{"id":4173,"date":"2023-06-16T12:03:48","date_gmt":"2023-06-16T16:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/?p=4173"},"modified":"2023-06-20T16:08:32","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T20:08:32","slug":"the-power-of-starting-something-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/?p=4173","title":{"rendered":"Power of Starting Something Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Richie Norton\u20142013.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What You Must Know First: Gavin\u2019s Law<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Anatomy of Stupid as the New Smart: Used Blue Jeans and the Creative Puzzle<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Where You Don\u2019t Want to Be: Lost in Waiting<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>There is a great saying, often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, which poignantly reminds us, \u201cGood things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Bezos Test: Will I Regret It When I\u2019m 80?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Sometimes it\u2019s not the idea that\u2019s stupid, it\u2019s the idea within the context of the current situation.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u2018When I teach what I call the \u201cStupid Principles\u201d to audiences or in private consultations, Tm asked this question more than almost any other: \u201cI have so many ideas! What if I pick the wrong one? Beware! You\u2019re in the quicksand of paralysis by analysis, and it has suffocated more great ideas than all the other potential stumbling blocks combined!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>You can\u2019t let fear and indecision sink your creativity\u2014they do not easily release their hold. Fear and indecision will stop you dead in your tracks every time. They\u2019ll keep you stuck where you already are; and you will start exactly zero of your beautifully stupid ideas. Another temptation people face when trying to decide where to begin is to say, \u201cWell, I guess I should just try them all and see what sticks.\u201d But then they flip right back around and say, \u201cNo, I must focus. Focus is the key!\u201d These two conflicting thoughts can quickly freeze you in the realm between thought and action, and as a result, again, you\u2019ll find that absolutely nothing happens at all. Here\u2019s the deal: If you\u2019re scared of choosing the starting altogether. And on the flip side, if you try to start all of your stupid ideas at once, you\u2019re bound to waste time, energy, and money (and go completely loco in the process). Plus, no matter how hard you focus, if you\u2019re laser-focused on the wrong activity or activities, your laser is going to end up burning a hole right through your potential for success.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Bezos Test: Will I Regret it When I\u2019m 80?<ul><li>Question 1: Do you have a pressing thought or idea that simply won\u2019t go away?<ul><li>Now, imagine your eightieth birthday. You\u2019re relaxing in your rocking chair on the porch, you pull out the list you just created, and you start thinking back over the years<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Question 2: Looking at your list, what would you regret not doing?<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Question 3: If you had only a short time to live, and you were required to rid yourself of all the things from your list except for three or four, \u201cwhich three to four ideas would remain?<\/li><\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Question 4: If you had to prioritize these few things in order from most important to least important, which order would you choose?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The T.E.M. Gap: No Time, No Education, No Money = No Excuse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cWhat would the gray hairs think?\u201d Then, Covey taught me a priceless principle that would forever change my outlook on the nature of education and experience. He said, \u201cRichie, experience is overrated. Some people say they have twenty years\u2019 experience, when, in reality, they only have one year\u2019s experience, repeated twenty times.\u2019<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Business of Stupid<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>IBM CONDUCTED a face-to-face study of more than fifteen hundred CEOs from sixty countries and thirty-three industries and identified creativity as the most important leadership quality for future success in times of complexity.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The willingness to be a champion for stupid ideas is the key to greater creativity, innovation, fulfillment, inspiration, motivation and success.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Innovation and the Stupid Loop: Don\u2019t Get Stuck at Model T&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stupid Projects: How One Tiling Leads to Another<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.Digital-Photography-school.com\">www.Digital-Photography-school.com<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>One Thing Leads to Another: How a Simple Project to \u201cMake Caine\u2019s Day\u201d&nbsp; Turned into Much, Much More<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201c1984\u201d is a legendary Apple commercial that ran during the 1984 Super Bowl. TV Guide hailed it as \u201cthe greatest commercial of all time.\u201d But the story behind the story is that the advertisement almost didn\u2019t make it on the air. The ad was intended to highlight the launch of the Macintosh personal computer, but not even once did the commercial show the product. Instead, the advertisement showed a woman, running with a sledgehammer, smashing an image of \u201cBig Brother,\u201d reminiscent of George Orwell\u2019s book 1984. The board at Apple wasn\u2019t thrilled. In fact, when Steve lobs presented it to them, they \u201cthought it was the worst commercial they had ever seen.\u201d Jobs was beside himself.