If a restaurant waiting list is hours long, odds are there’s a good reason. Why else would people waste time and stand in line if the food wasn’t great?

The online version of social proof is a bit more nuanced. There are tons of ways to attract and showcase proof that people actually appreciate your stuff. And the larger the number, the better. These could be numbers of….

• likes
• stumbles
• number of comments
• votes
• +1′s
• fans
• favorites
• saves
• shares
• forwards
• subscribers
• followers
• retweets
• clips
• views
• thumbs up
• sales
• stars
• watches

All of these combine to show the visitor how great other people think your stuff is.

But here’s the kicker:

So often we worry about how we can collect these shards of social approval before starting. (I’m guilty of this probably more than anyone reading this.)

But it’s also been my firsthand experience that anything that goes viral isn’t usually planned. It’s carefully created first, and everything else falls into place. People go out of their way to show their approval if it resonates.

So let’s get started, shall we?

1. How To Hack Your Social Life
2. Generating Ideas and Inspiration From Social Media
3. Social Media Shopping With Wize.com

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

~ Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

My brother’s incredible Walt Whitman tattoo.

This month marks the five year anniversary of this blog and this Walt Whitman quote is one of my favorites of all time. It explains this site and myself perfectly.

If you dug through the underbelly archives of this site, you’d see that there are some posts that are totally contradictory to what this site is about. When I started LifeDev in August of 2006, it was a productivity blog (like every other blog at the time). Then I switched to writing about creativity, and I still try to stick to that topic, but really now I just write about whatever tickles my fancy.

There is no ’5 Year Plan’ for this site, no real underlying theme and definitely no grand scheme to make pantloads of money. In fact the only thing that has remained the same around here is that I do the writing (for better or worse).

The problem with writing for five years across different topics is that at some point, you’re going to contradict yourself. I’ve done it many times here. I’ve changed–hopefully for the better–as a person and a writer over the past five years.

It’s taken me a long time to realize that the biggest benefit I get from this site isn’t money, or opportunities, or a microphone. The best part about writing here is that it’s a release for me.

I love writing in it. I have no set editorial schedule, I have no topics that I have to cover, and I stopped letting other people write here (with a few very rare exceptions). This site has helped me grow as a person more than anything, and I’m ecstatic that anyone else reads it and finds value from it.

So when someone calls me out for contradicting myself, I have to agree with them. I have contradicted myself many times.

Someone who sings the same tune every day for the rest of their life isn’t growing and learning.

Oh, and I can’t tell you how privileged I am to have the readers I do. Thank you. So here’s to five more years of flip-flopping and contradicting myself in such a way that would make Mr. Whitman proud.

1. Changing the Scope of LifeDev (Slightly)
2. Odds and Ends: The Guest Posting Edition
3. What Would You Like Me to Write About?

Right now I’m sitting in a coffee shop on a Saturday morning with almost no agenda. I have plenty to do, but I’ve decided to only do stuff for the next three hours that isn’t related to work. One of those things was to read my friend’s book.

Yet, in the corner of my mind, I’m constantly thinking about what I could use for a quote, or thoughts I could tweet, or anything that I could publish somewhere.

It’s like a digital version of ADHD.

Is anyone else feeling this? With the addition of Google+, there is a growing need each day to need to publish something to people who (presumably) are interested in what I think. Then there’s Facebook, Twitter, blogs to read, newsletters, emails to respond to, and even this blog post. All of these things make the weight of having to produce something heavier each moment.

Because of this pressure to create more and more on platforms that aren’t my own, I find myself doing the opposite and publishing less across the board. My Twitter account has taken a nosedive in tweets in the past few months. Facebook? Fahhhget about it. I’m barely able to hang on with Google+ as it is. (It’s my favorite of the three, but that’s beside the point.)

One thing I have noticed, though, is that when I start my day with my laptop closed, things become more clear. When I start by reading words on paper and writing ideas with a pen on actual paper, my thoughts take a more structured and full shape. They’re able to stand on their own, and they’re much clearer.

This is how the medium helps shape the message. I can’t toggle between screens, I can’t switch gears. I have to focus on what I’m writing, one letter at a time. My thoughts slow down, and I’m calmer.

Anyway, that’s how I’ve helped counter this nagging pressure to create fragments and focus on more important things. It’s a real problem for those who have to create daily, and it’s only going to get worse.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you’re combating this. What techniques do you use?

Thumbnail by Nina Matthews Photography

1. Thanks for Subscribing!
2. Facebook: The New Online Office

With a rebel yell, he cried “more, more, more!”

