JAKOB'S JOURNAL

Permission to Poke

March 9th, 2020

Go ahead…

Tear apart the theory.
Find the contradicting example, or out-of-context anomaly. Find the loophole, the leak in the boat.

I’d appreciate that.
Poke holes in everything if you’d like. I welcome the feedback—full disclosure: after a weekend with great people at a leadership summit, I wrote down several initiatives for self-correcting social systems, and almost every one comes down to accountability, ownership, responsibility, communication, and trust.

Letting others poke holes in our precious design, our baby, is part of the vulnerable, inclusive, process-oriented leadership that’s necessary to grow and scale in any successful organization.

Radical honesty is undefeated. Poke on. Poke at your peril, though. To open that door, we must be willing to accept feedback for our own. It must be a natural exchange. Don’t do it for pokes’ sake, do it because you want to see the organization grow and improve.

These people, committed to radically honest feedback, aren’t in the same arena as others. They are playing a whole different ball game. That’s the game I want to play, and that’s the game I want you to play, if you can handle it.
Suffering as Teacher

March 8th, 2020

Suffering can be a great teacher.

There are great teachers scattered throughout the world, though, and they’ll never get a class full of perfect students, why?

Let’s be ready to learn the lesson. Can we realize that suffering is inevitably going to return? We know it. It’s an uncontrollable aspect of our story—when we suffer—and taking it in stride shows that we understand how to identify that which we CAN control—a sign of maturity.

Open eyes, open ears, open hearts.
We shouldn’t waste our suffering on petty emotional stimulation. That’s cheap. That’s a cop out. The world gets a net-negative transaction when we endure suffering and have no mindset or system in place to improve from it.

Put it to work.

Be prepared and willing to learn when things get difficult. It’s inevitable. Make the best of it.
Write it down

March 7th, 2020

This post is very simple.

I’d like to advise you to Build a journaling habit.

It’s one of the single most valuable things we can do.

Don’t worry about the details in the beginning. Just place pens and notepads all over the house, and then use them every chance you get. No sagas need to be written by tonight. Just jot comments or thoughts or observations.

Build the habit with consistency, not effort. That’s how we get habits to stick.

Start today. What excuse do you have?
Moldy Taxes

March 6th, 2020

By the time March rolls around, most of us have at least thought about doing the taxes.

Filing taxes is likely the most universally written ‘To-Do List Item’ throughout March.

Dirty fridge metaphor: we don’t regularly check our refrigerator for residue and the build up of food scraps. It rarely even crosses our mind. Then, when we take the time to clean the fridge, we almost can’t believe how much better we feel for doing so, and how much better we would have felt if we would have chosen to do so sooner.

We’re entering the 2nd week of March, and there are about 5 weeks until taxes are due.

How much more productive might we be if we could do this: ~~File Taxes~~ ?

Taxes.
Do your taxes.

Even typing it multiple times gives me the jitters (we still haven’t done ours).

Imagine what curiosities we might explore, or how much more of our ‘down-time’ we’d enjoy, if we did our taxes this weekend rather than write it on the to-do list, but still not do it, for the next 5 weeks?

Sometimes, a kick in the ass, or a friendly reminder, is all we need.

Oh, by the way, there’s a few stray carrot top greens in the bottom left drawer, last weeks leftover sandwich with a hint of mold starting, and an expired bottle of ranch dressing you might want to address.
Creator, Marketer

March 5th, 2020

The job of the marketer is not to convince people that the product is worth buying.
That’s the job of the creator.

The job of the marketer is to get it in front of (the right) people’s eyes.

If we, as creators, are more focused on getting our ideas in front of people than we are on the effectiveness and quality of the message, our failure is a foregone conclusion.

Flaunting the elusion of value might keep our heads above water, but we’ll never catch momentum that way, and momentum is the only way to sustain creativity in a working environment over long periods of time.

Permission to Poke

Suffering as Teacher

Write it down

Moldy Taxes

Creator, Marketer