Passionate Living

It’s been two months into the first year of the new decade. January and February have passed and have been filled with many lessons for me personally. I think now is a good time to stop and review the progress that’s been made.

In another post I made a list of my resolutions for 2010 [1]. This is because I promised myself that I would be prolific. Most of the projects in that list are writing projects (content that I post on various blogs), and one main year-long project which is to write and release 26 songs in 52 weeks [2].

So far the results have been satisfactory, although there have been some days where I inevitably miss a schedule due to shortage of time and energy. I thought at first that I’m spreading myself too thin, and the quality suffers. But then I remember: the point of the resolution was to be prolific, I didn’t mention anything about quality.

The first thing that goes

In the months before 2010 (and in the months before I started writing in this blog), I was mainly a content consumer. I would spend my mornings reading every single post in my RSS feed [3]. It would take me up to two hours just two devour 20-30 posts, which I think is quite a long time compared to the speed I read now.

I feel that the months I spent merely consuming content was a necessary period – the period where I let all ideas come in and let them sediment inside my mind. Now, I’m regurgitating and remixing those ideas and adding my own perspective to them – which leads to the blueprint material for the thoughts I write in this blog.

I have to admit though, by taking on multiple writing projects – and being a content creator myself – the first thing that suffers is my RSS feed. Usually I would only have 20-30 unread posts at any one time, but today I could reach 200-300 unread posts! My perfectionist side would shiver at the thought of abandoning these subscriptions, but I also said to myself that I would embrace imperfection [4] and just let it slide.

The year of prolificiency

Between the songwriting project, the happiness project, and the dream journal project, I’m also thinking about starting new writing projects to promote my music through the Blue Summer brand. The prospect alarms me slightly, because I fear that there will simply be not enough time to write them all. Besides quality, consistency of content could also suffer (and it already has more than a few times).

But in the spirit of prolificiency (I just made that word up), I’m going to just do it. I’ve spent enough time aiming for perfection – this time I’m just going to aim for action. This time, I’m going to achieve results.

So join me, ye fellow songwriters, musicians, authors, entrepreneurs (and any other class of profession that reads this blog)! Two months have already passed, and we will have a great ten more months to this year. How will you shape and fill this time in your life, with the dreams and the values that you want to create?

This is your story. Better make it a good one.

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[1] For a Happy and Productive 2010, 2009
[2] 26 Songs in 52 Weeks. Today’s release is #4/26
[3] How to Use RSS, 2010
[4] It Doesn’t Matter Where You Start, 2009

Facebook Logo sticker by Jay Cameron

The advent of the internet has started a shift in modern economy. The basis for major industrial profit motive based economy is gradually being replaced with a much more organic and dynamic economy: the trust economy. With the trust economy, the paradigms and recipes we used to use to achieve success are starting to be obsolete and we need a different and more appropriate one that suits the principles of a trust economy.

The trust economy is also called by many other nomenclatures: the digital economy, the relationship economy, and (one of my favorites) the two way conversation economy [1]. Trust has always been the fundamental currency of our society [2], but the rate at which we are returning to the state of trust is fast enough to make the shareholders and capital business owners of the industrial era try everything in their power to slow down and even stop the process (or at least be in denial that it’s happening). But since the shift is a cultural one, the effect of the change that’s happening also applies to individuals and the quality of our success in life.

The trust economy online is accelerated by the advent of social media [3]: more and more people are using these online channels to publish their own opinions – whether it be professional or just for personal use – and also using these channels for personal branding and building their businesses. As Mitch Joel says [4], each of us is our personal brand now and we are responsible for our integrity and credibility of our online profile as much as we are responsible for our real life profile. That’s why it’s important we learn how to properly display ourselves within these online channels: because our profiles are being used to measure how much we can be trusted.

Managing a professional profile

Facebook is a great example of how we can measure the amount of trust we are worth based on what kind of profile we manage. I think there’s been plenty of good and great articles on the internet about how to maintain a professional purpose Facebook account, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents since I also feel that it’s a very good platform to establish yourself as an authority on your field of expertise. Facebook is a tool that has great potential to lead us to open new relationships and new opportunities (and maybe even meet your future husband or wife), so we should learn how to use it according to what we want to achieve in life.

Unfortunately, I see many of my friends use Facebook for non-professional purposes. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but I believe even in the personal area of life we should keep a certain degree of professionalism and try to provide constant value to the immediate people around us and to our extended community. That’s what I do with my profile: I try to share the information and insights I have about my industry and personal life and hope the value that I contribute will return to me in the form of more trust from my peers and extended stakeholders.

Here is a list of options you can change to have a more trustable Facebook profile. I’m listing them here based on my own empirical experience:

1. Select what you write as your status update. Sharing to people that you’re hungry or need to go to the bathroom is only appropriate for celebrities who already have tens to hundreds of thousands adoring fans who want to know their every move. Unless you’re this kind of celebrity, then I encourage you to limit your status updates to information or personal opinions that are useful and can be acted upon by your community. Examples of these quality status updates include links to helpful internet articles; quotes from a book or a speaker in a seminar you’re attending; or your own take on a solution for the industry. Throwing in the occasional personal status update – like where you’re spending the weekend with your family or how the weather is affecting your mood today – is fine as long as the ratio is still lower than quality status updates.

2. Comment on other people’s status updates. I don’t know if you feel the same way, but I feel that many of my friends want people to comment or “like this” their updates but they don’t want to do it for other people either (or at least do it minimally). Commenting and “like this”-ing on other people’s updates is one of the best and natural ways of building real relationships with people that are on your friend list. Make sure that your comments also give value though, and try to keep the jokes to the necessary amounts only.

3. Connect your other profiles to your Facebook profile, and don’t use ANY applications. This is to manage the content that appears on your profile timeline (or the “Wall”). There are plenty of other publishing sites (such as Twitter, Tumblr, and Posterous) that can be connected to Facebook, so every time you write in these channels the information that you share will also be posted on your Facebook profile. Combining this, and by not using ANY non-essential applications (you know which ones I’m talking about), you can establish a “lifestream” of your internet consumption activity that will allow people to see how you are using the internet to learn and expand your expertise in your industry.

What are your tips to make a more trustable online profile?

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*In the spirit of “those” Facebook apps, if I were asked “which superpower are you?”, I would definitely answer: predicting the future!

*Gretchen Rubin writes about the importance of doing something every day. I think it connects to my 365 Days of Happiness project

*I discovered today that Melody Gardot is a jazz singer. Sure doesn’t look like one though!

[1] The term “two way conversation economy” is borrowed from Ariel Hyatt, a PR expert for independent musicians
[2] Be Authentic, 2009
[3] Social Media on Wikipedia
[4] Mitch Joel is a digital marketing expert. I’m reading his book this month
[5] Photograph by Jay Cameron. Because the logo is a trademark