and where it will take you.
• Keep yourself open to opportunity.
• Treasure the good people around you. Avoid the toxic ones.

Those would be the operating principles of any community I am a part of.

The Pursuit of Happiness is Happiness?

CBS Sunday Morning's segment ended with this observation:

Maybe Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

If that's the case, then my mission must be learning how to make maps.

The Worthlessness of Ideas

Commenter Ben Yoskovitz challenges the idea that ideas are worthless, a view I have stated one-sidedly in a recent post: Obsessing Over Lost Ideas. It's completely understandable that Ben would take affront to this, and he unleashes a laundry list of reasons why ideas are great.

Here's some of his points (check out his post for more detail):

• Ideas create communication.
• Ideas Have No Risk? Says Who?
• Ideas help us be more creative.
• Ideas lead to change.
• Ideas foster communication.
• Ideas are the birthplace of businesses.
• Ideas beget more ideas.
• Ideas foster enthusiasm.

Yes, yes, and yes! Don't get me wrong...I love ideas. My perspective, however, is that ideas by themselves have little worth from a "results" perspective. An idea that stays in my head just takes up space, so either I tell someone about it (useful!) or I do something with it (world changing!)

Ideas that Make Me Itch

The scenario that irks me is when someone believes that being "the original idea-haver" is an entitlement, and that anyone who actually goes and does something with it is ripping them off. When I used to be a teaching assistant for graphic design students, I would occassionally have to resolve complains that "Student B is ripping off my idea!" It usually came down to something like this:

"Dave, did you see Student B's work?"

"Yes, Student A. What about it?"

"She's totally ripping off my design!"

"Really? Tell me more."

"See how I'm using circular elements here on my layout? She's..." and here the student would lower his voice, humbled by the ethical sins he was about to expose, "...she's also using circles! Like me! You have to stop this! It's not fair!"

The thought that would go through my mind was, "What, did you invent the circle? Are you the first person to put it in a design? Sheesh!" I would usually tell them something that the circle is a pretty basic element, and it was how you really used it that would make a difference...look, there's so many other ways you can combine size, tone, image, etc to make a completely different look that blows away "The Circle Stealer", who would happily go on with her business learning instead of, you know, looking over her shoulder.

Then there's the scenario where someone believes in idea-work equivalency; that is, having the idea in the first place entitles one to claim credit for all the work that was done to make it happen. Their argument is, "Hey, you wouldn't have been able to do anything without my idea, so really everything you've done based on it belongs to me." While this perhaps is true (and this is when I wish I'd studied Rhetoric in college), it's also incredibly disrespectful to the people who got off their asses and did the work. I have a particularly strong allergic reaction to people like this.

Ideas as Catalysts

I don't think what I'm saying is an argument against what Ben is saying. I actually agree with all his points; our difference may be where we put the emphasis. I would say that there's three ways I measure the "worth" of an idea:

• As a catalyst for action.
• As a catalyst for communication.
• As a catalyst for community.

My position is that though ideas are catalysts, the meaningful expression of worth is a result of the complete reaction. A catalyst without something to catalyze is just inert, sitting and doing nothing.

On the other hand, a catalyst is a substance that enables incredible things to happen. While a catalyst is inert by itself, so is that pile of resources. A true catalyst enables you to transmute that pile of resources from junk into gold. And truly, that is worth some serious bucks.

So if ideas can be catalysts in the way I describe, aren't they then by definition worth something? Well, no...most ideas are not catalysts. They are wishful thinking.

Imagination versus Catalysts

A non-technical Mac user once told me his idea to solve the Great Macintosh Speed Problem of 1986 (a drought which continued until 2006, I might add). His solution was brilliant in its simplicity: "Put more than one processor in the Mac! They're not that expensive! Problem solved!"

I started to tell him, as the ever-eager computer engineering student, that it wasn't that simple, but he would hear nothing of it. He had solved the problem in his mind. That's wishful thinking...a pleasant fantasy, but not one that was easily acted upon. That is not to say that dreams don't have a place; as Ben points out, these dreams (ideas) inspire us. So of course we do have multi-processing Macs now, finally...the idea never died; it just took a lot of hard work and a completely different operating system to get it right.

I'm going to postulate that a true catalyzing idea has to meet the following criteria:

• It describes a specific reaction between resources yields some desirable result that can be applied in an existing process (physical or social).
• It short-circuits our notion of how such reactions have occured in the past, creating an order-of-magnitude lead over existing methods.
• Our perception of the reaction is irreversibly altered, redefining conventional wisdom in the process.
• And the most important criterion of all: We think it's AWESOME. That's the gut-check, where our intuition comes into play.

