Learning to Create Disruption If your life, your job, your relationship was perfect you would be bored. But, just because something is not perfect does not mean we should not continue working towards perfection. I sat contemplating this the other day as I thought about business. Businesses are systems. In fact, everything is a system, including your life. We like systems to run the same way every day, and willingly accept flawed system out of fear. Too afraid of creating chaos and then possessing the ability to control it we shun opportunities for improvement. Think of the intricate system beneath the hood of your car, for example. If one component is not running correctly the …
Creating Vs. Documenting: Why Technology is Ruining Your Experience of a Place
Cell phones are making us dumb and preventing us from seeing the world. Everywhere I go I see people with phones in their hands. Check out lines. Coffee shops. In cars. At bars. Cell phones have become a habitual activity. We use them even when we do not mean to as a way of filling the gaps in our day. Cell phones are killing our lives Did you know that over 10 billion photos are taken with iPhones every month? Wrap your head around that one. 10 Billion. What do we do with all these photos? Well, over 300 million are posted to Facebook every month. Most of the rest probably go on Instagram or …
A Train Somewhere: Preparing for Success
The countryside rolled by, and I moved onward from one place to another. I don’t even remember where I was going that time. That’s sad. Too many train rides. Too many plane rides. Too many car rides. All of them taking me from this place to that place. I was young then, that’s what I remember. The experience is only sensations. The blur of the landscape. The hard plastic seats. The clack of metal on metal as wheels rolled on over metal lines in to the distance. I have so many of those experiences that they gel together. All of the things I’ve experienced on trains couldn’t have happened on the same journey, could they? …
Three Inches Up…There’s a Great Big World
Look up! Look up! Look what your missing! It’s right in front of your face! I watched 50 or more people stroll through town the other day with their heads down. Can you guess why their heads were down? Yep, because they were engrossed in their cell phones. These were not just locals and this place was not just a dirty big city street. No,the people I was watching were tourists from out of town, vacationing in one of the most beautiful mountain towns during one of the most beautiful fall seasons I’ve ever experienced. Maybe they looked up for one second to snap a quick photo of the golden sunlight striking the grey peak …
Appia Antica Way
Rome is like a cake. Beneath roads are old houses, a subterranean layer of history eroding away and returning to the Earth. Modern civilization is the frosting on top, a metamorphosizing, gelatinous mass of life shifting at the whims of the time. Some parts of this upper crust are the same as always. Bernini alleys, a coliseum built from money plundered from Jews, Salvi’s trevi fountain and more are relics of a different time. You can pass an ATM on the corner and then find yourself standing before the looming, black and weathered Pantheon. History overflows in this city like water from a bucket. The past spills into the modern world, melding the two. In …