“That must have sucked,” says everyone who never saw the broad side of a dial-up connection.

Enter the Internet and very quickly the one lane road turned into the salt flats of endless opportunity with people veering off in every cardinal direction – success oozing out of their tailpipes.

It seemed that all you had to do was see a problem, create your own value, tackle it on your own, and voila!

Success Sandwiches for everyone.

“This rules,” says those people who just created LLC’s on Legal Zoom.

Well nothing is that simple. For all budding engineers out there, they know that in the conservation of energy, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it just changes form.

Same goes for this new economy. There are always trade-offs.

While the opportunities opened up in the Internet world, surety decreased.
We traded the frustration of hierarchy with the fears of the unknown.
We swapped the desire to choose with the anticipation of choosing wrong.

On its own, endless choice does not lead to guaranteed satisfaction.

What used to be a passing thought of, “I wonder if I’d be happier if I _______________” suddenly turned into, “Should I continue doing what I’m doing or should I ________________?”

When presented with this “stay on the highway” or “go off road” scenario for the first time, we react like a kid who goes to college having never imbibed in the forsaken elixir (um, beer), forcing our control dials to be set on either “reserved” or “ballistic.”

All or nothing.

Here’s the thing, just because some of the guardrails have been removed on your career highway, doesn’t mean you have to be barrelling down the side of a sand dune in your 2003 Honda Prelude to feel like you’re making the most of your opportunities.

In the words of Chris Rock, “Yeah you can do it, but that don’t mean it’s meant to be done. Shit, you can drive a car with your feet if you want to. That’ don’t make it a good freakin idea!”

In this time of true opportunity, the trick is to make an intentional choice, not a brazen one. And the beauty of intentionality in a world of choice is that at first, the choice doesn’t have to be “this or that” it can be “this and that.”

Can you continue what you’re doing and:

• work on something on the side?
• work part time?
• propose a new working schedule with your boss?
• interview on the side to see what other opportunities are out there for you?
• take a class to see if you like this new interest?
• interview someone who has had a similar decision as you do?
• reach out to someone who made the leap like you’re contemplating?

Can you stay on the highway and make a few side trips to start?

In the end, you don’t have to totally abandon the highway if it works for you.

Sometimes the highway is nice. It’s lit, it’s paved, it has lane markings, it has gas stations and rest stops. Your life is your life. Choosing to stay on the big highway is just as impressive of a choice as the decision to exit off of it.

The power we so luckily wield in the 21st century is not having the opportunity to do anything but the choice to do something.

**How do you handle choice in your life?**

And I know these resumes weren’t from you (well I can’t really know that), and that a good number of you have your own companies and don’t need to submit resumes anymore, and that you would never submit anything but your best anyway, and that this post isn’t directed at you, but still. There are some goodies in here that can help you, including some advice from Eddie Van Halen.

Ok, where was I? Right, these 1,000 resumes.

Most resumes looked as if a child had exactly 3 minutes to get something on paper using software only introduced to him mere seconds earlier. I wish I was making this up. Some people had 4-page resumes for junior/mid level jobs (my resume is still one page long). There were formatting issues, typos galore and just a general disinterest in presentation.

Some of my favorites were the emails with no text in the body but the subject had something like:

• “See Attached” – Ok sure! I’ll get right to it, Sir Galahad.
• “dan smith resume” – Didn’t have the energy press the Shift key 3 times, did you?
• “Resume Attachment Please Open!!” – Maybe he was a Nigerian Prince.

If you’re looking for a job and you don’t want to read the rest of this post, remember this nugget: Just because you find a company with a job posting doesn’t mean that you are in the position of power. Just because I have a doorbell and I’m a little hungry doesn’t mean I’m going to buy the cookies you are selling – especially if the box is torn apart, and the smashed cookies are falling out of the plastic wrapping that has seemingly been cleaved open by talons. 

Rules For Submitting A Resume

First off, I’ve been there. I’ve been unemployed for months on end before and have sent out hundreds of resumes. I know it’s frustrating but that is why now, more than ever, you have to differentiate yourself from the herd. You have to do everything right on your end before you can begin to be frustrated by the job market, the economy and such. I learned the hard way. You don’t have to.

Overall Strategy

• Your resume is not a leaflet. You can’t just blanket the Internet with your generic resume hoping that if you throw enough out there, things will eventually end in your favor. You’d do yourself a better service by thoughtfully applying to 10 jobs instead of raining down your resume on every company that’s hiring.

