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Did you know that…
One weekday issue of the New York Times has more information in it than an educated man in the 17th century would amass in a lifetime?
There is a new blog born every half a second? That means that there are 175,000 new blogs every day and that the blogosphere doubles every 60 days.
The Average person is exposed to 3,000 ads per day?
Just a decade ago, if you needed to do some research, you would have to go to a library and work with the few books and encyclopedias that they had on your subject.Today we are not only surrounded by information, we are completely overloaded with it and we don’t know how to handle it.If you don’t pay attention to any of it, you will fall behind and get lost but if you try and take it all in, you will never in a million years have enough time to soak it all in.
The solution to this problem is “social media”.Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon as well as RSS readers allow you to keep on top of everything that is important.Unlike a newspaper or the 6:00 news, you define what is important.With social media, you get to build your own community of likeminded people and friends who help each other out on a regular basis.If your interest is humor, your social media group will also be interested in humor.If you are a marketing professional, then you will be connected to other marketing professionals or at least people who enjoy marketing.It is these people who will flag articles, blogs, videos and anything else that would be of interest to your group so that you don’t have to wade through all the other garbage out there and you can focus on what is important to you.
True that not everyone from a certain group has identical taste and that is why you can build your own network, person by person.You do not have to lock yourself into any set group and hope that you are compatible.You can build your own group based on your friends, your likes and your needs.
People used to have to check their email and the news every few minutes to know what is happening in the world.Now all you have to do is check your social networks every once in a while and see whats going on.If something is important, you can be sure that it will keep appearing.
By using Twitter, instead of sitting on Google for hours calling everyone you know for suggestions, you can just send a tweet and people from your community will help you out.For example, if you are traveling on business and get hungry, you can send a tweet from your phone that you need a restaurant in the city that you are in and everyone in your network will send you suggestions if they have them.Now, your network is only as strong as you make it and will only give you as much value as you put in.
So, make sure you build a strong network and add as much value to it as you possibly can because if you do, your network will be there for you when you need it and make your life a whole lot easier.
Last week I wrote a review of Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Workweek and I wanted to share the story below from the book since my last post was about redefining the “impossible”.
While teaching at Princeton University, Tim Ferriss offered a challenge to his class.He preached to the class that you don’t need to work like dogs to be successful in life but he also knew that most of the students in the class will probably work 80 hours a week as “high paid coffee fetchers”.He wanted to prove that his teaching can be used in real life so he decided to offer his class a challenge that would put his teachings into practice.
The winner of the contest would receive a round trip airfare to anywhere in the world.The challenge was to contact 3 “seemingly impossible” to reach people; Jlo, Bill Clinton and J.D. Salinger and get at least one of them to answer a few questions.
Close to 1/3 of his class remained after class to hear the challenge and participate.None of them completed the challenge or even gave the challenge a chance.They all had an excuse why they didn’t take or complete the challenge.They all thought that someone else would outdo them, so none of them even showed up.According to the rules that Tim set up, if any of them even gave a one paragraph illegible response, he would be forced to reward them with the prize.
The next year, Tim offered his class the same challenge but with one small difference.He told them about the previous class’ results.The results in the second challenge were 6 out of 17 students completing the challenge within 48 hours.
People tend to give up when they think that a task is “impossible”.They look at it for a few seconds or even minutes and decide whether it is possible or not.Then if they come to the conclusion that it is “impossible”, they drop the task and go into “excuse” mode.They think that if something is “impossible”, nobody can possibly expect them to complete the task.
If someone gives you a puzzle to do, you will try to figure it out but at a certain point, you may decide that it is “impossible” and stop trying.But, if someone else was doing the same puzzle and came up with a solution, you would probably take a second look at the puzzle since you now know that it is “possible”.
An experiment was once done where 2 groups of people were given 2 bent nails that were attached and told to try and detach them.One group was told that it may not be possible while the other group was told that it definitely was possible.Who do you think gave up first?
You guessed it.The “impossible” group gave up after a few minutes while the other group kept on trying until they figured out how to separate the nails.
Now you have to think twice before writing something off as “impossible”.
I’ve always wanted to visit Japan.I am people watcher, I love to travel, see new places and see how people live their lives.The different cultures fascinate me and I am always excited to see new things.I have traveled to six countries, seven provinces in Canada and forty-four states in the USA.Although it would be great to see how people live in Japan, the main reason I want to visit is because they are extremely innovative.They have hundreds, if not thousands of products and inventions that the United States have never even heard of.
I once stumbled upon a website with pictures of all kinds of different funny things in Japan as well as a vending machine like parking lot where you would park your car in one specific spot and your car would be taken automatically to an empty spot in the parking garage.When you wanted your car back, you would punch in your number and your car would be vended right to you.
One amazing innovation from Japan is the square watermelon.I was amazed when I first heard about them a few years ago but was reminded of them yesterday while reading another article by Andy Sernovitz about the Lesson of the Square Watermelon.The story behind them is that watermelons are traditionally big oval shaped and heavy.It is very hard to ship them to stores and stack them in the isles.The square watermelon was the response to this problem making them more efficient to ship and stack and resulted in a huge increase to the bottom line.
As Andy said in his article, people never thought of square watermelons as an option so they thought that it would be impossible to grow.In life we think of many things as impossible and because of that, we never attempt to do them.By writing things off as “impossible”, we give up on many great opportunities.
Unlucky people give up right away when faced with a challenge claiming that it is impossible.Lucky people take the challenge and may come to the conclusion that the challenge is impossible but they may figure out a way to complete the challenge and realize that it is a lot easier than it seems.
I love my IPod.I have Itunes set up to download Podcasts every day and I sync them while I am at the office.I do most of my listening and watching while commuting while I am nowhere near a computer. Yesterday I was watching a podcast from Andrew Lock of “Help! My Business Sucks!” and in the podcast, he asked his viewers, if they liked what they saw, to share his video through any social media such as dig, facebook, stumble, etc.
I listen to so many different podcasts that it is sometime hard to remember where everything is coming from.I carry around a notepad to jot down any ideas or interesting information as well as ideas that I come up with based on what I am hearing.When listening to a good podcast, I can fill up a couple pages in my notepad with things to try out, things to post about or things to research.Each of these podcasts help me get lucky by keeping a continuous stream of great information and ideas coming my way.
I realize that the people who create the podcasts do not do it for me alone, but they do it to create value and share it with the world.If I was the only one listening, I am 100% positive that most, and probably all of them would stop podcasting.If I want to make sure that the information and ideas keep coming, I have to make sure to do my part in sharing the information.To do this, I post articles to “pay it forward” and I use social bookmarking to spread the original content to more people, even if I have to spend time searching all over the internet to find their actual site to submit.
I thank all of the blog authors and podcast creators who have helped me get to where I am and I ask you, my readers to “pay it forward” as well by stumbling or social bookmarking my posts that you like, joining the community by leaving comments and spreading the word.
