One of the primary stitches running across my life cloak:
The primary engine driving economic growth is innovation. And we are in the midst of transitioning to a new innovation landscape as corporations are dying and the startup ecosystem matures. The innovation landscape is the overlapping theme for most of what I’m thinking about and working on. I’m interested in how we can increase collaboration, access more capital, push the interconnectivity and support systems a step further and increase the overall size of the ecosystem by getting more aspiring entrepreneurs across the chasm of commitment.
The innovation landscape is intimately related to what I believe is the world’s biggest problem and the approach we need to solve it. I discuss that in the 5 stages post, linked below.
A few of my frameworks for thinking about the innovation space: (Posts will soon be written for all of these)
Startups engaging collaboratively in complex value chains to achieve the scale of corporations, called the Lego Model and described here.
The 4 Pillars of Innovation Landscape: Community, Information, Tools, Capital. Most projects are different proportions of these 4 elements.
The innovation space is incredibly complex requiring a variety of different perspectives and knowledge on a wide array of subjects. This overarching theme connects my many interests: (I find the “I, it, we, its” a helpful organizing framework) I: talent development, psychology, learning, education, mental technologies; It: Personal productivity, food, athletic, health, energy management; We: community, social interaction, culture, collaboration; Its: geopolitics, interconnectedness, foresight, accelerating technological change, startups, behavioral economics, environmental sustainability, systems thinking;
This fall I was lucky to be one of the 30 residents in the inaugural year of Palomar5. It was by far the most intense experience of my life, triggering a lot of personal and project growth. A lot has changed since, but the dots still make sense looking backward. The last few years I’ve continually tried to tackle the biggest problem I thought I could, but two or three times I stopped, saying to myself, “this isn’t where I want to be and I don’t like where this is headed”. So I’d regroup, look at my new opportunities and resources and attempt to tackle something a little bit bigger. It was a bit scary at times not having many external demarkations of progress, but I trusted my instincts I was headed in the right direction.
I was so focused on making sure I continued to push my project forward that I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to Palomar5. I worried leaving the Bay Area for 6 weeks would cause me to lose all my momentum. I asked friends for advice and reflected. I knew it was a big decision. Fortunately I made the right one. I wrote two comprehensive blog posts about the camp here and here.
The weekend before the final summit of the camp we went to a incredible spa called the Liquidrom. I was floating in a large salted pool heated to body temperature. I rested my feet on a noodle and put my head back into the water, listening to the music drifing out of the underwater speakers. I sank into deep reflection, feeling the present warmth and everything that had happened the last few months. Fifteen minutes later, head still submerged, body still relaxed, I had a stroke of insight: for the first time in my life I’m exactly where I want to be. I’m not at a check point, I can’t stop and take vacation, I need to keep doing what I’m doing, but I’m finally at the place I want to be. For the last two years I’d been pushing myself to carve out a new path, continually fighting resistance, getting knocked down and getting back up with more resolve. My life was now on a trajectory I was completely satisfied with: personally, professionally, communally….It was appreciation not complacency. There’s a lot I still I wished I had my in life but I knew it was because I made a choice to place more importance on some things than others. And the things I didn’t have yet I knew I just needed to attack with the same tenacity I used to get here. Or I just needed to let time run its course. After I left the liquidrom hours later I could still feel a faint glow emanating from my body. In the last month or two when I’ve felt out of balance I just remind myself of that moment and how far I’ve come.
Three weeks later another one of my biggest goals was achieved. I was admitted to Stanford. But if you know me, you know I have radical views on education and getting into Stanford has not changed that. More later on my quest for an unconventional educational path.
Other gap year highlights include my first Burning Man, which will surely not be the last and a 5 day trip in the magical and fantastical city Prague, before returning back to America.
Aside from working on my primary projects, things upcoming that I’m excited about are: Attending the EG conference in Monterey, (founded by Richard Saul Wurman who founded TED —which I also have dreamt about attending one day), taking part in Jerry Michalski’s 4 day retreat with many fascinating people who have been involved in Silicon Valley since the early days, spending a few weeks in New York and Boston to visit friends, attend the Starting Bloc Institute, visit my sister at college with an intermediary trip to Austin for my first South by South West, and begin integrating with the Stanford community.
