Embracing The Craft

I was listening to an episode of the Tim Ferris podcast where he was interviewing Adam Savage the other day and became struck with a point Savage made. He spoke about his early days of being an actor, and the difference between himself and the other actors.  He essentially stated that he wanted to be an actor, but the others wanted to perform the craft of acting.  He was not as interested in the craft of it all.  This story really got me thinking about a lot of things in my own life.  I thought about the craft versus the work of the things I have pursued.

I have rarely embraced the craft of things.  I think this contributed to many of my failures.  I wanted the product of the work, I did not want the process and the craft.  Wanting the product of the work is a good thing, as is embracing the path.  At times I did embrace the craft.  In my career I have failed to embrace the craft at virtually every turn, in retrospect the only place I might have really embraced craftsmanship was lifting weights. 

In lifting weights I have embraced the craft in a pure way.  I enjoy almost every workout, it has become a great source of joy.  I enjoy becoming better at exercises.  I enjoy the practice of really dialing in my form.  I indulge in hours and hours of reading, watching videos, and listening to podcasts around fitness.  As I have gotten older, I enjoy all this even more and more.  I am content in the knowledge that I may ever only apply 10% of the fitness knowledge I have gained.  I enjoyed gaining muscle, and gaining strength, but these have not a huge focus for the last decade, I lifted because I was a lifter.  I did the things around lifting, because I did them.  This was all very easy to do.  I enjoyed lifting, it is a really fun thing for many people.

Having seen what this looks like in my lifting, I have never seen the same craftsmanship and embrace in my career.  The same kind of things, the same depth of experience has never happened for me in my career.  My career has been dictated by the end goals, by impatience.  I like to think I have worked hard, and tried to do things the right way in my career.  I don’t believe there was some moral failing on my part.  I was never as into things as I maybe should have been.  A lot of people can succeed without embracing their craft and career, I don’t think I am one of those people.  For me, I am at a place in life where the craft of things must be embraced more. 

What does embracing the craft look like?  There are a lot of things it means to me.

I must be patient.  This is biggest thing for me.  If I am not happy where things are at, then I want change now.  This desire is fine, but I can’t let that desire for instant change to govern things as much as I have in the past.

I must pursue repetition.

I must pursue the craft daily if possible.

I must accept that I don’t always need to see the ROI immediately of everything.  I must seek knowledge and skill for their own sake. 

I must emotionally and mentally accept the craft. 

Embracing the craft for me, must be a pursuit, I need to look for ways to embrace it more.

I must accept I must embrace the boring to get to the cool.  The bigger the base the higher the pyramid can be.

For me when I embrace the craft of something the results are a lot better.  I think we know in our hearts when we have really embraced something.  This embrace creates results, peace, and more fun for me, and isn’t that what I want from everything?

Maxims of Community Strength and Growth

I have spent a lot of time the last several years floating around tech, startup, and coworking communities.  I have organized events, I have spoke at events, and I have just hung out at many others.   I have built a startup that crashed and burned.  I have coded, and I have consulted.  I am convinced a strong community can work to the benefit of all involved.  These communities should always be growing, strengthening and evolving.  These are the maxims if implemented, pondered, and explored that I believe can lead to a strong community that is enriching and beneficial to all those in it.


Maxim 1. Everyone that is willing should be allowed to participate.


2. This is a team.  You must make the team stronger.  If you do not make the team stronger you must leave.


3. Every single person in the community must help every other single person become better.


4. We exist in each other’s lives for mutual benefit.  Great profits are to be gained elsewhere.  The team is not for profits.


5. Failure is not failure.  Failures are data points and practice.


6. To be included you must create.  You can’t wait years to be in the game.  This is not a place for waiting.


7. Limitations are to be left at the door.  Someone far stupider and lazier than you has made it work.


8. What works for one person doesn’t work for everyone.


9. Only one project at a time that isn’t making you any damn money.  You are not Elon Musk.  One fight at a time is enough.


10. You are what you create.  You are not your race.  You are not your gender.  You are not rich or poor.  You are not ugly or sexy.  You are not your age.


11. People that don’t need help still need help.  Society likes to help people.  It seems rather logical and meaningful to us to help people that are disadvantaged in some way.  Even people that “don’t need help” need help, and we can’t forget that.


12. The community will reflect the leadership of the community, leaders should be chosen wisely.


13. Entrepreneurship at times is about breaking the rules.  If we all followed the rules we would all be working at Purdue University and no one would be building companies.  We have to allow people to break rules.


14. If we are not competitors we should be helping each other a lot.


15. Wizards, Jedi, rockstars, and ninjas are rare.  Even the ones you find likely suck at most things in their life.


16. There must be events that bring all parts of the community together.


17. You only have to be good at a few things to get success.


18. There must be a cultural expectation to produce.  Floating around isn’t good.  The term production will vary from person to person.


19. Everything looks different for everyone.  You don’t know people’s stories.


20. New leaders must be groomed and sought out, almost immediately.


21. Leaders cannot be overextended.  There is a tendency for this to happen.  Community leadership carries more weight than it appears to from the outside.


22. Leadership must be distributed.  The community cannot collapse because of the removal of someone or even a few someones.


23. Fewer, better events are usually better.  Resist the urge to expand too fast with meetups and events.


24. Leadership must play matchmaker, and ensure people meet each other.  There is an art to this, and it must be done proactively.


25. The community must be grown to stay alive.


26. You need true believers.


27. False prophets and unbelievers need to be ostracized.


28. A community is a garden, and must constantly be groomed, weeded and watered.  There is no rest to this and no relenting.


