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If you consider yourself an idea junky; if the future interests your more than the past or present; if you’re into technology, entertainment, and design; then friend you need to check out TED.com. Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.

In the talk below Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, shares why everyone loves classical music… they just don’t know it yet. He also shares a few gems on leadership and true success. A charming and inspiring talk.

Photo Credit: World Economic Forum

Lot’s of people think they’re paid for the number of hours they’re ‘on the clock’ each day. These folks are always bragging about their long hours as though this legitimizes the value they’re bringing to the company.

Don’t be fooled by them. At the end of the day none of us are paid for the hours we work. We’re paid for what we produce. Period. We need less people bragging about what how long it took them to do something and more bragging about what they actually accomplished.

*Note: A pretty cool concept I heard about recently was the R.O.W.E. method (Results Only Work Environment) for running your business. I think it sounds like a much needed paradigm shift for organizations everywhere.

Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds

Whenever we say something like, “I really like Bob. He’s friendly and intelligent. The world would be a better place if there were more people like him.” What we’re actually saying is, “Bob really likes me. He thinks I’m friendly and intelligent. He thinks the world of me.”

On the flip side whenever we say to ourselves, “I’m not a fan of Bob. He seems like a real jerk.” That’s normally because we sense that Bob thinks we’re a jerk.

As sad as it is, we tend to take our cue of how we feel about others, from how we perceive they feel about us. It’s like we walk around with some sort of radar that’s constantly pinging the question, do you like me? Until we get that question answered by an individual, we keep the jury out on them.

Be a person who makes the first move. Choose to see the good in other people and love them for it. Not only is it the right and decent thing to do, I think you’ll find a growing number of people who have nothing but good things to say about you. Why? They trust you would do the same for them.

Photo Credit: JasonUnbound

Most things worth doing take longer than we wish, but rarely as long as our worst fears tell us they will.

We’d all like to lose some weight wouldn’t we, but the problem is it takes longer than we want it too. We want to workout twice and lose twenty pounds, so we start the diet or workout routine, get discouraged a week into it and tell ourselves “This is going to take forever, it’s probably going to take 5 years for me to lose this weight.” The reality is that it will probably take you between 3-6 months.

Perhaps you’ve been thinking about starting a cool business or non-profit. Deep down you’re hoping that within 6 months you’re organization will be rocking it like Charity Water or Apple, you can almost taste success. However, deep in your psyche you’re also aware of your worst fear, your fear is that you start the organization and 20 years from now you’ve helped roughly two people.

Most thing in life aren’t as easy as we want them to be but that doesn’t make them impossible. Reality tends to be somewhere in-between our fairy tale and our worst nightmare.

Photo Credit: Hsin Ho.

Thanks to Tim Ferriss I recently took some time to reflect on a thought provoking question he asks in his book: if you had $100 million in the bank what would a normal day look like for you?  Note the word normal.  The question isn’t “if you had an unlimited amount of money and only 24 hours left to live what’s the most insane thing would you do?!” While that question would definitely yield some interesting answers, I don’t think it get’s to the heart of the issue like the first question does. The beauty is that it forces you to think through what you actually want out of life when money isn’t on the table, in other words what would you do for free?

While initially this may seem like positive psychology gobbelty-goop I think upon further reflection it’s quite practical because for many of us this day will eventually come. Though it may seem impossibly far away there will be a day when many of us retire, granted we may be 65 years old (or much younger if we’re financially successful) but at some point the day where we have to work for money will end and then what? Most people don’t know what to do with themselves outside of doing a job they hate. Don’t be that person. Answer that question today and start living it part time immediately. Everyone needs something in their life they would do for free.

Photo Credit: abbietabbie.

Every yes, is a no to someone else. The problem is that for many of us, this never crosses our minds. Our boss asks us to stay late at the office for something pressing and we quickly respond with a yes, not thinking about the fact that we just told our family no. We’re working on an important report that needs to be completed today when we hear our email alert go off. We open our laptop and take a peek at our inbox, the email is marked urgent! We drop the report and say yes to the email. We walk outside to go for a jog when our neighbor spots us across the lawn and hollers our name. It’s been awhile since we’ve chatted so we proceed to do just that for the next 45 minutes, effectively saying no to our new workout routine.

Sometimes we think we can get through life saying yes to everyone. We hate the idea of letting people down so whoever is currently asking us for time or energy gets whatever they want, which gives us the illusion that we never say no. This is bull. The reality is that we’re saying no all the time, and even worse than that we’re lettings ourselves be bullied by the urgent and missing what’s most important. The key is to know your priorities and choose those each and every day.

Photo Credit: Ferran.

Title: Unleashing The Idea Virus
Author: Seth Godin
Description: How to help your ideas spread in the modern world.

Title: Clue Train Manifesto
Author: Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, and Rick Levine
Description: How the rise of the internet is changing business from top to bottom.

Title:The Zen of Blogging
Author: Hunter Nutall
Description: A great beginners guide to blogging and a solid reminder of the basics for the seasoned veteran.

Title:Twitter 101 for Business
Author: By Twitter with Sarah Milstein
Description: Takes the mystery out of effectively utilizing twitter for your business.

Title: We Have A Website. Now What?
Author: Craig Rentmeester
Description: Practical advice on marketing your website.

Photo Credit: archiemcphee

Have you ever taken an entire day to “veg out”? I’m not talking about a day where you rested a bit, I’m talking about a day where you acted like a literal vegetable all day? Perhaps you watched the entire Lord of The Rings trilogy, slept the day away, or completed season 1 of Lost. How did you feel at the end of the day? Personally, I usually feel pretty crappy at the end of these 12 hour extravaganzas. It’s almost like I rest so much that I exhaust myself.

I think we begin the day with a certain amount of creative capacity, and our only job each day is to get that out of us. If you’re passionate about writing then you need to sit down and write, if you love sales then you won’t feel settled until you’ve called a potential client, if you’re a developer then the only way you’ll be happy is to hammer out a few divs. The weekends are no exception either because our creative capacity doesn’t take a day off. (I suggest doing something different on the weekends because mental rejuvenation is important, but you still need to create).

We were born to create, to try new things, to stretch ourselves just a bit each day. It can be difficult though because part of us just wants to just sit on our butts and do nothing. A part of us seems to think, “the less I do the more happy I’ll be!” Trust me, that’s a lie. For the sake of your own happiness leave nothing uncreated, empty yourself each day.

Photo Credit: fotologic

What is art?  Sometimes it’s harder to define art than to simply name it when you see it.  We’ve all seen something random and thought to ourselves “That is so beautiful!”, it’s almost self defining and self evident.  I used to believe that “real” art was only found in places like art galleries for the enjoyment of creative types:  musicians, painters, and poets were the only artists among us, looking back I think I was wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all been there haven’t we?  Something unfortunate happens and our attitude takes a plunge as deep as the Grand Canyon.  What happened to our “can do” outlook on life?  What happened to our “onward and upward” mentality, that only a moment ago couldn’t be shaken?  Apparently, it’s slipped beyond our grasp and now we feel that our entire day has been completely ruined… or has it?  Is there any hope of salvaging our attitude from the wreckage of our circumstances?  I believe there is, so let me share a few ideas to help you do just that. Read the rest of this entry »