If you have such an idea, I think you've probably got something. And that is worth crowing about to someone. You have just crafted a piece of practical magic.

If your idea falls short on any of these specifics, that's OK. Use it as your defining vision, and inspire yourself. Rest assured that plugging away at your idea will yield results, maybe not the ones you were expecting, but it may lead up to that life-changing critical insight that does pay off big. As a dance instructor once told me, the hardest part about taking dance lessons is just showing up.

If you have an idea that you think is worth something...show us. To paraphrase one of my favorite movies, "it's a moral imperative".

The Divisiveness of Ideas

One thing Ben said struck close to home: telling people about your ideas can be really scary. I think I've slowly lost my fear of that, but that is because am relatively independent and I tend to judge ideas on their own merit (I'm an INTJ/INFP, if that means anything to anyone). Unfortunately, a lot of the time people judge us by our ideas, and that can have serious repercussions in the workplace and even the home.

I'm using the term "ideas" pretty loosely here, so I will make a distinction between what we say we believe/think, what we imagine, what we plan, and what we perceive:

• What we say we believe/think -- Religion, Mac versus PC, Red States versus Blue States...you know. This isn't what I'm really talking about when I say "ideas" in this post.

• What we imagine -- This is a little closer. This is about values, dreams, and desire. It's also very private, and in a politically-charged environment these bits of information can be used against us, twisted to create a damning statement from our own words.

• What we plan -- This is more nuts and bolts; "how we will do things to achieve a certain goal". We can be judged on this too, by our bosses and coworkers, who all have their own idea of how something works. If our plan doesn't hold water, it splashes all over our chance for promotion. Bummer.

• What we perceive -- I'm a big believer in looking at things from multiple angles, because ideas often work only in a specific context; you have to be able to see the context before you can have the idea. Then the problem is explaining it to someone with a different perspective. You see this happen a lot between upper executives and floor workers: executives see a very distorted picture of how things work if they don't get out of their corner offices. Even worse, everything they say and do is magnified thousands of times beyond what it may really mean. This is a good example of 1% of what is visible is perceived as 100% of the reality, which doesn't do anyone any good in the long run. When your crazy-sounding idea comprises the bulk of that 1% to your boss, you're going to be careful about what you say.

I don't have any solutions to this, other than deciding to be a freelancer and work on my own ideas on the side. I'm incredibly grateful that this Internet thing exists for me to ramble into, but even I am nervous about what I put up here from time-to-time:

• That post I wrote about getting a manicure, for example, was predicated on the idea that "seeking any kind of experience and writing about it is good"...a strong position to take! On the other hand, I was also worried that people might think I was some kind of nancy-boy, and I'd never have another date for the rest of my life. I decided that people who thought that were probably people I wouldn't be interested in hanging out anyway, and just let it ride.

• Then there was the one about thinking negative, which I wrote when I was feeling kind of depressed. I spun out a somewhat derivative-but-authentic tale about seeing ghosts in my house, and by the end of it I actually felt much better. And. I. Posted. It. That night I couldn't sleep because I imagined losing my entire readership because This Is Not What I Signed Up For. The next day, I got some calls from my friends that were like, "Um, OK. You OK?" and Gueeessss whooooo thiiisssss issssSSSSssSS? WooOOooOOooo! But I also got some comments from people who appreciated the story, and shared some of their own experiences with me. From then on I decided that I would just post what came to me, and live with it. I don't want to live in fear of my own ideas.

So that's where I'm coming from. I'm very pro idea, but I nevertheless value them more when they're put into action or shared.

Now that I think about it, this is probably one of the main motivations for my private Freelancer/Idea Forum: it's private and optionally anonymous because I wanted to create a sanctuary where people could feel free to express their ideas. I value every idea that people post about, and I believe that everyone who's active feels the same way. Although anyone can sign up, there IS a price of admission: you must share a little bit of yourself before you're allowed to join the community; that takes some guts and motivation, and knowing that everyone in the forum has gone through that rite of passage automatically makes them one of your peers.

And with that, let a thousand ideas bloom.