29. A vibe of energy must constantly be cultivated.  Success requires much effort and long hours.  An energetic community helps one through the long hours.


30. The individual needs to be supported more than the company.


31. Many entrepreneurs are lonely, and grinding hard alone.  This is not the most mentally sound of positions.  The social aspects of the community should not be discounted for such reasons.


32. A cultural expectation to go to and support book launches, product releases, etc.  We should be more excited about a book launch than someone having a baby in our community.


33. The community is a living vibrant thing, it does not stop.  Weekends are just days.  Holidays are just days. We cannot stop.  Taking summers off is for school teachers.


34. If you run with the lame you will develop a limp, most limps can be fixed.


35. Weakness must be purged, but the weak must be allowed to enter.


36. Community members should have a voice, and representation.  Leadership should consist of people active in the community.


37. “Normal”, “work life balance”, and “reasonable” are the enemy.


38. Speaker fatigue must be limited.  A speaker cannot speak too often.


39. Steel sharpens steel.  There must be steel.


40. You cannot tell people to stop.  The community must enable.  Even to the detriment of the entrepreneur.  Success is often found only after all semblance of reasonableness has been left behind.  There are costs and sacrifices to be paid.  If someone wants to run face first into a brick wall, we must help them.  Then when they break their face, we help them put the pieces back together.  Their process, their journey doesn’t have to make sense to us.


41. We keep trying and swing that bat, until we win, or we’re broken.


42. Impossible is a four letter word.  We figure things out, that’s what we do.  Culture must facilitate that.


43. We must create places for failures to land.  Otherwise they may not be able to try again.


44. It is good to have a clubhouse where the community can do whatever it needs to do.  Multiple clubhouses are best.


45. Once you’re in, you’re in for life.


46. We must avoid people that have accomplished very little being exalted as luminaries in fields and competencies they know little about.  The blind far too often lead the blind.


47. We must learn how to be truly helpful.  Offering help once is polite, offering help numerous times shows you care.


48. We all need lots of help.


49. This is a safe place, but since you’re my brother, I will bloody you.


50. We must take care of each other.


51. Going lone wolf makes people crazy.  Encourage partnerships, whether formal or simply good friendships.


52. Physical spaces should facilitate work.  Chairs need to be comfortable.


53. Quit talking about the coffee so much, it makes you a loser.


54. The building cannot matter, burn it down tomorrow and the community should remain.


55. The community must take pride in itself.  It is what it is.  This should be celebrated.  You shouldn’t try to be bigger and grander than you are.

 

The Hidden Power of Startup Weekend

It’s Monday morning, another Greater Lafayette Startup Weekend is in the books.  It was a weekend of creativity and just a bit of chaos.  These events are a bit odd, a bit silly, really cool, and I wonder if they don’t just happen to teach us how to live a little bit better in our everyday lives.

If you had to describe what a Startup Weekend is, you could be brief and simply say “Energy and Optimism.”  In fact these events are filled with people that are 100% optimistic and seeking a touch of magic.  They find that magic by simply suspending disbelief for just a weekend.  Negativity and doubts are disregarded in favor of action, exploration, and wonder.  Taking nothing more than idea, everyone is trying to breath life into this idea of theirs.  Once there are some teams formed around some of these ideas, then some really cool things start to happen.

These groups of mostly strangers start with business ideas, and they try and figure out if these ideas have any legs to them.  These strangers then spend every waking moment for the whole weekend helping this team of theirs move forward.  Then at some point something else cool always seems to happen, all the other teams of strangers, start helping out all the other teams full of strangers.  Then at some point a bunch of coaches and mentors show up to bring even more help and expertise to the table.  A lot of these people are professionals that bill out their time at over $100 an hour, and they just help all weekend for free.  This creates some sort of vortex of creative energy that is hard to find in the world.  This energy unlocks things, it can unlock people.

Before long these teams will realize how flawed they are.  Most teams are lacking something pretty big they need to pull off their vision.  Web apps are hard to build without a developer.  A team may not have anyone that is good at public speaking to present their vision.  A team of engineers may not have much experience validating a market or talking to customers.  These teams are flawed, they know they shouldn’t succeed.  That story they tell themselves is bullshit.  Most of the time they cut through this bullshit and move forward.  It’s not uncommon to see people that meekly pitch an idea on Friday, stand up on stage Sunday for final presentations and own the room.  People quit thinking about what they “can” do, and just start doing, and in the process learn just a little about themselves.

As the weekend progresses people become more aggressive.  Passiveness and indecision melt away.  There is just no time for that nonsense.  People enter an attack mode, and a lot of stuff starts to get done.  A lot of first-time attendees of the weekend leave a bit surprised how much they accomplished in the weekend.  A lot can happen in the course of a weekend or even a day.  You could ask yourself why couldn’t this happen all the time?

The answers are simple.  Focus, the only thing that matters for the weekend is the team, the business, the mission, its almost like a state of mediation.  Passion, the passion people bring in is contagious.  Playfulness, people feel free to try things and experiment.  Inclusiveness, everyone finds a way to contribute to things, and everyone that enters the building is a part of the game in some way, no spectators are allowed.  We start to act a little different, and we start to get something different as a result.

Why don’t we all help each other more?  Why do we put up with our own bullshit stories in our heads?  If we all acted like this a bit more every day, where would we end up?  There is nothing stopping us from doing this all the time.  There is only the hinderance of choice.  What is stopping people from choosing passion, focus, energy, openness?  Maybe that’s what Startup Weekend is good for, learning how to unlock ourselves and get out of our own way.