As you consistently do something, it gets easier to continue doing it.
Write a blog post a day for two weeks and it becomes easier to do so for four weeks. After four weeks, it becomes easier to do so for two months. Before you know it, it’s been two years.
The Momentum Deception is once you’ve got a lot of momentum going for you, it becomes more difficult to stop. In reality, it’s just as easy to stop your momentum as it is to continue it. If anything, it gets easier to do both.
You don’t need a computer virus to break your blogging momentum, you only need to think “oh, what’s one day off going to hurt?”
Overcharging rarely has to do with the product itself.
When going out for breakfast and seeing $11 is the cost for a couple of pieces of french toast, you’re not overcharged for the french toast.
“For that much they oughta be there to wipe the syrup from my lip.”
Would you think you were overcharged for the french toast if you knew you would have your own personal waiter, only there to wait on you? Or what if the cooks made a presentable plate of french toast? Or as some restaurants do, what if they cooked it right in front of you and made it a show? Would you still feel overcharged?
We feel overcharged when a transaction lacks special delivery, when the price is high on a “you get what you see” purchase, when there’s nothing remarkable about the experience of buying the product.
Delivery matters so much. I’m not going to wait in a line to pay $11 for the same type of french toast I can get elsewhere for $3 or $4. Not when there’s no other reason for charging $11. Nope. Sorry.
“If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.” – Algernon
The Importance of Being Earnest is by far my favorite play. I’ve read it twice and quoted from it multiple times over in my writing. (Also bias in the sense Oscar Wilde is my favorite poet.) I was finally fortunate enough to see a live rendition of it last night, and the show reminded me what makes a play or any artform remarkable.
People never talk about perfection and if they do, they are lying.
From a three hour-long play, only two actors made one mistake each. They merely started a word and, half-way through, restarted the word. There was a millisecond moment they questioned whether the word they were saying was the right word or not.
Again, over the span of three hours and thousands of words, only two moments reminded the audience the actors are human, and those two moments make all the difference in a remarkable show and an unremarkable one.
Jugglers, Actors, Humans
The reason jugglers attract such a crowd is they are in a constant state of risk. Even the most professional jugglers in the world still drop what they are juggling. If jugglers were perfect, no one would be impressed. The same goes for a playwright. The same goes for any form of art.
Slight noticeable errors are what we all relate to; it’s part of being human. When a minimal error is made during an act, it reminds the audience just how difficult, incredible and remarkable the art you’re doing is. As Earnest would suggest, it is mixing pleasure and science.
If anything were perfect entertainment (pleasure), it would go without being talked about. People talk about great experiences, sure, but never perfect ones and if they do, they are lying. (Consider giving them dental floss and reminding them lying through their teeth doesn’t count as flossing.) When an error is made, science complements pleasure.
The universal relation of humans is we may all strive for perfection, but we will never reach it. Any reminder of this concept, say, a slip of a word during a three hour-long play is what makes art of any kind, remarkable.
Stay Positive & Do Something Remarkable, Anything Except Perfection
I purchased a pair of $150 aesics running shoes a few days ago without any plans to run in them. I’ve worn running shoes as casual shoes since I threw away my chucks six years ago.
I went in another shoe store two days ago to find a pair of brown dress shoes. The salesperson, Nick, came out with a pair of the shoes I requested, a pair of black dress shoes he admitted grabbing by mistake, and a pair of ECCO Biom Sport Ultra Quest Plus shoes because he simply wanted me to try them on. (Obviously not what I went in looking for; not brown and not dress shoes. See picture above… But I suppose that’s just what eccentric Nick likes to do…give you what you didn’t know you wanted.)
I put on the ECCO Biom Sport Ultra Quest Plus shoes and fell in love. I’ve never stepped in a shoe with minimal cushion and felt so comfortable, so free, so attached to the earth in a good way — and that’s just the feeling of putting them on, at the time I hadn’t even walked in them yet. It goes without wondering, yes, I bought the ECCO performance terrain shoes and I returned the aesics running shoes yesterday.
Oddly, I’ve found myself standing straighter, shoulders back more while wearing the ECCO shoes than I have with any other shoe. The shoe is a perfect play on forming to fit my body and my body forming to fit the shoe. The Yak leather is pretty awesome considering ECCO raises their own cattle and holds up to sustainable standards. All around great shoe: flexible, breathable, functional on all terrain, great grip, and looks great kickin’ it casual or business casual.
4.5 star rating
If you read this weeks after I’ve written it and you want to check in on how the shoes are handling, feel free to email me at thegarthbox@gmail.com
What I’ve done here in these four short paragraphs is filled a gap. After purchasing the ECCO shoes, I searched online to find reviews of them, but could only find four reviews, both old, short and not very helpful in reassuring me of making a smart purchase. So I’ve decided to write a review myself to fill the gap.
While this is from a customer POV, it works equally from the business POV. The only way to find a gap to fill is to go out and actually experience what is out there and to either improve what is or create what isn’t.
Be a NEB (Nick-eccentric-business) and give people what they never knew they wanted.
If you have a solid opportunity to add some design to something standard, take it.
Chobani has some text on their yogurt stating they are a proud sponsor of the olympics. Instead of stopping there, they decided to have a bit of fun with design. Sure, the design may only be noticed and appreciated by a few, but they are the few that matter most.
Plus, adding some design raises brand awareness with those who don’t care for greek yogurt. It has to be comforting to Chobani knowing you will now think of them when you consider giving greek yogurt a try. (Trust me, you eventually will if you haven’t already.)
The real beauty of design is it can be made to appeal both to your target audience and the masses in its unique way. Fun little design is universally appealing.
It’s the little things in life, ya know?
Stay Positive & Out With The Standard, In With The Design
Think of yourself as a QB. You have an end goal and you need to get there play-by-play. No point in thinking 10 plays from now because the game will change by then.
Huddle, break, make the play. Repeat.
A 2 hour meeting rarely produces 4 hours of effort. And an all-day meeting? Forget about it.
How boring would football be if they only made 3 plays a game. How boring would your art be if you only shipped something once a year. Let’s not even go into how boring meetings are to begin with…
Asking what someone wants to be when they grow up is stopping the ball short. Same goes for the person who asks herself what she should really be doing with her life. If I ask you to tell me a color and you say “green,” that’s not enough either.
What kind of firefighter? What type of entrepreneur? What shade of green?
When Steve Wozniak decided to develop a computer (along with Steve Jobs), do you think he just thought to himself he was going to become a computer developer or did he think he was going to become the riskiest computer developer? the best computer developer? the most design-in-mind computer developer?
Think Seth Godin thought he would be just another marketer? Think Adam Levine thought he would be just another lead singer? Le Corbusier, David Meerman Scott, Zig Ziglar – they didn’t just think they would fill a spot in the world, they decided they would make a spot by doing things differently than anyone before them.*
When we decide what we’re going to do with our lives (for the time being, until we decide something new [and that’s okay too]), we have a chance early on to decide to do something difficult, to trailblaze, to do something in a way no one has thought of doing it before. Don’t become just another ______ (fill in the blank).
If you thought it took long to figure out what you were truly passionate about, imagine how long it takes to turn that passion into something different, unique, remarkable.
Stay Positive & Better Get Going
*Certainly they leveraged themselves by doing what those in the field they were interested in had done before, but they also improved, added, and twisted the techniques into their own.
