A Jolt at Podcasters Across Borders 2008:
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Five Step Method of Protecting Yourself From Negative Influences : Fridays
Five Step Method of Protecting Yourself From Negative Influences : Fridays
Friday is about protection. Protection, in the traditional sense, is the mental state of actively burning away all of the negative influences you’re aware of in your life. Clear your mind if your schedule permits, and grab your media library. Indulge in a short movie clip, song, or personal saying that emphasizes shielding and protecting against harm. Perhaps it’s a science fiction movie or a medieval setting in which an armored knight repels arrows, or the theme song of a superhero for whom bullets bounce off harmlessly.
On Friday, as the week winds down, square away all your work for the week, tying up as many loose ends as you can. Reply to emails that need a reply, then archive them out of sight. If your messaging systems permit, turn on an out of office notification the moment you’re prepared to leave the office, informing those that would contact you during your weekend that you’re simply unavailable. If you work as an independent contractor, establish the expectation that if a client has needs during off hours, they should be prepared to pay a king’s ransom for your time, until your office reopens on Monday.
Set and enforce boundaries rigorously. If you have an office phone or PDA, power it down entirely once you depart the office. Control which media you choose to allow in your life, which ways that news can arrive, as news is rarely good these days. Choose to replace mundane forms of media (thoughtless television, rambling radio, etc.) with the media that continues to inspire you, that builds inside of you a burning passion for accomplishment and meaning.
Review your past week in your mind as you prepare to end your work week. You’ve focused on a fresh start, correct actions, communications, and thoughts, and expressed a willingness to blockade negativity from your life. Now you’re prepared to head into the weekend, into your private time, fresh and energized, knowing that your private time is truly yours and you’re protected from yourself and others who would influence you to outcomes that are not in your best interests.
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Five Step Method of Protecting Yourself From Negative Influences : Thursdays
Five Step Method of Protecting Yourself From Negative Influences : Thursdays
Thursday is about mental focus. Correct thought, in the traditional sense, means thinking clearly, unimpeded by runaway distractions of every kind. Clear your mind if your schedule permits, and grab your media library. Indulge in a short movie clip, song, or personal saying that emphasizes clarity of thought. Perhaps you have a detective hero who always sees the solution ahead, or maybe there’s a movie clip that epitomizes insight, an a-ha moment that never fails to inspire you.
On Thursday, look for things in your life that focused thought can solve. Is there a particularly difficult problem that demands your focus? Is there an issue on your mind that requires diamond-like clarity of vision and thought? Work to create a situation for yourself in which you think best.
At a bare minimum, go dark. Turn off phones, instant messengers, email and calendar reminders, close your door, or even leave your office. If you think best while moving, take the time to go for a walk, to get away from the distractions and diversions of your regular places. Head to a quiet coffee shop or a calming park bench. Bring with you a paper notepad and pen to jot down your thoughts as you have them.
Take time throughout the day and night to shield your mind from distracting influences. Leave the television off for the day, shut off your phone when you arrive home, and avoid pointless agitation from things like news programs. Instead, use the day and evening to fill your mind with useful mental materials. Read a thought-provoking book, or go out to dinner and drinks with a friend you always enjoy rigorous, healthy discussion with.
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Five Step Method of Protecting Yourself From Negative Influences : Wednesdays
Five Step Method of Protecting Yourself From Negative Influences : Wednesdays
Wednesday is about communication. Correct communication, in the traditional sense, means speaking with purpose. Clear your mind if your schedule permits, and grab your media library. Indulge in a short movie clip, song, or personal saying that emphasizes ways of communicating effectively, powerfully, and helpfully. Maybe it’s a romantic clip from a favorite movie or a moving speech from an orator. Perhaps it’s part of an audio book or a memorable sermon from your religious service. Pick a communication example that shows communication that makes a difference, that inspires and helps.
On Wednesday, look for things in your life that effective communication can make better. Are there a few emails in your inbox that have been waiting for replies? Hit Reply and boldly solve the problem. Is there a friend or family member you keep meaning to call? Pick up the phone! Is there a meeting you’ve been less than enthusiastic about attending? Go, and go with the intent of contributing as much as possible to it.
Speak willfully and powerful on Wednesday to make the world just a little bit better. Leave a truthful but kind comment on someone’s blog. Write a letter to a political figure promoting a positive change you wish to see become reality in the world. Consider mentoring someone in your workplace or community, helping them become better.