• Pay attention. If you’re emailing your resume and/or cover letter in, you MUST put the job title, company name and your name in the subject line unless otherwise instructed. And do make sure you check and see if there is an “otherwise instructed.” People put certain instructions in how to submit a resume not because they want to be asses, but because they want to see if you took the time to read it. It’s your first job assignment. It’s just like why Van Halen said that brown M&M’s had to be removed from their dressing room. It proves diligence that you read the posting

• Get my attention. Add at least a little something in the body of the email (unless specifically instructed not to). A hello, a thank you, a dose of your personality if possible. Remember, that job you are applying to has 999 other people applying as well. Imagine what my inbox looked like. Be memorable. One of my favorites:

“Good afternoon, Bassam. Without the risk of being boring and adding another email blocking your sure-to-be overflowing inbox, let me say your straightforward and out of the ordinary posting was a breath of fresh air. Now, how can I actually help you fill the void you have, make your job easier, and provide growth to _________, Inc? Glad you asked. My cover letter and resume are attached to help answer that. I look forward to hearing from you and I thank you greatly for the opportunity. Have a good day.”

• Send your cover letter and resume in mail form to the office you are applying to. Yes, it takes a hell of alot more work but it also makes you a hell of alot more interesting. No one does this. As my friend and colleague, Antonio Neves says, “Don’t be deletable.”

Your Cover Letter

• Prove that you are human. Give me some sort of indication that you at least read the job posting. I took a lot of time and care creating it so I expect the same amount of care in its response. Call out the name of the position and double check that the company name is in your cover letter. And it won’t help your cause if you write, “I saw your posting on indeed.com” when it was never close to being posted on indeed.com

• It’s not about you. Hiring managers don’t care what you’re passionate about, outisde of their needs. Your cover letter shouldn’t be a glorified blog post about YOU. I want to know how you and your skills are going to help ME. Look, I know we all copy and paste the majority of our cover letters, but do some research into the company you’re applying for, check the job description and make sure that your “I believe I would make a great fit” sentence makes sense and why it does

Your Resume 

• Framing. If you don’t write a cover letter, then your resume needs to paint the picture of you that you are intending. Your resume is a story you create. Look at your own resume for 10 seconds and tell me what picture you get of yourself. Would you want to interview you after that 10-second peek? I think Ramit Sethi has the best advice on that front so I’ll let him explain

• Double check. No, triple check that there aren’t any spelling or grammatical errors. If you “assisted the project manager’s.” then you’re not getting the job. If your grammar is as pitiful as mine, have a friend or colleague review it

• Presentation. Before you can present yourself in person, your resume is your stand in for how put together you are. The more disheveled the presentation of your resume, the less and less I will feel like trusting you. Be sure to check that your resume file doesn’t have a ghost page. You know that blank 2nd page on a word document or pdf that hangs like a piece of toilet paper out of your pants because you forgot to hit backspace on your keyboard. A blank extra page, misaligned bullet points, or different sized fonts make me think that you are lazy, inconsiderate, late more than not, and have a few too many holes in your socks. Not a good start for you

• The name of your file matters. Let’s say I can only interview 1 of 2 people but all I get to see is the name of the file each submitted. I have “joeyresume(3).doc” in one corner and I have “Sarah King Resume.doc” in the other. Who am I interviewing? Of course no one hires off the name of a file but presentation matters. It all matters. If it’s something you can control, make it the best it can be

• Have more than one resume for different kinds of jobs. I know it’s hard getting a job but I used to have an engineering resume, a writing resume, a sales resume and so forth. Yes, it takes more time but it’s worth it and it will keep your resume from being longer than a diner’s menu

• Support Your Verbs. “Improved” “Assisted” “Researched” “Supported” “Created” are all vague verbs that don’t tell me anything. Can you use numbers somehow? Improved what? How? Assisted whom? How? Researched what? Why did that matter? Don’t list a bunch of features of your job, tell me why you were beneficial to your company.

The Interview

For the love of everything sacred, please know what company you are interviewing for. I had one woman come in for an interview and she said, “Hey, I know this is a little embarrassing but can you tell me what you guys do? I don’t even know what kind of business you are in.”

Sorry Miss, that thing that just hit you in the foot was my unhinged jaw. Could you hand that back to me.