This is the stage of decline where the company becomes successful and starts to believe that anything they do will turn to gold. No idea is a bad one! Expand, expand, expand! These companies spread themselves too thin across too many (unproven) ideas, while not tending to the thing that brought them their initial success. They effectively kill the Golden Goose.

Ideas are hard. They’re easy to generate, but hard to filter and even harder to finish.

I try to swing for the “sweet spot” in the idea distillation process:

1. Capture every idea
2. Mercilessly pare the list down

This is incredibly hard to do, and takes practice. Mostly, because ideas are sneaky.

Most ideas start out innocently enough: They look “really easy” or “won’t take much time”. The worst is when a really good idea is deemed “a gold mine!”.

(Have you ever noticed how people never talk about the process of building gold mines? You need transportation, lots of manpower, financial backing, workers, managers, oh, and copious amounts of dynamite. And that’s just breaking ground. It’s not easy.)

Nobody wants to admit that finding the gold is often the easiest part.

Scott Belsky, (the guy who knows how to make ideas happen), believes that having too many ideas is detrimental. In fact, his team only spends 1% of their time generating new ideas. An intern at Behance was saddened to discover that her time there probably wouldn’t be spent generating new ideas at all.

Our eager intern was clearly disappointed when she realized that we spend less than 1% of our time generating ideas. As our founder explained to her mid-way through her time in the office, ‘if anything, we have a surplus of ideas. Excess ideas are our greatest cost. What we need is fewer ideas.’ In addition, our intern observed that the team essentially lives in ‘execution mode.’ Not much fun.

This business of taking on too much and trying too many ideas is easily my achilles heel. I’m guessing it’s many of yours too.

So how do you combat the idea generation addiction? Or do you? I think there are many ways to tackle this, and I’d love to hear your take.

Photo by misocrazy

Chipotle’s famous simple menu.

If we can do many things well, we should be able to see profits. “Diversify, diversify, diversify”. Yet for whatever reason, sprawling out into multiple markets doesn’t necessarily mean success.

It’s only being the best at one thing and refining it daily that wins in the long run.

Chipotle has centered around the the simple premise that they were going to serve a very limited menu, without extra things like plates, appetizers, or deserts. Just burritos, tacos and salads with all the same (limited) ingredients. Experts believed that the limited selection would turn customers away. Oops.

Ever seen Instapaper? This simple application does one thing: saves online pages for later viewing. Even the site’s design is dead simple. Yet people love it because it only does one thing exceptionally well.

Lots of Mediocre

Successful companies figure out that they can’t compete at everything. They can only compete at a few things. It’s when they move away from the core product that they start losing market share.

Instead of focusing on being the best in the world at one tiny thing, they try to be “pretty good” at a lot of things. The only problem is that it doesn’t scale.

Not being the best causes you to loose morale. It makes it harder to get up in the morning and harder to stay motivated. It’s only those who have figured out a true niche that dominate over a long period of time.

***

I’m trying to find ways to free up time and energy for the things I love. It’s incredibly hard, probably because it goes against every fiber of my “I gotta be perfect at everything” mentality I’ve developed over the years. But it doesn’t scale. Trying to be the best at everything waters down what I’m best at.

But it’s still freakin’ hard. In fact, it’s totally against my nature as an entrepreneur.

So what can you quit? What can you drop that will free you up for those one or two things that you’re best at?

Photo by animakitty

Yesterday I had the incredible honor of having a guest post published on The 99 Percent about finishing masterpieces. Tons of fresh faces subscribed here because of the article (hi there!), and lots of traffic was sent this way.

In a weird twist of luck, an article on Mashable also ran yesterday that featured yours truly spouting off nonsense about freelancing.

When it rains it pours, I guess.

If there’s something you should know about me, it’s that I’m a stats guy. Actually, it’s deeper than that. I like to figure out exactly why people are doing things on my site, like leaving or subscribing. I like to really dig deep and analyze data, looking for trends or things that I think I could improve around here.

It’s also a way for me to tell if people are engaging with my writing. I want to provide the most bang for your buck. Stats can be a useful yardstick to help gauge the fruits of my labor, if you will. But when a monolithic traffic day like yesterday happens, I can turn into a twitchy, compulsive stat checker. I’m not proud of it.

Yesterday I caught myself checking email subscriptions and site analytics on an hourly basis. I’d officially entered the “Obsessive Zone” of blog ownership.

***

There is a fine line between being “attentive” and “obsessive”. No matter what site owners tell you, they love checking stats. It’s like almost like a game. (I’m sure there are a few weirdos who deep down don’t really care, but they are definitely a minority.)

