Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
When you feel behind, you need to change not what you do, but the attitude you carry with one action. Before you know it, your attitude will be consistent with other actions.
Your consistent attitude with one action always becomes present in all other habits.
It’s just the way it is.
Stay Positive & Use It To Your Advantage
Garth E. Beyer
I never plan to be productive. Night after night in the past I’ve said to myself that I will take care of the banal so that I can be productive in the late evening. I never was. Maybe I got a few words on paper, but not enough to consider it a productive night. And that is why I don’t plan to be productive.
I’ve realized that there is no surer way to invite the unexpected into your life than to plan progress. This alone sounds bitter.
But, what do you do when your entire day is filled with banality, when your routine is running your life, when there’s just no inspiration to be productive with?
Plan evenings, or mornings, or afternoons, to be productive, even when there is nothing to be productive with. You’ll be surprised at how quickly the world will throw something at you to stop production.
Stay Positive & Sweet, Sweet Productivity
Garth E. Beyer
If you’re given 10 free canvases, you still need to buy the paint.
If a friend gives you his old Gameboy, you still need to come up with the games.
When you buy an iPod, you have to get all the songs and shows you want.
Smart product creation is when you pay a large amount for one product that forces you to spend small amounts on what you need to use it: paints, games, songs, etc,.
Keurig is letting Madisonians trade in their used corded coffee makers for a brand new Keurig, looking like the good guy.
But now those that trade up have to buy K cups to go with it. Short term loss for Keurig, but creating a long-term gain. From my estimates, it will take roughly 300 K-cups for the Keurig to be paid off. From then on, it’s all profit.
(The target audience in itself is brilliant. They are appealing strictly to frequent to extreme coffee drinkers. Point for another post, perhaps.)
Keurig makes itself look good, but really it’s genius product design. Not necessarily making them the bad guy, but just a reminder that your habit is their profit, making you the product.
If it weren’t for the ease of pirating music. I’m sure Apple would be letting you upgrade your mp3 player to an iPod. I think we can cope though. It takes a very special product to pull off what Keurig is.
Stay Positive & It’s Coffee Time
Garth E. Beyer
I’m speechless.
Here is an excerpt from The Onion,
So, as managing editor of CNN.com, I want our readers to know this: All you are to us, and all you will ever be to us, are eyeballs. The more eyeballs on our content, the more cash we can ask for. Period. And if we’re able to get more eyeballs, that means I’ve done my job, which gets me congratulations from my bosses, which encourages me to put up even more stupid bullshit on the homepage.
I don’t hesitate to call it stupid bullshit because we all know it’s stupid bullshit. We know it and you know it. We also know that you are probably dumb enough, or bored enough, or both, to click on the stupid bullshit anyway, and that you will continue to do so as long as we keep putting it in front of your big, idiot faces. You want to know how many more page views the Miley Cyrus thing got than our article on the wildfires ravaging Yosemite? Like 6 gazillion more.
That’s on you, not us.
You can find the full article: here
Still speechless. Maybe I’ll have more to say about it later.
I attended a conference that hosted a panel of writers and publishers. Happy to share what I took from the writers panel with you.
Lastly, and worth not having in a bullet point, always try to keep a project going.
that you were just thinking of isn’t the average anymore.
The average isn’t what it was 10 years ago, 10 months ago, or 10 minutes ago. And certainly 10 seconds from now, the average will be higher.
People are constantly raising the bar. Will you be one of those people?
Stay Positive & Drip By Drip You Can
Garth E. Beyer
In continuation with yesterday’s writing about having a presence, I was going to write about having a unique appearance, one that someone in the industry you’re trying to break into doesn’t already have.
Seth Godin (jokes?) that he shaved his head and wore different socks on each foot because no one in his field was doing that. It made him stand out.
For me, I follow Oscar Wilde’s adage that you can never be overeducated or overdressed. I dress in a way that makes me stand out amidst other professionally dressed players.
The idea, though, of standing out in your field by changing your appearance has pitfalls.
“I’m too scared to buy anything from that guy!” is exactly what a friend of mine said when we walked past a table of shiny rocks and gem stones. The seller was wearing a gray tank-top, roughly (and I mean roughly) six foot two, with arms like logs. Not to mention, he was tattooed on his chest, his arms, his neck, and all around his face.
Does he stand out in his stone selling business? I’m sure he does.
Does it work out to his advantage? Of course not.
Yes, as a book salesman, you want to stand out, as a writer, you want to stand out, as a marketer, you want to stand out; it needs to be everyone’s priority to stand out, but don’t catch yourself going overboard. The face tattoos… a bit overboard.
Stay Positive & It Can Be As Little As Having Sexy Pocket Squares
Garth E. Beyer