—-

You can’t control the mood of the hiring manager, an accidentally deleted email, or someone else having the inside track but you can make sure that the virtual you looks like a damn stunner. While you don’t have a job, that’s your only job.

We tend to perceive happiness as a binary existence – either it’s true or false – it’s either 100% or 0%. Rottentomatoes is great for movie ratings but 71% isn’t good enough for our happiness.

Well, happiness has a language problem

If you know Spanish, it’s like the difference between the verbs Estar and Ser. They both mean “to be” but not in the same way. One is a temporary state, the other is an identity. You can be both hungry and tall, but only one changes by the minute.

So, feeling happy and being happy are two colossally different things. One is happiness, the other is Happiness.

Mistaking happiness for Happiness is like trying to get one side of a Rubix cube done but neglecting the rest. It’s not that the one side is worthless, it’s just that there is more to the puzzle.

happiness vs. Happiness

happiness is the big smiles
Happiness is the little things

happiness is your outward mood
Happiness is your silent disposition

happiness is the raise you get
Happiness is the impact you have

happiness is an on/off switch
Happiness is on a dimmer switch

happiness is the found acorn the squirrel eats in the fall
Happiness is the stored acorn the squirrel eats in the winter

happiness is the nice things people say about you to your face
Happiness is the nice things people say about you when you’re not there

happiness is when you get what you expect
Happiness is when you get respect

happiness is what takes your breath away
Happiness is what no one can ever take away from you

happiness is the moment
Happiness is the story

You don’t need to feel happy to be Happy.
You don’t need to be Happy to feel happy.

On Your Raft

Our Happiness percentage is an ever-changing, unique-to-every-individual concoction* of:

• Our work/career experience
• What we do/have done for leisure
• Who we surround ourselves with
• What those people think of us
• What we think other people think of us
• What we think of us

And let’s say that the overall Happiness percentage mimicked the amount of air in your raft as you were out on the ocean of life. 0% air in your raft and you sink like a brick. 100% air and your pontoons are filled to the brim.

Happiness is cumulative in the sense that the air we pump into the raft takes up more space as we keep pumping. But it’s not altogether cumulative because we are genetically predisposed to releasing air through a tiny puncture we all have. 

The hole in our rafts reflect our constant need to feel challenged, respected, purposeful and engaged in some manner.

Therefore, there is no specific life occurrence – money in the bank, job title, countries visited, parties attended, starting a family, retiring – that that will keep our rafts bloated with bliss. There is no Nirvana of Happiness where we can plant our flag down and state universally, “I’ve made it. I’m finally Happy.” 

You don’t reach Happiness, you tend to Happiness.

The good news is that the air won’t seep out quickly. We can go from 85% to 75% and not even notice it that much because our raft is comfortably floating. But eventually we’ll feel a stir, an itch or an impulse for a new injection of Happiness and we’ll have to man the pump again. 

The idea is to get to a point in your life where you somewhat understand your total air capacity, you’re comfortable with your current buoyancy and where it doesn’t feel so laborious to pump air in when the time does come. 

So Happiness isn’t a destination, it’s a pursuit. Not a pursuit of the absence of problems (that’s happiness), but a pursuit of better problems.

–What do you think?–

*As an engineer by trade, I like equations. I had to stop myself from writing about gas mixtures, expanding air molecules under increasing temperature and the speed with which gas would be ejected from a “full raft” compared to a “half-full raft”. I even came up with an equation for H, where H = E(W_E+L_E+C_E+R_E+O_E+S_E) + [(1-E)(W_M+L_M+C_M+R_M+O_M+S_M)]. Don’t worry about what all that means right now, just know that I had my math brain on!

Best of The Web

Here are my favorite articles online from the past week having to do with productivity, motivation, accountability, entrepreneurship and all that good stuff you love.

How To Be Productive By Doing More And Working Less 
Have More Meetings But Keep Them Short 
Punch Fear In The Mouth 
The Joy Of Creative Ignorance 

“So what is it that you actually do?”

Damnit…Someone top me up here, please.

Since we are oftentimes unsure of what it is that we do (because we’re not actually doing it), our natural reaction is to usually give a one-size-fits-all answer like:

“I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a social media consultant, I’m a copywriter, I’m a coach. I’m a graphic designer. I’m a photographer.”

This doesn’t work so well because chances are Uncle Sal only knows the societal usefulness of a handful of job titles like: medical doctor, criminal defense attorney, grade school teacher, prostitute, etc.