And that’s only the next 3 months I know about.
I tell people now, I’m not on a year off, I’m on a year on.
I’ve completely overhauled my about page on my site to reflect the changes of the past few months and I will be releasing a number of reflective posts revealing my path and some of my theories that have guided.
The T Model is a framework I made to describe how to most effectively approach learning, work, and non-linear career progression.
In the T Model you alternate between a broad, horizontal phase and a deep, vertical phase, (though it’s actually an upside-down T because starting with the horizontal phase is a must) . In the broad, horizontal phase the goal is to try as many things as possible, and in small doses to maximize variety. You want to continue experimenting until you find many things you are passionate about and also accumulate many reference frames to better categorize and make sense of new experiences and information.
Once you have a huge pool of things that excite you, look to switch to the vertical phase, where you will hone in on a few specific passions and combine them, to do something tangible. (This tangible thing should be something you can point to quickly and say, “I did this” and the word “project” could be considered loosely accurate).
Going through this cycle is very simple conceptually, but rarely executed. But if you look at most successful people they’ve usually followed a path similar to this. This is because in order to be really successful at something you need to be passionate, you need to be able to focus, and increasingly you need to be interdisciplinary. Success without passion exists, but those people are usually severely unhappy and prone to burn out.
Often completing this cycle even once sets off a positive feedback loop, marking the start of a lifetime of engaged pursuit and contribution. On completion of the first cycle an internal flame is lit, that once ignited is very difficult to put out. John Seely Brown former head of Xerox Parc describes this phenomena as such, “Very often just going deeply into one or two topics that you really care about lets you appreciate the awe of the world … once you learn to honor the mysteries of the world, you’re kind of always willing to probe things … you can actually be joyful about discovering something you didn’t know … and you can expect always to need to keep probing. And so that sets the stage for lifelong inquiry.”
Many people don’t complete the T cycle because they get stuck in one phase or the other. People who get stuck in the horizontal phases are people who are very creative and always have lots of little side projects going on, but they suffer from a lack of “big wins”, that provide the reputation and credibility that lead to greater opportunities and chances for financial sustainability— not to mention that gratification that comes from pulling off something big. People stuck in this mindset are resistant to focusing on a particular project because they can’t bear the possibility of turning down an interesting opportunity. They fear picking only one thing would put them in a box, vaporizing their multi-facted identity they associate so strongly with. The lives they lead are very unique, but by not reaping the rewards from alternating into cycles of focus, they strongly limit their ability to realize their potential.
Many people also jump into a focus phase prematurely, spending all their energy on something they aren’t passionate about. This is more dangerous than being stuck in the creative phase because the extrinsic reward will be there for focusing even if the activity is done without passion. This often fools people into believing they are headed in the right direction for themselves. But people who make this error frequently end up suffering from burn out, hitting midlife crises or working tirelessly to reach the top of their field only to be left wondering why they are so unfulfilled and whether all the sacrifice was really worth it.
There’s also a large sector of the population who isn’t in either the creative or focus phase and are resigned to getting by with whatever pays the bills. While the onus is on the individual to find their passion, trying to do so in our education system is like swimming upstream against a level 5 rapid. And most people just get swept away. (Even at the better public and private schools, you’re still swimming upstream, just against a lighter current).
If you can complete even one T cycle, the rewards will start rolling in. Executing a project you’re passionate about is rare, and separates you from a cacophony of wannabes. Everybody talks about things they want to do, but few people have the self-discipline and initiative to make projects come to life. This scarcity of executors, makes people pay close attention to you if you are one, and opens up a whole new set of opportunities unavailable before. Opportunities will start chasing you down instead of the other way around. When this happens the second T cycle has begun. You now have the chance to explore horizontally again, this time with more freedom and opportunity.
The exploration here is much richer. You’re a more developed person. You have access to more people. You have more financial freedom. You get flown places to speak and are invited to contribute to more interesting projects. You have more influence, and as a result, people listen to what you have say and want to support or join your cause. This more intensive exploratory phase should lead to a new point of focus, where you can again combine your rapidly growing pool of knowledge, experiences and passions to build something new, likely more ambitious than your last.
