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Why I’m skeptical of social media

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I finally figured out why I don’t like social media. I can’t believe me it’s taken me this long. But you see, it involves feelings. And being a totally in-my-head geek, I don’t normally pay much attention to my feelings, though, of course, my feelings affect me profoundly.

I talked with my best friend Joel today for a little while. I got off the phone and felt warm and fuzzy and like I wanted to skip downstairs. Talking to Joel almost always leaves me feeling that way.

Then I spent 4 hours sucked into the maelstrom of social media. I tweeted, I posted status updates, and I did lots of back-and-forth conversations on various comment boards. While I feel a little spark of goodness and connection while I’m having those interactions, when I’m done, I feel drained and tired. Skipping is nowhere in the equation.

And that is why I don’t believe that these online relationships are healthy. They give us the short-term dopamine shot that connection gives us, but they go no further. And at least for me, they don’t give me the kind of joy and happiness that one-on-one, phone (or better yet, in-person) connection gives us.

I think that may be why theater is so compelling for me, too. I’d never attended plays until I was caught by the desire to act. It made sense if I wanted to act that I should at least see what it’s like to be an audience member.

Plays are less realistic than movies. The sets are paltry, compared to movies. The subtlety lacks, compared to movies (a subtle facial expression works great on a 60-foot screen but doesn’t work at all when viewed live from a distance of 60 feet). And yet I find them quite compelling. Why?

But it’s live. It’s in-person. There’s some kind of connection I feel with the characters in a play that’s just not there in a movie. People talk about the energy of having a life audience. It’s tangible. There are levels of communication that happen live that doesn’t happen virtually. And I simply prefer the energy of the live connection to the intellectual depth (hah!) of the virtual connections.

Your stereotypes may blind you to opportunity

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Today I visited a store where I often shop. The young man who cleans up and maintains the displays was there as usual, with a sullen expression on his face. My story about him is that he’s lazy and unfriendly, and does his best to do as little work as possible. Yet, I see him often. So today, I walked over to him and introduced myself.

His face lit up, he got a huge smile, and gave me his name. Suddenly, my whole conception changed. He didn’t seem sullen, lazy, and unfriendly at all. It struck me that he’s quite possibly shy, and given his job, ignored by virtually everyone who comes in. Far from wanting to drive people away, he wants to connect and be acknowledged. But my misreading his cues made me stay part of the problem until today.

A friend reported something similar after doing an exercise where he had to strike up a conversation with a stranger. Though he was in his 40s, the first person he found to talk to was a teenager who was present at a summer school program. He was astounded to discover how interesting this teenager was. Then he realized with a shock that his son was the same age, and he’d never talked to his son as a person, but always as “his son.”

Our preconceptions can help us. If they’re accurate, they can let us step right into a situation with a great deal of information. But they can also blind us to what’s really going on. The young man at the store was friendly and shy, not sullen and hostile. The teenage son is a whole person with a rich inner life, not simply a child to be disciplined or controlled. By double-checking our assumptions about other people, we sometimes find that things are very different than we think.

Challenge:

  • Find someone you don’t like. Talk to them and learn about them.
  • Find someone you’d never normally approach and talk to. Talk to them.

See what happens. The results may surprise you–or not.

Stever starring in Opera this weekend!

I am goofing off today. Yes, world, it’s true: sometimes the Get-it-Done Guy doesn’t feel like working. Excited about opera tonight!

Opening tonight at the Majestic Theater is Boston Opera’s Maria Padilla. There will be 3 shows: tonight, Sunday, and Tuesday. If you’ve never seen opera before, the singing and costumes are amazing. It’s full of drama, intrigue, and emotion. Lots and lots of emotion. Student rush tickets are just $10.

The official site is: http://www.operaboston.org/operas_padilla.php

I am taking the liberty of giving my own plot synopsis here:

Maria Padilla is the story of a major historical figure, known to us only as “Number Three.” (His full name is rumored to be “Spanish Soldier Number Three.”) His first recorded sighting is as a young servant in the Padilla household, pouring drinks at the wedding of Ines Padilla.

