And then did I hesitate?

Interesting that my last blog post was about moving forward without hesitation and then I immediately miss two blog posts in a row. It was actually because my sister-in-law got married and I had to get my family to the far away location where they decided to have the wedding.

It’s a reminder to myself that I should probably have a few extra blog posts “in the hopper” but then I remember that I write these blog posts as a daily writing exercise and not to entertain the reader. That’s why I miss a few days here and there. Here I make the rules and I get all the excuses I want.

Let nothing cause you to hesitate

Everybody has failures. Don’t live like somebody who is immune to failure, it makes you fear failing and hesitant to try.

Successful people aren’t successful because they avoid failure. They are successful because they don’t let the fear of failing stop them. The person who hesitates is the person who fails. Let nothing cause you to hesitate.

Laughing and learning

When you make them laugh, you know you’ve connected. Laughter is an involuntary response and a genuine laugh is easy to see and feel. When you make them laugh it is one of the only true moments left when you know exactly where you stand with your counterpart.

So, make them laugh.

The razor of self-love

My generation is obsessed with self-betterment on one hand and self-love on the other. Maybe the argument can be made that some self-love is self-betterment, and I would agree that bettering yourself is loving toward yourself.

There is a popular breed of self-love that seems to consist merely for the purpose of finding excuses for underachieving and laziness. Often that excuse falls broadly under the umbrella of “self-love.”

But don’t please your current self by slapping your future self in the face.

That’s not self-love, that’s indulgence masquerading as self-love.

Proverbs for Paranoids

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers. That’s proverb number three in Thomas Pynchon’s “Proverbs for Paranoids.”

It’s an interesting list, but this proverb #3 is a reminder to remain outside of the expectations of the moment in our creative work. Ask questions about the questions, you’re presented with. Look at the “sides” of the expectations or trends. What makes them special and why must I adhere?

If you get stuck asking the wrong questions, or following the wrong trends nothing else matters in your work. You’re cutting off your potential creative brilliance before it ever has a chance to flourish.

Be open to everything, question it all, and don’t close yourself off to what appears crazy.

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” – Steve Jobs

When a weakness is also a strength

The weakness of machine learning and computing power is that it does not consider the circumstances. This is also a strength.

The hammer does not care what you use it to build, it simply pounds the nail. If your idea is good or bad, it does not care. It does its work.

This is a weakness of machine learning and AI because it limits the help it can give us. However, our ability to understand the context of a situation weakens us as much as it helps us.

Context tells the bomb expert that he could die and makes him jittery. The bomb robot just defuses the bomb and doesn’t even know it could be destroyed.

A machine is not affected by its mistakes because it doesn’t even remember the last thing it did and it doesn’t know what it will do until the moment it does it.

For the human, the worst thing we can do after a loss is let it affect us and diminish our abilities and bring on more losses.

We enter the Kübler-Ross model of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The computer is focused on the one thing it’s doing right now. Success or failure doesn’t exist and it moves to the next thing and does it just as well.

We get demoralized, but computers do not. Computers don’t have pride, ego, or ambition and they don’t get embarrassed after a mistake. They get right back to work with no detrimental effects.

It would be interesting if we could use our humanity to become a little less human when the circumstances call for it. Some humans can do that, the greatest baseball closers don’t care about losing the game, they make the best pitch. Special Forces operators are cold and calculated under some of the most intense pressure a human can face.

What if we could do the same in business? Learn from a loss and immediately forget about it as if it never happened. Even if a position seems completely lost, we would still work as if we were guaranteed a win.

That’s a focus I would love to have, and maybe someday I will.

Courage

“Courage isn’t having the strength to go on. It is going on when you don’t have strength.”

–Napoleon Bonaparte

The Devil’s Advocate plays a critical role

Playing the Devil’s Advocate, or advocatus diaboli, as it was originally known, is a useful tool in helping yourself to think more critically.

In playing the Devil’s Advocate we fill the important role of considering a proposition from a different point of view. Critical thinking becomes much easier for us and an integral part of how we think if we take the time to try arguing for a point of view which we do not hold ourselves.

We stand to profit greatly from finding deficiencies in our beliefs and either strengthening them by learning more, or altering those beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Furthermore, if we take the time to understand the argument from our antagonist’s point of view, we place ourselves in a position to be able to form a counter-argument that will be more compelling to him.

Challenge yourself by arguing against what you believe in. It will help you understand why you believe what you believe and help you convince others who are interested in what you believe.