As you turn the corner towards your second focus project, true interdisciplinary thinking begins to emerge. You can combine your breadth of knowledge on many subjects with the depth of your previous focus, charting new territory from a variety of informed perspectives.
All in all, a cycle probably takes anywhere from 2 to 7 years, so you have the opportunity to pursue both learning and doing many times in your life. And the T cycles start linking up very naturally. When they do that they begin resembling something like a series of s curves— a natural evolutionary growth cycle with some intriguing implications (to be explored later). Strictly interpreting the analogy of the T implies alternating between stages of being 100% horizontal and 100% vertical. But it is probably not realistic nor optimal to be one phase 100% of the time. A good rule of thumb is to allocate 80% of your time to the designated phase and 20% of your time to the other phase, i.e. 80% Creative & 20% Focus or vice versa. This allocation will also give the T smoother curves if graphed, creating a more natural looking S curve.
This model can be used as framework for decision making and allocating priorities in almost any field of interest. I’ve shared this model with numerous friends the last few months and many have appreciated the insight and clarity it has produced.
I hope to explore more facets and implications of this model. A few areas I’ve mapped out: The emotional journey through different phases. Why the T Model Works. How School Follows the Exact Opposite of the T Model, which is why students hate it. My Personal Path Along the T. Complimentary Theories to the T Model from Stefan Sagmeister, Seth Godin, and IDEO’s Tim Brown.
There are two types of organizations that are driving a majority of our economic growth: the startup and the large corporation.
On one hand, we have startups, which are where the innovation is happening and on the other hand, we have corporations, which have the advantages of scale and abundant resources. We need a new kind of organizational structure that can bridge the gap, combining the strengths they each possess.
I’ve come up with a model that explains how startups can gain the advantages of scale and have access to greater resources while staying agile and preserving their penchant for innovation. This model is called the lego model.
In this model you can think of a startup like a rectangular block and a large corporation like a tower. Startups can create a tower by collaborating with other startups. When enough startups are seamlessly working together they have created a tower that is functionally equivalent to the towers of corporations that can take advantage of the efficiencies at scale. But the tower startups create is not a single indivisible entity, it’s more like a tower made of lego pieces. And that has a lot of advantages the indivisible tower doesn’t. It is more resilient, more flexible, more modular and can quickly be assembled and disassembled. This process incorporates principles from both evolution and nature selection. It enables unlimited experimentation and also fast replication for the stuff that works. (This is good that it mirrors nature, because we know nature works, because it created us). The modularity also gives much greater control over optimization, because it’s much easier to isolate and test particular variables. Best practices can easily move across the ecosystem because as things get increasingly quantized, they are easier to replicate. If one lego piece is shown to be particularly versatile or adaptive it can be plugged into many existing towers. If a particular lego piece is poorly constructed and not doing its job very well, there are plenty of pieces waiting in the wings that can replace this ineffective lego piece. That provides great resiliency because while you’re still only as strong as your weakest link, the chain isn’t fixed anymore.
Towers only have to live as long as they are still creating increasing value for the customer. As the vertical the tower is operating in begins becoming saturated, essential pieces can shift their focus from growth, to becoming as lean as possible— doing the same job with many fewer employees and much greater efficiency. The pieces that are no longer essential as the vertical matures can leave while still highly profitable, and move into an area where they are still adaptive or regroup and plan to start from scratch with the resources they’ve gained.
What we don’t want are companies trying to milk past innovations for all they are worth, through monopolies and legal manuerving. This is terrible for customers because it closes down the space and prevents further innovation. It’s terrible for companies too, because as soon as they stop innovating, a death knell has been sounded, and they are now fighting an uphill batter that will only get steeper. All utters have a limited amount of milk.
Why do large companies stop innovating? There are many reasons, a few are because: they become too large and innovation requires being flexible. The people in the organization age and become tired and complacent. It’s easier and more certain to incrementally improve existing products and services than venture into the uncertain waters of innovation.
What we want to have happen is to have successful organizations in a mature market release both their financial and human resources back into the ecosystem to begin creating more innovative lego pieces that will eventually be formed into more lego towers that serve new verticals.
But why can’t startups form these lego towers currently? Because currently they are just rectangular blocks without the knobs and holes. If the pieces are just flat rectangular blocks, the structure is more akin to a disjointed Jenga tower, which certainly isn’t adaptable or sustainable.