Guard your speech as well. Look for opportunities to reduce the negative things you say and write, and slowly whittle those out of your vocabulary.
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Five Step Method of Protecting Yourself From Negative Influences : Tuesdays
Five Step Method of Protecting Yourself From Negative Influences : Tuesdays
Tuesday is all about action. Correct action, in the traditional sense, means doing things with purpose. Clear your mind if your schedule permits, and grab your media library. Indulge in a short movie clip, song, or personal saying that emphasizes decisive action and reaching out to help someone in need, perhaps your favorite action hero saving the day.
On Tuesday, look for things in your life you can take immediate, effective action on that will improve the quality of your life and help those around you. Is there a chore around the house you’ve been putting off? Get it done! Do you have a task that’s just been idling in your mental queue? Accomplish it! Eliminate the hesitation that holds you back from accomplishment by getting in the habit of doing.
Take willful action on Tuesday to make the world just a little bit better. This is easier than it sounds. Look for a piece of litter and trash it. Find a bottle to recycle. Take a single can of a non-perishable food and leave it at a shelter or food back on your way home from work. Even a little, simple action like this, done consistently, can make the world a better place and help you sleep a little better at night.
Look at your life and look for opportunities to reduce pointless idleness. Is there a habit you have that consumes time without benefit? Aim to eliminate it!
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Five Step Method of Protecting Yourself From Negative Influences : Mondays
Five Step Method of Protecting Yourself From Negative Influences : Mondays
Monday is the traditional start of the work week. It’s a great day to reboot, a great day to start fresh. If your schedule permits it, start off each Monday with a brief meditation session. Bear in mind meditation doesn’t need to be sitting on a mountaintop, chanting. A meditation session can be anything that wholly focuses your mind. Pick a favorite song, sit up straight, close your eyes, and sing along. (obviously, a positive, inspiring song is the best choice for this)
Once you’ve cleared and focused your mind, take a few actions to reboot. If there’s a short movie clip, song, or personal saying you associate most with a fresh start, make sure you indulge in it. You’re taking a fresh start to the week, free of everything that happened the previous week.
Turn off all your messaging systems – phones, instant messenger, services like Twitter, etc. Head into your inbox. Archive ruthlessly anything that’s left over from the previous week that doesn’t require immediate action. Use a system like Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero first thing in the morning to prioritize and systematize communications you’ve received. Fire up your calendar, book any appointments and meetings you need to book for the week ahead and set your reminders.
Take your fresh start point of view to all the work you face that day. If you’ve got a problem you need to solve, consider starting anew, or at least starting over the part that’s troubling you. Perhaps grab a coworker or friend and collaboratively brainstorm about the problem, as two heads often think better than one.
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Five Step Method of Protecting Yourself From Negative Influences
Five Step Method of Protecting Yourself From Negative Influences
There’s a lot of chaos and negativity in the world; a quick glance at the evening news is practically enough to send anyone to the psychiatrist. Negative energy, negative thinking, can sap you of your energy and torpedo your motivation. There is, however, a proven five step method for reducing the influence of negative energy on you. Note that it won’t necessarily change the sources of negativity, but the method will reduce its impact on you, its ability to take your focus off the things that matter most. In this series, we’ll explore the method and how you can make it work for you.
The method is derived from the teachings of Stephen K. Hayes, a master instructor of ninjutsu and founder of the To-Shin Do system of self-protection. For more information, be sure to visit his site.
To use this method, try to focus on one part for each day of the week for a little while – use Step 1 on Mondays, Step 2 on Tuesdays, etc. until being able to perform each step is second nature. Once you can do each step successfully, begin to integrate all 5 steps every day.
Day 1 will begin on Monday!
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Declaring Social Media Independence Not Always A Great Idea
Declaring Social Media Independence Not Always A Great Idea
We make a great deal out of saying how independent media is terrific. Independent media is the future. The usual stuff – and I don’t disagree, independence is a wonderful thing, the right and privilege to do pretty much whatever you want. No gatekeepers or superiors to answer to, no corporate bosses to kowtow to. As an independent media producer, you’re free, and that siren call lures lots of people to social media. Quit Your Day Job! and its ilk.
Look back at our history. There were a number of occasions when the United States of America very nearly didn’t make it. The Whiskey Rebellion. The War of 1812. The Civil War.
Independence is freedom, true. But independence also means the loss of a safety net. When you free yourself and leap off the cliff to freedom, you’d better be damn sure you’re strong enough to fly. You can have mentors and friends to help to some extent, but at the end of the day, you have to be strong enough to fly on your own.