But more importantly, things like compulsively checking stats are really detrimental to our creative output. We all have something that steals our focus and attention away from the bigger picture.

In Making Ideas Happen, Scott Belsky talks at length about how the nitpicky, obsessive stuff that we seem to gravitate towards might actually be how we avoid doing the really important stuff. It’s a form of self-sabotage. (Cue Beastie Boys!)

We place a fake “importance” on little stuff that doesn’t really do anything but steal our attention from the things we should be doing.

Did checking my site stats obsessively somehow lure more people into subscribing? Nope. All it did was satisfy that ADHD little boy in me and waste my time.

Committing is hard. Really hard. Having timelines, goals, accountability, and all that other good stuff is what keeps ideas alive and into motion. But the fact that committing ain’t easy means that you’re going to be more vulnerable to distractions. You’re going to want little escapes to keep you distracted from reality.

Even worse than a blatant distraction (viral video, anyone?) is a small, nitpicky task that looks like something you might “need” to do. These are the real wolves in sheep’s clothing. They could be tasks like checking stats, or organizing planners, or trying out a new productivity tool. Tiny, small, unsuspecting things that add up to ginormous wastes of time that only distract from our masterpieces.

But in the end, if you can power through the nitpicky stuff and focus on what’s needed to create fantastic things, then you’ll gain momentum. You’ll gain clarity and focus, and most importantly, you’ll finish.

###

I know I’ve touched on this before, but you’ll want to buy or steal Making Ideas Happen (affiliate). It’s fantastic. (Just don’t tell Scott I told you to steal it.)

Photo by Janine

1. Are You Too Busy Working? You Might Suffer From Work Tunnel Vision
2. This Just In: The News Is Crap
3. That’s Funny… I Thought Traffic Was Up

Photo by Mr T. in DC

Post by Jason D Barr.

“It wasn’t that I was able to persevere. I was unable to stop! I just couldn’t give it up. It was just too important. It never entered the realm of possibility. But, I never was sure, really sure, that it was going to work and I would ever really be an astronomer.” – Vera Rubin, Astronomer (emphasis mine)

Is that an awesome quote, or what? Talk about putting yourself out there. Vera Rubin wanted to be an astronomer during a time when it just wasn’t acceptable for women to have those kinds of ambitions. She tried to enroll in Princeton’s graduate astronomy program, but wasn’t allowed. She found another school that would take her (Cornell) and studied under some of the greatest minds in physics. She’s currently 81 years of age and still teaching, having authored 114 peer-reviewed research papers (and counting).

Why is it that some people, like Dr. Rubin, are willing to do just about anything to accomplish their goals, and others are willing to let adversity (or worse, apathy) push them off their course?

“What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” is a question that counselors and motivational speaker-types often ask. I like what my Twitter friend, life coach Tim Brownson, asks his clients, though: “What would you do, if you knew you would definitely succeed?”. Turns things on it’s head, doesn’t it? It assumes certain success, rather than just avoiding failure (because, as we all know, you can avoid failing without really succeeding).

So, what’s preventing you from doing what you want to do? Is it fear? Uncertainty of how to begin? Plain old laziness? I’ve experienced all of these, and trust me, they’re no excuse for a truly motivated individual. When you get to the point where, as Dr. Rubin said, “[giving up] never entered the realm of possibility”, you’ve moved past any chance of failing. It’s only a matter of time.

1. “I’m scared.”

This is nothing to be sneezed at, folks. For all the admonitions floating around about affirmation statements, there is evidence that for those who are the most in need of it, positive self-talk can be hurtful. While this is just one study, and doesn’t conclusively prove anything, it demonstrates that the situation isn’t black and white. The fear of “what will other people think when I fall on my face?” is very real and paralyzing. That fear can’t always be overcome with a couple “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggonit, people like me!” statements in the mirror.

So, how do you get over your fear? By moving through it. “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” is what Ambrose Redmoon said. There’s no magic statement or shortcut to get past the fear. It’s going to be with you forever. All these silly platitudes like “the first step is the hardest” may be overused, but they’re actually true. And, while you may not believe it, you can do whatever it is you want to do. It might not happen fast, it most certainly won’t be easy, and you might reinforce your fears more than you struggle past them, especially at first. You just have to be willing to find that courage somewhere inside of you.

2. “I don’t know where to start!”

This is another tough one. Until you’ve done something, you’ve never done it (obvious, right?). So, while people spout off platitudes about “Just Do It!” and “Begin With The End In Mind”, those of us who can tend toward the overly-analytical end of the spectrum think, “Yeah, but how?”

