I Hate Peas

I hate peas, cucumbers, peanut butter, and meetings.

I’ll eat peas if they are put on my plate, but I won’t put them there myself. Why? Because I don’t like the extra little bit of skin on them. They texture grosses me out. I love grapes because they have a tight skin, so they are crisp. Fresh peas don’t feel fresh. I hate peas.

The only time in my life my mother made me stay at the table until I ate something was the time I denied my mouth cucumbers. I was 6. They felt slimy. After sitting in my chair for 4 hours, I finally ate the four slices. I put too much salt on them and threw up. Because of that, I hate cucumbers.

When I was 8, we traveled on a family vacation to Yellow Stone National Park. Stuck in traffic, we reached into the cooler and made sandwiches with the only thing we had: Whole wheat bread and peanut butter. I hadn’t drank any water that day and the PB sandwich dehydrated me to the point that I experienced my first migraine. Migraines now remind me of peanut butter and how much I hate it.

This last year, I accepted a massive publishing project. My supervisor has never managed before and had never been involved with published, design or deadline oriented projects (don’t ask me how she got the job, I don’t know.) She would schedule a team meeting once a week, every week, to check up on us. Two hours later, she still wouldn’t understand the project and she has successfully wasted 30 hours of work. 15 people, 2 hour meeting, it makes sense.

The reason I tell you these things is not so you can sympathize with me as a migraine plagued 8-year-old. When something frustrates you, instead of ignoring it, investigate it. When you hate something, find out why. There’s always an answer.

And that answer will always educate and influence you more than the hate ever could. What do you hate?

Rule #1: Don’t Suck

It seems like it’s a pretty simply idea to not suck. To not be terrible. But, sometimes, it’s just to simple.

Yesterday, I plowed through a post about Customer Service on Twitter. It was going to be a masterpiece that propelled me to writing fame. Masterpieces aren’t easy to write.

I wrote for 2 and a half hours. What came out was 1,800 words of discombobluated thoughts and half-assed points. I went on and on, ignoring my first rule. I sucked.

What did me in was my lack of simplicity. My Keep-It-Simple-Stupid attitude seemingly got replaced with rambling. What did I learn from this?

A few things. Don’t use 9 words when 7 will do. Don’t overcomplicate things. Over edit. If you think you have dumbed it down and simplified it too much, it’s perfect. Brevity over bravado.

And most importantly, don’t suck.

Make Me King!

One of my favorite sayings around political elections is definitely “We’d all vote for the best candidate, if only he was running.”

Back when I worked in radio daily, I had an unbearable supervisor. Having won award after award, he let it go to his head. His way or the highway. Reeking of self-importance, he drove everyone in the office insane. Either you fell in line with what he thought was best or he belittled you until you didn’t care to fight anymore. He was the only hard working person in the office, and if you didn’t believe it, he’d tell you.

When our ratings came back and we had our best quarter ever, he was so proud of all the work he had done. Patting himself on the back, he looked down on everyone else. So, when he was destroyed in a staff meeting shortly thereafter, he couldn’t understand why we didn’t appreciate his work and shortly left the station for another job.

When our ratings came back the next quarter, without him, we still checked in our best set of ratings yet.

I have a photographer friend who is determined to be the most well known photographer on the face of the globe. He is underselling workshops and speaking at as many conventions as he can. He is getting his name out there with abundance. He’s been turning down actual photography work to speak about his photography.

The problem is, his photography is mediocre at best. Where he shines is the experience his studio offers. While he is fighting to show how great he is and how much he can help others, he’s killing his own studio. By no longer walking the walk, he’s become an annoying bastard that must likes to talk about how great he can make your studio. His priorities are shot, and if he’s not careful, it will kill his business.

Instead of being the best, he’s trying to show he’s the best.

These people are too concerned with being king. One day, they’ll realize being king isn’t what’s important. It’s about making a kingdom worth being king of, not making yourself king.

Today, are you too busy trying to be king or too busy building a kingdom?

What’s a Good Idea?

I call bullshit on good ideas.

There, I said it. Something I’ve learned over the years in creative professions (Graphic Design, Photography, and Studio Management for me) is that a surplus of ideas is as dangerous as a drought.

Notice how they are called ideas? No adjective. Not good, great, revolutionary, magical, terrible, awful. Why?

At conferences, on calls, over Twitter, we’re all guilty of saying, “I’ve got this great idea…” I bring it up all too often. An idea for a blog, a company, a book, a workshop.

People aren’t willing to support you when all you are doing is talking about your idea. But people will fight to make a mediocre product great if you give them the chance. Throw yourself into action, figure out your plan as you go. Even if your idea ends up being a terrible action, at least you’ll know.

Problem is, you can never tell how good or bad an idea is until you DO IT. Once you put something into action, you can tell if the blog will take off or drown in the internet’s white noise. You’ll see what you need to change, cut or curate. You can’t pass intelligent judgement on an idea until it’s become more than that.

So, do it. If an idea is created, but never applied as a solution to a problem, it’s worthless. Even a bad idea applied has more worth than an idea hiding in your Moleskin, unused.

What ideas are you going to apply today?

Beta Testing the Future

Full disclosure, I love the iPad. After a great house warming gift from a friend, I’m typing this on a 64GB 3G iPad, rumbling down the highway going 70mph. (Don’t worry, someone else is driving.)

This device has all but replaced my iMac. I only fire my old love up for heavy tasks, such as photo editing, layout and design. All my emailing, Tweeting, surfing, researching, TV show watching and most of my writing happens all on here.

Today though, while bored riding along, I discovered the future of this device for me. Photography.

Chase Jarvis, a great commercial photographer, has been talking for the past few years about how the best camera you have is the one with you. From that thought spawned a photo iPhone app, a book and an online ecosystem.

Today, I’m going to come out and say it. The best computer you have is the one that’s with you. And no folks, your laptops don’t count. Anything that takes too much time that it can be considered a task ruins it. This is something you should be able to do between layovers in airports.

While outside of Temple, Texas at a Shell station, I started taking pictures for fun. It’s been a while since I just played with my camera. The results are the start of a revolution in how I look at photography and, hopefully, how you do too.

43 photos later, I got back in the car. The camera adapter for the iPad had finally arrived and I wanted to test it out. Plugged it in, selected 20 shots, imported and sorted down to ten shots I liked in about five minutes.

Just for the hell of it, I opened up Best Camera, Chase Jarvis’ iPhone app. Within five to eight minutes, I was done. Ten images that I was happy with, just like that. Are they the best images I’ve taken? Of course not. Best images I’ve edited? Hell no. But that’s not the point.

Within 30 minutes, I had taken, sorted, edited and posted photos while driving down the interstate to Austin. Imagine with me for a second the possibilities.

Let’s say that Apple releases an iPad version of Aperture. You’ll have a few brushes, your synced presets from your desktop, your library of photos at your hand. And you’ll physically be editing your photos! I can start selecting and uploading pictures from a wedding while my assistant drives us home. The barriers of communication are falling, the time it takes for you to get information to coworkers and clients is dropping and you have to be ready.

Posting this is just a start, a beta test. I edited the images on an iPhone app and posted this blog using Squarespace’s great iPhone app. But, the results and speed in which I could do it was alarming and phenomenal.

Yes, I’m beta testing. But I’m beta testing the future. What are you testing?