Effectiveness is relative. 

When you’re doing the right things, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing things right. Because when you create from a place of meaning, productivity follows. When you nail the what and the why behind the work, the how comes along for the ride. 

Effectiveness and productivity become incidental, not intentional. 

On the other hand, if you have an antagonistic relationship with your job, no system is going to save you. That’s like trying to multiply by zero. Because as we learned in math class, no matter how big the coefficient is, any number multiplied by zero is still zero. 

And so, before you crack another book on getting things done and taking action and finding focus and mastering time, go back and make a few decisions about what you constitute meaningful work. 

That’s the first step, and it’s not easy. Because it requires honesty and courage and responsibility. 

In fact, the mere issue of life’s meaning is too unnerving for most people to dare. They perceive it as arrogant, disobedient, esoteric and pretentious. As if some anti existentialist mob was going to show up at their door with pitchforks and shotguns. 

When the reality is, adopting meaning is the centerpiece of human life. It’s the primary obligation of our species. And once we wake up to then fact that meaning is made, not found, once we learn to approach everything we experience within that frame, concepts like effectiveness and productivity become irrelevant. They’re neither here nor there. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

When was the last time you complained about time?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “22 Questions to Sidestep Entrepreneurial Atrophy,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Rent Scott’s Brain is part mentoring, part coaching, part consulting, but all strategy. 

Whether in person, via phone, or another digital channel, Scott works with you both strategically and tactically to achieve your goals. 

His brain will be a source of profound holistic improvement for your business. 

You’ll learn powerful strategies for: 

Ideation. Messaging. Storytelling. Platform creation. Brand development. Content strategy. Inbound marketing. Thought leadership. 

You’ve seen what he could do with a nametag, imagine what he could do for you.

Learn more @ www.rentscottsbrain.com.

Because the creative process regularly feels uncertain, overwhelming and unsatisfying, it’s important for each artist to build a personal menu of faithful forces. Portable routines and dependable constants to keep their creative life stable and fruitful when inspiration goes into hiding. 

I prefer doing the dishes. Because unlike publishing books or composing music or giving speeches or strategizing with clients, doing the dishes is one of the few times in which I have zero external demands and little need to exert a high degree of concentration. 

Unlike creating new art out of thin air, doing the dishes is a completely mindless, physically taxing, immediately rewarding, psychologically calming activity. It satisfies my human desire to see things to completion. It has a definite beginning, middle and end, and that gives me a deep sense of achievement. Most importantly, doing the dishes never fails to flood my mind with inspiration for my work. 

And that’s where things get really interesting. 

Zhong conducted popular study about brain incubation and the merits of unconscious thoughts in creativity, and it found that habitual tasks like doing the dishes enabled people to unconsciously access peripheral information that their brain may not readily consider during an intense state of focus. 

In the study, neuroimaging indicated that these types of situations allow the outermost regions of the prefrontal cortex, which are the areas of the brain that help exert cognitive control, to loosen the reins and allow thought processes and neural activity not strictly related to the primary task. 

And so, anytime I find myself staring the screen, convinced that I have nothing to meaningful say to the world, I simply leave my office and go do the dishes. Even if there are no dishes to be done. It may sound silly, but when you have a job where the quality frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood, you do what you have to do to refill the creative tank. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How do you stay inspired when your job is to inspire others?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “52 Random Insights to Grow Your Business,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Rent Scott’s Brain is part mentoring, part coaching, part consulting, but all strategy. 

Whether in person, via phone, or another digital channel, Scott works with you both strategically and tactically to achieve your goals. 

His brain will be a source of profound holistic improvement for your business. 

You’ll learn powerful strategies for: 

Ideation. Messaging. Storytelling. Platform creation. Brand development. Content strategy. Inbound marketing. Thought leadership. 

You’ve seen what he could do with a nametag, imagine what he could do for you.

Learn more @ www.rentscottsbrain.com.

It’s easy to
make things hard for ourselves. To approach innovation as an endless uphill
battle. But the creative process doesn’t have to be as laborious and pressured
as we make it out to be. 

Searls famously said in his manifesto that he’d been pushing large rocks for
short distances up a lot of hills, for a long time. But then he inverted and
started rolling snowballs down hills. And some ideas didn’t go very far, he
said. But some got pretty big once they started rolling. Because each snowball
grew as others ideas linked to it. And eventually, some grew big enough to have
some impact. 

The question is, are you rolling snowballs down hills or pushing
rocks up hills? If so, you might consider taking a different approach. One
technique I find helpful in the innovation process to take average ideas and
change them into better ones. It’s a tool for helping your brain inch onto the
creative runway. And often times, it’s easier than wandering around hoping to
chance upon a great idea. 