So our ping will be pong’d with something like:

“So how do you earn money?”

Throw up in our mouth a little bit + sip our drink to wash it down + take deep breath.

Since we think we were just indirectly called a lazy bum, we fire back the description of everything we’ve done or wish we were doing in the past week.

“I have a blog. I’m writing a book. I teach. I consult. I connect clients. I design. I research trends. I create logos. I have people skills!”

What Pros Know

Pros have been able to change the question in their head from “What do you do?” to “What do you do for other people?”

Because what you do for other people is the reason you will get paid or gain followers (even if you’re not getting paid for it right now). And the quicker you start thinking in that manner, the quicker you will take yourself seriously, and the easier it will be to articulate to people what you do for them both in person and on your website.

• “I’m a social media consultant,” does not tell us what you do for other people. “I get companies more customers through various strategic campaigns on sites like Facebook, Twitter,” does.
• “I’m a life coach,” does not tell us what you do for other people. “I show busy professionals how to increase their output while gaining more free time,” does.
• “I’m a copywriter,” does not tell us what you do for other people. “I bring companies more sales and increased customer retention by getting them to change how they say what they are saying,” does.

I am currently in the process of my own rebrand (coming late spring, early summer) and I’m working on articulating what I do for other people. Right now, it’s: “By leaping tall problems in many small bounds, I help people sanely finish the stuff they say they want to but just can’t seem to.”

What do you do for other people? Chime in below.

——- 

New Addition! Best of the web.

Here are my favorite articles online from the past week having to do with productivity, motivation, accountability, entrepreneurship and all that good stuff you love.

Which Comes First: Audience or Product?
Is this the best you can do?
How to Master Your Mind: Part One- Who’s Running Your Thoughts?
A Guide to Practical Contentment
Can Everyday Hassles Make You Depressed?

How big is this ocean we need to boil, anyway?

Unfortunately, our zest comes crashing to a halt when we turn around to see that reality has only left us a tin can and a Hibachi Grill for the job.

Our rational brain doesn’t care what our emotions want to do. It only leases out focus in small and scarce pockets of time everyday. We have to figure out if those limited bursts of concentration are best spent filling up the can (focused work) or painting the can (other work). 

After hours and hours of testing, I’ve figured out how much energy my brain can give out and how that energy needs to be broken up. I thought you might enjoy my creative process to better help yours.

Focused Work

I can only do focused, uninterrupted, creative work – like blog posts, web copy, proposals – for about 30 minutes at a time (this is my fuel capacity). After that, my brain starts to think about plane tickets, spoonfuls of Nutella, or why it took me so long to start watching The Walking Dead.

I can only do a maximum of 4 hours of this kind of work on an average day (this is my battery life). If I do more than this, my concentration fully abandons its post, leaving the gorillas to run the banana factory.

During these focused sessions, there is no phone, no Facebook, no emails, nothing else. If I have to go to the bathroom, I stop my timer. That’s right, I set a timer to go off in 30 minutes. Instead of it being me vs. the task, it’s me vs. the clock. And I know I’m getting a life raft in less than half an hour.

That is the key for me to being able to work unabashedly. I never have to wonder if I “should” be doing more work because I know exactly how much I’ve done and how much I can do each day. I’ve given myself permission to feel good about my efforts because I’ve learned the limits of my battery life and the size of my gas tank.

Am I drinking Scotch and skateboarding in Union Square outside of those 4 intense hours? No, there is “other work” to do – not to mention that I’d likely kill myself on a skateboard, even without the Scotch.

Other Work

“Other work” is the stuff that still has to get done during the day but that doesn’t take a whole lot of gray matter to do, like returning certain emails, calling people back, picking up dry cleaning and all that. I typically do “other work” in 20-minute segments but they can vary.

Breaks

I love me some chill time. My breaks can last anywhere from 5 minutes to 3 hours depending on the mood I’m in or what I have planned. Breaks include anything non-work related: movies, facebook, exercising, socializing, yadda yadda

Putting It All Together

Before I start doing any work on a given day, I take 10-15 minutes to split my up my to-do’s between focused and non-focused work.  If I want to work on something for an hour (this blog post, for instance), I’ll give it two 30-minute slots. Below is a photo of what my list looks like this very second. Every line on the left hand side is something I planned to work on for 30 straight minutes. Every line on the right is other work I’d like to get done at some point.

