Month / March 2016

Routine

What’s your routine? Is it good or bad?

Routine hugs us in a comforting embrace. Warm and safe. When it’s a bad routine it only seems safe. It’s not. A bad routine keeps you from achieving, from doing, from being. It allows you to sit watching TV for four hours every night. It allows you to spend time with your phone rather than with those around you. Skip exercise. Skip creating. Skip making.

If you’re anything like me, your routine could be better. A lot better.

Break the routine. Build a new one, but better.

by Colin Brosnan

URLs Are Forever LOL

“URLs are forever”. My arse they are.

Since sometime in 2006 I’ve collected links using one web service or another. First it was Delicious and later when Delicious started mucking with their site I moved everything to Diigo. Now I have a library of over 20,000 links there. Oh, and I also use Pocket. Mmmm… nerdy.

Besides being a record of my past procrastination these links are meant to help me find stuff I’ve read or half read in the past. Stuff I think will be useful to me again in the future. Links to webpages about all sorts of stuff. Science, design, web design, marketing, business, management, leadership, inspiration, writing, productivity, book, movies. Those are just some of the tags I’ve used.

Another tag I’ve used is quotes. Find a quote from someone and save the link for future use. Except that’s not what happened. Recently I went through a bunch of those links and found that in many cases the URL no longer lead to the content I wanted. Instead it brought me to a dead page, “404 not found”, or otherwise. Saving those webpages didn’t do any good. Those quotes, whatever they were, are gone. I can’t use those links as a resource for the quotes I post on this blog on weekends.

The idea that URLs are forever just isn’t true. It is an ideal we wish website creators followed. The real web isn’t always built to the standards we wish it was.

URLs are for a while at best.

by Colin Brosnan

Untwisted Twist

This morning I came across a link, “15 Books to Read if You Love a Shocking Plot Twist”.

I didn’t click. I couldn’t. It’s a self defeating headline. If I read the list then those fifteen books are ruined for me. The twist becomes untwisted. It’s a non-spoiler-spoiler.

It’s the same problem when someone tells you a movie has a great twist. Well, thanks, you’ve ruined it. You didn’t tell me the secret but you told me enough that I’ll be watching or reading in such a way that I’m keeping an eye out for the twist. So I’m not immersed in the story. I’m viewing the story at a remove.

Knowing there’s a twist takes away the surprise and with it half the pleasure of the story.

Just recommend the book or movie to me. Say nothing about a twist. Tell me you think I’ll enjoy it. Do that I probably will. And after I’ve read or watched I’ll thank you for the recommendation. Not curse you.

by Colin Brosnan

Female Heroes

Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, the first woman in space. Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. Countess Markievicz, a revolutionary in the Irish Easter Rising of 1916. Rosa Parks, an American civil rights activist. Wangari Maathai, Kenyan born environmentalist, pro-democracy activist and women’s rights campaigner. J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books. Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani schoolgirl who defied the Taliban to campaign for the right to education. These are just a few of the extraordinary women we count as heroes.

There are female heroes closer to us than perhaps we realise. They are our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, our friends, our girlfriends, our wives. Perhaps we are too close to see clearly. Take a step back. Give yourself the space to see. A hero is someone we admire for their outstanding achievements, noble qualities, or courage.

I count my wife, Christina, as one of my heroes. Her achievements are inspiring. She launched Brosnan Photographic almost ten years ago. Last year she published her wedding advice book ‘Ever Yours’. She continues to strive for new achievements, recently launching Lux Curated and starting a YouTube channel. Hardworking, dedicated, creative, kind, and unfailingly helpful to others are just some of her noble qualities. She shows courage often, particularly when she puts herself in situations outside her comfort zone, such as launching Lux Curated.

All that I have mentioned is just one aspect of my wife. They relate to the her work side. I have not even touched on her qualities as a wife and friend. How could I not be inspired by her?

Today, on International Women’s Day, look again at the women in your life. Recognise them for the heroes they are.

by Colin Brosnan

Ideas Are Easy

Ideas are easy. They are. No, really they are.

It seems like a boast but it’s not. Ideas ARE easy. Pick up a pen and paper and write down ten articles you could write. Or ten ways you could improve the world.

Ideas are easy but they have no value. None.

I have a list of ideas for projects. I’ve been adding to the list for years. There’s a lot of good stuff on the list. Not one of those ideas has any value.