\u201d He went to cofounder Steve Wozniak, and showed him the ad. Wozniak \u201cthought it was the most incredible thing.\u201d Jobs told Wozniak about the board\u2019s decision to scrap the ad for the Super Bowl time slot and explained that they consequently needed to sell the air time. But Wozniak was committed. He asked the cost of the Super Bowl slot. And when Jobs said it was $800,000, Wozniak replied, \u201cWell, I\u2019ll pay half if you will.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=axSnW-ygU5g\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=axSnW-ygU5g<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Crush Fear: How to Turn High Fear into High Achievement<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Get small wins. Small wins, a term coined by psychologist Karl Weick, are the way we compensate for our fears and make sure we don\u2019t fall into fear-based inactivity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>End Pride: The Humble Power Alternative<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>I have a memory of grocery shopping with my mom when I was around six years old. I wanted my mom to purchase a certain brand of sugary cereal. The odds of a favorable response were not on my side. Those kinds of cereals weren\u2019t allowed in our home aside from special occasions such as birthdays or camping trips. When she told me no, I responded by starting to cry. I don\u2019t remember the details of my behavior, but I know I was acting very irrationally. Even for a six-year-old. I eventually wrapped up my tantrum monolog\u2014which likely included all the reasons she was destroying my life by denying me bowlfuls of refined sugar for breakfast\u2014and my mom was just standing there. She was calm and completely unaffected. If she had been embarrassed by my behavior, she certainly didn\u2019t show it. In a last-ditch effort to get a rise out of her, I wailed, \u201cMom! You make me sooooooo maaaaaad!\u201d and as calm as can be, my mother gently responded, \u201cWait a minute, who makes Natalie mad when she\u2019s mad?\u201d Of all the lessons my amazing mother has taught me throughout my life, this is the one I am most grateful for. That day in the supermarket, she taught me that I am never absolved of responsibility for my own behavior. No matter what happens, I am always in charge of me.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It\u2019s common to blur the line between pride and confidence, and it\u2019s just as common for people to confuse humility with weakness.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Overcome Procrastination: Breaking the \u201cTomorrow\u201d Habit<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Myth One: Procrastinators are lazy. Reality: Procrastinators can be workaholics.<ul><li>Mike Michalowicz. A successful entrepreneur and author, was proud of his twelve-hour workdays and his eighty-hour workweeks. But when he reduced his workday to nine to five, he discovered something interesting about himself. He said, \u201cIronically, when I forced myself to leave work each day by 5 p.m., my whole schedule changed. I started skipping the nonsense distractions, such as the constant checking of e-mail, or surfing (ahem\u2014researching) the Internet. I actually got down to work during that time. My per-hour productivity sky rocketed! And I was getting more done in a 9-to-5 day than I used to in an entire workaholic day.\u2019\u201d<\/li><\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, authors of the book Rework, say, \u201cIn the end, workaholics don\u2019t actually accomplish more than non-workaholics They may claim to be perfectionists, but that just means they\u2019re wasting time fixating on inconsequential details instead of moving on to the next task. Workaholics aren\u2019t heroes. They don\u2019t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things\u201d: Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him [to] do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Most people who procrastinate are glaringly aware that they are neglecting what is most important to them by filling their time with less important things. However, it is common for people to be neck deep in patterns of procrastination without even recognizing it. This happens when people genuinely believe that they are unable to act on their most important goals because of time-related restraints. They say, \u201cI can\u2019t do this important thing the thing I\u2019d most like to accomplish\u2014right now because these other important obligations take up all my time.\u201d Remember, procrastination doesn\u2019t always come in the form of frivolous activities. Often we\u2019re filling our time with good or even essential tasks, but even so, anytime you postpone doing the things that are most important in your life, you are falling victim to procrastination.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I like to set an alarm to ring every fifteen minutes in order to keep myself on task. When the alarm goes off. It reminds me to check in with myself to see if I\u2019m being productive or if I\u2019m wasting time. Once I get in the zone, I turn off the alarm and simply focus on the work at hand.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Be Authentic; The Power of Authenticity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>3. Set Standards, Keep Them, and Get Respect<ul><li>\u201cThe Quicksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau is the most venerated big wave surfing event on Earth, held at Waimea Bay, Oahu, on a single day during the Hawaiian winter when, and if, waves exceed the 20-foot minimum requirement. Only twenty-eight surfers (along with some alternates) are invited to compete, making this a very prestigious and coveted event. Because of these strict standards, \u201cThe Eddie\u201d\u2014as it\u2019s known\u2014has only been held eight times over twenty-seven years (from 1984 through 2011)\u2014\u201cbut those rare and special days are recognized as the most spectacular days in surfing history\u2014for both surfers and spectators.