Though the drinks were rumored to contain nothing but alcohol, some scholars have their suspicions. He is also spotted bringing in garlands of an unspecified (and possibly psychotropic) flower for the bridal party.

It was shortly after this wedding that momentous events were set in motion. Maria, the other Padilla daughter, became clearly and irrationally smitten in the love affair that was to change a kingdom. Could the drinks have been doctored? Were the flowers casting hallucinogenic pollen throughout the unsuspecting assemblage? We may only speculate; you must decide for yourself. The fact that he appears to have access to the bedroom and even nightstand of the most famous players only adds to evidence of his already-rising influence.

His next recorded appearance is as a soldier in the Spanish army. He actually carries the pen with which the royal marriage contract between France and Spain is signed. In keeping with his brilliant, manipulative style, it is through such tiny gestures at pivotal moments that his entire plan was carried out. Is it any wonder, then, that he is the one who safekeeps the gorgette and only much later returns it to the fray?

It is at this point we lose track of him for quite some time. He reappears, having risen to status of courtier and, indeed, helps to prepare and present the royal cloak, itself. It was shortly hereafter that he changed allegiances and threw his lot in with France.

The reason can be known only to him, but the more romantically-inclined believe he was spurned after proclaiming his love for the other Padilla daughter, Bernice. The more strategically-inclined scholars pooh-pooh the notion, noting that Number Three did not (at that point in his career) have the vocal abilities to carry an aria of the requisite emotionality and volume. They say his defection was simply the obvious next step in expanding his influence across national borders.

And expand his influence, he did! He rapidly became a member of the French army and confidante of the court. He is soon entrusted with supervising transportation of the French dowry and is present in the room when the Betrayal Itself takes place.

It was then that the final event in this chapter of his life takes place. To reveal details here would be inappropriate, for obvious reasons.

The successor opera (rumored to have been written and then misplaced by Donizetti) is titled “Number Three: The Ruling Years.” His descendants remained deeply active in intelligence work and power politics, extending fully into the 20th century, as his three-times-great grandson (“Number Six”) was taken prisoner in a well-documented series of political incidents.

Pop up ads are necessary for advertising business models

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My friend tweeted me about how obnoxious web popups are. You know the kind: you’re reading a web page and your reading is interrupted by a pop-up urging you to join a mailing list or buy a product. It’s a total interruption, and almost everyone clicks past the popup. Why would merchants be so stupid, he asked.

They aren’t stupid. Because, my friends, those popups work.

We’re in an attention arms race that won’t be doing anything but escalating. The reality is that content is not free. It takes time and effort to put up web sites. Ultimately, those must be paid for somehow. Since very few people want to pay for content directly, advertising is the only way to pay for it. But the more ads we see, the more we ignore. Advertisers must get increasingly in-your-ace to have even a small chance of motivating you to buy something. And at the end of the day, it’s that purchase that helps them feed their families, not the legions of people who read for free and never spend a dime.

I hate popup ads too, but I make my living as a content creator. I understand the reasoning and reluctantly join in the war for attention, myself. Because if enough of you don’t buy my products and services, I’ll have to shut down my business and get a job plucking chickens or something. That wouldn’t be very pleasant for you, for me, or for the chicken.

So if you’ve enjoyed my free content, please consider supporting me by buying something in the shop, or joining my Time Control membership program.

An NLP hint on writing and emotion

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NLP has taught me a lot about how people experience words. By carefully considering your words, you can change the whole mood that people get left with.

I recently posted a Facebook update: For those that missed it, here’s my popular ‘Modern Vacation’ video spot (don’t worry – just 36 seconds!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt0Bs0frEnM

Once I’d posted it, I re-read it and realized it used language poorly. The evocative words in the post are:

  • popular
  • worry
  • just 36 seconds

As people read each word, they access the meaning of that word and any associated feelings unconsciously. What then comes to mind is a gestalt of those meanings and feelings. How’d I do?