So what can be done? How do you overcome it? My guess (and this comes from a lot of personal experience, a little talking to other people, and no actual scientific research) is that many people aren’t willing to get started because their goal is just too big. A massive goal like building a business (for instance) involves so many interconnected but different steps that many people just throw up their hands in frustration and go back to the couch. This is not the way to overcome the problem!

Don’t think of it as one huge goal; think of the incremental steps. Rather than saying to yourself, “Today is the day I begin building my business!”, say “Today is the day that I’m going to sit down for an hour and mind map my interests and skills. I’m going to find out what I’m really good at and interested in!”. So much less intimidating, yet still a crucial step.

I think of it like following a path through a lava field. Most people, I think, wouldn’t stare at the end of the field as they’re walking; they’d stare at their feet and make sure the next step is placed somewhere they won’t get burned. Look at the next step, not the finish line, and the task won’t seem so daunting.

3. “Eh, whatever. It’s not so bad right now.”

I don’t really know what to tell you about this one. Sure, I could contradict what I just wrote and say “Just Do It!”, but that seems a little trite and disingenuous, doesn’t it?

I’m sure we’ve all heard the statement, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”, right? It’s the same with laziness. It all boils down to comfort zones. A person will refuse to get moving until their fear of failing where they’re at becomes so acute that they’re no longer scared to move on to something else.

The thing is, you’re in charge of how you respond to your emotions. You can’t help feeling lazy (at least, I’ve never figured out how to), but you can help acting lazy. I still feel lazy all the time when I’m supposed to write, or mow the lawn, or do something “grown up”. I’d rather go watch TV with my wife or play video games. The only difference between now and a year ago is that now I don’t let my feelings tell me what to do.

So, that’s it. The three best statements you can make to ensure your failure. Recognize any of them? I don’t know about you, but I recognize all three of them in my life multiple times per day. What they all have in common is that they’re products of circumstance. If you allow your circumstances to control your responses, then you’ll never overcome. However, if you refuse to be a victim of circumstance, and get to the point where failure is no longer an option, then circumstances will just be a passing issue. So, give your circumstances a beat-down. Master your emotions, don’t let them master you.

Jason D Barr writes Start Being Your Best. You can follow him on Twitter.

During my morning run today I realized that my days were starting to get a little out of hand. Recently I’ve been dipping back into the old habits of unstructuring my day in order to work on whatever idea moved me each day.

Photo by jef safi.

However, recently I lost a big portion of my income and have started to do outside freelancing development to cover the bills. (Short plug: If you’re looking for a web developer, I’m taking on a few projects right now. Feel free to contact me.) My previous workflow just wasn’t going to work with the added responsibility of making an income from my ideas.

So today I’ve decided to do something about it. I’ve thought long and hard about it, and I’ve changed how days work.

Boundaries Get All the Bad Press

If you think about it, our society has a serious issue with the association of the word “boundary”. We don’t like the thought of being constrained in any way. Consider these historical events that revolved around breaking boundaries:

• abolishing slavery
• tearing down the Berlin Wall
• wommen’s suffrage
• nearly every war/battle ever fought

These are only a tiny, tiny portion of events in America (and worldwide) that cause our modern society to wig out and run in the opposite direction when faced with the word “boundary”. When you read about boundaries being enforced in the news and elsewhere, it’s typically in a negative or controversial fashion.

The same is true with how we work. Entire industries are built on the prospect of “sticking it to the man”, quitting the “9-5″ and becoming your own boss. And rightly so… the antiquated business work model is old and in serious need of an overhaul. (See: Excellent post by Leo on natural working rhythms.) But we’re straying from the point, aren’t we?

While we may hate it, work and boundaries go hand in hand. I’m not talking about oppressive mandates passed down by a suit. I’m talking about structure. Structure is what ensures our work days are effective, especially for those with jobs that demand creativity on a regular basis.

Without any sort of boundaries, we loose focus. We can’t perform. Things get dropped, ideas are lost. And when it comes to the business of capitalizing on ideas, it’s imperative that our ideas are seen through.

We gotta have structure.

Structuring Our Day = Better Returns On Ideas

Photo by Nicholas T

Somewhere down the line somebody thought it would be best if we just made the process of forming and working on creative ideas as loosey-goosey as possible. And the concept makes sense too: How can ideas truly thrive and grow unless they’re constructed in an environment without boundaries?