Promoting Your Agenda

I just got a phone call on my biz line, which I answered with great initial enthusiasm. It was "Kathy" or "Kaitlin" asking to speak with the "Lady of the House". I informed here that there wasn't one, so she asked to speak to someone else in charge of the household. At this point I asked, "Who are you?", and she replied she was with The Dove Foundation and could she please speak with the lady of the house? I then asked with what she wanted, and she got a tad bit huffy and insisted she needed to speak with the lady of the house. I said, "Look, YOU are calling ME on my business line, and..." but didn't get farther; she spoke over me, saying "I'm sorry, thank you for your time" and hung up before I finished. I actually can't remember if she did apologize, because the tone of the voice conveyed the opposite intention, which was I've got other calls to make, you're wasting my time >CLICK<

I started preparing an informational rant against The Dove Foundation, but along the way I had an insight about a new marketing strategy that could work for me. It's not as awful as you might think.

Their Agenda

The Dove Foundation is an organization that promotes the production of "high quality, wholesome entertainment options for their families". It's a rating on top of existing industry ratings like the MPAA for movies and ESRB for games. I flipped through the listings on the website for games, but the number of reviews was rather short; it's rather telling that the first game at the top of the list is "The Bible Game". I was hoping for something more like Consumer Reports, a comprehensive rating system for all the current games, but apparently not. From their one-page public annual report, their 2005 revenues were $430K, and their major cited accomplishments were conducting opinion polls, publishing studies, conducting film festivals, and writing movie reviews.

If you do a search on google for "Dove Foundation", you get a lot of angry posts about their terrible telemarketing manner. The earliest post I saw was dated 1998, so they've been irritating people for years with their put-up or hang-up style of "outreach". So common is this irritation that they include it in their FAQ; the gist is "we don't intend to hang up on people, maybe our operator pressed a button by accident." I feel so loved. My opinion is that they're just focused on the prize: collecting data that supports their agenda. And they don't care who they irritate in the process, because if you're irritated you must not be in their demographic.

Now, there's nothing wrong with having an agenda; I just like it to be out in the open. In the marketplace of ideals, I like healthy competition through factual expression, not cooking the stats. I realize that's a blurry line to draw, but it comes into sharp focus when I see lying with partial-truths. Everyone knows this is the best way to lie. Marketing copywriters of a certain type know this, hoping that we can't smell the rat. Guys and gals...you're not fooling anyone. By coincidence, the SXSW06 podcast for Cluetrain: Seven Years Later was released today. It was one of my favorite panels at the festival, featuring Doc Searls, Heather Armstrong, Henry Copeland, and Brian Clark (Christopher Locke didn't make it). Very much worth listening too; it's all about conversation in the marketplace.

Honest conversations. Yeah.

Conversations

I don't mean to bust on marketing copywriters...just look what they have to work with! When you've got to feed mouths, turd polishing is a job you gotta do. But I was thinking: companies historically are artificial persons formed for some commercial enterprise. Extending the "person" idea, the language that copywriters are forced to use is all about saving face. Some companies are painfully aware of their drawbacks, and they've gotta hide it. And if you're trying to sell a stinker of a product with words and pictures, what recourse do you have? Even if the product is merely average, you're kind of sunk.

Freelancers face the same problem. Although I have freelanced since 1998, it's only now that I'm starting to see how some of my pieces fit together. Before that, I had the same skillset as everyone else: Flash. Director. Photoshop. Graphic Design. At least, these were the skills that people could recognize...I have always liked writing and analyzing things, but people don't like buying intangibles like that; they like stuff they can see or otherwise experience. So you're kind of doomed to compete on generic term matching ("I'm looking for a Flash guy") to get the work, wait for referrals, or hussle to get your name out there. I've been pretty bad at doing the hussle, subsisting largely on referrals. I've been inspired lately by watching My Life on the D-List and seeing how an utterly-shameless person (Kathy Griffin) gets things done, at the same time dealing with self-doubt, setbacks, and stress. I'm working my way up to that.

There isn't much difference between what I want to do and what The Dove Foundation is doing. I'm a little more selfish about it: my cause is me and the people who are important in my life who I have yet to meet. The Dove Foundation wants "wholesome family values" in the media. Maybe what's different is the approach I prefer to take.

My Agenda

Naturally, I want to portray myself in a positive light so I can have a successful life just like everyone else; that's my agenda. Two approaches come to mind:

• Show Only My Best Side -- In other words, list the good things that I've done, and trust that this makes up for everything else. It's not being dishonest, unless you're trying to cover up something. It's like the supermarket putting all the good pork chops on top of a "variety pack" of meat, obscuring the skanky cuts beneath them. Or even having a selective portfolio in the first place.

