Here is a podcast worth listening to at the beginning of a new year.
A friend of mine, Derek Wilson, interviewed me about mindsets, decision-making, and calling the future you want into existence.
I think it's a good episode, and it feels very fitting as we start the new year. Check it out. Or download a transcript made with Otter.AI
You can also find his podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Best wishes for a great 2021!
We're about to usher in a new year – along with the promise and pressure of filling its blank slate.
2020 is nearly over. What a strange year it was!
With 2021, we get a fresh start.
We look forward to what we will achieve – even though history says we rarely achieve everything we hope for. Meanwhile, paradoxically, it is also true that we rarely achieve things we don’t hope for. So, Hope! It may not be a reliable strategy … but it beats the alternative.
Personally, I’m excited about 2021.
Despite the abnormal market and uncertain political climate, we're clearly moving toward increased stability compared to 2020.
Even though I expect some volatility, we have become more accustomed to handling it (and we've become better at transforming its strategic byproducts into strategic benefits).
On a different topic, think about how much progress we've made and how different the "new normal" has become. For example, think about Zoom and remote work or how quickly our economy migrated online. On many levels, what we are doing now seemed like science fiction even just a few years ago.
We are living in an age of exponential technologies and exponential possibilities.
I commissioned this image, from GapingVoid, to remind our team to keep shooting higher.
Resilience, resourcefulness, and a worthy goal are the keys to many entrepreneurial success stories.
In the spirit of New Year's Resolutions – I’ll add that a deliberate approach to goals is important too.
I'm a big fan of picking a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (sometimes called a "BHAG") and taking actions that move you in that direction.
I'm also a big fan of Strategic Coach's Bigger Future exercise. It is a 20-year planning exercise where you layout your commitments and goals to yourself, your family, your career, and your legacy.
While doing this, I realized that my ideal next 20 years involves taking Capitalogix to the next level (and beyond) through collaboration, cooperation, and joint ventures.
Once you know what your long-term goal is, it is relatively easy to plan out the steps you need to achieve that goal. Achieving smaller goals reinforces success, builds momentum, and makes continued progress feel more likely.
Extra points if you make them SMARTs (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Sensitive).
Actions speak louder than words, and your words can distract you.
If your goal is to win first place at a competition, focus on the metrics of a first-place finish instead of the medal. This makes the goal concrete and sets an internal locus of control on your victory. This also means that you don't need to tell others your goal too soon. Studies show that when you announce your intention to a goal in public, you decrease the likelihood of you succeeding.
It's okay to misstep, it's okay to get stuck – but recognize where you are, what you've done, and move forward.
Often the most frustrating thing that any of us feel on a regular basis is to want something really bad, and not be able to get it right away.
The world makes that hard – media everywhere is peddling immediate gratification, but it results in higher rates of obesity, drug abuse, and depression.
Don't be fooled. Overnight successes are rarely actually overnight successes.
It's also important (once you've accomplished your goal) to set new goals.
Over the next 20 years, there are a ton of people I want to impact and a lot of goals I want to accomplish. Capitalogix is the way I intend to do that.
It hasn't always been easy – but building Capitalogix has been an intensely rewarding passion.
I look forward to you all being a part of it as well. Here's to a successful 2021 and an even more successful 2041.
Onwards!
Seemingly complex things are often simpler when understood.
This applies to many things.
For example, great writing is diverse and nuanced … but its underlying structure isn't.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote a number of "Classics", including Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, and The Sirens of Titan.
For all his great writing, and all the complexities, he simplified stories into a few basic story shapes.
Here is a graphic that explains the concept.
Here is a 17-minute video of Vonnegut discussing his theory of the Shape of Stories. You can get the basic concepts in the first 7 minutes … but he is witty and the whole video is worth watching.
You can explore a bit more elaborate version of his "Shapes of Stories" from his rejected Master's thesis from the University of Chicago.
Vonnegut's idea was fulfilled not too long ago–a computer was used to identify story shapes. Researchers extracted the emotional trajectories of 1,327 stories and discovered that there are six core emotional arcs:
For more on writing from Kurt Vonnegut:
We're in the middle of annual planning – which I mentioned in my video on Chunking Higher.
Today, I want to focus on another aspect of getting better at planning and alignment … the idea of thinking about your thinking.
I shot a video that discusses several useful techniques to amplify decision making.
One of the ideas is something called "Think, Feel, Know." Basically, it explains that you have to deal with superficial thoughts before getting to deeper feelings. Then, you have to deal with those feelings before you get to "knowing".
Another technique discussed in the video involves adding time to look for "insights" after working on something. Those insights are often the seeds for something greater.
Let me know what you think of the video … and I'd love to hear ways you try to amplify intelligence.
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.
The pandemic has affected many things beyond basic health. Increasingly, I see research showing meaningful increases in pornography consumption, suicide rates, and a host of other trends that are shaping our world today … but, in the longer-term, it is also affecting the face of tomorrow.
In May, after only several months of lock-down, I was surprised how many businesses decided that they had no intention of ever requiring their employees to come back into the office.
As we close in on a year in the pandemic, I am surprised how easily we adapted to the new normal. Even with a vaccine in sight, I suspect many of the adaptations will remain.
Personally, I like going to the office. Most days, I still do … even though a tiny fraction of our people are there.