Kindness without discipline

We will find ourselves in many places throughout our life and in each place we will have different obligations to ourselves and the people around us. As Elie Wiesel famously said, “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

We must do good when it is in our power to do it.

In our conduct have two main bulkheads: kindness and discipline. If we use either one without consideration for the other, we abuse ourselves or others.

If we expect kindness and grace from others without ever acknowledging discipline or boundaries, this is enablement. We can do this to ourselves as well. Kindness to myself without discipline is the enablement of bad habits in the name of “compassion.”

And discipline without kindness leads to a broken spirit and self-sabotage. It dries up the fountain of inspiration and motivation in even the most spirited youth.

We must find a balance between the two in what we expect of ourselves, what we show toward others, and what we expect from others. Kindness and discipline. So powerful together, so harmful when apart.

Note: Much of my thoughts today are stolen from an email newsletter I received this week from Mark Appel. Like I often do, I am writing what resonates with me to lodge it more deeply in my psyche.

There’s a reason it’s called “Artificial” Intelligence

With the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT text-prompt application in late 2022, there has been a firestorm of excitement surrounding artificial intelligence and the future of knowledge work.

There is a response of near-apathy from some, while others have an apocalyptical view of the rise of AI. I believe that both extreme views are rooted in a misunderstanding of how AI and machine learning work on a granular level.

The idea that AI and programs like ChatGPT are versions of organic and self-conscious intelligence as we find in humans is simply not the case. At least not yet.

The human brain is unique in its ability to maintain a constant state of awareness of its surroundings and the circumstances of any data that it receives. It then can process information and formulate responses to external prompts that are useful, appropriate, wise, calculated, etc… all depending on the external circumstances and the goals toward which the human is striving.

Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, relies on its neural network. Neural networks are static infrastructures that receive training, but do not change their intelligence or output depending on the circumstances–most of the time they don’t even know there are circumstances.

These artificial intelligence tools return answers based on rules formed within them and they only change when they are re-trained.

Even the best AI programs at the moment are limited by the combinations of known topics that they can pull information from and present them in other known styles of presentation.

This makes tools such as ChatGPT useful for generating ideas and creating outlines, but the need for adding context, adjusting for the reader, adding deep and specific technical knowledge, and ensuring factual correctness is still very much needed from a human.

Rather than seeing AI as a tool that might take away our jobs or control the world, it’s more likely that AI will become the way that everyday people learn to use automation in their own homes and personal lives in the same way that Windows brought about an operating system that brought the PC into the common man’s home.

The 30-30-30 Method

No matter what business you run, it is essential to talk to your potential customers and listen to your actual customers. Learn what they’re looking for and listen to what they need help with. Use this information to make small changes to your business and you will reap long-term benefits.

I’m a big fan of Justin Welsh and his modern content-first marketing style. He has a 30-30-30 system that he often talks about:

• Spend 30 minutes per week talking to prospective customers.

• Spend 30 minutes per week figuring out how to solve their problems.

• Spend 30 minutes per week creating content about those problems.

When you create content, you will attract more potential customers (if you are creating content that your customers would enjoy) and those are people whom you might now talk to and learn from. This is ultra-valuable data.

The more you talk to your people, the more you can begin to predict what they want and how you can serve those needs. Whether you’re a construction company or a content creator on YouTube you can learn more about how to serve your audience and meet them where they have needs and are willing to spend money.

Listen to your target audience, find ways to help them, create content that addresses those needs to attract more of those people who could potentially hire you or buy your product/service.

Shaking the box of rocks

The famous saying “Fortune favors the bold” is a good reminder that we must venture if we wish to gain. However, a careless venture would make you lose everything. Take, for example, Pliny the Elder, who is commonly attributed as coining the term when daring to head toward the powerful eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in search of his friend. He died in that expedition and did not save his friend.

So, not all bold actions are rewarded, I guess. However, the courage to intelligently shake the box of rocks and move the proverbial chess pieces around the board will put you in a position to succeed and take advantage of opportunities that arise only because you dared to do something–to shake that box of rocks.

Waiting for our break is hard, but we must work diligently while we wait.

Thomas Edison put it well when he said, “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.”

Find strength in the difficult moments

All is not lost when you face a setback. Disappointment comes to all of us in various ways. Maybe we lose a loved one, maybe the car breaks down, or maybe we lose our job. But all is not lost.

It’s just the beginning when disappointment strikes.

Greatness does not arise in you when things are easy and when you have everything handed to you. Greatness comes when you endure hardship and face tests. You are strengthened by disappointment in ways that nothing else can shape you. So don’t run from hardship when it arrives. Soak it in and embrace the change.