If something comes up during my day that absolutely has to be done and it will take focused energy to do it, I may have to bump something else off my list on the left. So goes life.

I don’t always do 4 full hours of creative work but I’d rather have a day that had 1.5 hours of dedicated output over a day with 10 hours of procrastination and guilt.

Again, the trick is to judge your days on what you’re capable of doing, not on what you want to be doing. Because your success depends not only on what you do today but the mindset you’re in before you go to bed tonight. Is what you did today a springboard for how you want your day to go tomorrow or are you dreading what’s on the far side of your Circadian Rhythm every single night? That’s your choice.

Finishing a big project takes putting together a whole lot of seemingly average days in a row. You have to figure out how to enjoy it.

If you’d like to start a process like this, first figure out how big your gas tank and battery life are. Everyone is different. Without knowing this, you’re like Clark Griswald asleep behind the wheel. 

Or maybe you feel like you don’t have a life that allows any autonomy of deciding when to focus deeply and when not to (you’re a nurse, an air traffic controller, a mechanic, or on the floor of the Stock Exchange), and you’d like to use what little focused energy you have left to wring my neck.

That’s ok too. Let’s be honest, my neck could use a good wringing from time-to-time. I just hope you’re able to get the mental breaks you need to be able to do your job to the best of your ability, and to feel more or less that you’d like to do it again tomorrow.

My brain started to stockpile descriptions of successful people: good networkers, exquisite communicators, committed, driven, passionate, educated and blessed with strong teams, but the problem was, that cache can look quite similar to those of unsuccessful people.

Rats.

So I stopped looking at the characterizations they harbored and instead investigated what it is that they do differently. (Well, I familiarized myself with a highball of scotch first and then I investigated. Investigations are much more fun with a scotch in your hand, I learned.)

My swigging and sleuthing combo led me to one conclusion. Assuming that all efforts and circumstances are equal:

Successful people finish shit.

Sacre Bleu! Could it be this simple or was this the Glenfiddich talking? I rechecked my findings and other than the fact that I chose to use the word “shit” instead of “stuff” told me that the scotch had given me a touch of crass but it hadn’t clouded my conclusion.

Finish what?

A thought. A conversation. A handshake. A draft. A book. A painting. A pick up line. A proposal. A pitch. A project that might fail. They close the circle on their accountability. They finish cleaning the office kitchen when no one’s looking. They finish writing script ideas in case anyone asks them for one. They finish the prototype even though it looks like a protozoa.

Unsuccessful people say, “I’m still working on it.”
Successful people get to, “I’m all set. Take a look.”

Successful people don’t always have the best ideas, they’re just willing to put their ideas out there and have something to point at. But if you have something to point at, that means everyone else can point at it too…and judge it, point out the holes and say what it doesn’t do.

Sorry, if you’re not willing to “finish” in the eyes of your public sphere, then you will never be deemed successful, publicly.

People like to know what you’ve done, not what you’ve worked on (Attention resume writers).

Does this mean that success is only defined by what others think? No, but you and I both know that it’s a huge component of it.

Finishing something allows you to pass the baton, the baton of work, the baton of judgement, the baton of progress.

If my duty is to punch a hole in a piece of metal so that the next person on the assembly line can thread a string through it, it does him no good if I only mill out 90% of the hole. 3 pieces milled out at 90% each, does not equal 2.7 milled out pieces.

Yes, you’re still milling things all day, putting in the same amount of work but your work is essentially useless to the greater good until the hole is punched all the way through.

Punch more holes in life. Finish shit.

Our consciousness is often an appeasement machine for the motives our subconscious feeds to it.

Having researched far too much on behavioral psychology in the past few years I thought I’d share with you some of the more mind-boggling tendencies that the great rationalizer in our head has us doing or not doing.

The Halo Effect

The Skinny – You believe what you see or hear first.

The Good – If we had to inspect and research every person or everything we read in detail, we’d still be in the Stone Age.

The Not So Good -

What do you think of Alan and Ben?

