My friend Oliver recently read Naomi’s post on how we killed social media and wrote a reply that inspired me to share my own opinion on the matter.

Naomi’s point is that unscrupulous marketers found the loopholes in social media like Digg, Twitter, and del.icio.us, and filled them full of crap. Now they’re not helping anyone anymore, because everything is so full of crap. The loopholes have been closed. There’s no free lunch and there are no corners to cut. You can no longer interrupt people into paying attention to you.

It seems hopeless, doesn’t it?

It seems like an endless spiral of greed and oversaturation. But it’s not hopeless, and here’s why.

As spammy marketers flood social media more and more, people are getting hungrier and hungrier for real quality and real people. The people who are honest and have something of value to say and to offer will shine through like diamonds in the rough. They may not shine through on Digg, Twitter, or del.icio.us, but they’ll shine through where it counts — in the opinions of your friends and other people you trust.

Now that social media is broken, people will fall back to the old way of doing things: having conversations with their friends. And if your friends find a diamond in the rough — if they find something remarkable — they’ll tell you about it.

So, if you’re a small business owner, what does this mean to you?

Your friends telling their friends about you seems irrelevant, right? I mean, you can only have so many friends, and each of them can only have so many friends. So how do you get your small business to grow?

The answer: There are just two things you need to succeed. You need to be REMARKABLE and AUTHENTIC.

You need to be remarkable to get people to make remarks about you. You can’t pay for fake remarkableness anymore, because the only remarks that people listen to these days are remarks that come from trusted sources. To be remarkable, you must be valuable and you must be worth talking about.

You need to be authentic to get people to trust you. People have been burned too many times by fake viral marketing campaigns and corporate blogs that preach transparency while actually lying through their teeth.

Seth talks about how criticism hurts his feelings and gets him down. Naomi posts sweet things about her son. Havi talks about feeling lonely. Steve admits stupid things he did when he was a teenager.

These things make you human. These things make you real. These things let the person on the other side of the screen know that they’re interacting with a real human being and not just some faceless marketing whore. And yes, people can trust brands, but for small businesses, that’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is that people trust people.

Seth, Naomi, Havi, Steve — Kyeli and I consider all these people our friends, even if it’s only a one-way deal. (That’s how you can break through the monkeysphere.) We trust them. We recommend them. We tell our friends how awesome we think they are. We’re doing so right now, in fact. (:

Next time you find yourself knee-deep in SEO or with your nose to the social media grindstone, just remember: Be remarkable. Be authentic. That’s all you need.

If it wasn’t, you never would have found this article. (;

Usually, our place is clean and tidy. We’ve got lots of stacking bins that make a couple of tall and a couple of short towers in various places – these keep our stuff organized and out of the way, gives everything a place to live off the floor and the tables. We’ve got a neat box of drawers that holds our smaller things, like dice and nails and pens. We’ve got a big dresser-like tabley thing where we store our tools and lockbox, photos and laundry essentials. We mounted a neat bar-and-shelf thingie from Ikea to our kitchen wall, to free up our minimal counter space.

We have “hardwood” floors, so we got lots of rugs to help keep the floors cleaner and more comfy for our bare feet. We brought a laundry basket downstairs for those errant, end-of-day socks that would scatter everywhere. We have a cork board and push-pins for outgoing mail and memos, a whiteboard for shorter messages and budget tallies, a mounted rack for our DVDs and video games, and trash cans in lots of places. Everything has a place, and everything goes in its place.

However, right now, my environment is stressing me out.

Our house is messy. There are several boxes strewn about. Our tables are covered with stuff. Our floor is unswept. Some of our handy dandy organizer bins are overflowing, particularly the one right next to my spot on the couch, making the mess in my personal space. We have some new things that don’t yet have places to live, so they’re strewn about in inconvenient (and sometimes painful) places. There are visible cords now, because we got Rock Band and the drums and microphones connect to the Wii in the front. Our bathrooms are dirty, and both our toilet seats are broken. I got a couple of new kitchen gadgets, so now the counters are too crowded.

On top of this, my brother is coming to stay for a few days on Wednesday, and we’re having a party on Saturday (Pace’s birthday is next week!).