What good is any idea on that list to anyone unless it is made real? It is only when an idea is executed that it has value.

The ten articles you could write have no value unless you write them. And even then, how well you executed the act of writing those articles will increase or decrease their value. The more well executed the higher the value. Better executed is more difficult to achieve.

There is a matter of scale between the execution of writing ten articles and improving the world in ten ways. The scale of difficulty in execution increases too.

Ideas are easy. It’s execution that’s hard.

by Colin Brosnan

Full Disclosure

The term ‘full disclosure’ one we see in articles on a regular basis. The term is meant to be an acknowledgement of possible conflicts of interest. That’s true. But it can also be a backdoor marketing ploy.

Take the following quote from a 2013 article by Ryan Holmes…

For years, robust software tools known as social media management systems have been around to manage and protect companies’ social media assets (Full Disclosure: My company, HootSuite, is one of them).

This use of the full disclosure label seems less an acknowledgement of a conflict of interest and more a full on marketing plug. Particularly when it uses a link to the company.

The context is of how and where the article appears is also important. , Holmes is writing the article as CEO of Hootsuite. His position is presented at the top of the article. It would have seemed much less cynical if he had dropped the full disclosure label and simply wrote – ‘My company, Hootsuite, is one of them.’ With or without the link.

Is there a better way?

by Colin Brosnan

Conversations Lost with the Death of the Home Landline

Your mobile phone rings. Who answers it?

The home phone is dying. That’s not the same thing as the landline dying. Business still have as many landlines as ever. Homes do not. In 2004 almost 100% of homes in the US had landlines. By 2014 that figure was down to just over 50%.

With the loss of the home landline we have lost something else. When the home phone rang anyone could answer.

The phone rang. It was your aunt wanting to speak to your mother. But you answered the phone so you got to speak to her for a bit. Then you passed the phone to your mother.

The phone rang. It was your mother-in-law calling for your wife. You answered so you got to say hello. Then you passed the phone to your wife.

With the house phone when it rang and you answered you got to speak to people unexpectedly. Now…

Your mobile phone rings. Who answers it?

You do. You answer your phone. Your phone is normally close to you. In your pocket. On the desk beside you. If someone else has your phone when it rings they’ll hand it back to you. They won’t answer it. You can call them back if you can’t answer just then.

They won’t answer it because answering someone else’s mobile phone is a breach of an invisible barrier. Privacy has something to do with it. But it is more that a person’s mobile phone is part of their personal space. There’s an invisible barrier of space around a person and we instinctively know not to break it. And yes, sometimes a person will answer your mobile and breach that invisible barrier just as sometimes a person will breach your personal space. In both cases it’s uncomfortable.

So we lose those conversations. Conversations that help us to better know the people close to those close to ourselves.

We don’t have to allow those conversations to be lost. We can do something about it. We can create tools.

Tools such as software that would link phone numbers. So that for particular callers the phones of two or more designated mobiles would ring at the same time. Or tools to allow call sharing so that when someone calls that the recipient can decide to add others in the household to the call. This way others can join the conversation.

Sometimes we lose things with technological development. If we care enough about those things we can build them back in.

by Colin Brosnan

Ideas

A thought flares into existence in your mind. It is not yet an idea. It is small and fragile. Unless you give it immediate attention it will gutter and die.

Thoughts are important but we do not treat them so. They need space. Space to breathe and grow. Space to protect them. They need light. Shine the light of your attention on a thought and it will grow into an idea.

More often than not we don’t do this.

Instead of giving a thought space and light we crowd it. Depriving it of oxygen. Strangling it. Keeping it in the dark. Allowing it to wither and die before it has had a chance.

It’s not a surprise. Our modern lives are lives of information. There’s more of it every day. And we flood ourselves with it. How many times a day do we check Facebook? Or Twitter? Or Reddit? or Instagram? Or Pinterest? Or Snapchat? Or… Or…

Our brains are flooded with this information. It crashes in from all directions. Drowning our thoughts. Carrying them away in the never ending deluge.

No, I am not suggesting that all information is bad. After all, from information comes the seeds of our ideas.

To give our thoughts the space and light they need to grow we need to stop trying to drink the flood of information. A healthy flow will nourish them. The flood will wash them away.

We need to give ourselves time without content. Take time away from information. Time to allow our own thoughts to flourish and grow into ideas.

by Colin Brosnan