If theory is to be taken seriously, what does it mean practically for how we should be organizing startups?
In order to start building lego-like structures startups need to have greater interconnectivity and more standardization for interoperability. To achieve either requires a more mature startup ecosystem which will need to evolve to encompass many new things including: more transparency, more portable data, a more collaborative culture that focuses more on creating value than capturing it (meaning share more and worry less about protecting IP or being ripped off); a tighter community with more fluid relationships between first time entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial veterans and mentors. Startups also need better information including: roadmaps, templates, and organized, actionable guides. And the ecosystem needs more startups for startups—companies creating tools designed specifically to help other startups grow their businesses. We want to be one of them.
As these tools develop and the ecosystem matures achieving lego like startups will begin becoming feasible, but the culture must evolve in parallel, too.
What we’re trying to look at and understand is what the innovation landscape might look like in the future, I think the lego model is a step in the right direction. Let us know what you think. We’ll be sharing more implications of the lego model and complimentary ideas that could shape the innovation landscape.
Me and my fellow Sandboxers and Palomar-ians Sagarika, Jyoti and Eddie wrote a post about our first week at Palomar5. Read the full post here. A few favorite quotes posted below.
The Palomar5 experience began with a warm welcome to a chilly Berlin at the Malzfabrik, a former giant brewery that is being transformed into a creative hub. However, we are its first full-time inhabitants. The indoctrination began when we donned identical blue jumpsuits which were worn for the duration of the first weekend while we consolidated our collective consciousness. However, we were able to keep slivers of our individuality by deciding the placement of the logo–which cleverly represents both the 5 and “lo” of “Palomar5″.
n our first week we ventured into central Berlin twice. The inaugural Sunday, we were invited for a private tour at one of the city’s avant garde art galleries housed in a restored bunker from the WWII–Bunker Berlin, Boros collection, have also a look at this link. We then caught the sights and sounds of the city on a boat ride down the river Spree, finishing our day with excellent pizza at a famous cult-like restaurant run by punks.
While some soaked up the city on our trip, Max, upon returning home realized his memories of the city were sparse as he spent most of the time in the inner caverns of his mind plotting world domination with his fellow campers. It’s a gift and a curse.
…We know we’ve left them with a gift: a break in their routine to expose the hidden assumptions that chain these transit-goers to their habits and thus their lives, precisely the same affliction that shields oversized companies from realising the ways of working in the future. Have no fear, their eyes will soon be pried open— and if not, they will awaken from their decadent slumber to find that the next generation holds the reins to the world they once held in the palm of their hand.
‘I try to make what I do and what I am passionate about as close together as possible. I believe that should be one of everyone’s major goals in life. I think passion almost always manifests itself as a desire to change or improve something, whether it’s the entrepreneur who wants to change an industry, the writer who wants to change public opinion, the artist who wants to change collective consciousness or the musician who just wants to change how people feel in the present moment.’ Max Marmer
Max Marmer from the US likes to make big ideas happen. He’s obsessed with learning and conversing about frameworks that give insight into where humanity is headed and why humans do what they do. As both an entrepreneur and a big picture thinker Max tries to pinpoint the biggest problems and opportunities that he can affect. He tries to clearly understand both present circumstances and future scenarios worth inhabiting and then start shaping the future by approximating ideal outcomes through iterations of entrepreneurial projects.
He’s currently involved in founding a very ambitious startup working to weave together converging trends in education, entrepreneurship and the future of work. The startup is called Force For the Future and is beginning by providing decentralized, local support networks for entrepreneurs. But the larger vision for the project is to evolve into a liaison for “Real World University”, the best learning environment of all, where passion, learning and work are all fluid and intimately related. The world’s major institutions in the corporate and educational sectors are failing to develop the talent of the next generation. And we need our institutions to prepare people to work effectively in the 21st century, and support people in finding the problems they are passionate about solving. And that is perhaps the world’s biggest challenge and opportunity right now: getting a greater percentage of the world’s population working on solving humanity’s biggest problems. Max believes entrepreneurship is the most effective way attack these problems and that life approached in an entrepreneurial manner is one of the best ways to create a life of personal fulfillment and greater contribution.