I forget how important a clean and organized environment is to my ability to work and function until I’m overwhelmed and in tears. Then I take a deep breath, look around, and realize that the place is a mess! Since we work here as well as live here, I’m in this habitat nearly all day, every day. That’s a lot of time to be in an environment that’s causing stress!

So, it’s time to go back to the Container Store, time to head to Target. Fix those broken things, get another bin or two, find homes for that new stuff. Get the floor swept and another rug to help manage the mess. Maybe a trip to Ikea for a few more mountable kitchen space savers. Time to evaluate the stress and get the mess under control.

Having a clean, organized environment helps me focus on the blog, the Usual Error Project, my son, my wife, and myself. When it gets too messy, too out of control, the stress builds and becomes a major distraction. We recommend trying out a few organizational systems and seeing what helps your environment become more relaxing and peaceful, and what helps you to better focus on your priorities!

This post is not about the iPhone. It’s about human nature, dissonance, paradigm, and the stories we tell ourselves. But the iPhone was the first example that made it clear to us, and the name stuck.

Imagine a guy named Joe. Joe was one of the early adopters of the iPhone. He paid $500 for it — quite a lot of money. It’s really slick, and does a lot of cool and useful things. There may be some problems, and it may not be all he expected, but overall he’s pretty happy with it. But maybe he’s not quite $500-plus-service-contract-fees worth of happy. He feels some dissonance about having paid such a large amount of money for what amounts to a cool toy.

What story is Joe going to tell his friends?

Is he going to tell a story of ambivalence, a story about how he may have overpaid for a nifty gadget? No. That story would make him look like a sucker, and would make him feel like a chump.

He’s going to tell a story about the iPhone being the best thing ever. He’s going to tell a story about how great it is, and how it was worth every penny. That’s the story he’ll tell, because that’s the story that relieves his dissonance.

Dissonance is uncomfortable. Dissonance makes us shift restlessly in our chairs. Dissonance makes us avoid eye contact. Dissonance itches at us like cracker crumbs in our bedsheets.

Dissonance drives us to seek relief.

Sometimes, dissonance drives us to action. We release our dissonance by changing our situation. But more often, we release our dissonance by changing the stories we tell. That’s the main point of what I’m trying to say, so let me say it again:

We relieve our dissonance by changing the stories we tell.

Sally is in an unhealthy relationship, and both her and her partner do things they aren’t proud of. Sally feels dissonance between her concept of herself (a good person) and her actions (not so good). To relieve her dissonance, she tells a story of herself being a helpless victim and her partner being an evil villain.

Matthew works a 9-to-5 job, and feels bored and unfulfilled. He feels dissonance between his dreams and his current situation. To relieve his dissonance, he tells a story in which there are no other options. He tells a story where he is a hero: he’s a hard worker providing for his family. He’s a savvy realist, wise to the ways of the world, and he’s avoiding any unnecessary risks.

Jessica, due to a combination of nature and nurture, has not yet developed good communication skills. Others often misunderstand her, and she feels isolated and alone. She feels dissonance between her self-concept of being a good communicator and her many experiences of being misunderstood by others. To relieve her dissonance, she tells a story of being a maverick, a lone wolf, the only sane person in a crazy world. She tells a story where she’s right and everyone else is wrong.

Pace recently gave notice at her high-paying job so she can focus 100% on doing what she loves. She feels dissonance between her passion for her dreams and her fear of failing, running out of money, and putting her wife and son into a bad financial situation. To relieve her dissonance, she tells a story of positivity, of visualization and manifestation, and of wild success.

The stories we tell become the realities we live in.

So be careful what stories you tell. It’s only natural for you to seek a release from dissonance. It’s a very uncomfortable place to be. But choose your story carefully, because it will become your reality. Examine your life authentically. Look at your situation honestly and genuinely before choosing to change it with a new story. Choose your story on purpose instead of by accident.

Note: This post was inspired by another blog post I read a couple of months ago, but I can no longer find it. I thought it was Seth, but he doesn’t remember having written it. If you wrote it or know who did, please give me a link so I can provide credit.

First of all, Pace is fine. This is only an example.

The phone rings. I answer, and it’s Pace. “I’ve been in an accident; another car hit me.”