The same skills that eventually helped America become more than just a rebellious British colony are the skills that any independent media producer absolutely must have. Fiscal discipline, strategy, planning, and a boatload of luck all head up the list, as well as having something worth fighting for. Independence for independence’s sake is not enough.
This is why I continue to happily work for a corporation, for the Student Loan Network. I know that there are people who value what I can do and believe I’d make a fine independent contractor, and if I had to play to only my strengths, I’d of course do that. But independence is a double edged sword, and I also know my limitations. I know what things I’m not good at, what things are weaknesses.
I am happy to exchange absolute freedom for the comfort of not having to deal with bookkeeping, personnel, accounting, sales, contract negotiation, object oriented development, high quality customer service, utility management, janitorial services, vendor selection, and the billion other things that I don’t do when I go to work every day, that you don’t see in my YouTube videos and other social media efforts, but are just as important to the well-being and functioning of a company.
Perhaps someday, I’ll consider making that jump, but if I do, I know for damn sure I’ll be ready to fly.
If you’re thinking about taking that leap, about declaring your independence, recognize that independence carries with it tremendous responsibility. If you don’t know your weaknesses and have a strategy to address them, it’s going to be a short, short flight.
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Twitter has Pulver-ized me. Time to move to Plurk?
Well, Twitter has flipped me the bird.
When I sent in a support request, asking what this was about, a few folks pointed me to a wiki talking about rate limiting – i.e. preventing certain actions for a period of time, like queries to the API.
However, after 4 days, things didn’t get better, so I opened a support case in as many ways as I could. Here was the response I got back:
The follow limit is different for every profile, based on that profile’s activity. If you’ve hit the follow limit for your profile, you can un-follow some people in order to follow others. You can stop following some people to follow others, however, you wont be able to follow more people than you’re following currently.
Twitter has Pulver-ized me – Jeff Pulver encountered the 5K ceiling with Facebook, and had to open a second account.
For those of you who have followed back as many people as you could, be glad you did – that may be all you ever get.
For those folks who view following back as important, I’m sorry to say that Twitter is now preventing that, at least for me.
In the meantime, I’m going to go over to Plurk and play around there some. You’re welcome to join me off Twitter at the following:
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Transmitting Essence in Social Media
Transmitting Essence in Social Media
As I continue to learn more about digital photography and graduate from clueless hack with a nice camera to somewhat clueless hack with a nice camera, one of the lessons I’ve learned so far is that very often, representing the whole can be done through representing the essence.
What the heck does that mean?
Here’s a few photos from my recent trip to Block Island. The island itself is 6 miles long and conveying a sense of the culture and energy of the island is difficult in whole. Here’s a picture of the beach:
Tough part is, this is such a broad picture that it could be any beach in the world.
This photo conveys a lot more about the spirit of the island:
Notice that it’s using fonts and layout that are reminiscent of a 1950s ice cream shop. Here’s another shot:
What I’m learning is that sometimes just a picture of something as seemingly inconsequential as a sign in a shop or a wood fence on a dune conveys a lot more feeling about the place than trying to take a giant panoramic photo of it all. The small picture brings out the essence of what’s different about the island, what sets it apart from the thousands of other islands in the Atlantic ocean.
Likewise, look at your social media efforts. You can try to be as broad as possible, trying to keep up on every network, running around like crazy on every platform, but that ultimately makes you the equivalent a collection of wide-angle, subjectless photos. You see everything but nothing’s interesting. Sure, take a few panoramas at the start, but then dig in and find the essence of the kind of social media experience you want to have, and focus your efforts where you want to be. Find out what’s different.
If there is one feature that distills the essence of social to you, what is it? That will tell you what network you need to be on. Is it presence? Twitter and its clones. Clubs and groups? Facebook. Exploration of people’s interests, one on one? MySpace. Career-focused, professional networking? LinkedIn. There are plenty of others, and other ways to perceive each of these networks – these are just how I use the properties.
Pick the conferences and events you want to attend based on the essence of the experience you’ll get out of it. Want a “fishbowl” new media event? Podcasters Across Borders. Want to meet a never-ending flow of new people? PodCamp. Marketing? Look to MarketingProfs. Inspiration? TED. Each conference and event has an essence, and if that essence is what you want, then when it comes to making hard choices about what conference to attend, you’ll have a better idea of where to allocate scarce time and money.
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