What is this strange nap of which you speak?

I had the remarkable privilege today of engaging in a nap.  Yes, the nap.  This hallowed activity, all but lost to productive citizens in this fair country.  Evidently, in other areas of the developed world, these supposed naps still exist en masse’.  But as far as this red blooded American is concerned, a nap is practically a device of a by-gone era.  But, having gotten past the shock of actually participating in this activity, I now believe I know why this lost art has gone the way of the dodo.  Simply put,  productive individuals are not equipped for two rounds of dreaming. 

It is bad enough to have to navigate the wiles of an early morning thought infusion.  We have created entire skill sets for dealing with this disruptive activity, such as  filling our mornings with mundane tasks meant to offset the newness and creativity which we ought be beholden to.  Brush the teeth, shave the face, brush the hair, eat the biscuit, read the paper, check the email, shine the shoes, change the laundry, all in all an excellent strategy.  By the time we have provided ourselves with an opportunity to reflect on the gift of dreams, all that is left is a hazy, what-the, but-how, i-thought, what-was-that, awwwww I don’t know.  But the Nap, the nap is sneaky.  Oh, sneaky indeed.  At 3:15 pm, there is nothing to do if you aren’t already doing it.  When one wakes from their 10, 15, 30, or heaven forbid 60+ minutes of ancient history, we are equipped to ponder.  No alarm to rile you from your thoughts, no wife mumbling “time to wake up”, no kids to dress and feed, just a glimpse of what is always available to you had you only the time to receive it.  A very profitable enterprise indeed, but I am not sure if I could tolerate napping  two days in a row, here it is 12:18am and I still haven’t begun to process the breadth of fresh wisdom.  If these naps became habit, I fear I might never sleep.

Finding a Way

I just uploaded a rather sizable post, which for whatever reason has decided to remove itself from the face of the earth. If it does not magically appear by the morning, I will attempt to re manufacture the knowledge, and feeling behind it. I would do it now, but it is really late.  On second thought, I may revisit this topic in the future, because I believe that it merits such treatment, but not in the next 24 hours. I am slightly disillusioned by this unfortunate turn of technical events.

I will however leave you with the essence thereof. Pastor Bray Sibley of Harvest World Outreach has put it like this: “You are somewhere in the future, and you look much better than you look right now.” You probably need to marinate on that one for a while, but it suffices to say that, you are somewhere in the future. You need only find a way to get there. I hope that makes sense.

r.i.p. get.in.now

Notice:

We have been using the tagline “get.in.now” under our company logo for some time now. I came up with that. I thought that it was an excellent little piece of encouragement that might stimulate interest and produce a climate of scarcity regarding the product. The reaction to get.in.now has been about 80/20 favoring the positive with the other 20% regarding it as pushy. While I never intended to use “get.in.now” forever or even indefinitely, I am now convinced that get.in.now has.to.go.

ideabreaker.com is being built right now and is going to be an amazing online offering. But as of now when you visit www.ideabreaker.com you encounter a basic, under construction type page with a link to this blog. ideabreaker.com is currently under. . . blah, blah, blah, you get the picture. So what’s the problem? I am not a big fan of construction pages, but I am less a fan of temp sites. I think that they can confuse people as to the scope, size, and service that you will be offering, and actually harm your company. But that’s not the problem at all. The problem is that you simply can’t get.in.now.

No matter how excited a person may be about our product, or how excited I am about the prospective client, you just can’t get.in.now. Sure, if you contact me via email, or the company via U.S. mail, and we establish a dialogue, then you can get.in.now, but not in the same form and fashion, and not through ideabreaker.com. No, the most that you and I can hope for is get.in.soon. and get.in.soon just doesn’t convey the same feeling as get.in.now.

Maybe, I am the first person to notice this phenomenon, or maybe others don’t care, but I care and I am going to kill get.in.now. I may be overreacting, but I can’t stand the fact that our site is asking our potential customers to enter into business with us in a format that is currently unavailable and presently impossible. Seems like bad business. So rather than place a temporary tagline under our logo on our home page and otherwise, It’ will simply be under construction, simply ideabreaker.com. Simply. We are debating whether or not to resurrect get.in.now at launch and are open to suggestions, so drop us a line and in the mean time we will be working feverishly to get.it.done.

The height of your fence

My wife and I recently purchased a new home. It is by far the nicest place I have ever lived since leaving my parent’s home in 1998, and a generally good fit for my family. It is a new home, in a new area, in a new subdivision full of new people. Nice people. Stroller pushing people. Bringing over an apple pie people. Young, bright and vibrant families not so different from mine. I only say this to illustrate the fact that I have felt in no way intimidated, threatened, unsafe or undermined. Yet, the first thing to come out of my mouth once we had unpacked all of the boxes, hung up the clothes, hooked up the electronics, and ventured outside to enjoy the backyard was, “I tell you what, as soon as we settle in, the first thing we’re going to do is build a fence.”