In fact, to help others put this into practice, I
launched a new project called Steal Scott’s Ideas. Every week, I will publish a
sample of ideas, some good, some bad, some borderline illegal, in the hopes
that they will inspire my readers to improve them. To help people roll the
snowball downhill, instead of pushing the rock up it. Because frankly, sifting
through the mass of sand in order to find a nugget of gold sounds like a lot of
work. 

But taking a piece of rock and mining it into gold, that’s doable.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How could you make your creative process less labor intensive?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “9 Things Every Writer Needs to Do Every Day,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Rent Scott’s Brain is part mentoring, part coaching, part consulting, but all strategy. 

Whether in person, via phone, or another digital channel, Scott works with you both strategically and tactically to achieve your goals. 

His brain will be a source of profound holistic improvement for your business. 

You’ll learn powerful strategies for: 

Ideation. Messaging. Storytelling. Platform creation. Brand development. Content strategy. Inbound marketing. Thought leadership. 

You’ve seen what he could do with a nametag, imagine what he could do for you.

Learn more @ www.rentscottsbrain.com.

Savasana, also known as corpse pose, is the most anatomically neutral position of any yoga practice. 

Physically speaking, it’s the most ergonomic position of the human body. It reduces stress and fatigue on muscles and joints. It also helps lower blood pressure and  slow respiration and reduce heart rate. In fact, most teachers say it’s the most important posture of the practice. 

And yet, it’s profoundly challenging. Because the only thing savasana requires of you is to simply be. To surrender to your body’s itches and just let them tickle you. To take a ride on your sweat instead of trying to fix it. 

As my teacher loves to say, relax and soak up everything you came to class to give yourself. 

What’s interesting about savasana is, its basic principles can also be applied to life off the mat. Because it’s all about putting yourself in a neutral position. Not necessarily physically, but mentally and emotionally and spiritually. 

I recently traveled thirty hours across the globe to deliver a presentation at a youth leadership conference. Malaysia was one of the most colorful and friendly and juicy countries I ever visited. The audience was engaged, the food was spicy and the weather felt like I never left the yoga class. 

But what I loved most about the experience was, traveling there sent my mind to a neutral position. Because when you’re swimming in a waterfall in the middle of the jungle ten thousand miles away from home, with no cell phone or contact with the outside world, your inner life suddenly gets very clear and very quiet. Like taking a mental savasana. Finding the most ergonomic position of the human mind and allowing the stillness to swallow you whole. 

And not surprisingly, by the time we returned home, I felt completely rejuvenated. Like I had just finished a seven day yoga class. 

Dead body pose? Perhaps. But true savasana is when you feel most alive. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What’s your neutral posture?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “71 Things Customers Don’t Want to Hear You Say,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Rent Scott’s Brain is part mentoring, part coaching, part consulting, but all strategy. 

Whether in person, via phone, or another digital channel, Scott works with you both strategically and tactically to achieve your goals. 

His brain will be a source of profound holistic improvement for your business. 

You’ll learn powerful strategies for: 

Ideation. Messaging. Storytelling. Platform creation. Brand development. Content strategy. Inbound marketing. Thought leadership. 

You’ve seen what he could do with a nametag, imagine what he could do for you.

Learn more @ www.rentscottsbrain.com.

I don’t pack heat, I pack nametags. 

Since I wear a nametag twenty four seven, I carry spares with me everywhere I go. In my wallet at all times. Both blank and prewritten. Because you never know when you might need one. 

What’s interesting is, after fifteen years, I’ve found ways to use a nametag for almost every conceivable purpose, unrelated to an actual badge. 

Scrap paper, tissue paper, toilet paper, adhesive tape, protective covering, business cards, address labels, practical jokes, door stops, kids toys, pet hair remover, sticky notes, even nipple pasties. 

It might look silly, but you can use a nametag for almost anything. This quirky habit, however, is reminiscent of the famous creativity experiments that took place in the fifties and sixties. 

Guilford and his team famously pioneers a large number of influential tests to measure a person’s level of divergent thinking, which is the critical thought process used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. One of these was called the unusual uses test, where subjects were asked to list as many uses as they could for a familiar object, like a brick or a coat hanger, the results of which would derive a person’s fluency, originality, flexibility and elaboration. 

How might you score on such a test? How strong is your ability to imagine the otherwise? Because that’s all creativity is. The courage and willingness and ability to see one thing, and immediately populate a list of other things related to it. 

If you need help in this area, you might try my free software program for developing divergent thinking, Leverage Junkie. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What else can be made from this?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “71 Things Customers Don’t Want to Hear You Say,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Rent Scott’s Brain is part mentoring, part coaching, part consulting, but all strategy. 

