Personal Choice | The Fourth Revolution Blog

How to Exploit the Fact that Life is Richer at the Interfaces

It is a constant biological observation that life is always richer at the interface. Take intertidal zones (the zones that are covered and uncovered by tides), the interface between the sea and the air, between earth and the atmosphere etc… On the reverse, life is much poorer in the middle of all single environments. And those animals and plants living at the interface are also much more adaptable to all sorts of new circumstances.

It is the same in life and business. However we have been educated to live best in a single environment and we are often unconfortable to sit at the edge of our environment or at the interface between two disciplines.

This is a mistake because opportunities are much richer there. First, there is much less competition because it means that you are able to be comfortable in at least two different environments. Second, it gives great opportunities to connect people and resources of both environments to create something new of high value. Third, it is the source of fantastic creativity when it comes to transferring to an other environment the knowledge gained elsewhere.

Don’t develop your career in a single environment. Make sure you can be comfortable at the Interfaces, at the fringe. This will give you an edge and allow you to create unprecedented value.

Next time you think about where to develop yourself professionally or personally, think about interfaces and how rich they can be in opportunities!

Overcome the Fear of Picking Yourself

Seth Godin says: “The problem isn’t that it’s impossible to pick yourself. The problem is that it’s frightening to pick yourself. It’s far easier to put your future into someone else’s hands than it is to slog your way forward, owning the results as you go“.

Most people wait to be picked (or to be lucky, which is a variation of it). That’s plain wrong. About all successful people did not wait, they just picked themselves. More in this great Seth’s post.

Again and again I find that you are what you believe you are. As I need to assert myself as a consultant in situations that are not always easy, I make sure that I act consistently with the identity I want to have. I pick myself for that activity, and I shape my identity accordingly. I am today what I want to become.

What about you? Have you picked yourself? Why wait? Just be what you want to become. Don’t be afraid: the world will bow to your will!

How to resist the increased immediacy of our world!

We live in a world of ever increasing immediacy. This tends to change significantly the way we behave. We can’t spend a few minutes without watching our devices!

In social networks, our posting history is soon unavailable, after a few days at most. It is difficult to search for past posts. Even in the case of emails, data shows that people tend to forget ever sooner those emails that are not on the top of the pile (see “Is Email Open Rate Decay Increasing?” blog post by Christopher S. Penn). A reason might be increase in the use of mobile devices with a much more limited screen and usability of scrolling down!

Curve showing optimal twitter frequency for marketing (from marketingsavant.com)

The curve above suggests that for marketing purpose, tweets should be sent many times per hour!

In the same time, tools that allow to read content in an asynchronous manner like Google Reader are being discontinued by their producers.

So, are we supposed to be permanently hooked up to our devices so as to not miss the latest update or news? Isn’t it a conscious strategy by marketers to push us to remain hooked in front of our tiny screens? Does that really correspond to a need?

Every time I disconnect, or I stay in a situation where I can only connect once a day or so, like during holiday time, I feel like it is enough. Not so much changed in the meantime.

One of the skills in the Collaborative Age will be the ability to manage time. To resist to this behavior expected from us to remain hooked to our social network feed.

Will you use these holidays to get off the hook and disconnect for a while? Practice your time consciousness?

Those Who Matter Won’t Mind You Saying What You Think

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter won’t mind.” ~ Dr. Seuss

When you speak your mind, you will disturb. You will disturb the nicely arranged uses, customs and habits that are so easy to repeat without questioning.

That’s a given – you will disturb and the world will try to fight back to stay at the same equilibrium.

As a result, most people avoid creating this disturbance.

Yes, of course, if you say what you really think, most people will object. But not the few ones who matter. And that’s what is really important.

Be certain that the few that won’t object are those that really matter to you. So, just move on and change the world. What are you waiting for?

Why Chronic Inconsistency is the Signature of Mediocrity

“The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change, the signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency” – quote from the book “Great by Choice” by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen. In this book, the authors explore what makes start-ups successful or just about mediocre, but that probably applies to us as well to us individuals as to organizations.

get rich quick ad — Attractive ways to make you believe you’ll get rich quick…Who do you think will actually get rich?

This view is a bit surprising, but upon closer examination it is so true. It is so easy to give up to the latest attractive fad and to change focus so often that nothing important really gets done! According to the authors, successful organizations are successful because they stick to a rigorous discipline day-in and day-out, whatever the latest trend and event. Only rarely do they adapt their way of working to deep seated trends.

Lack of focus is the plague of many people and organizations I know. The search for the miracle solution pervades our society – it is enough to look at all these get-rich-quick solutions to which so many must succumb to! Yet without continued focus on a very limited number of initiatives, nothing decisive will get done.

Being consistent is boring. It’s long winded. It’s not attractive and remarkable at first. Yet it is the only way to become an overnight sensation… 10 years after you started.

Be boringly consistent in the short term to become remarkable on the long term. Spread your focus inconsistently, enjoy thrill on the short term and you’ll remain mediocre on the long term.

Which one do you choose?

How to feel forever young

I stumbled upon this quote from Om Swami: “When your life has more memories than ambition, consider yourself old“.

Old Man — Is that the way you are feeling today?

Om Swami goes on: “When all you have to talk about is how you did this in the past or how you did that in the past, how you were amazing a decade ago or how you were so incredible back then. When you no longer live your present or look up to your future, when all you do is reknit the same stories in the present using yarn of the past, you are old. An unfailing sign of the one who feels old within is they mostly talk about their past“. (the entire post is here)

Stop feeling old. Remain forever young. Have ambitions and projects. The past is the past, the future is open. Go for it.