Max is honored to have the opportunity to immerse himself in a creative environment with 29 other amazing people all trying to implement their visions for a better world. It looks to be an incredibly stimulating atmosphere where the seeds of big projects will be sewn and lasting friendships begun. He expects the Palomar5 Camp to be an incredibly stimulating experience that will help shape the nascent project described above through conversation, experimentation, iteration and implementation. He expects an overstimulated but happy brain, a warm heart and cold skin. He’s ready for early mornings, late nights and sweet dreams.
But frankly, this will be a first experience for all involved (the organizers included) and we don’t really know what to expect what will come out of this six week experience except the unexpected.
As you may have noticed the blog has been relatively quiet the month of September, but my life has been anything but. I have a lot I’d like share and look forward to writing some more comprehensive life updates and keeping in touch with everyone who has been in and out of my life. But respites are few and far between the next few weeks.
Here’s a quick rundown.
Throughout the month of August all my friends from high school packed up suitcases and hopped in cars and planes, scattering around the country. Then it was my twin sister’s turn to take a 1 way to Boston and begin her adventure at Tufts University. I’m very excited for her and I know she’s having an amazing time, but it marked the closing of a large chapter in our lives and was a sad day for the Marmer Family, indeed.
As August closed and September 2009 was born I was up in Black Rock City having an amazing first time at Burning Man. What a transformative experience. Understanding cannot be shared vicariously, though I might be able to offer a few tastes in a upcoming post.
The day I returned from Burning Man I turned 19. Reflection of the last year ensued and I couldn’t believe how much had changed. It was the best of year of my life by far. But I’m confident this year will top it. The stage is set for a wonderful gap year and for the first time in my life I am in control of my most precious resource: my time. Hopefully I’m setting a trend for the rest of my life where things keep getting better all the time. Yes, you can sing it.
Many of my entrepreneurial friends who are veteran Burners described the following weeks as the most productive of the year. I must agree. I returned high on life with all cylinders firing. I clocked 14 hour days for 7 days straight without feeling a hint of lethargy and sailed straight into Tech Crunch 50, in what turned out to be the most productive conference I’ve ever attended. I did the conference the way you’re supposed to. Skipping the most of the content, because it can be had later from the comforts of my desk and instead seizing the opportunity to talk with the plethora of people in attendance I’d been wanting (needing perhaps?) to meet with.
My company took a major leap forward due to large volume of connections made, partnerships forged and targeted feedback I gathered. And after another busy day following the conference, I crashed. I woke up with a fever and was out for over a week, spending most of the time in bed, managing to get an email off every now and then. It hurt. It was a knife straight through the surplus of progress acheived in the preceeding overtime workweek. When you’re scratching and clawing for everything you can muster, being stuck on the sidelines is just agonizing.
But as the cloud over my head was lifted and the mental haze melted away the sun came careening through. As I eased back into work after a week of fitful slumber I received the news that I had received one of the 30 residencies for the Palomar 5 camp. A huge smile swept across my face punctuated by 3 forceful first pumps. The theme of the camp —the future of work— could not be a better fit because it’s so well aligned with all that I’ve been thinking about and working on. What an opportunity. So I’ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get everything done in the few remaining days I have on the west coast before I leave for Berlin for 6 weeks on October 9th.
Most people when they take a gap year decide to travel. I decided I had bigger fish to fry than to chase perspective. I wanted to create. I still planned to travel some, but was unsure how I was going to fit it in. But now I have the perfect opportunity to combine work and travel. While most of my time will be spent exploring my home base city of Berlin I hope to get in a few weekend trips traversing other magical cities nearby in Europe. London and Amsterdam top the list right now.
I welcome any suggestions or reccomendations of things to do, places to see or people to meet while I”m situated in Berlin until late November. Let me know.
Most of this blog has been about broad intellectual topics, but if you’ll forgive some self-indulgence, I’m going to begin to share some more personal anecdotes. I just finished a post on passion and what I advocate for how to find it, and now I’m going to give you a small glimpse into some of the life choices that led me here today. Though there’s a good chance that a fair amount of this is just connecting the dots looking backward as Steve Jobs likes to say, I have no way of knowing.
