The Sum of Your Decisions
Imagine if your life experiences were all grouped together with similar experiences, one after the other. It might look something like this parable from the book Sum:
You spend 2 months driving the street in front of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. For 5 months straight you flip through magazines while sitting on the toilet.
You take all your pain at once, all twenty-seven intense hours of it. Bones break, cars crash, skin is cut, babies are born. Once you make it through, it’s agony-free for the rest of your life.
But that doesn’t mean it’s always pleasant. You spend six days clipping your nails. Fifteen months looking for lost items.
Eighteen months waiting in line.
Two years of boredom: staring out a bus window, sitting in an airport terminal.
One year reading books.
Your eyes hurt and you itch, because you can’t take a shower until it’s time to take your 200 day marathon shower.
Two weeks wondering what happens when you die. One minute realizing your body is falling. Seventy seven hours of confusion.
One hour realizing you’ve forgotten someone’s name. Three weeks realizing you are wrong.
Two days lying.
Six weeks waiting for a green light. Seven hours vomiting. Fourteen minutes experiencing pure joy.
Three months doing laundry.
Fifteen hours writing your signature. Two days tying shoelaces. Sixty seven days of heartbreak.
Five weeks driving lost. Three days calculating restaurant tips. Fifty one days deciding what to wear.
Nine days pretending you know what’s being talking about.
Two weeks counting money. Eighteen days staring into the refrigerator. Thirty four days longing.
Six months watching commercials. Four weeks sitting in thought, wondering if there is something better you could be doing with your time.
Three years swallowing food.
Five days working buttons and zippers.
Four minutes wondering what your life would be like if you reshuffled the order of the events.
Sum is a quirky book of creative stories guessing what an afterlife might be like. This first of the forty “afterlives” described in the book caught me. Not in any spiritual way (I haven’t really been spiritual in a very long time), but in a way that made me realize how powerful it is that our lives aren’t organized into these kinds of groupings of events.
I also realized how many people live their lives as if it were organized this way.
We put a whole lot of pressure on ourselves to make the right decisions. But the right decisions don’t matter nearly as much as we make them out to, because more often than not, we’re going to get a chance to make that decision again. Probably sooner than we think.
In your personal life, in your community, in your job, career, or business – more decisions are able to be made and remade than you’re probably willing to admit. You make excuses for the decisions you’ve made as if you’re still living with them instead of looking for the next opportunity to make that decision a different way – for better or for worse.
JFDI isn’t just an excuse to say “fuck” every time somebody asks me what the tattoo on my arm means. Just Fucking Do It is my way of reminding myself to let go of what was done and doing something new.
Try. Experiment. Iterate. Being willing to make a decision and then let it go when the next decision comes along is what JFDI means to me today.
Your life isn’t the result of your decisions until you stop making decisions.
The beautify is that if you’ve already stopped – you can always start again.
Find out details or sign up below. Save $75 by using the code DANGER.
Don’t mistake “feedback” for instructions
Jeff Atwood is a prominent programmer, and wrote this article about dealing with community feedback in his prominent programming community…but the lessons are 100% for coworking communities, too. These lessons become particularly pertinent to helping our communities scale beyond our grand openings.
Summarized and slightly interpreted for coworking:
1. 90% of all community feedback is crap. But that means that 10% of it is absolutely awesome.
Communities at scale trend towards these numbers – early on you’ll see much more absolutely awesome than 10%. I think that the “absolutely awesome” ratio can be maintained as better than 90/10 by following a lot of the guidelines below and making sure that you get your “first 10″ members right.
2. Don’t get sweet talked into building a truck.
Hybrid solutions end up ultimately pleasing no-one. Pick one solution and execute it completely.
3. Be honest about what you won’t do.
Don’t be afraid to say no. We also do everything we can to explain what it would take to turn the no into a yes.
4. Listen to your community, but don’t let them tell you what to do.
Often when a question hits this list, we’re the wrong person to be asking – so we say “ask your community”.
