The truth of things isn’t always interesting — it’s often detailed, boring, and not as exciting as the embellished story. The types of stories that are detailed, boring, and not exciting are often long. The truth of a thing can also be ultra elegant — one or two words, astonishingly simple. The truth isn’t short… and it is.
I wonder if life is becoming too much of a zero sum game. Google “US Politics” and you’ll find hundreds of examples of people playing zero sum games. Are these games productive? Who ultimately wins? My working theory is that all but a small fraction of a fraction of people win these games. With so many people losing, why do we tolerate them?Perhaps it’s because of what it means to be part of a team. Leaders wield a great power - the power to wage war or create alliances with or against competing teams. With that great power, comes great responsibility — to look after the people — all of them — in their charge. What good is winning if everybody must suffer?
You can whittle a stick into a spear by applying angular strokes of force against the stick with a knife. In the same way, your ideas can go from “this might work” to “this will work” by applying the angular stroke of outside critique to them. As much as it might be painful to listen to the ideas of those you loathe and hate, ultimately their force acting upon you will shape your work.
If you want to improve yourself, you are required to step back and get a vector — where are you right now?Then, once you know where you are, you have to move forward through space and time. There is no other way. Movement creates disorder, and disorder allows for growth. Stay still and paralyzed in your own thoughts, doesn’t help.
Music education is for learning how to create and ship an idea that matters to those you seek to serve. The music educator teachers the student the master an instrument - the mode of communication, the language of music - the form that will be used, and then creates the time, space, and place for that magic to happen. The student generates an idea with a purpose — the student plays. Much of the communication that we do as humans could be improved through the study of music. Leaders: you can use this insight in your business as well. Substitute “music education” for your name.
I don’t enjoy receiving praise. I didn’t receive a lot of it growing up, and I don’t enjoy the feeling of it now. I almost prefer the leaders in my life keep their praise and instead respect me. I value respect over praise because respect is a form of deep admiration. I prefer my boss to feel respect towards me than to lob a “nice work” to me when I do my job. There are others like me. Perhaps you are one of those people. If you are like me, or you know people like me, consider respect over praise.
There are customers in everything that we do. If you’re a leader, your employees are customers. If you are a musician, your fans and venues are customers. If you are a teacher, your students are customers. If you want to make more from the work you do, get better customers. Why not get more customers? Would you rather have 1000 customers paying you $1 per month, or 2 customers paying you $500? I would rather work with 2! More time, more calls, more work, more outcomes, more results, more likes.. more isn’t always better. Pick your customers — the smallest number of people who want to the work you do — and serve them.
I sometimes find this time of the year tough. More difficult to keep up with important habits, more difficult to keep up with my studies, and more difficult to keep up with my writing. It’s not that I don’t have energy. I have plenty. I find it difficult to focus my energy towards important work. So where does my energy go? My mind wants to focus my thoughts towards doing and observing things. As if it was pulling my head out of my books and into the world. As if my mind was saying, “what good is that knowledge if you don’t use it.” Fair point, brain. Fair point.
I watch politicians use rhetorical devices to make points. I observe them dodge questions. I watch them pivot answers to their points of view. There are PR people making a lot of money guiding their clients to avoid answering questions. I wonder who these PR people believe is persuaded by these devices?I am coming to the conclusion that the best form of persuasion is the persuasion you do to yourself. It’s one thing to talk at you. It’s quite another to ask you a provocative yet judgment-free question that causes you to think — perhaps doubt. Questions like that only work if you exercise the skill of listening. The art is not in the question. The art is in the story the question causes the answerer to tell themselves about themselves. Perhaps being persuasive is about getting people to tell themselves a better story.No amount of talking at you makes that happen.
I’ve used Squarespace’s mobile app to write the last few blog entries. It appears that they didn’t publish when I scheduled them to publish. Apologies if you received several entries on one day. Sometimes that happens. Your plans don’t always pan out the way you hoped. I heard a scientist say that he would be delighted to be proven wrong; you learn something new when someone proves you wrong. I suppose I’m delighted that Squarespace may have error’d me; I’ve learned something new… stick to the web app.