For most of my life, athletics were my core passion, but athletics began to fade after series of misdiagnosed back injuries, that first occurred in 7th grade, and began to develop into chronic injuries that I was unable to overcome throughout high school despite many hours of physical therapy and disciplined training.
My passion for sports began at a very young age and I’d have to consult my family for more accuracy. But I know I put myself out there when I was very little. I was more athletic than most of my 3 year old peers and was pushing myself pre-kindergarten. At my Pre-K (a year between preschool and kindergarten) I was unsatisfied spending my recesses on the little kid’s yard, so I lobbied to cross over the chain link fence where the big kids (first and second graders, big right?) were playing soccer. I don’t think this was an easy sell, no one to my knowledge had done it before, but I proved I could more than hold my own. You could say I was the Jackie Robinson of pre-kindergarten sports. After I made the trek over to the big kid’s side of the yard many of friends began joining in. Soon we formed a soccer team that played in a league outside of school. We called ourselves the Big Green (after the amazing movie, of course) and went on to become a micro soccer dynasty, losing just twice in our 5 year history and racking up a shelf full of trophies. Micro soccer was just 4 on 4 on a small field that allowed youngsters like us to develop our foot skills and teamwork more easily. I have found memories of regularly zipping through my opponents racking up consecutive goals just minutes apart.
As I got older many of my afternoons were spent practicing, many weekends were spent competing and many summers were spent at sports camps. In my downtime at home I played many video games, usually sports games. Though if I wasn’t playing sports games, I was probably playing long RPG (Role Playing Games) like the Final Fantasy series. These RPG’s were great because they weaved long complicated story lines together, frequently culminating in a big world changing idea, like a corporation that controlled the world, or a mysterious phenomenon that sent people back in time and showed how their lives we’re all interconnected. I’m sure these early influences had an effect on my current inclinations towards big picture thinking and weaving disparate theories together.
Two of my strongest passions now are for big ideas and making them happen through entrepreneurship. The life of the mind began to take root around the age of my Bar Mitzvah (in case you were wondering I now consider myself an atheist though culturally jewish), which was also 7th grade, probably coincidentally, maybe luckily timed with my injuries. Because at some point late senior year I called it quits indefinitely on my athletic career (it’s still on hold 8 months later, granted I’m still a push up and sit up enthusiast and exercise bike aficionado) for one because the frustration of not being able to play even close to my potential was becoming unbearable. I was in purgatory. I could play, just not well. I was never big, so my whole game was based on speed and quickness. At one point in middle school my teammates nicknamed me “the flash” after a string of breakaway goals in consecutive games. But post-injury my bursts of quickness could be sustained no longer than flashes in a pan. The second reason for calling it quits was that my life of the mind had been growing steadily the last few years and was now bursting at the seams, salivating for more of my time and energy.
The next 6 months were anything but fun, but I knew I was making the right decision. I knew delaying gratification was part of the deal for a better future. I was at the beginning of my startup career, I had a really big idea but no idea how to make it happen. I jumped in the deep end and tried to swim, and I did, but I got slapped around…a lot. I was putting in a lot of energy and not getting a lot of return. I would meet big fish like Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, Jason Calacanis and Saul Griffith (though the relationship with Saul was longer standing from when I reached out to him about digital fabrication), impress them in the moment, receive verbal commitments of help and be on cloud nine the rest of the night, but then be blown off the following day.
Aside: I don’t hold any resentments against any of these people, it was very much a matter of circumstance. I welcomed any positive interaction I had with them as an undeserved reward for a young kid thinking big, but coasting on potential. Any help I did get from them thereafter was greatly appreciated, but that’s not to say I wasn’t heavily disappointed when I couldn’t get my emails returned. I also must admit at the times I did get help I wasn’t always ready to take maximum advantage of it. But it’s all part of the process of growing into my own. And the interactions I did have with these people were highlights that definitely served as fuel to keep going. My thought process after rejection went something like, “I may only get a glimmer of their attention now, but if I keep going we’ll be collaborating in no time.”
