The Long(and the Really Long) Journey

Some journeys are long. The route may not be so clear, but they have a clear beginning and end.

The road trip from Illinois to Colorado that I am about to take with my mom is a long trip.

On the other hand, really long journeys have no destination, maybe some landmarks along the way though. In a sense, the journey is the destination.

Each training session, powerlifters are trying to make themselves stronger, more technically efficient or healthier. They may be working towards a personal record, world record, or some other benchmark, but those are just landmarks; as soon as they reach it, another will be placed just off in the horizon.

Long journey's shouldn't necessarily be enjoyable(of course my upcoming road trip will be, though), think about about that college class that you despised; grinding through was manageable as long as you got your degree. On the other hand, if you're not enjoying your really long journey, you better take the next off ramp.

Customers and Marriage

Switch to <insert cell phone service provider>, and we will pay off the remainder of your old phone contract.

Buy this new truck, and we will pay off the remainder of your previous car loan.

Get cable/satellite service and save 50% for your first 12 months.

Get married to me, and I will give you this huge ring, an amazing wedding and a loveless marriage.

Wait, that last one sounds horrible, yet it is oddly similar to the messages sent in many of the advertisements I see on TV.

Instead of worrying about what sort of trick we will use to get out our next customer, or, if polygamy floats your boat, next spouse, how about we start taking care of those we already have.

Better than Perfect

Solid state amplifiers create a less noisy signal that tube amplifiers, yet many audiophiles prefer these imperfections.

Perfect form and technique are preached while lifting, yet while performing maximum effort attempts form usually deteriorates slightly.

Perfectly seared scallops and julienned vegetables prepared by a master chef just won't cut it, if your stomach truly desires a greasy cheeseburger, thick chocolate shake and salty fries.

Cindy Crawford's mole and the gap in Michael Strahan's teeth are both imperfections, but those imperfections have allowed them to be more relatable to regular people, making them more perfect in a sense.

Sometimes you need to be less perfect in order to be more perfect.

Asking for Directions

How do you get to Kaneohe, Hawaii?

If you were to ask most people in America, they would probably tell you 2 things:

1. Head to the South-West.
2. You need to head there by plane or boat.

If you are in most of the United States, that would be a great start. But what about those who are in Honolulu?

In fact, to get to Kaneohe from Honolulu, you need to head to the North-East by car.

Knowing where you currently are is just as important as knowing where you want to go, be wary of blanket statements that don't take the former into account.

Readings of 2014, April Edition, Part 1

The Circle by Dave Eggers:

What happens when social media becomes so deeply ingrained with our day-to-day life that we begin paying our bills, voting, and even (literally) display every moment of every day for the world to see?

The Circle documents a new Circler's(that's what the employees call themselves), Mae, rise through the company the most influential and controversial company on the planet.

The Circle's intentions begin innocently enough; they begin as essentially a mixture of PayPal and Facebook, which requires a verified social security number to fight online fraud. Mae begins at the company a few years into it's life, and The Circle is now even more deeply ingrained into everyone's life, which Mae is slightly torn about.

As the story goes on, this only increases, as The Circle takes the Silicon-Valley buzzword, transparency to another level; Mae actually begins wearing a video camera, which documents every second of her day for the world to see.

I am not going to give any more spoilers out for the book, because I believe that you should go read it. It is an amazing insight into some of today's fictional technological and moral problems that could very well be the facts of tomorrow.

Dot Complicated by Randi Zuckerberg:

Yes, that Zuckerberg.

Where The Circle focuses on future fictional implications of the growth social media and technology, Randi Zuckerberg focuses on the present: beneficial, as well as negative.

Like I alluded to earlier, Randi Zuckerberg is Mark Zuckerberg's sister, as well as one of Facebook's first employees, where she led the marketing efforts.

Throughout the book, it is apparent that Randi is torn between all of the benefits that social media has to offer(connecting people, sharing of information, etc) and all of its obvious and subtle drawbacks(never being truly present, feeling the need to document all aspects of our life for the world to see, trying to maintain multiple online personalities, and the need to learn a constantly evolving online etiquette).

Again, I won't ruin the whole book for you. I would definitely recommend reading both... there are some very interesting connections to be made between the two.

Finding What You're Looking for

If you know what you're looking for, it is easy to find.

Just look at supplement companies. Increase muscle mass by 200%, decrease fat by 30%, increases testosterone levels 50% greater than the competitor, and clinically shown to increase growth hormone level by 1000% in 16 year old asian males. The claims on the packaging have to come from research somewhere. 

Not everybody responded positively? Let's just focus on those who responded well.

The control group generally performed poorly, with the exception of a few outliers who outperformed everyone. Eh, let's just throw out the outliers or re-run the experiment.

We all have supplement company-like tendencies from time to time.

Worried that indeed your ass looks fat? Ask your spouse if those jeans make your butt look big... they won't dare to tell you that it does.

Want to hear that your new business is the second coming of Facebook? Vet it by your friends who worship the ground you walk on.

I am guilty of it. It feels great, but it doesn't get us anywhere.

Most of the time, we need to find what we're not looking for; we need to hear that we could lose a few pounds or that our social networking site for cat lovers is not even remotely viable.

If you want to grow, surround yourself with those who will be completely honest with you... or you could pretend you are growing and surround yourself with those who are kinda-sorta honest with you.

Which will you look for?

Mission Statements

The two things that all successful organizations have in common: having a tangible mission statement and empowering everybody to do their part to make sure that the mission statement actually manifests into reality.

Zappos mission is to provide the best customer service possible. It works because their is no customer service department; everybody, at every level of the organization, is empowered to provided that customer with the best service.

Similarly, Starbucks has a very tangible, albeit slightly longer, statement consisting of sourcing the finest coffee, the promise of a perfect beverage, highest quality customer-employee interactions and welcoming stores that "are a break from the outside". I bet you could have paraphrased their mission statement just by your experiences in the store. 

"Put a computer on every desk and in every home." That was Microsoft's old mission statement, and the evolution of computers clearly reflect it. In computer's infancy, they were expensive and impossible for all but experts to use. Microsoft solved these issues by driving the commoditization of hardware to bring down prices and continually making the operating systems easier to use.

Now that a computer is essentially on every desk, and has been for a few years, Microsoft has had to create a new mission statement. This one consists of many fancy sounding phrases like "Interoperability among assistive technology products". 

What does that even mean?

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Microsoft's decaying public perception is a direct result of their hand-wavy mission statement, but I would imagine it definitely plays a part.

If having tangible mission statements work for companies, imagine what a personal mission statement could do for all of us...