Tag / opportunity

by Nathan Coumbe

There Will Never Be Another Time Like Now

If you’re reading this, you have an electronic device with access to the internet.

With that access you have the ability to reach upwards of 2 billion people on earth – a reach unheard of in human history.

Use that ability – in the form of blogging, video, photography, or some other medium – to create a voice that makes things better. 

You won’t reach all 2 billion people (you might not even reach 2), but if you reach one person, you’ve made a difference. And maybe that one person will tell the others.

This freedom may not last; the open systems, those that have allowed anyone with internet access the ability to speak up, are closing to us as quickly as they opened 20 years ago. 

You’ll never have a better opportunity than today.

by Nathan Coumbe

Tomorrow is just another Wednesday

It’s New Year’s Eve – which means tomorrow is a new year, a chance to start over again, to accomplish all the goals you set for yourself but failed to achieve in 2019. It’s a chance to make new resolutions and actually keep them this time.

Yeah…right.

Tomorrow is just another Wednesday. New Year’s resolutions rarely work, as most of us know.

Yes, there is something innate within us that seems to see new opportunities at the beginning of every year, but there really isn’t anything special about tomorrow.

Except that tomorrow is another day. If you are lucky enough to wake up breathing tomorrow, you’ve been given a chance. Every day gives you the opportunity to start again, to make promises to yourself and keep them.

So do that – not because tomorrow is New Year’s, but because tomorrow is tomorrow. What is one tiny little thing you want to start doing better, or stop doing altogether?

Make a promise to yourself that you are going to do that one tiny thing. Keep that promise, day in and day out; don’t worry about anything else. Pretty soon you will form a habit. Then do it again. Not next year as a New Year’s resolution, but next week or next month, as a promise to yourself.

Tomorrow is just another Wednesday. Make the most of it.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Reaping excellence

I came across a little maxim yesterday that got my mind going, so I wanted to share.

“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”

There is also a quote that pairs nicely with this maxim:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

– Aristotle

What is it that you repeatedly want to do? If you did it often enough, do you believe you would truly develop excellence in that habit?

Perhaps you should ask a related question: if what you are doing now isn’t something in which you want to develop excellence, what do you repeatedly think about? Once you have an idea in mind, you can then apply it to the maxim.

For example, let’s say that a person is constantly thinking about art, but only thinking, never creating any herself. We’ll start there.

“Sow a thought…” she is constantly thinking about and admiring the artistic work of others.

“Reap an action…” the aspiring artist decides to take drawing lessons and vows to draw a little bit every day, no matter how small it might be.

“Sow an action…” drawing each and everyday becomes second nature.

“Reap a habit…” she no longer even thinks about if she will draw today; the only thought on her mind is what to draw. A habit is developed.

“Sow a habit…” drawing has become second-nature to her now. It’s as habitual as brushing her teeth or eating.

“Reap a character…” she has become, intentionally or not, an artist. It is now who she is, a fundamental feature of her character. She is now one of the people she once admired.

“Sow a character…” you can see the rest. Her destiny is whatever she decides to make it at this point. She has already developed the skills and habits needed to carry her far down the path of artistic success, whatever she decides that looks like for her. Perhaps it is a career in art, or perhaps it is just a wonderfully enjoyable hobby. But it is now who she is.

So, what is it about which you constantly think? How can you turn those thoughts into action, and then practice those actions often enough until habits form and a certain character you want develops?

“We are what we repeatedly do…”

Decide and act on that in which you strive to be excellent.

by Nathan Coumbe

Luck happens

Sometimes, it comes down to sheer luck.

You’re sitting in the right booth, reading the right book, and someone notices.

She comes over and asks what it is that you do; you proceed to tell her how you help people. Eyes light up, connections are made, recommendations are given to you about who else you can help with your craft.

What a lucky meeting!

And yet…if I hadn’t been working so diligently for months on my new endeavors, this lucky encounter never would have occurred. Had I been sitting in the booth watching Netflix, she would have walked right past me.

So yeah, luck happens, but it still pays to prepare and practice your craft so that you are ready when the lucky moments occur.

I’ll take slow, persistent effort sheer luck any day.

by Nathan Coumbe

Solve interesting problems

One of my passions, and pain points, is the state of modern education in the US. Everyone knows that it’s not working well: children are leaving schools, both public and college-level, less prepared for careers than ever before.

The reason is simple: schools are operating on outdated modes of education in which students are taught to sit still, obey, memorize lots of information, regurgitate it on a test, and then promptly forget everything they just memorized.

The creative ones, the wiggle worms, speakers, artists, drawers, engineers – they are all stifled in the name of obedience. Yes, I realize that to have 35 kids in a classroom, you can’t have them all doing their own weird and wacky things, but answer this question for me:

When was the last time you got paid to regurgitate information on a standardized test?

What is school for? Seth Godin asks this question often. I believe the answer should be to educate and prepare children and young adults to create, innovate, contribute, and solve interesting problems for society. It is not about asking, “Will this be on the test?”

None of the “tests” you face in real life are multiple choice, with answers you found in a textbook and memorized only to forget them a hour later. When an irate customer is standing in front of you, there is no clear, right answer. There is an answer that might make things better or not; it’s up to you to figure that out.