I was the drunk hook up. I was the new kid on the block. I still am, but I can feel the tide turning. I can’t prove it to you now but you’ll see, the proof will be in the pudding the next few months. Now I receive comments like, “You know you’re going to rule the world, Max”, “Max, you just know everybody don’t you?” I’m flattered. But things certainly aren’t downhill from here. But miraculously they feel like it. I’ve done enough conscious mind hacking to align the dopamine reward centers in mind with working hard and making a difference. I put value out into the world and it comes back to me. I’m addicted, what can I say. But I’m not on career milestone blitz either. My goal is to live a healthy, long sustainable life, full of impact, fun and love. My first foray into adult intellectual communities was with the futurist community who deliberated on ideas of Accelerating Change and the Singularity. I interned with the Institute for the Future last summer and nearly with Singularity University this summer, and while I have scaled back my involvement in futurist communities some (to be explained in a future post), my long term orientation has not left me, and I hope it never does. And what that means is that although there’s still a big disparity for me between effort and reward I know I’m in it for the long haul, and the last few years have been a time of building a foundation and paying my dues. At some point that equation actually flips polarity and you begin to get rewarded when you barely put in any effort. I’m far from there, but things are beginning to speed up for me nonlinearly. All the hours I put in the last two years to develop myself, expand my connections and mind set the stage for the gap year I’m now taking.
But I was telling you how the last semester of high school was full of sacrifice. I skipped dances for conferences, I skipped picnics for lunch meetings, I skipped parties for the chance to finally have a few concentrated hours to iterate the next version of my executive summary. I also kept up with a very challenging and time consuming course load. I knew I couldn’t drop my studies then, as much as I knew from an opportunity cost’s perspective they were wasting my time. I also needed to do well if I still wanted my parents support and the freedom they had given me to pursue these entrepreneurial activities. And there was pressure to finish school with a good academic record after I had maintained one all four years and not drop the ball at the finish line, in large part for college admission’s sake. So I was sleep deprived and felt like I was working two jobs and not having much fun.
But I had something very few of my peers did: Passion and purpose. And the farther I began to venture into this entrepreneurial world the more disconnected and out of place I felt in the school environment. My social life was never spectacular in high school but that semester I really turned the power off and it rusted and rotted. In many ways this was a conscious decision. I was never that connected with my peers, I always felt different, (though along the way I adopted a belief that I should be able to have fun with anybody in the moment no matter our differences, but I didn’t have the skill to pull that off at the time) and I knew we’d all be scattered around the country in 6 months anyway. So I set out at first to create a new network of people I knew and later a new network of friends.
One of the great things about finding your passion and purpose before finding your true friends is that it becomes much easier to find friends you are truly compatible with on many levels. Especially, if you learn how to seek people out and social network very well like I did. Finding friends you respect at a deep level is so important because you become who you surround yourself with, and now I get to choose who I surround myself with. Most of my friends now are in the 22-27 range. I just turned 19. I stole the “I’m the youngest person in the room” card from one of my precocious 22 year old friends, who is pushing 23, and there’s usually an age vacuum between us — no competition. But my conversations with my new circle of friends are at a higher level than I ever had before (my conversations with one friend in high school excepted, who was an awesome intellectual peer and we had amazing conversations at a theoretical level for a straight year and half, but we began to diverge when our world views as entrepreneur and musician began to disagree). My new circle of peers push me every time we interact. We can hit high lofty theoretical crescendos and then bring it back down to reality, creating actionable next steps each of can take to achieve our goals. And that feeling is simply amazing. It’s soul filling.
Long awaited, I finally have the video after wrangling with file format difficulties, technical workarounds and trips that left my time in front of the computer fragmented.
This is only my 2nd or 3rd public speech I’ve given, excluding participation on panels, but I hope to do more in the future. Unfortunately due to time constraints and the density of the content I wanted to cover, this speech required written prompts. Expect future talks I give to be presented more dynamically from the heart.
This blog post started as a comment on Ben Casnocha’s post on passion and voice. Most of my blog posts recently have come as a result of something provocative coming into my environment, a conversation, an idea, a quote, and unplanned, I end up writing. I’m not allocating much time to write these days, but when the thoughts come I try to capture them. I have plenty of ideas captured. I’m going to try to start allocating time to finish them off and shipping as Seth Godin would say. Enough hoopla, let the post commence:
While passion is undeniably important for your career I think it is the wrong thing to focus on is because it is an epiphenomenon. And epiphenomenon are by definition elusive if pursued directly.