Only if we visit the darkest recesses can we know how beautiful the climb toward the top of the mountain is.

Always give your best effort and don’t let discouragement or worry derail your energy in giving that effort.

Battles with the resistance

As I think back on the past three and a half years, I reminisce on what have been some of the more difficult months of my life. Many things have contributed to the difficult moments, but I still can’t escape the many good things that have happened as well.

Probably the greatest thing of the battle with resistance (as Steven Pressfield would describe it) is the renewed vigor I have gained for working hard and prioritizing effectively.

My highest priority is protecting my ability to prioritize. That means doing the work I need to do every day to ensure I’m not crushed by urgent work that could have been fixed before it ever became urgent. Hard work first, optimization second.

If you don’t prioritize your life (put your needs first and organize your life,) someone else will.

Life has seasons of ease and brutality. If you can learn lessons in the brutal seasons, your seasons of ease will be a little bit better.

Waiting and waiting (is the hardest and dumbest part)

Don’t wait to be invited in. Don’t wait for the job to come to you. Don’t wait for your business to miraculously “take off.”

It comes down to you kicking the door in and taking what belongs to you. Do you want success? Go take it. It belongs to you, if only you’d step up, do the work, and seize the prize. Become so great that they can’t ignore you.

Don’t sit idle while the world happens to you. Go. Do. Happen. Break barriers. Do things that people can’t believe you could ever do. Prove them all wrong and do it yourself.

Same names

Not a deep thought today, but isn’t it interesting how few people have the exact same name as you?

There are a few names that are well-used, but not many people share the same first and last name (we’ll ignore middle names for a moment.)

Maybe it’s an American or European thing. I’m not sure, but I do know that I’ve never met someone with a name that even came close to my first and last name, Nathaniel Dodson.

Maybe we are all a little more unique than we thought.

Two keys to speaking and sharing information

As a content creator and educator online, I have a great interest in the methods that are used to convey information in interesting and engaging ways. Two of the primary thoughts that I run into are:

1. Speak and teach in an approachable way. Don’t be too technical with an audience of beginners and bore them, but don’t be overly basic with an audience of experts and offend them.

2. How you speak and convey information is just as important as what you’re speaking about. The best story ever told, told in a dry and uninspiring way will leave the whole room bored to tears.

Whenever you’re able, learn who your audience is so you can share appropriate information in a way they can consume best. And speak in a way that is not scripted (even if your speech is written beforehand!) Speak with inspiration and passion, as though the words are coming to you in that very moment. This gives weight to your story and makes everything feel more immediate to the audience. It will also cause everything you say to have more impact and draw in those who are listening.

Wear out your shoes

Our world is obsessed with self-betterment. It’s part of why I write these blog entries every day. I’m practicing thinking about ideas I see, hear, and read about and regurgitating them into these short articles.

Self-betterment often leads young people into the trap of focusing all of their effort on optimization. The adage “Work smarter, not harder” is misapplied by practically everyone and is very dangerous to any good work ethic.

Hard work is the price of admission. You can’t get smarter unless you’re working. Like trying to steer a ship, it must be moving first.

Rather than trying to save my energy and time as if I’ll get it back later, I want to do the hard work first and figure out working smarter once I know how the work feels.

Wear out your shoes, not your sheets.

Adversity makes the man

If adversity makes men, and property makes monsters, why do we all want prosperity? Probably, because prosperity is comfortable. But what does that then say about comfort? The dichotomy of discomfort so often being so good for us is interesting.

Disappointment

Disappointment is a harsh reality that sets in and forces you to readjust your view of the world and your assessment of the situation. Adjustments are needed and disappointment is the emotion that helps you make the required changes.

We can't let difficulty and disappointment drown us. Perspective is the road that is elevated beside the ditch of disappointment. With perspective we can observe and take good from disappointment. We can also avoid the traps disappointment would have us believe.

This trap is that disappointment is certain and permanent. But it's not permanent.

Where there is no end to love, there is no end to grief, but that unbounded love is reserved for a precious few things in life. Most of what disappointments us doesn’t get our unbounded love, so we should understand that the grief of it will pass quickly.

Despair and blind optimism are opposite one another and we have to walk the road of wisdom between both. It helps to work while you walk that road. Walking and thinking, without working, seems to push us into despair or blind optimism (which only sets you up for more disappointment.)

Try not to linger and fall for the trap that disappointment is permanent.

"Courage isn't having the strength to go on. It is going on when you don't have the strength." –Napolean Bonaparte