Unfortunately this is all a myth. I can tell you from experience, (and I’m sure many of you would agree), that bopping from idea to idea is unsustainable. Yes, it’s important to have some elbow room with how we work, like the 3 opened project method. So here’s how I walk the fine line of working in a structured manner, while at the same time allowing for random ideas, thoughts and other miscellaneous work.

My Daily Structure

I start with a plain white sheet of print paper. I’m not using an online list because of the quick “jot-friendly” nature of paper and pen. I just let the ideas/tasks flow from the hand onto the paper. (There’s something magical about writing something down with a pen that imprints the output into your mind. This doesn’t happen with computer-based typing for me.)

Instead of making the typical “To Do” list, I break apart my day into 3 different categories:

1. Writing
2. Thinking
3. Development

These are the three different aspects of my job, or the different “gears” used to get stuff done throughout the day. I’m either in writing mode, development mode, or thinking mode. The three columns allows me to switch effortlessly between different types of work. If I’m tired of writing, I’ll switch to development. If I’m tired of development work, I’ll switch to thinking. And so on.

GTD enthusiasts might link this to breaking work into contexts. Not me. It’s much less structured than that. It’s just an added dash of structure to a day that holds endless creative possibilities.

1. How To Grow Your Idea (While Staying Out Of its Way)
2. Scrivener Helps Manage Idea Dumps While Writing (Mac)
3. Harry Potter: A Great Example of GTD and Idea Capture

I’ve written a guest post on 16 ways to keep razor sharp focus at Zen Habits. I’ve been struggling a lot with finding focus in my own life recently, and writing this was a way to address my own problems in the area. Here’s the tip that I’ve been finding most helpful recently:

Plan the night before. Planning the night before is a great way to really get focused on the next day. “Sleeping” on your tasks and goals for the following day can really help your mind expect what’s going to happen the next day. Essentially, you’re preparing your mind for the following day.

Hopefully my stumbling about to find focus can help some of you as well.

photo credit: Film Colourist

While visiting friends a few weeks ago, I noticed a change that I wasn’t too thrilled about. Technology was beginning to take over their lives. Literally.

Over the last six months, technology had changed the way my friends socialized. Before, you could hold a lengthy and meaningful conversation with them without any distractions. Now, you can’t go 90 seconds without checking the latest text message on their phone. But the worst part is that you could be in mid-sentence and hear a little “ding!” and either friend would instantly whip out their phone and start texting a reply. Sometimes they’d try to fake acting interested in your conversation with a nod and a “uh huh”, proving yet again that multi-tasking never works.  Other times they’d politely interrupt and say, “Sorry, one minute. My friend texted me.” Even though there was an apology, what I heard was “One sec… you’re not as important as my other friend”. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

This is a perfect example of how we’ve started to let our lives be overrun by the urgent, not the important. Instead of talking to the person in front of them, they were willing to interrupt a conversation for a more urgent input: their cellphone.

The Urgent

It’s incredibly interesting what we’ll do when an urgent stimuli (the “ding!” of a text message, for example) rears it’s ugly head. Text messages are the worst offender. We’ll hear the text go off, and even while trying to concentrate, the only thing we can think about is the text message. Why? Because it’s an urgent prompt. It’s begging for your attention. Other forms of urgent inputs:

• Cell phones/text messages
• IM
• Twitter (it’s true!)
• Email (especially with pop-ups)

The Important

So what are the things that we should be worried about, the “important” things in our lives? Easy. The things that last and provide value.

• Friends/Family- There’s nothing more important in life than friends and family. They are directly linked to our happiness and well-being.
  
• Life Goals - Goals that we’ve set that want to be accomplished eventually.
  
• Projects due/commitments - These aren’t necessarily related to work.
  
• Health- Taking care of our bodies is incredibly important. Personal health is something that greatly adds to our level of happiness (believe it or not).

Unfortunately, focusing on the urgent ensures that we’ll never get to the important. In order to make sure we’re doing what’s important, we need to find a way to ignore the urgent and focus on the important with steely resolve.

I struggle with this daily. (As I write this I’ve had 2 text messages and the doorbell rang!) As a person who makes his bread working on a computer, I find that it’s quite easy to get distracted. The web is a beautiful and social place, but not one well-suited for productivity. Eliminating urgent inputs is something that is going to continue to grow in importance, especially with the widespread adoption of iphones and the like. Our world is continually becoming more connected. As a result, it’s going to be much harder to filter out the urgent stimuli.

How about you? Are there any methods that you use to really combat these urgent messages in our everyday lives?

1. Saying NO To Urgent Unimportant Tasks
2. The Cost of Working In a Digital World
3. GMail Doesn’t Do Long Emails