For finding passions here’s what I’m advocating now:
- Try as many things as possible with as low a commitment as possible: School does a terrible job at this, you get to try a maximum of 6 things a semester, and you’re locked in (after the first two weeks). And outside of school most people don’t try many things on their own. So therein lies a big part of the problem of passion and why most people haven’t found it. They simply have tried enough things and pursued in enough depth to find it. I could go into more depth about why school destroys passion, but here, I won’t.. Many people think that their only options for passions are what school presents them with. So they don’t even try to look outside of school. And they think they don’t have passions, so they give up.
- Ratchet up your commitment one level – Ways to do this: Read more in depth about one of the things you tested out and enjoyed doing, or practice it for an hour, talk with other people who like this thing too, talk with professionals who have done it for years. Then assess whether you want to go further. Passion doesn’t come until you’ve put in enough hours to become hooked. Passion doesn’t really come until you become good at something, or at the very least, you feel good at and no one has told you that you aren’t yet.
- Begin devoting more and more energy to this thing you enjoy, testing whether it can become one of your passions. This is where you try the passion on as a noun. Do I want to be a ___ (artist, dancer, marketer, entrepreneur). Before you were just trying it on as verbs and adjectives (gerunds are verbs for all intents and purposes here): I’m being artistic, I’m dancing, I’m writing copy, I’m being entrepreneurial. Now you can pick up the plethora of advice on literature about how to build your life around following your passion. You can read all the success literature and a lot of it will stick. The hard part was finding your passion in the first place.
And now a personal anecdote of passion seeking and passion finding:
My interest in computers and technology started when I began playing around with the first computer my family positioned in an accessible place. My dad occasionally bought macworld magazines. I read them and began learning more about computers and working through tutorials in the magazines. I began playing with the system and experimenting on my own. I browsed the internet and bought books. I was hungry to learn more. I worked through books on html and built a website for my mom. I listened to podcasts online and on my iPod. I found my way through an interview on a tech podcast to the ITConversations site. Where I then began listening to talks on accelerating change. I loved those and listened to more whenever I could. I bought books based on the talks and talked with people about the ideas. When the rest of my family was shopping for in Barcelona, I parked myself on a bench and listened to awe-inspiring lectures.
I went to the conference and began meeting the people involved. I kept showing up. I eventually got a job out of my connections. These big ideas I heard filled in the blank for how I was going to make a difference in the world. At first I thought it was big business, but then later I discovered the idea of entrepreneurship. I reached out to entrepreneurs. I read about entrepreneurship. I went to events when I was underaged and knew nobody. I began to get connected. I helped organize events. I figured out how to turn some of my previous projects into a startup. I started asking for introductions and setting up meetings with people who had done startups before. I met with anyone I could just trying to expand the breadth of people I knew and get new perspectives. I decided this was a path I loved and I decided to take a gap year and give myself the time to focus hard and fully commit. Now I’m fully committed to this passion of mine and I’m learning faster than ever before, meeting incredible people, and opening up new possibilities faster than I could have ever imagined when I began playing with my computer and reading macworld magazine.
Everyone I meet now knows I have “the itch,” as they say. But it grew in proportion to my effort. That’s how you know you’ve found one of your passions, when the more time you put into it, your desire to do more increases. Many times you’ll find things that feel like passions in the beginning but you realize you don’t like that much after putting more energy into it. That’s fine. It’s part of the process. Just pick up something new that interests you and run with it. If it feels wrong consider dropping it. But if it feels right keep going. And going.
we can remove barriers & provide more fertile initial conditions, minimize friction, supporting ignition. Motivation more fund than tenacity
11:23:48 PM January 30, 2010 from web
More thoughts on Tenacity (thx for comments): Grows similar to passion: in proportion with increasing opportunity and skill. Therefore...
11:23:36 PM January 30, 2010 from web
"Inside of you there is a peace & refuge that you can go to at every hr of the day & be at home. Few ppl have this & yet all could have it"
11:09:34 PM January 30, 2010 from web
Can people who arent tenacious become tenacious? In other words, can you teach tenacity? I think many people have latent tenacity. Thoughts?
08:09:16 PM January 29, 2010 from web