• Demonstrate All My Best Qualities -- This is the approach I think I'm taking, having decided this just now. There are things that I do well that embody important personal principles and values. I want to work with people that have the same values. Therefore, I must demonstrate my values through action and by example. So if there's something that's important to me, like Information Graphics and having a Meaningful existence, then I must live it out. Make stuff. Talk about it. Be real. Make it easy for people to see that I'm on their side. That's how my portfolio needs to be designed.

I suspect that approach #2 makes much less money in the short term (certainly, I am a datapoint supporting this theory :-) but I'm hopeful it has the longest legs. Approach #1 is about saving face, worrying about how you stack up against the competition. That's a game that works too, and it makes the world go round. Nothing wrong with that; it's just when the game is dirty that I have issues: lying through statistics, misleading people with half-truths, taking away other people's choices for your own sense of emotional security and convenience.

For me, recognizing that "living and demonstrating my principles" can work as a marketing strategy formalizes what I've been doing for the past year or so. I was into the niche of one thing, but in the abstract. Now that I've recognized this principles thing, I can identify specific ones. This just may be the next step to finding the answer, fulfillment, or something good.

Storytelling by Design

I've been pulling together my thoughts on a design approach based on the power of storytelling. While I still haven't quite figured out what it is, I have started to chain some realizations together.

The Failure of Thing-Focused Design

The failure of much design stems from the lack of engagement between creator and audience. As we creators grow more and more specialized, the tendency to describe what we are doing with precise bursts of jargon increases, balkanizing the creative landscape with specialists who spend more time talking to themselves than communicating ideas to regular people. And yet, it's the people that matter most, both in terms of social fulfilment and in revenue.

While the idea of "story" in design is not new in the context of Human-Computer Interaction, Usability, and Experience Design, I haven't yet seen a whole lot of emphasis on the quality of storytelling. The literature cites story as a way of defining a user, which is useful for workflow visualization; ironically, storytelling itself is not part of the toolkit.

Storytelling Doesn't Just Describe Relationships; It Also Creates Them!

I'm interested in a process that's more immediate and primal. I think of the "art of storytelling" (as opposed to just having a descriptive story) as a two-way modelling process. It's a more engaging way to introduce individual people to new ideas and concepts. Stories and storytelling go back to the dawn of humanity; it is arguably the way we understand the world, and it's also arguably the most compelling commonality in the development of all our media technology. Yes, specialized jargon is inevitable when discussing the inner workings of the technology amongst ourselves. However, we must recognize that the inner workings themselves are relevant only to other practitioners. What matters most to me is putting that technology in service of the storytelling; becoming a better storyteller is at the heart of being a designer with relevance in the real world. This is performance by proxy, showmanship applied with purpose. When you help someone understand new technology in the context of their understanding of the world, they can co-creation the new reality with you because they can envision their place in it. That's the power of great storytelling. Great exposition doesn't reach as far. It's just boring, which anyone who has had to read a functional spec can attest.

The difference in approach can be illustrated as follows:

• The specialist designer provides a menu of services and skills related to production, and then asks the client what they want. What format? How many colors? What's the copy? How many pages? What should it look like? And then, they produce to an evolving specification based on user modelling and iterative testing.

• The storyteller-designer, by comparison, first asks about motivation and desire, and designs for the dramatic moments. The primary goal is not to produce to a functional spec, but to create a story about the cllient, with the client in the hero-protagonist role. Only then are the production skills are applied to create causal elements in the real world. The difference is that the story doesn't remain a fiction; when executed well, the story makes the client's reality. And if all goes well, the story takes on a life of its own.

I believe the concept of the storyteller-designer is what I'm actually moving toward. It focuses not on process and technology, but on creating events placed in a meaningful human context. And that's where all the action is, IMHO.

Mind you, I am not saying that Usability is useless. However, "user models" and "archetypes" are mere descriptive anchors; the role of "story" in the context of Usability is to package user behaviors into a concise blueprint useful for general systems modelling. The flow of information is one-way: behavior is observed, iterated upon, and re-observed. While the users are involved in the process as the "target" audience, they are more like statistical parameters in the system design. That's fine, and that's not what I'm talking about.