Alan: intelligent—industrious—impulsive—critical—stubborn—envious

Ben: envious—stubborn—critical—impulsive—industrious—intelligent

If you are like most of us, you viewed Alan much more favorably than Ben. The initial traits in the list change the very meaning of the traits that appear later. The stubbornness of an intelligent person is seen as likely to be justified and may actually evoke respect, but intelligence in an envious and stubborn person makes him more dangerous. Sequence matters, however, because the halo effect increases the weight of first impressions, sometimes to the point that subsequent information is mostly wasted. - Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

Also, multiple studies of the Halo Effect in jury outcomes have shown attractive individuals both receive lesser sentences and are less likely to be convicted than unattractive ones. Yikes. Damn you, high cheek bones!

The Takeaway - As the adage goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. What people see or experience first (a smile, a hand shake, clear copy on your website) will be the thing that shapes their thinking of you for far longer than it should.

On the flip side, if you are being judgmental towards someone or are writing them off, ask yourself why you are doing so. Hopefully it won’t be because they had a booger hanging out his his nose the first time you met.

Show me more! 

http://www.economist.com/node/14299211
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Effect-Business-Delusions-Managers/dp/0743291263

The Ideomotor Effect

The Skinny – Gestures we make can affect what we believe.

The Good – We can make ourselves happier by changing our physical demeanor.

College students were asked to rate the humor of cartoons from Gary Larson’s The Far Side. Some of the students had to hold a pencil in their mouth sideways, forcing them to smile a bit. The other students put the tip of the pencil in their mouths forcing them to “frown”. Those who were “smiling” (without any awareness of doing so) found the cartoons funnier than did those who were “frowning.”

The Not So Good – We are sheep if we are not careful.

In one demonstration, people were asked to listen to messages through new headphones. They were told that the purpose of the experiment was to test the quality of the audio equipment and were instructed to move their heads repeatedly to check for any distortions of sound. Half the participants were told to nod their head up and down while others were told to shake it side to side. The messages they heard were radio editorials.

Those who nodded (a yes gesture) tended to accept the message they heard, but those who shook their head tended to reject it. Again, there was no awareness, just a habitual connection between an attitude of rejection or acceptance and its common physical expression. - Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

The Takeaway - Other than jumping off a bridge because now you’re sure you’re real body is just sitting in a pod somewhere being controlled by machines like in The Matrix? I don’t know. But seriously, it helps to know that we can trick ourselves to be in a good mood instead of waiting for something to happen. Mindsets are everything. When you wake up in the morning, you can choose to be in a good mood or not. If worse comes to worst, stick a pencil in your mouth sideways for 60 seconds and start humming your favorite song. Yes, it can be that easy.

Show Me More!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideomotor_phenomenon
http://www.skepdic.com/ideomotor.html
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ideomotor.html
http://www.barrettdorko.com/articles/ideomotor.htm

The Zeigarnik Effect

The Skinny – We hate not finishing what we start.

The Good - This pushes us forward in life.

The Not So Good – It stresses us out when even simple things are not completed in our lives. So If we have 17 things on our to-do list and only complete 5 of them, we end up being more stressed about the unfinished 12 than we feel good about the completed 5.

The Takeaway - You might be thinking, “Well if we love to finish things, doctor (please please. I’m not a doctor. I only play one in this blog post), why can’t I finish them?” That’s because things like the fear of failure, fear of success, the fear of change and such, sit on the other end of the stress see-saw. I know, it’s a cruel, cruel world. So when trying to start something you truly care about, shrink your list into tangible chunks and just…start…anywhere. There is no right starting point, there is just starting. How not to kill yourself after you start? “Finish” smaller chunks so as not to be so overwhelmed at the greater task at hand.

Show Me More!  

http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Zeigarnik_Effect
http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/02/the-zeigarnik-effect.php

——-

What do you think? Do you feel any of these in action in your life?

Yeah Bassam, let’s grab a barrel of it, pour it all over mediocrity and set fire to this motherfu- Whoa whoa whoa. Hold on, Arson Wells. While I appreciate your zest, that’s not the analogy I was going for. Stay with me.

Ear muffs, environmentalists.

For the places it gets us to, gas is absurdly cheap, always available and even smells good – in a rebellious kind of way. But to help us expand worlds and shrink distances, we have to turn the ignition.

At that point, your tires, safety belt, carburetor, brakes, axles, windshield wipers, transmission and lights all have to come into play. You have to put the car into action.

Inspiration is a lot like that. Without it, doing anything meaningful is impossible. And thankfully you can find inspiration online at every turn. Quotes over landscape photos, Pinterest, Instagram. You can save photos, share links and like whatever it is that tickles your fancy.