Whether in person, via phone, or another digital channel, Scott works with you both strategically and tactically to achieve your goals. 

His brain will be a source of profound holistic improvement for your business. 

You’ll learn powerful strategies for: 

Ideation. Messaging. Storytelling. Platform creation. Brand development. Content strategy. Inbound marketing. Thought leadership. 

You’ve seen what he could do with a nametag, imagine what he could do for you.

Learn more @ www.rentscottsbrain.com.

I believe purpose matters. It’s a deep source of energy and motivation for me. It’s a valuable checkpoint for evaluating my actions. It’s an intelligent way to provide a framework for systematic behavior patterns in everyday life. And it’s the best available cure for my feelings of meaninglessness and anxiety. 

After all, it is easier to get out of bed when you have a horizon to point to. The heaviest burden is having nothing to carry. 

But I also believe that purpose can quickly become bastardized when it’s treated as a another technique. As a superficial personal development tactic that perfectly compartmentalizes life a neat little package.

Look, I’ve read all the books and listened to all the tapes and attended all the seminars and done all the exercises, but I don’t find it useful to have a singular, concise, perfectly crafted mantra of purpose. I don’t find it necessary to have a coherent statement of my life’s ultimate vision. 

Firstly, because purpose is a moving target. It changes every year, if not every six months. Secondly, most people need multiple life purposes. The goal isn’t to find the meaning of life, but to create life’s many meanings. Third, purpose is too important to be reduced to a soundbite nicety. Nothing against people who carry around an index card with a single sentence that encapsulates their entire existence, but frankly, my life isn’t that simple. Purpose isn’t a homework assignment. 

Taoist literature reminds us that words obstruct understanding by creating the illusion of understanding. That words can confine and limit with the deception that the mystery has been captured. That when there is naming, the name is mistaken for what has been named.

And so, don’t be brainwashed into believing that you need to prove your purpose to anyone. There’s no purpose police that’s going to require you to produce, on command, a tidy little statement that trivializes the governing principles of your existence. 

In fact, sometimes the quest for purpose actually takes you away from what matters most. Because you will never live your purpose if you’re too busy trying to define it. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you searching for the meaning of life or the experience of being alive?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “71 Things Customers Don’t Want to Hear You Say,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Rent Scott’s Brain is part mentoring, part coaching, part consulting, but all strategy. 

Whether in person, via phone, or another digital channel, Scott works with you both strategically and tactically to achieve your goals. 

His brain will be a source of profound holistic improvement for your business. 

You’ll learn powerful strategies for: 

Ideation. Messaging. Storytelling. Platform creation. Brand development. Content strategy. Inbound marketing. Thought leadership. 

You’ve seen what he could do with a nametag, imagine what he could do for you.

Learn more @ www.rentscottsbrain.com.

My nametag is my passport. 

It’s a guest pass that makes me feel welcomed everywhere. With the nametag, I’m instantly friends with everybody everywhere, no matter what country I’m traveling through. It enables a positive, personal and memorable experience with people of different cultures. And it builds a bridge to people who may look different on the outside, but have the same wiring on the inside. 

And yet, whenever I’m hired to give a speech in a foreign country to tell the story about my nametag, I’m always concerned that my message will get lost in translation. That my ideas will fly right over the audience’s head. And that the people will have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, smile and nod, and politely thank me for making the journey. 

But each time I perform abroad, humanity proves me wrong. Because although the audience may not speak my native tongue, they all understand the universe language that my message represents. 

Friendliness, connection, hospitality, vulnerability, creativity, identity and commitment, you don’t need a translator for those. People get it. No matter where they’re from. Those ideas are fundamental to the human experience. That’s why the nametag works everywhere. 

And so, for anybody who wants their message to travel cross culturally, success is more than just superficially modifying your color scheme and tweaking your references and adapting your language to fit that particular culture’s style. 

It’s about fully integrating your humanity into your work from day one. It’s about building universal relatability into your product before it meets the world. If you treat it as the last step in the process, as the veneer you layer on top of the message after it’s been finely crafted, you’re already too late. 

Start globallier earlier. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What makes your message universally relatable?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “23 Boundary Questions to Help You Draw the Line,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Rent Scott’s Brain is part mentoring, part coaching, part consulting, but all strategy. 

Whether in person, via phone, or another digital channel, Scott works with you both strategically and tactically to achieve your goals. 

His brain will be a source of profound holistic improvement for your business. 

You’ll learn powerful strategies for: 

Ideation. Messaging. Storytelling. Platform creation. Brand development. Content strategy. Inbound marketing. Thought leadership. 