When a new idea is dropped on your desk by a leader, you have to collaborate with your team, find and utilize resources, synthesize information, and come up with a solution for the project. How is memorizing a bunch of unrelated information that is kept separate from other information in the spirit of division called “subjects” helpful in this regard?

Why not instead teach people how to solve interesting problems? Teach how to find answers to questions on their own, how to create connections between information across varying fields and periods of time, how to think, and more importantly, how to learn when formal education stops.

Greg McKeown triggered this train of thought for me in his book Essentialism when he wrote the following:

“What if schools eliminated busywork and replaced it with important projects that made a difference to the whole community? What if all students had time to think about their highest contribution to their future so that when they left high school they were not just starting on the race to nowhere?”

Greg McKeown, Essentialism

The Industrial Age in the United States has ended; factory work is quickly becoming a thing of the past, as much as parts of our culture want to hang on to it. Our schools cannot continue teaching in the same mold as as they used to, when everyone eventually went to work on an assembly line. Employers no longer need cogs in machines; they need creative thinkers and problem-solvers equipped with the skills of communication, collaboration, analysis, leadership, and learning (yes, it is a skill).

In short, we need to teach people how to solve interesting problems.

by Nathan Coumbe

It may not feel like much

It may not feel like much when it’s all you can physically do.

I’m speaking, of course, on producing, practicing, or creating when there just isn’t enough time in the day to get much of anything done. On those days, all you can do is all you can do.

And all you can do is good enough.

Write a few sentences instead of fretting over not writing a chapter.

Practice your instrument for 15 or 20 minutes instead of saying, “screw it” because you didn’t master an entire piece today.

Draw a doodle comic, not some magnificent portrait.

Go for a 10 minute walk rather than beating yourself up over the fact that you didn’t spend an hour at the gym.

Incremental improvement. Streaks. Baby steps. 5 minutes here; another 8 minutes there. This is how progress is made.

Change your mindset; realize that you are building mental fortitude and creating habits when you do just a little something each day rather than adopting an all-or-nothing mindset.

You might feel like you suck. You don’t. You’re doing a heck of a lot better than the person that decided not to show up today.

And if you can’t do anything at all, wipe the slate clean and show up again tomorrow.

by Nathan Coumbe

How to learn anything

Do it.

The thing you want to learn how to do? Start doing it.

Start writing. Start playing the drums. Start drawing. Start reading the classics. Start creating a podcast.

How do you learn how to speak another language? Any teacher worth her salt will tell you that you have to immerse yourself in the language and start speaking it. All the books and college courses in the world won’t help you if you don’t do it.

This is scary, isn’t it? The resistance in your head is telling you that you don’t know where to start or that you can’t possibly learn how to do this or that without a rigorous amount of study. If you don’t know where to start, then yes – go and pick up a book. Watch a YouTube video or download an app. Hire a teacher. But all the reading about it, watching videos about it, being lectured to about it – that won’t get you anywhere until you take action. Once you have a grip on the basics, you just have to start doing.

Learning is easy once you start doing it. Taking action is what’s difficult.

by Nathan Coumbe

Prepare the way

I have been guilty many times in my life of sitting and waiting for things to happen for me. It is only recently, in the last couple of years, that I decided to be proactive and seek out opportunities for myself. 

How many of us have sat with the mindset of, “When [some random opportunity] happens, then I will start to learn/practice/develop [the skill needed to accomplish said opportunity]?” I will bravely raise my hand. Great opportunity may come to those who wait, but I think we’d all be better off if we started preparing for things while we wait. 

“Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.”

– Zig Ziglar, See You at the Top

We cannot sit on the couch, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for the phone to ring with that new job offer. No one is thinking to themselves that they should call you with a gig or a show unless you have proven yourself by developing a following, building relationships, developing your skills, and making a ruckus in the world already. This idea is very similar to my previous blog post “Take your eye off the prize” in that sometimes you just have to work, learn, create, and do without thought of reward, without letting the notion of “What’s in it for me?” hold you back.

Be persistent, find out what you need to learn and do to get where you want to be, and start doing it. The opportunities will come, but you have to be prepared when they arrive. If you get an offer for the NBA, and you’ve been sitting naked on a bean bag chair eating Cheetos for 3 months, you aren’t prepared and will therefore fail in your opportunity.

If you want a job in marketing, you are going to have to learn it on your own time and start doing marketing, maybe for a friend while you hold down another job to pay the bills. If you want to make a living as an artist or a graphic designer, you are going to have to start doing work and putting it out into the world whether or not you get paid for it. People have to see you and know you before they will want you. You will have to sell yourself as an expert in what you do and that means you have to do the work, build a following, make noise in your little area of the world.

You are going to fail, probably more than once. That’s fine, just start another project, call another business, reach out to another person who might need your expertise. Just keep working.

“When you work and develop your skills and talents, your day will come…[and] if your day never came, you would still be the big winner. Inside you will be the knowledge that you’re doing your best with what you have.”

– Zig Ziglar, See You at the Top

I’m going to keep preparing myself so that I am ready when opportunity comes knocking. What about you?