Re-introducing boredom

I feel like my brain is seriously with being overloaded with data. To the point where I am becoming addicted to it. I am constantly seeking the next idea, the next great blog post, and the next piece of technology news. And now I feel like my brain needs a bit of rest. Not from sharing ideas, or continuing my projects, but during my down times. My down times have sadly becoming momentary bridges of media consumption – there is no ‘down’. Whether it is checking my tweet stream, checking into foursquare and perusing instagram, it just feels like I am bombarded with other peoples thoughts. So here’s what I am going to do.

I’m actually going to ‘re-introduce boredom’ to my life.

So instead of checking my twitter stream while I wait in line, or read in bed until my last waking moment, I’m going to give my brain a rest and let it just be. Let nothing exist.  Let my brain do what it wants, not what I want it to do (oxymoron?)… and just see what happens and where it leads me…. just be a little less demanding on my brain and see if it likes it better. Might be worth a try for all of us to avoid the overload for a while.

Love Stevie.

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Overcoming fear

This is the fourth of my crowd sourced blog entry ideas as suggested by Lani Pauli. Lani wanted to get my thoughts on the following: How to overcome the fear to take the leap and do your own thing.


I’ve written about this a few times. And I’ll start by pointing out previous entries on De-gearing, Quit your job and The number 1 reason being an employee sucks. But to make things contemporaneous here’s my thoughts on the topic today, off the top of my head.

Two important words come to mind when I think about the fear of pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors.

Having & Doing.

And as far as I can tell these two words are what we worry about when it comes to finance. We want to do cool stuff (like build a startup and pursue dreams), but in the short term it can have a big impact on our lifestyle and consumption patterns – the having part.

But most people don’t realize this important fact until after they have made the leap:

“The having is in the doing”

In my view we often replace our dreams and goals with consumption. And society promotes this ideal. We use money and steady income as a means of consumption based happiness. When in reality, we’d be much happier if we just did what we wanted to and had greater fulfillment in the hours of our days.

We have to make a decision on what’s more important to us; having lots of stuff and security, or doing cool things. I believe the latter creates a more enjoyable existence, and often leads to a virtuous circle where you realize how little we really need.

The real bonus is this: it’s easier to be successful when you are really into what you spend your time on. And when success comes to entrepreneurs we get the best of both worlds.

Startup blog says: Dream chase now!

Micro Fame

Recognition of effort is an important to the human psyche. We actually don’t like money as much as society would have us think. We what like is the recognition that people believe money buys. In this sense the human brain of the ‘uber consumer’ breaks it down a little like this:

I want to be recognised as a worthy

I want people to know I have achieved

If achieve I will be rewarded with payment in the form of money

People can’t see my bank account and wont know how successful I am (my self worth)

So I’ll buy things with my money which are on public display (car, house, holidays, clothes)

People will know these things require lots of money

People will know I have earned lots of money

Only people who are successful at ‘something / anything’ get lots of money

I can be happy that people will know ‘I am somebody’.

I am a worthy person

Then there’s people who know all this but take the short cut and just buy stuff they can’t afford on credit cards to define their success through consumption.

Smart startupss can use this human pshyche to their advantage as well. Rather than the success, money consumption trail, they can provide something much more immediate and altruistic. They share reconigition. The reward and promote their people as part of the success process. They provide micro fame.

This can be done is so many simple ways. Ways which rarely have a large financial burden on either party, but create a union between the two players for mutual benefit. Stuff not limited to but including:

– Member ratings

– Access to exclusive services, parties, insider events.

– Recognition in digital and print media

– Crowd sourcing & revenue sharing of such User Generated Content

– View counts

– Followers / friends / subscribers

– Most forms of social quantification

– Overt branding which has ‘user personlilty rub off’

obama girl

So the question then begs:

What sort of Micro Fame is your startup or business providing its people?

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