  • popular – evokes ideas of something desirable
  • worry – evokes the sense that something’s wrong
  • just 36 seconds – implies that it’s fortunate that there’s not much of it

Once through the reflection process, it makes sense to ask what feelings I’d like to leave the reader with. Excitement, curiousity, and a desire to see the video would be a better frame of mind for the reader. Here’s my rewrite:

For those that missed it, here’s my popular ‘Modern Vacation’ video spot (the best 36 seconds you’ll have all day): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt0Bs0frEnM

Try reading both versions back-to-back and notice which images and feelings each one leaves you with. It’s subtle, but it has an impact. When you’re writing a longer piece of writing (like a podcast episode or an article), what you write will move people through a series of images and feelings. Think carefully about the sequence! The emotions you evoke may be positive (desire) or negative (fear), but if it’s negative, you probably want to lead somewhere else, like hope or resolution. The feelings people have when reading your material get connected to their concept of you. That’s called branding.

Go forth. Write with emotion. And make sure the emotions leave people in a good place. Giving people nice emotions is good for them, and you’ll find it’s good for you, as well.

There’s such a thing as too much convenience.

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One of the things that amuses me most about Americans (of which I am one) is how we blather on and on about “freedom” and then voluntarily give it up at every available opportunity. As long as we give it up in the service of commerce, rather than in the service of government, we seem to embrace the steady erosion of our rights, our health, our privacy, and even our minds.

After a decade of brainwashing that I need to have the latest and greatest gadget on my body at all times, I tried an experiment. A few weeks ago, I went to a conference and made the conscious decision to leave my cell phone in my hotel room safe each day. After a couple of days of fidgeting and feeling disconnected, I relaxed and returned to my pre-cell-phone state of attention and being-present. It was a really wonderful feeling. I picked up my messages after the conference each day and was able to be focused in how I returned and responded to those calls.

The moment the conference was over, of course, I went right back to being a cell phone addict.

Last night, I met a friend for dinner. I purposely left my cell phone at home, and surprise!, my attention was on her all throughout dinner. It felt kinda neat.

If you’re up for an experiment, try going 2 days without your cell phone. Pretend it’s a landline, leave it at home, make plans with people before leaving the home, etc. It actually produces a nice, high-quality evening. I’m starting to believe there’s an optimum convenience point. Too little convenience and life is drudgery. But too much and life becomes an endless stream of distractions/interruptions.

Hint: If your immediate response to this is “there’s no way I could ever do that,” stop and think again. You absolutely could. The fact that you’re so defensive about it and eager to justify not even trying has more to do with the symptoms of addiction that cell phones trigger than with reality. Just do it! You’ll survive!

Attitude isn’t everything!

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I recently read an article in which the writer asserted that “attitude is everything.” He was quoting none other than the famous sales guru, Zig Ziglar.

I respectfully disagree. I believe attitude is simply part of the equation. You can succeed with a bad attitude and you can fail with a good one.

In my experience, bad attitudes can crush people. A bad attitude can keep someone from achieving their goals, even if they are superb and skillful in their execution. Their attitude can blind them to opportunity, prevent them from even attempting to find solutions, destroy relationships, and cause them to give up too soon.

A good attitude, however, isn’t enough. It still needs to be backed up with thought, ability, and execution. The good attitude may set the stage for someone to work hard, learn, try, fail, and try again. But the attitude itself isn’t enough. Confidence should follow from competence, not replace competence. Similarly, attitude should partner with aptitude, not replace it.

Sign in using…

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I just went to ScreenR to try out this download-less screencasting site. It requires me to log in using my Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. account. Creating a separate account on ScreenR.com isn’t possible.

Am I the only one who is vaguely disturbed by this? This puts Google, Yahoo, etc. in the position of having an accumulated list of all the sites I use and the login credentials I use to access them. I simply don’t know if I want every site I use, every email I receive, and every person I contact conveniently located in a single database. While I’m not particularly worried about Google or Yahoo, history is full of cases of databases being hacked, stolen, or subpoena’d by people and groups that have political or social agendas.