Though she must be at least okay to be able to call me, my heart’s in my throat and I can barely breathe. An eternity passes before the next sentence: “I’m okay, and the car is damaged but okay,” and until I hear it, I’m completely stopped. Even after she says it, I’m tied up in my William James zone and unable to function well for a while.

Compare this with:

The phone rings. I answer, and it’s Pace. This time, she says, “I’m totally okay and I love you. However, I got in a car accident…”

Now, I’m upset and concerned, but that heart pounding, nerve-wracking fear has tempered. I know she’s okay. She can take her time and tell me about the accident and we can solve any problems, all while I know she’s okay. I’m in a much better place to hear her and help.

Prefacing bad news or scary news with reassurance is like the famous spoonful of sugar. It helps our minds and bodies function with stress much better, and gives us solid ground to stand on while things start falling apart.

We refer to this as “the rule of bad news”. Any time you have bad or unhappy news you have to deliver, remembering to start off with something positive will help both you and the one you’re telling.

People often tell me that I’m a dreamer: I’m not grounded in reality, that “reality” is going to eventually come and bite me in the ass while my head is in the clouds.

I’ve heard it all:

“You’re too sensitive.”

“You’ve got your head in the clouds.”

“You’re too emotional.”

“You’re ignoring reality.”

“You’re not grounded.”

…and so on.

And you know what? It’s all true. I’ve got my head in the clouds. I’m extremely sensitive. I let my emotions rule my decisions, and I am emotional. I am a dreamer.

Dreamers aren’t all dreams and clouds and stars-in-the-eyes. It’s possible to be a dreamer and be grounded. You can have your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground. Especially if you’re really, really tall. Or a tree.

Cynics call themselves “realists”, and they are, but they give reality a negative spin. Dreamers can be realists, too – but they typically give reality a positive spin. We manifest what we visualize, what we focus on. If you focus on a positive reality, positive things will come to pass – and if you focus on a negative reality, negative things will come to pass. Effective dreamers work to make those dreams come true.

This is not to say that bad things never happen to those who focus on positivity, because that’s not the case. In my experience, however, when you’re focused on a positive reality, bad things become much easier to handle and fix, because you’re not dwelling in the negative. A positive attitude makes reality, in whatever form it takes, more positive.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. When people say I’m a dreamer as though it’s an insult, I smile and nod. Yes, I’m a dreamer! I’m a passionate dreamer. I create safety nets when I take big risks. I look at the bright side of things. I have stars in my eyes and my head in the clouds – and my feet on the ground. And I wouldn’t be any other way. (:

Yesterday, we wrote and sang a song about milk for Havi, one of our favorite bloggers and a really excellent person. If you’d like to hear us sing a very silly and fun song, go check it out!

David Brooks, a former world champion of public speaking, spoke at our Toastmasters club this week. A lot of what we learned from him applies to the Usual Error Project workshops, and some of it applies to communication in general. Here’s what we took away from his speech.

1. Make a point, tell a story. Points and stories go hand in hand. (This made us really happy because it’s exactly what we do in our workshops, and it’s exactly how we wrote our book.)

2. Don’t be egotistical. At least, if you’re going to be egotistical, don’t do it in a oneupsmanship kind of way. Don’t knock others down to lift yourself up.

3. Don’t talk about how awesome you are and how many qualifications you have. Your audience has already showed up to see you; let your content and form sell itself. But it is okay to talk about yourself as long as you make a…

4. “You-turn”. Take you-related things and turn them around to your audience so they can find a message in it that applies to themselves.

5. Don’t make a blatant sales pitch and then say something like “I’m not trying to sell, merely to invite.” It makes you seem fake, inauthentic, and may cause people to mistrust your motive. If you’re selling something, be honest and straightforward about it. If you truly believe that your product or service provides value to others, you can sell it authentically without sounding like a salesperson.

6. Evoke emotions — everyone can relate to these six emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust. Evoke them with vivid imagery and emotional stories. (It’s good, especially for freaky people, to share something that we have in common with the audience members.)

7. Write your speech word for word. (We disagreed with him on this, but that’s because we mainly do workshops, not speeches.)

8. Don’t put audience members on the spot or single them out. Simply pointing at someone can make them feel on the spot.

9. Make people laugh, but don’t tell jokes to do it. Instead, tell stories from your own life that are funny and genuine.