With that said, I know that our business matured. We are better at the skills, tools, and mindsets that make remote work possible or profitable. We've gotten better at deciding what's a meeting (versus an e-mail or an online chat). People are working hours that are more comfortable for them, and we see meetings happen both earlier and later than they used to, before the quarantine.
As a macro trend, we also see a flight from urban centers.
via visualcapitalist
I keep hearing about people moving far from their work-places. Ultimately, they decided that remote work enables a new form of freedom for them – to live where they want, regardless of what they do (or who they do it for).
Over time, I'm curious how a remote workforce will impact the quality and the amount of work done.
Adding to my initial concerns, flexible workspaces cause (or exacerbate) other issues, including cybersecurity, digital collaboration, defining the new workday, and a host of other challenges.
I remember the early 2000s and the distress I felt watching how many time cycles my son "wasted" being on his phone (which to me, at that time, seemed like "all-the-time"). But, in retrospect, that was nothing.
Flash forward to 2019, and everything was even more "digital" and "smart." Refrigerators, exercise bikes, billboards, and more all had screens, and 2-year-olds were already digitally literate. "All-the-time" took on a whole new meaning.
Somehow, the pandemic still took our reliance on the digital world (or our augmented alternate reality) to the next level.
via Alaska DHSS
Kids are also getting less physical activity and human contact, and spending much more time online. Contributing to this is the reality that much of their academics have been forced online. Likewise, adults also are shifting more of their attention and activity cycles to the digital world.
Continued screen-time increases coincide with video game revenue spiking and Internet traffic increasing by more than 50% worldwide.
As the world opens up, I still expect digital reliance numbers to stay above pre-COVID benchmarks. People's reliance on digital to feed their need for information, entertainment, and companionship is growing.
Starting with consumers, we've seen a massive movement toward frictionless and touchless payment. Even physical stores are prioritizing getting in and out without having to deal with another human. In addition, there's a massive move toward delivery services for groceries and meals.
On top of the changes to normal retail services, reliance on online shopping has increased, while the time it takes for electronic purchases to your door has decreased. Combined, these factors will terraform commerce. Consequently, this year was likely an inflection point for e-commerce penetration … and, from that perspective, life will never be the same again.
Despite the growth of online retail, many small businesses that couldn't move online are struggling, and many have already gone under.
Which leads to the next trend …
While small business owners and front line workers have been struggling, billionaires saw their wealth increase by over half a trillion dollars.
Part of this is due to government aid toward large companies, part of it is due to tax laws, and part of it is due to the digital rise mentioned in the previous section. The big tech companies were already thriving, and the pandemic created a positive inflection point.
Despite those gains, the pandemic hit millennials and small businesses hard.
via Morning Consult
The longer the economy is affected by COVID-19 measures, the larger the wealth inequality will grow, and the more people you can expect looking for government assistance. The strong will thrive while others will suffer increasingly from learned helplessness.
Obviously, the 2020 quarantine has created impacts in many other areas – including family stress, community isolation, political radicalization, etc. Moreover, these effects won't be isolated to this year – and we should expect many to impact our "new normal" for years to come.
Some people consider this a challenge. I think it's the playing field. It's going to be true for everyone. What you make it mean, and what you choose to do, it is up to you. Some will be like a cork, floating on the water, going where the tide takes it. Others will recognize the situation as an opportunity and thrive.
The impact has been global, but the choices you make are local … and they are still your to make.
Here is to making 2021 our best year yet!
Onwards!
We've been doing annual planning for 2021.
The meetings are going well. There is a lot of back-and-forth idea sharing, negotiating, and priority setting.
Nonetheless, I had a sneaking suspicion that sometimes what seemed like a dialogue, was really multiple monologues.
The reason for the disconnect (or misconnect) was that the participants had fundamental beliefs, at a higher level than we were discussing, that were at odds with each other.
I shot this video to explain how to fix that issue.
The short answer is to chunk high enough that you truly start from a place of agreement. Exploring distinctions from there is relatively easy.
I'll add one more concept for good measure … Start with the end in mind. Alignment happens in stages. Before you can truly get alignment on what to do next, you have to get agreement and alignment about where you are and where you want to go.
With that said, another important component of meaningful communication is a shared understanding of common language. Words can mean different things to different people. Simply agreeing on a "word" is different than agreeing on a common meaning.
To summarize these concepts:
Hope that helps.
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.
In a time of unrest, partisan politics, and situational anxiety … it is important to remember how much we share (as opposed to what separates us).
VisualCapitalist put together a great graphic on the top 56 values that drive human behavior. For the top 15, it also shows you where they rank based on country.
Each individual's ranking of the 56 (15 shown above) may be different, nevertheless, this chart helps highlight what is really important to us all.
Click the image to see the full infographic.
via VisualCapitalist
The ranking of the values changes across cultures and nations, but family emerged as the most important value consistently, and other "connectedness" values consistently ranked high.
Humans are emotional creatures (with the ability to think) rather than thinking beings (with the ability to feel). Ultimately, we are social creatures in a social society. From a Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs standpoint, security often comes first, but connection comes right after that.
It's easy to focus on our differences, but it's more important to find the common ground. That's where discussion and progress happen.
Onwards!
The upcoming holiday season seems a little different this year.
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.
via