For those who think such things just don’t happen in America, as recently as 2004 administration, congressional aides hacked into the opposing party’s computer files and leaked them to the press. Never mind the “outing” of CIA agent Valerie Plame as a political maneuver designed to put pressure on her husband.

So I’m cautious. We’re putting more and more of our personal, private information into the hands of fewer and fewer companies. Do I want to log in using my Google account? No. I want to log in using credentials that connect only to that web site. Sadly, that’s becoming a rarer option.

Google, building better bosses. I doubt.

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In this New York Times article, the reporter explains how Google is using data to “build better bosses.” Their first amazing discovery: bosses are wanted not for technical skills, but for management skills. Wow. That’s an eye-opener. I’ll bet no one’s ever observed that before. Actually, last time I checked, companies often promote people to management based on technical skill, give them virtually no training, and then those managers do a piss-poor job. This has been going on for decades, and don’t think I’ve ever met an engineer over 25 who would find this surprising. Of course, I haven’t worked at Google.

Fortunately, they’ve now hired statisticians to analyze a gillion pages of interviews and measurements. What I love about statisticians is how they’re known for making keen, non-obvious observations and distinctions in human behavior, and measuring them. Excuse my incredulity, but … really? No sociologists? No psychologists? No cognitive behavior people? The human race knows an incredible amount about ways of understanding and measuring human behavior in data-driven, statistically significant ways.

Are Performance Evaluations Examples of Their Management Expertise?

By the way, Google has four performance evaluations a year. Frequent feedback, right? Maybe. There’s increasing evidence that performance evaluations serve almost no function except to stress out everyone involved. If an employee and their boss communicate well, there should be no surprises at such evaluations, rendering them unnecessary.

And if they really believe performance evaluations are valuable, do they bother to quality control them? Do they make sure that their managers are trained in an objective way of evaluating behavior? Performance evaluations are measurements, and the managers are the yardstick. Measuring something with a broken yardstick produces a meaningless measurement.

Are They Accounting for Cognitive Biases?

They go so far as to mention cognitive biases in the article but don’t seem to have considered whether or not there’s a halo effect in interviewing their employees about what makes a good manager. Perhaps if you ask someone what makes a good manager, they always give you the same answer, which would imply we have a built-in explanation that may or may not even relate to external reality. And if that’s so, turning a description like “listens well” into actual teachable behaviors is a trick in and of itself. (I’ll bet some of them don’t know how to rigorously realize that a phrase like “listens well” is too vague a concept to be teachable.)

Just look at the field of leadership research; pretty much every leadership book says the same thing about what makes a great leader. Yet with 80,000 leadership books on the market, we still suffer from a terrible lack of leaders. Maybe we’re wired to think about leadership in terms that aren’t specific-enough to be useful or are simply wrong. There’s ample evidence that people are extremely bad at predicting their own reactions. So asking someone “What kind of boss would be good?” may produce well-meaning but inaccurate answers.

I admire Google’s desire to be data-driven. And I also envy and admire their persistent desire to give their entire company the intellectual freedom and comfort of a college campus. Yay!! More companies should do this. (And more high tech companies have done it in the past, as long as they were pulling in the kind of gross margins Google pulls in. Most such companies abandon those cultural artifacts and revert to more traditional and soul-destroying modes when under economic pressure. I hope if it ever comes to that, Google has the fortitude to hold on!)

But at least as much as I love what I’ve heard about their culture, at least as reported in this Times article, their attempt to build a better boss is high on data manipulation and gathering, and very low on data quality.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned?

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I’m attending a workshop that has about 10 Americans, and 140 people from about 20 other countries. It’s fascinating to experience such a variety of attitudes about life. I forget how much of what I take as “true” is simply an compilation of American cultural biases that others don’t share.

It’s also enlightening to hear their stereotypes of America, their impressions of being here for the first time, and their reactions when I perhaps present some data that would suggest their stereotypes aren’t accurate.

What’s most surprising that *you’ve* learned from people in other cultures? (Either about their culture or your own)?