In Sunday’s New York Times magazine, there’s an inventors’ support company featured, Quirky.com. It’s purpose is to take your crazy idea and put it out in the Quirky community for a group grope on what your concept would be if it were better than what you could think of on your own. I love this resource because of all the values that define my personal brand, “invention” dominates it. My partners, clients, associates, fellow instructors, suppliers, employees, family and the panoply of people who surround me in my working life (which is 90% of my life) both benefit and suffer from my having this trait.
Why me?
Invention is the trait that drives me to read Annals of Thoracic Surgery and Volleyball magazine, although I neither break open chests in an operating room, nor do I drive the 3 miles it would take to get me to the beach and dive for balls in a bikini. I read a lot of things (publications, the backs of cereal boxes, anything except instructions to technology that I also am driven to purchase) that have no reason to be interesting to me other than the fact that my brain noisily demands to be fed, like the way your stomach spasms and makes noises when you’re hungry. I can’t escape this drive to be relentlessly educated. It’s why I can’t wake up without lots of newspapers, real and online. It makes my Sunday ritual of having lunch out just an excuse to wend my way to a bookstore and come home with six books that I could probably get from a fellow publisher if I could wait (I run Pegasus Media World). My brain won’t let me wait.
The blessing is I’m very lucky to have been born after Guttenberg made the press (not Police Academy 3), Vint Cerf invented the Internet (not Horton Hears a Who), and Steve Jobs (as opposed to Steve Just Thinks) put it all first on our desks and now in our palms.
The curse is I can’t watch the news on television because it’s not news by the time I see it. If I’m not growing I feel like I’m dying. That’s why being a lifelong learner isn’t something that’s nice for me, it’s essential – like air, water and food.
Why you?
What is YOUR driving trait? I’ve revealed mine in its most manic light, because I want you to see that the basis of your brand isn’t a choice, it’s your calling.
What is keeping you awake at night? What gets you to turn down an invitation to chill with friends and instead go into your real or virtual workshop and tinker? What are you going to write your book about? What are you doing, reading, listening in on, participating in, making, laughing about, crying about, hiding or broadcasting or however it is you are manifesting the symptoms of your brand?
Potentially most important, what makes YouThinkInc a worthy contributor to GroupThinkInc? That is, no brand succeeds if it’s not embraced by at least one large enough, lucrative target that will need not only what you say or sell, but will purchase virtually endless iterations of it. Maybe you have the next Panini maker in you or a better way to wash dogs. Maybe you have a way to turn kidney beans into a caffeine-free morning beverage with the flavor to rival coffee and tea. What’s underneath what you most like to do? And, what is it going to take to move who you are and what you have into the embrace of the community or individuals who will make you whole, and wildly successful?
Why them?
I don’t have the mechanical skills or geometry in my brain to get physical with my thoughts. That’s where GroupThinkInc equals in importance to my personal contribution. Like Quirky.com, the lifeblood of my brand is my ability to communicate my thoughts to enough people who can interact with them and make them better and easy to use. Thus, while invention dominates me, I’m clearly the walking nexus of four values: education, invention, communication and relationships.
Think about you. What quality of life or value dominates you? What is the foundation from which it grows? What other values must you wrap around yourself, in order to put you in the minds and hearts of people who matter to you and your career?
Try these on
Here’s a quick list of seven values for navel-gazing. Ask yourself: do these values drive me? If not, what does?
Transformation
Ambition
Peace
Legacy
Family
Fame
Compassion
Now, what else do you need from yourself and the world, in order to manifest your dominant life source into marketable commerce?
Author:
Nance Rosen is the author of Speak Up! & Succeed. She speaks to business audiences around the world and is a resource for press, including print, broadcast and online journalists and bloggers covering social media and careers. Read more at NanceRosenBlog. Twitter name: nancerosen.
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As a fellow book addict, your post really resonated with me. My wife once cleared off the kitchen table during a meal and asked, “do you have to read everything? What is so interesting about the back of the ketchup bottle?”
It’s nice to meet someone else that simply can’t stop reading. I look forward to reading more of your posts in the future.
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After reading this post I realized that I try to read anything and everything. If I am not reading or at least thinking constructively i feel like I am wasting time and not being productive.
Until this post I thought I was the “weird kid” its good to know there are others out there
This post is about me to the letter, except that I am a ‘synthesizer’. I crave learning from books, signs, commercials, song lyrics, even people watching, you name it – all so I can bring in little bits of data and reswizzle them to put them back out for new concepts, new meaning or new uses.
I like your compelling questions at the end of the article – I’ll pass this on to my tribe and I’ll look for your posts.
Now THIS is a good, unique post. A little long and loud at points (underlining + bold…) for my tastes, but very beneficial.
I would hesitate to offer caution though. It seems those who have commented so far (including me) have a similar trait: reading obsessively. Let’s put it a better way: consuming obsessively. Reading is just the easiest manifestation because the Internet and printing press have given us such ubiquitous access. It is worthy of note, however, that information is not knowledge. And knowledge is not power. Correctly applied knowledge is.
There is no sin in leisure, by which in this case I mean inactivity. Inactivity is not atrophy, though it’s difficult to associate the two. When I was younger, I often “burned the candle at both ends” because I felt like I needed to constantly be bettering myself, looking for more information, trying to figure what I liked/didn’t like/was good at/bad at/etc. I’ve learned over the years that it’s okay to let life take its course. That doesn’t mean I don’t try to succeed, but I focus more intensely on what I feel is necessary in the present, and sometimes that’s taking a nap on my hammock when I’d normally be checking my email in the morning.
Just some thoughts, take what you will.
Nance,
What a timely post! With the Jewish New Year approaching (Rosh Hashana) – for me, a time to take inventory of all my good and bad traitis and in a deeper sense see what factors and values are driving my life decisions.
Connection and Communication are definitely two of my major driving factors, that is probably why I also like to read what seem to be random and various topics and spot their underlying connection.
Best,
Kayvan