\u201d The surfing contest has no set date and is open between December 1 and the end of February in hopes the ocean will provide the right conditions. On January 21, 2011, the contest organizers gave the waves a \u201c50\/50 chance\u201d that they\u2019d be big enough the next day, and they spent the day preparing for the \u201cworld\u2019s most prestigious big wave event.\u2019<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Thousands of people poured into Waimea Bay the next morning to watch and wait\u2014not an easy thing when the parking lot has only fifty-five stalls. However, \u201cafter 4 hours of monitoring, only eight waves more than 20 feet had crashed Waimea Bay.\u201d Despite all the spectators, surfers, time, energy, and money that was put into the event, the contest was cancelled. The waves weren\u2019t \u201cbig enough for the namesake of the Quicksilver in Memory of: Eddie Aikau.\u201d<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>How did the crowd react? One newspaper reported that they \u201cactually clapped upon the announcement that there would be no contest on this day, apparently in respect of the process. Ever heard applause at a rainout?\u2019 Quicksilver CEO Bob McKnight said this about the decision to cancel the contest:<ul><li>This event has created a life all its own and has come to stand for much more than just big wave riding. Standing on the beach at Waimea Bay on January 20, surrounded by tens of thousands of spectators from around the world, we were disappointed to have to call a No Go. But when the crowd began to cheer, we knew it was the right call and that The Eddie represents something special that we all want to uphold. Eddie was a young man of character, integrity and incredible athletic ability. His story took surfing\u2019s story across boundaries and around the world. Through his legacy, we look to inspire young generations of surfers for decades to come.<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Standards were set. Standards were kept. And people respected that; they even applauded and cheered when they missed out on the event of a lifetime.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The 5 Actions of the New Smart: Serve, Thank, Ask, Receive, Trust<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Thanking is a form of payment that exponentially pays forward both personally and professionally. People are far more likely to collaborate with, hire, or refer a grateful person than an ungrateful one.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cAsking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don\u2019t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won\u2019t laugh at you.\u201d Jim Rohn. &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>When I first met Justin Lyon, it was immediately apparent that he was unlike anyone I\u2019d ever known. \u201cCharismatic\u201d is a heavily diluted description. So when Lyon told me he hadn\u2019t always been that way, it was a shocking revelation to say the least. When he described what he was like growing up, he used words like \u201cshy\u2019 and \u201cinsecure.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lyon had always wanted to work in the movie industry. He pictured himself producing independent films and changing the world. However, in the small town in Idaho where he grew up \u2026. Well, to say his dream was frowned upon would be an understatement. \u201cIt\u2019s devil\u2019s work!\u201d was essentially the response. So he put his dream away. \u201cMy culture told me that going into filmmaking would be foolish,\u201d he recalls, \u201cso I stopped dreaming about it.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A few years later, Lyon moved to Arizona where he was hired as a bellboy at a luxury resort. He quickly worked his way up the hierarchy and was promoted to the position of Bell Captain. The other full-time Bell Captains were in their forties and fifties, and frequently discussed where they\u2019d be now if they had made different decisions when they were younger. The regret these men openly expressed made a deep impression on young Lyon, who was in his early twenties at the time. \u201cDo I want to make this job into a career?\u201d he thought.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lyon did his job well; he always served cheerfully and took a genuine interest in each hotel guest. In turn, guests often took a genuine interest in him\u2014and celebrity guests were no exception. It wasn\u2019t uncommon for him to wait on people who made headlines. Actors, musicians, and even movie producers frequented the resort. With the other bellmen\u2019s regrets ringing loudly in his ears, Lyon remembered his dream of working in the movie industry and decided he was ready to do whatever it took.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>He worked up the courage to discuss his dream with celebrity guests by reasoning with himself: we\u2019re all human, and famous people are just humans who at better known. He opened up to these guests, and many of them took a genuine interest in him. Over time, his paradigm began to change. One day, he asked a visiting studio executive from Los Angeles about his concern that the industry would make him corrupt. The executive responded, \u201cYou can be corrupt at anything. There are corrupt lawyers, dentists, and doctors too. You can make it in this industry and still be yourself.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lyon later related, \u201cI learned that if you love something, if your heart is really in it, you can live your dreams and maintain your ideals.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>He was done waiting. In his own Hollywood-worthy moment, he quit his job, packed his bags, and headed for LA. After he arrived, he placed a call to Mark Mulcahy, a VP at Paramount Pictures whom Lyon had met while he was bell-hopping. Lyon asked Mulcahy if he would take him on a tour of the Paramount studio. He said yes. And Lyon got to see behind the scenes and get a better idea of what it really took to make movies.