That said, you don’t need to do exactly what they tell you. Their answers are clues, not directions. Look through their answers for what they really want. People can only ask for what they know is possible. It’s your job to introduce them to new possibilities. “If I had given people what they asked for, I would’ve built a faster horse” – Henry Ford.
5. Be there for your community.
This one is insanely underrated. People aren’t used to being listened to.
Sometimes, your members don’t need to you to do anything. Your instincts might tell you to respond to anything that happens, good or bad. 99% of the time – you just need to be present. Not just physically present, but mentally present. They need to know that you’re paying attention, and genuinely care.
Find out details or sign up below. Save $75 by using the code DANGER.
Social Capital & Cool Kids Clubs
The topic of social capital came up on the coworking google group today. My boy Trek, from Workantile, was cited for his usage of “social capital and debt” to determine which members might be not worth retaining.
I love Trek’s simple equation, it’s one I personally live by as well and has done well for me. In coworking, it manifests in lots of other ways, too. One thing we actively work on at Indy Hall is making sure it’s a place to DO work, not a place to GET work. Not to say that people can’t find or get work within a coworking space – in fact we all know it happens and happens a lot.
But members who show up with the express desire or need for work, for example, tend to find less of what they want. It’s like trying to withdraw from a new bank account that you haven’t made a deposit into yet.
On the other hand, the people who contribute before they take (make a deposit before a withdrawl) that get the most.
Teach a skill. Share a lunch conversation. Recommend a book or article. Simple stuff pays back 10-fold.
The Dark Side of Social Capital
All of that said, within social capital, there are also two kinds to consider and balance: bridging capital and bonding capital.
Bridging social capital is accumulated between heterogeneous groups, and bonding social capital is accumulated between homogeneous groups.
There are negative consequences of too much bonding capital:
- exclusion of outsiders
- burdons imposed on group members
- increased pressure to “fit in”
- a trend towards lowest common denominator social norms
Basically? Cool kids clubs are their own worst enemies, and many coworking spaces have the same problem.
Tricky, especially for guys like me who preach “build the club, then build the clubhouse”.
Luckily the antidote is simple: balance bonding capital with bridging capital.
Think of it like diversifying investments. You (and your members) want to diversify your social capital across the coworking space and it’s members – but actively encouraging people to invest their social capital in other neighboring groups as well is often overlooked.
Co-host a party with another group. Develop an event series with a bunch of partners. Invite cross-industry/community collaboration everywhere you can. Break those bubbles, get out of your comfort zones, and leave the treehouse once in a while.
Protip: this practice can start long before you open a coworking space.
Find out details or sign up below. Save $75 by using the code DANGER.
The only thing special about doers is that they do things
One of my favorite Philadelphians and human beings, Wil Reynolds, tipped me off on this post tonight.
Doers see something they don’t like, and do something to change it. Talkers see something they don’t like and tell everyone how much they don’t like it, but never do anything about it. Wishers see something they don’t like and tell themselves in the head over and over how much they wished things were different.
Doers attract doers. Talkers attract wishers.
Doers like to be around other doers. Being around people who not only want to change things, but actually change things helps the doers keep doing. Meanwhile, talkers tend to hang out with other talkers and surround themselves with wishers who will listen to the talkers talk about how they would change everything if they were in charge. This makes the talkers feel important and makes the wishers feel like someone else might actually change things for them.
I think one of the main reasons that Indy Hall is a nexus of doers is because it was started by doers – and I’m not talking about myself.
I’m talking about some of the most fantastic people in Philadelphia who chose to do it with me.
JFDI.
Find out details or sign up below. Save $75 by using the code DANGER.
It’s not about the pieces, it’s how the pieces work together
Inspiring words on designing experiences from…Ice Cube?
It’s not about the pieces, it’s how the pieces work together. You know, taking something that already exist and making it something special.
Update: The NY Times has a Q&A with Ice Cube about this video that’s pretty great too.
Find out details or sign up below. Save $75 by using the code DANGER.