But inspiration is only as good as the action it stirs.

Inspiration’s purpose is to fuel personal change, to convert potential energy to kinetic energy, to be the catalyst for progress, even if that progress is peace and understanding.

Once you have enough inspiration in your tank, take the damn thing out for a spin.

What happens when you’re running low on inspiration? Like gas stations, make sure the good bits are readily available for mental refueling. Don’t just pin them or promote them. Print them and post them.

Inspiration is cheap. Action is value.

Find inspir-action.

We humans send well over 100 trillion emails a year. No, that isn’t a madeup number to emphasize “a lot”, it’s reality. One hundred. Trillion. We can’t conceptualize that but it just looks ridiculous: 100,000,000,000,000.

And when we treat every new email as part of our to-do list, it’s no wonder that we often find ourselves roaming the streets of Panicville, both repulsed and addicted to the sights and sounds of unread messages. information@overload.com. Shame on you, push notification. Shame on you.

So, now that we understand the numeric reality of our lunacy a bit, let’s jump into the tools that can help us manage the dashboard of our lives, and one tool that changes coffeeshop productivity forever.

Filters  - Taps have filters. Air conditioners have filters. Filing cabinets are only in existence to filter out other files. The verb, to filter means: to pass through a device to remove unwanted material. So why can’t emails have filters? Well they do.

You can set up a filter that automatically sends any email from a particular sender directly to a subfolder of your choosing (Think: An inbox that is out of your stream of consciousness). And keep your battle axes at bay, this subfolder’s font gets bold and it tells you how many emails are in there, just like your inbox.

Just because someone emailed you doesn’t mean you have to read it right now. And you don’t ever need to be bothered by an amazon.com receipt in your inbox, ever.

We are a simple species. We do what’s in front of us. We can’t help it. So, help yourself. Gmail tutorial. Yahoo tutorial.

Boomerang (gmail only) – Maybe my favorite email add-on, Boomerang allows you to specify the time you want a sent email to reach the recipient’s inbox. Whoa. What?

Say I get an email at 9PM at night. I shouldn’t be looking at my email at 9PM but the tractor beam of…needing….to…feel…important sucked me in. I could answer this email right now because it’s a simple answer but I don’t want to get in a back and forth with this person during Game of Thrones. But I also don’t want to let the email sit there for the morning because that will just add on to the things I need to do. So, boomerang allows me send the email at 9PM but it won’t go out until the time I specify. Maybe that’s 3AM, maybe it’s 8AM, maybe it’s in 3 days. Whatever it is, once I click send, it’s off my to-do’s.

Followupthen – I just told you to not let people control when you return an email. But what if that person forgets to email you back? I don’t own a wolverine, but my digital self does. It’s called: Followupthen (you can also use www.followup.cc. boomerang can also do a version of this).

You can put 4days@followupthen.com in a bcc, and in exactly 4 days, you’ll get the email you sent, sent right back to your inbox. Now you never have to write down or remember to follow up with this person because you handled that task while you were writing the message.

You can also send an email to 30days@followupthen.com reminding you to do whatever you need to do in 30 days. Sure, all these follow ups can clutter your inbox if you have the follow-through of an armless man but if you know how to use it, you can stop trying to remember important things, or stop writing them down in obscure notebooks that you keep forgetting to take with you because you rarely write in them.

IFTTT – This lovely acronym stands for “If This, Then That.” It ties into gmail, twitter, facebook, linkedin, google reader and a satchel full of other mediums so that you can automate repetitive tasks that utilize more than one platform, like:

• Thanking someone for following you on twitter
• Saving an email directly to Evernote
• Adding receipts sent to your gmail directly to a google doc spreadsheet

You’ll start realizing that IFTTT is so powerful that it’s almost like having your own personal assistant without having to interview anyone.

Rapportive (gmail only) – I like to call it, “Proper stalking”. It’s a social media aggregator that pops up on the right side of your screen when you are emailing someone. This aggregator lets you connect to this person on Facebook, twitter, linkedin and such right in the email. Anything that keeps me from doing the things I’m going to do anyway is a friend of mine.

Contactually – I think I’m about to start using this. If you are a freelancer or are someone who depends on having to find and cultivate new clients, Contactually might be for you. From what I gather and from what people tell me, Contactually automatically keeps your digital relationships organized and gives you suggestions on whom you should be following up with and when

Sounds amazing.