How to Thrive in this World of Monkeys

Following our reading and review of “The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust” by John Coates (How our decision-making is everything but rational), let us have a thought experiment for a while.

gorilla office worker — Did you check who’s sitting next to you at the office?

Let us imagine that the office where we are working in is full not of neat humans, but of monkeys. Big, large monkeys that obviously react with much less thought and rationality than what we’d expect from humans.

Monkeys that would snare when they’d feel threatened. Monkeys that would display all sorts of body language to assert themselves, show their superiority or their social rank. Monkeys that would react unwillingly to opposite sex presence – and high-ranking monkeys trying to get additional partners to show their superiority. Monkeys that would react by fear or show threat when cornered. Monkeys that would live in close bands per hierarchical level and defend their territory. Monkeys that would conspire to overturn the current hierarchical order to get more peanuts.

Well I must say that sometimes I really feel like we’re not too far from observing our jungle origin even in the coziest offices of the largest towns created by civilization. No mistake – we’re still very much governed by our biology. How can we make the best of it?

How our decision-making is everything but rational

I’d like to share high recommendations for the book “The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust” by John Coates. This author is a former trader turned neuro-scientist and he explains how stress and hormones drive the behavior of traders, leading to irrational exuberance and well as irrational panic on the markets.

The interesting side of this book is how our physiology is influencing our decision-making, and how it can be contagious in a group. The book describes in minute detail the working of our nervous and hormonal system when we are faced with the stress of modern life.

If there is a proof that the rational approach of economists and market theorists can only be wrong, it is this book. In effect our primitive brain happens to drive a lot more of our actions than what we’d like to believe – and thus creates irrational behaviors that can have far-flung impact on our economy and our lives.

Read this amazing book to understand to which extend what we believe are our choices are in fact dictated by our deeper, primitive nature; how our physiology influences deeply our behavior and choices – and how seldom in fact our rational, evolved brain intervenes in our decision-making.

Welcome to the world beyond the rationalism of the Industrial Age.

Choose – be a critic or a hero?

Too often we praise critics instead of praising those that go down in the arena to do things – real stuff that is, that can change the world.

As Theodore Roosevelt so well said: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better”.

Theodore Roosevelt continues: “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Are you exposing yourself in the arena or do you just watch from you cozy critic’s seat?

Hat tip to Robin Sharma.

Why career management is like riding an absurd merry-go-round

A little useful etymology I stumbled upon – and which explains why career management is about riding a merry-go-round!

marry-go-round with adult — Do you feel you are going in circles on a never ending race? Maybe are you ‘managing your career’ Industrial Age style?

‘Career’ comes from the Middle-Age French carriere (race-course), itself a deformation from Latin. It thus means ‘racing’, a competition in scarcity where the few top positions are reserved to those who will be fastest or the strongest.
‘Manage’ comes from the Middle-Age French ‘mesnager’ or Italian ‘maneggiare’ which was used to mean ‘drive a horse’ or ‘hold the reins of a horse’.

I don’t know why and I associated the two ideas and suddenly I was looking at Industrial Age career management as people riding wooden horses on a merry-go-round, always racing and never getting anywhere. Just going around on an absurd race.

Strange thought?

Where is your current racing on the ‘career ladder’ really taking you?

How to overcome interruptions

Interruptions is the scourge of our modern life. It becomes increasingly difficult to concentrate on creating something without being disturbed.

time between interruption — Time between interruptions today is… Zero s

The curve on the right is somewhat ironic, but doesn’t it represent what we feel on a daily basis? Can you remember how life was before emails and mobile phones ? (I have difficulties on my side, although I lived the start of my adult life in that faraway time).

Actually I dropped twitter because its value is based on being constantly connected – tweets disappear after a few hours or even minutes.

It is essential to keep in your life moments without interruptions. There are even some paying applications that shut down internet on your computer! Yes, some are even paying! (visit for example the page for “Freedom” (10$) or “Self-Control” (free). [Curiously these applications seem to be only for Macs; either PC users don’t have internet or only those creative Apple freak seem to need paid applications to shut down internet on their computer!!]

Anyway, there is one simple way to avoid being constantly interrupted. It’s free even! The image on the left is self-explanatory.

When was the last time you did turn your gadgets off to enjoy a real, quality time without interruption?

How to Really Being Productive in the Collaborative Age

“Being productive isn’t about wringing every last minute out of every day doing something or checking stuff off a to-do list and building a relentlessly efficient system that allows nothing through the cracks.” – Amber Naslund

Productive Ape — Is that the way you are productive?

Now that’s quite an interesting thought, which is further developed in this blog post “Rethinking Productivity“.

Amber Naslund is an entrepreneur and she’s working in social networks business. She’s quite advanced in the Fourth Revolution. So, no wonder that when she looks at productivity, she looks at it from the point of view of the K.E.E.N. (Knowledge Exchanging Enhancing Networker): productivity of the K.E.E.N. is very much about creativity, not about repeating tasks efficiently!…

Let’s leave the last word to Amber:

“We need time to float along on the breeze. Have a casual, spontaneous conversation. Enjoy some silence. Write a bunch of random stuff that we never finish, and be okay with that. Productivity, at its essence, means being able to bring things about.”

The good thing, is that it just killed our guilt of doodling around (next time you’re asked, say that you are growing your next ideas)!

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