The approach of Storytelling by Design, as I'm trying define it, is about interfacing with clients using an approach that emphasizes story as the primary unit of understanding, as opposed to "pages", "Flash", "PHP", "look and feel" and "rounds of revision". You can also think of it as "speaking the language of the client" taken a little farther; using storytelling techniques in client communication to create engagement and understanding of the creative process. It's also a given that storytelling is the focus of the creative work; this is well understood in any customer-facing endeavor that's intended to be viewed by actual people (e.g. Advertising)

Later this week I'll talk a bit more about how the process of practicing "Storytelling by Design" works.

UPDATE: I just found this article that talks about something very similar! So I'm not alone in this :-)

Related Posts

• Story-based Design is the first attempt I made to clarify what I was trying to do.

• Story-based Design II is a first exploration to distinguish between what I'm doing and the already-entrenched usage in Usability / Experience Design.

• Story-based Design III: Shakers and Objects describes a related insight about "objects looking like objects, as opposed to like people".

• Story-based Design IV: When it Breaks describes a situation where maybe you shouldn't tell the story.

• Storytelling versus Co-Creation of Story describes "branded entertainment" and my reaction to the idea. I realize then that it's not so much the storytelling that I'm trying to define, but the style of client interaction I'm trying to achieve.

• Topic home is http://davidseah.com/storytelling-by-design

Obsessing over Lost Ideas

I tend to have a lot of ideas, which is a kind way of saying that I'm easily distracted. The way I control this impulse is by recognizing that most ideas aren't worth much without the solid execution to bring them into reality. So when I talk to someone about an idea, I will assess our ability to work together with a set of rules like this:

• Do we have the skills?
• Do we have the time?
• Do we have the resources?
• Do we have the chemistry?
• Do we really have the motivation?

It's amazing how many ideas don't make the cut, if you're being truly honest. In a lot of cases, I'll do something because I'm actually not sure...in the process of doing, I'll find out. Of course, I have to disclose this fully to any involved parties, because otherwise the second battery of tests will fail:

• Are we maintaining momentum?
• Are we setting our expectations correctly?
• Was our initial assessment accurate?
• Do we keep going?

Not many personal projects make it past the second battery either, at least in my limited experience. That's why if you ever find someone to team up with that can repeatedly pass this test, you should make every effort to work together. You have found something magical.

But I digress. I just realized that though I can keep my distractions from turning into failed projects, I am absolutely obsessive about documenting them. Witness this blog. And this obsession is actually driven by fear.

I have a terrible memory, or so I think. I remember being commanded to memorize and repeat phrases on the spot in French class, and not being able to do it to great personal embarassment. I also hate losing information, or feeling stuck because I am lacking some critical piece of information that could solve some workplace conundrum. And it's probably related overall to a fear of not being competent. So I work really hard at being competent, and I suppose I have succeeded in certain respects. But the fear is still very much there, lurking deep in the shadows.

How does this relate to the documenting of every idea that I have? Well, I'm not really sure. It may be that for all the noise I make about ideas being worthless by themselves, it happens to be one of the things that I truly enjoy and am actually good at. So the upshot is: I'm really good at doing something that I know is worthless without execution behind it. Sheesh...I didn't see that coming! By documenting them, perhaps I am attempting to generate some kind of value from them. At least when they're written down, other people can benefit, and therefore attribute some kind of value to me.

So facing up to myself, I'm recognize I am being silly. Let me work this out:

• First of all, if I'm so good at generating new ideas, then I will never lack for them. Ever. So starting now, I'm going to stop obsessing about remembering them (which I suck at anyway) and focus on generating new ones. That's not to say that I'll stop blogging them; I will just not run to the computer to write them down and get caught up in it every time a thought crosses my mind. This should have an effect on my personal productivity.

• Secondly, I should worry about the ideas that do make it past the two filters, because those are the ones that matter in terms of executability. And that means the creation of tangible, life-sustaining assets.

• Thirdly, my core business might actually be packaging ideas for consumption. Content creation, in other words. I have a nice skill set for doing that: design, development, writing and all that related stuff. It's not experience design or graphic design, or storytelling/journalism in itself.

• Fourthly, the ability to generate and package ideas very cheaply (in terms of mental energy) is a competitive advantage, in some business circles. Identifying what businesses those are will be an interesting challenge.

I'm pretty confident that everyone has some kind of trait like this; it's just difficult to see it from your own perspective. For some reason taking showers seems to trigger these insights, and since I've been taking a lot of showers lately as I try this polyphasic sleep schedule out, I guess it's my own darn fault. :-)