10. Be authentic. Use stories from your own life. Talk about your passions, your loves, your life — things you really and truly care about.

Two weeks ago, I stopped telling little stupid lies. Since then, my life has improved by a ridiculous amount.

There is a big difference between 99% and 100%. 100% committed is far more powerful than 99% committed. 100% confident is far more useful than 99% confident. And 100% honest is far more empowering than 99% honest.

99% honest is pretty good, it’s true. The 1% of my dishonesty was mostly either “fudging by rounding” or “little white lies” about trivial and (so I thought) harmless things. Here are some examples.

Kyeli: “Did you see that cute thing Phineas did?”

Me: “Yeah, it was really cute!”

My thoughts: “Huh, why did I say that? I didn’t see it at all.”

Kyeli: “Are you okay with this plan?”

Me: “Yeah.”

My thoughts: “I’m mostly okay with this plan, and that’s close enough that I don’t feel like making a big deal out of it.”

Kyeli: “Today I was talking to *mumble* and she said that *mumble*.”

Me: “Uh-huh.” *nods*

My thoughts: “I didn’t really hear what Kyeli said. Why did I just smile and nod instead of asking her to repeat herself?”

Another thing I did was retell stories to make me seem a little cooler. For instance, I would tell a story as if I had actually thought of the snappy retort at the time, when the truth is that I stood there with my jaw hanging open at the time, and only thought of the snappy retort later that day.

Openness and honesty are very important to me. So why was I being dishonest? I had to do quite a bit of introspection and soul-searching to figure out the answer to that question. Here’s what I found.

1. Conflict avoidance.

I learned to avoid conflict when I was young, and it stuck with me. Many situations in my life reinforced that the easiest solution to any conflict was for me to suck it up. If I could just stop caring about whatever it was that I wanted, the conflict would go away. It’s kind of like a sick, self-destructive version of Buddhism, in that I was letting go of my worldly desires. However, I wasn’t doing it for the right reasons; I was doing it because I was afraid.

Conflict avoidance has been a recurring theme in my self-work. I’m making progress, but I’m still working on it.

2. Lying about trivial things had become a habit.

At some point in my childhood or adolescence, I learned that exaggerating stories made me seem cooler, and that nothing bad happened if I did. I desperately needed to be perceived as cool at the time, so I developed the habit of exaggerating my coolness in stories.

I’ve struggled with social awkwardness throughout my life, and I’m also slightly hard of hearing, so when I miss a few words, I learned that nothing bad happened if I just smiled and nodded.

Similarly for saying “Yeah, I saw that neat thing that you’re talking about!” It was a way for me to feel like part of the in-group when I often felt like an outcast. I clearly remember standing at the bus stop in 9th grade, and Jen Morris (who was very cool) was talking about the Smashing Pumpkins. “I love the Smashing Pumpkins!” I told her, even though I had never even heard of them. And nothing bad happened.

3. Fear that others wouldn’t love me as I truly am.

Deep down, the root of all this was the fear that others wouldn’t love me if they saw me truly. Yep, I’m getting the Tears of Truth as I write this.

I don’t even know where this one comes from. I had a pretty good childhood, my parents loved me, and I’ve had some good, loving, honest romantic relationships.

Regardless of where it comes from, it’s a big insecurity and a big fear. Now I’m a relationship with Kyeli where I feel completely secure. I know wholeheartedly that she loves me and accepts me the way I am, and that our relationship is stable and good. So I can let go of this too. I can be 100% honest, 100% myself, and I can do so despite my fear.

After discovering and processing those three reasons, I was ready to let go of my little white lies and “rounding errors”. It wasn’t like flipping a switch, though. Old habits die hard, and I still tell those little white lies. I still make those rounding errors. But now I catch myself, and I admit when I do it. Here are some more recent examples:

Kyeli: “Did you read Seth’s blog today? Wasn’t it awesome?”

Me: “Yeah, it was really good! *pauses* Actually, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I haven’t read it yet.”

Kyeli: “So, shall we go out on Sunday?”

Me: “Sure, sounds good. *pauses* Actually, I’m only mostly happy about going out on Sunday. Let’s talk about it and see if we have any other options.”