Build a fence. Not soon after I uttered that seemingly rational, red blooded, logical, and productive statement, did my wife say, “I don’t think that we should build a fence.” Not build a fence? Is she crazy? Fences are what people build. They are our first line of defense in invasion and our last line of defense in escape! They are necessary. To keep in all that is good and to keep out all that is unknown. Dangerous or otherwise, it is worth the minuscule risk of being wrong. Men have been building fences since man has determined the positive effects of owning real estate. I was going to build a twelve foot tall fence topped with prison grade razor wire, if the covenants allowed it. Residence, or penitentiary, We NEEDED a freaking fence.

Her basis for not building a fence, and i quote: “I want our neighbors to be able to say hi, or walk on over if we are outside with the kid’s, or. . .(insert whatever motherly activity you desire)” As silly as it sounded at first, she had a decent point. We had met out neighbors, they were great people. They had already been over several times in the short time that we had lived there. Our kids played with their kids, my wife hung out with his wife, and they keep their yard in great shape. Why keep them out? They would never come over if we weren’t outside, let alone not at home, and if they did it would be to slay any would be trespasser. But I wanted a fence. I just did. At least an 8 foot privacy fence, preferably cedar, with a single nails spacing in between the boards, if i wanted to mow the grass in nothing but my socks.

However, the next day I began to realize that my wife unknowingly executed a tremendous lesson covering one of the greatest fallacies of relationships, business, innovating, creating, and life in general. Fences do one thing well: They keep people out. And more often than not, they keep out far more of the people you need to be letting in, than the people you really should be keeping out. I thought back to the moment that I removed the fence from my professional life.

I was working on an extremely complex and proprietary display technology. This was not the first project that I was executing behind my fence, but it proved to be the last. As I toiled away, behind my fence for the umpteenth time, attempting to thwart any better funded thieves, any less innovative copy cats, any unscrupulous partners, or any loose lipped acquaintances, I succeeded in doing much more than I anticipated. I alienated potential investors, quality team members, helpful vendors, and willing advisers; not to mention my wife, parents, friends and mentors. Yes a fence can be a wonderful tool, but more often than not it becomes a hindrance to success and more importantly a means of unhealthy disconnect.

After years of hiding behind my fence, in writing, in music, in inventing, in relationships, and most other areas of my life in which I sought success, I decided to tear it down. It was too tall, too foreboding, and too effective. While working on my latest concept, Ideabreaker.com, I have done 90% of the work in comfortable openness. Sure, I have kept the proprietary, and technical aspects close, but not from those who have more of in interest in me than in the product. My wife has been a terrific asset in comfort and strength, my parents have been invaluable resource as a sounding board and a leveling agent, and my friends and advisers have helped to pave the way for something truly ground breaking through research and corrective criticism. That is brings a feeling of true security, a security that produces, instead of consuming.

As for the backyard, it is still getting a fence. A nice, short, and inviting one of the picket variety, with a number of easily accessible gates. You would do good to replace yours as well.

What’s keeping you?

“What’s keeping you?”

This little piece of grammatically incorrect language had for quite sometime escaped my consciousness. It was only when I reflected upon why it was that at 27 years old, and with a seemingly endless collection of thoughts, that I was not of the next generation of publishers. It was while I was riding in the car today that I was revisited by the question, “What’s keeping you?” In reality, the all to common answer to this question is invariably simple: Nothing.

Nothing, is what keeps us from doing anything. Nothing is what keeps us from accomplishing anything great, both for ourselves and others.

Nothing.

“What’s keeping you?” is a question asked by two types of people. Those that care greatly for you, and those who do not care for you at all. The first group ask this question as a simple way of extracting what excuse might be plaguing us at any given moment, in an effort to spur our growth. The latter ask as if to belittle us for being susceptible to excuses at all. Like there is an individual on this planet that has not fallen victim to the paper tiger of nothing-based decision making.

So, have you developed a marketing strategy for your latest startup? Well, what’s keeping you?”

Have you debugged that nagging piece of code that you once thought would change the world? What’s keeping you?

Did you approach the one professor in the engineering department that can help you build the final piece of your 10 million dollar puzzle? What’s keeping you?

If you find yourself being “kept”, chances are that nothing is keeping you, and it is far easier to overcome nothing than something. Whatever that something might be.

Somethings include things like:

*Caring for a dying relative 12 hours a day and working full time.

*Raising 5 kids by yourself, while your spouse is serving in Iraq.

*Working yourself half to death to earn your high school diploma at 23 years of age, while supporting a family on $6.50 an hour.

*(you get the picture)

The joyous truth of the matter is that real somethings are just a few steps away from becoming nothings, and overcoming somethings always leaves you in a better place than those who overcome nothings. In character, life experience, ethics, and rectitude. In short, if there is really something keeping you, overcome, triumph and get over it. If there is nothing keeping you, just get over yourself.

I did, and you’re reading it right now.