Coffitivity – This isn’t an email add on but this has blown my mind. We like going to coffeeshops to work because:

a) being around other people calms us
b) Ambient noise is good
c) You feel part of society
c) The hot guy/girl we see all the time
d) you think people think you’re bohemian for being at a coffee shop and therefore you think more highly of yourself regardless of whether or not you are actually doing work

The problem is, we too often get caught up in other people’s conversations that we didn’t intend to. Relationships, businesses, god-knows-what else. Well now you can recreate the good of a coffee shop but keep out all of the ridiculous gossip seeping into your eardrums. The site puts on loop the sound of a perfect coffee shop, and when you join your music with it at a low level, the cacophony of sound turns into a symphony of productivity.

Now, just like the giant coffee mugs in that favorite French cafe of yours you love so much: Tres Magnifique!

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Were these helpful? What email tools do you use?

So why the hell can’t we ask for it most of the time?

Myth: When we ask for help we are admitting we aren’t as put together as we seem and thus, people will be annoyed and will not respect us.

Somehow, the image of calm and collected is what matters most to the outside world. Ice in his veins. A poker face. Courage under fire. James Bond is so damn cool because he is…so damn cool. He always calmly knows what to do no matter the ludicrous life-threatening situation he finds himself in. Even after he jumps from an excavator in a suit onto a moving train that is tearing apart the very train he’s on, he fixes his cufflinks first. Control at all costs. This is all part of my plan, folks.

Why do we love the scene in Pulp Fiction where Jules essentially emasculates Ringo in broad daylight through an existential conversation all while keeping Yolanda calm, confident, respected and not peeing her pants? Because he’s like Fonzie, he’s cool. He already knows what to do in this mother-of-all breakfast-interrupting situations. Social equity is never hoarded more than it is through seeming “cool”. Look at any ad in any men’s or women’s style magazine. Composure in any situation is essentially every marketing angle.

Unfortunately, this thinking has bled into our work life too. Requested help is accepted when we are in school, on an athletic team, or trying to lose weight but we feel like social pariahs if we need help in our career or creative endeavor. The moment that something is tied to our income is now the instance when advice is least socially acceptable. How insane is that?

The ridiculous reality is that even though we value the image of control and surety in professional and entrepreneurial environments, skin deep we’re all freaking the fuck out about something.

Embracing that fact and tapping into it will be your greatest asset. Yes, there are people who know more than you about things, but they don’t know more than you about everything. They have their own doubts they’re wrestling with. They are questioning their place in the world too.

So let’s go back to the myth: People will be annoyed and lose respect for you if you ask?

Let’s paint a scenario and you tell me what’s true or not. You have been at your job, or doing whatever it is you are doing for a year. Out of the blue, one of your colleagues or someone who has been a fan of yours asks if she could pick your brain regarding your expertise on a subject.

Would you ever in a million years think she was stupid, ignorant or an idiot? Would you ever, under any circumstance tell other people in a condescending way, “So this one girl asked me for advice and if I would help her…I know right?! What an IDIOT! I can’t believe she doesn’t know this yet.”

Of course not. You’d probably gain respect for her and go out of your way to help. Anytime I’ve asked a colleague for help they have filled my cup of knowledge and included a meniscus on top for good measure.

So what else is holding us back?

Our egotistical problem when it comes to seeking help from colleagues or peers is that we don’t like to give people the satisfaction of knowing more than us, not just for his ego, but because what it says about our place in the pecking order.

Get over yourself. Quickly. Because no one is sitting around thinking of creative ways to help you in her spare time.

Sure, we don’t like our perceived intelligence or know-how to be meddled with, but until we can admit that we need help, no one will extend a hand because no one knows that one is needed. I re-learned this the other day when I was looking for feedback regarding a project I was working on. I was nervous about asking some people in my inner circle and even some people not in it because of the myths above. Once I got over my own neurosis, people were ready to help, in fact, ready to go above and beyond.

So go and ask. I know there is something you have been delaying because you are afraid to ask. Whatever it is, I challenge you to ask today. Your heart will race, your palms will be embarrassingly sweaty and your ego will send a “WTF!” text but don’t let any of those culprits force you to swallow your tongue and live a muted experience from the one you are trying to live. They are just a minor byproducts of vulnerability.

And as Brene Brown said, “Your experience in this life cannot exceed your willingness to be vulnerable.”

What’s holding you back?