Kyeli: “I read that *mumble* is now changing things around to be *mumblemumble* and a song about milk.”

Me: “Yeah. *nods* *pauses* Actually, I have no idea what you just said. Something about milk?”

It’s always good for Kyeli when I do this. She’s never hurt or offended that I just told her an untruth; instead she’s supportive of me working on breaking this habit.

And now that I’m being 100% honest, everything has become amazingly better! I feel better about myself. I feel more empowered and more open to success. I feel a stronger and deeper connection between myself and Kyeli. And here’s why I think that is.

When you live according to your values, you like yourself.

When you like yourself, you open yourself up to all manner of good things.

If you don’t like yourself, you’ll find ways to sabotage yourself, either consciously or subconsciously. And when it comes to liking yourself or living according to your values, there’s a huge gap between 99% and 100%.

If you do live according to your values, and if you do it wholeheartedly, you may find depths of self-like and self-love that you didn’t even imagine were there.

Whatever you choose, I wish you the best in your journey!

There’s this magical time when all the planets align and the sun is in the right place and the moon is tilted in that perfect way and you’ve got the money and the plans and the desire, and the very universe pauses and holds its breath while you take action.

It’s the “right time.”

It’s the right time to get married.

It’s the right time to have a baby.

It’s the right time to quit that job you hate.

It’s the right time to move to that city you love.

It’s the right time to tell that girl you’ve got a crush on her.

But, really, how many times will the planets align? When will the money and the means happen in the same moment? When will the moon and the sun kiss across our little home planet?

In all likelihood, if you’re waiting for the right time, you’ll keep waiting until it’s too late.

We tell ourselves “it’s just not the right time.” We say it when we’re asked when we’re doing that thing, that big thing that we’re scared of, that we don’t feel ready for, that we don’t know how to face.

The “right time” is a fable, a myth. Waiting for it only causes more problems, not less. Now, I’m not saying to jump in with both feet without looking for snakes. (Although, we do that from time to time!) It makes sense to have a backup plan. It’s smart to know what risks you’re facing when you act.

But it doesn’t make sense to wait.

The time to act is now, because there is only now. Have that baby. Kiss that girl. Tell that boss he’s an asshole and get out of there! Life is too short, far too short and too precious, to wait for the right time. If you want something to happen, make it happen! Make the right time, right now!

I just read Getting Things Done, and it was pretty awesome. A lot of the techniques David Allen advocates are paper-based, and Kyeli and I have a mostly electronic office. Also, I don’t think we need the level of organization and detail of the full GTD system. I think that would be overkill. However, there were three points he made in the book that totally rocked my world. Each of them is interesting enough to get its own post. Here’s #1:

Get your to-do list out of your head.

When your to-do list is in your head, it creates what he calls open loops. Open loops are niggly distracty things where your brain will randomly yell at you “Hey! Remember the milk!” And if you’re not at the grocery store, that’s totally useless, distracting, and annoying. Sometimes my brain will even wake me up in the middle of the night reminding me of some stupid open loop, like an idea for a blog post. (:

So, Kyeli and I got our to-do list out of our heads and onto our coffee table.

We made blocks of post-its for each subplan of the Usual Error Project: Book, Blog, DVDs, Website, and Workshops. We also added two more blocks of post-its for Money (the green ones) and House, since those open loops were stressing us out a lot and we wanted to get them out of our heads.

Apologies that the text is too small to read; Kyeli’s camera was too low-res. We’ll post about our business plan in detail later; transparency is very important to us. But for now you’ll have to wait. (;

The most important step for each block of post-its was to ask “Is there anything else we can think of about this topic, anything at all?” and think about that for several minutes before moving on to the next topic. The reason this step is super important is because it allows your brain to close all its open loops. It lets you stop worrying about whether you’ve forgotten something.

Everything you could possibly think of is now on the coffee table, so you can let go of your worries.

This worked fabulously for me, but Kyeli felt more stressed after covering the coffee table in post-its than she had felt before. Seeing all our to-do items in living color made her feel overwhelmed and anxious — a feeling of “you have all these things, why are you not doing them right now?!” Kyeli’s anxiety wasn’t relieved until the next phase of the project, which we will tell you all about… in the next post in this series.

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