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Next, Lyon cold-called one of his idols, producer Gerry Molen, who had produced Schindler\u2019s List alongside director Steven Spielberg. Lyon told Molen that he was an aspiring producer and asked him for advice. Molen graciously agreed to part with some nuggets of wisdom for the industry. He advised Lyon to go to school, but not to let that stop him from producing along the way. So, Lyon enrolled at the Art Center College of Design and started doing as many projects as he could. He remembers, \u201cThese projects had shoestring, rather. No-string budgets,\u201d so he volunteered his time.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>One day, Lyon was contacted by Christian Jacobs, \u201cThe MC Bat Commander\u201d from the popular rock band The Aquabats, and Scott Schukz, an accomplished artist and musician. \u201cThey were sick of boring TV programming for kids,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThey wanted to create an educational children\u2019s show that was fun for parents. Too.\u201d The problem was, the pair had been pitching their idea to networks for six years with no results. \u201cThey had their own unique talents and backgrounds,\u201d Lyon said, \u201cbut they were not finding success getting their children\u2019s show picked up by a network.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Because Lyon had taken Gerry Molen\u2019s advice and started working right away, he already had enough projects under his belt to legitimize himself as a producer. So the three of them started a production company called The Magic Store, and got to work. Again remembering Molen\u2019s advice, Lyon decided to just bite the bullet and make some pilot episodes. Luckily, Lyon had learned how to bootstrap from his early projects, and the team was able to convince family and friends to make costumes, create the music, and design the sets for the show. They figured, worst-case scenario, they could recoup the little money they borrowed by selling some DVDs.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Once the pilots were complete, they resumed the process of pitching the show to the networks. Nothing. Then the game changed. They decided to upload a trailer to the Internet to see if there was any interest. The video went viral. Over a four-day period, there were over a million views, crashing their server.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cSuddenly,\u201d Lyon said, \u201cpeople from television networks started e-mailing us every five minutes, from all around the world, asking us where they could find out show.\u201d At the same time they were fielding all these calls, viewers started calling Nickelodeon, suggesting they pick up the show. Even Jared Hess, the director of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, called the director of Nickelodeon Movies and told her she needed to see the pilot.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Yo Gabba Gabba went into production just a couple of months later, and within four seasons, it has become a household name. Brands like Vans have licensed Yo Gabba Gabba shoes; Volcom licensed T-shirts; Neff licensed beanies, and on and on. The show has even done live performances, selling out Radio City Music Hall in New York City.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>All because of two dads with a stupid idea they weren\u2019t willing to give up on, and a shy kid from a small town in Idaho, who wasn\u2019t afraid to ask for help in achieving his big-city dreams.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>How did Abrashoff spur such a monumental change? The answer is, he extended trust. In the captain\u2019s own words, \u201cI trusted my crew with my ship and my career.\u201d And clearly, that made all the difference.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Leverage Existing Resources: How to Make Moccasins for a Kardashian and Do Anything Else You Want to Do<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>When Susan couldn\u2019t find any \u201ccute\u201d shoes for her son, she decided to make her own. She hadn\u2019t ever made shoes before, so she went online, found a shoe pattern, and modified it to make what she had in mind: a simple pair of children\u2019s moccasins. She loved the finished result so much that she decided to put them online to see what her customers thought. They were a hit! Moccasins for babies became her staple product.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Leverage is the process of maximizing the resources that are available to us, in order to increase effectiveness. When we leverage, we aggregate and organize existing resources to achieve success.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Think about your local supermarket. Do they actually produce anything they sell in the store? In some circumstances perhaps they do, but for the most part, your local supermarket leverages everyone else\u2019s existing products to stock their shelves with the food you put on your table. Movie theaters play movies made by other people. Radio stations play music written by other people, and newspapers tell other people\u2019s stories. Teachers teach other people\u2019s information, and even authors often cite other authors to support the validity of their own claims. Leveraging other people\u2019s information on the Internet is simply an online reflection of what has been happening for years in the physical world. Google Search can be effectively summed up in one word: leverage.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The End of the Book. The Beginning of Your New Smart Life<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richie Norton\u20142013. What You Must Know First: Gavin\u2019s Law The Anatomy of Stupid as the New Smart: Used Blue Jeans and the Creative Puzzle Where You Don\u2019t Want to Be: Lost in Waiting The Bezos Test: Will I Regret It When I\u2019m 80? The T.E.M. Gap: No Time, No Education, No Money = No Excuse [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,241,240,245],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4173"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4454,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4173\/revisions\/4454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}