You’ve seen what he could do with a nametag, imagine what he could do for you.

Learn more @ www.rentscottsbrain.com.

All creativity begins with the moment of conception. 

That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here.

Based on my books in The Prolific Series, I’m going to be deconstructing my favorite moments of conception from popular movies. Each post will contain a video clip from a different film, along with a series of lessons we can learn from the characters.

Today’s clip comes from the voice scene from Field of Dreams:

When you make anything, you compete with everything. It used to be so simple. Create something worth
talking about, and people will talk about it. If you build it, they will come.
Piece of cake. I almost laugh at the number of times the story about my nametag went viral. I barely had to lift a finger. Because in
the beginning of the digital revolution, news outlets and publications and
other media properties didn’t perceive an interesting story as something that
competed with their own content. I was never a threat to their business model.
So they gave me tons of ink. Fast forward to today, now everyone runs their own
media company. Everyone is an artist, everyone is publisher, and everyone is in
the ears and eyeballs business. Everyone. Attention has become the most scarce
commodity on the planet, and we’re all vying for it. And the scary part is,
since anybody can create anything for nothing, everybody is competing with
everyone, from everywhere, for everything. The age of compartmentalized
competition is over. The primary currency is keeping the audience’s eyes glued
to the screen. Anything that diverts that precious attention is the enemy. This
bothers me. Every time I launch a new project, I can’t help but think I’m just
throwing another frisbee out the window. Because most people are just not
paying attention. I suppose, then, the answer is to go where the door is
already open. To feed those who are already paying attention so that they will spread
the word for me. It’s horizontal marketing. Side to side, person to person, not
top down. Do you have a
tribe or a group you think you’re marketing to?

Nobody wants hear stories about trouble in paradise.My favoriteauthorhas a great passage about dreams. He writes about
blinking in disbelief, feeling the first rush of euphoria that comes with the
knowledge that life is granting you the grace of a dream realized. It’s divine
experience. Unfortunately, life has a way of taking those fleeting moments of
excitement, those ephemeral senses of wonder, those brilliant flashes of
satisfaction, and replacing them with something called reality. Ugh. Because
once your dream comes true, not only do you have to learn to live with it, you
also have to learn to deal with people who resent you for having and following it.
I have a friend whose lifelong ambition was to relocate to the city of love and
light. Paris.But when she finally
stepped into her dream, she quickly learned that the fantasy of moving there
was vastly different than the reality of living there. Turns out, as romantic
and artistic and beautiful as the city was, it could also be lonely and
isolating and hard to meet people. And to make matters more difficult, she
couldn’t complain about that struggle with anybody. Because her friends and
family weren’t interested hearing the downside of her dream. What the hell. Why
is it that the moment life exceeds your wildest dreams, a knife appears at your
back? Sounds like a country song to me. Dolly Parton said it best herself.
Don’t ask me how I feel about dreaming unless you really have time to listen. Who feels disenfranchised by your dream?

Make use of everything you are. In order to feel fully expressed, to feel that I’m
creating the most value in the world, I constantly ask myself a few questions.
Are there are hidden gifts and talents that deserve a more prominent place in
my life? What personal skills have I not yet tapped into to improve people’s
lives? And might there be unique strategies for contributing to the world that
I have not yet taken advantage of? The answer is always yes. Because on the
mixing console of life, there are always more tracks available than we realize.
But it’s up to us to plug them in. It’s up to us to listen for the whitespace,
consider our ever growing set of assets and imagine what else is there for us
to bring. I once came across a job application for a consulting company. The
agency evaluated candidates on something called a skills maturity matrix.
Pretty inspiring stuff. But when I read their framework, a switch turned on
inside my head.Oh my god.Somebody
else actually has a name for what I’ve been trying to explain. Are these people
psychic? Because under the category calledcounsel,
the framework literally listed every skill I was good at, but wasn’t currently
taking advantage of. Providing feedback that inspires action. Contributing to
the growth of every person connected to you. Offering meaningful, off the cuff
advisement to people. Unearthing valuable new opportunities in the midst of a
conversation. Providing counsel that has an impact.Wow. It’s like they printed my resume for me. That matrix described
my skills perfectly. It gave me clarity and encouragement around my value as a
professional. It helped me understood which tracks on my mixing console needed
to have their levels raised. And it
inspired me to relaunch mymentoring
program.Are you making use of everything you are?

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What did you learn from this movie clip?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “11 Ways to Out Market the Competition,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Given the choice, I would rather exercise steadily for sixty minutes than strenuously for ten. 

In my experience, it’s duration, not intensity, which allows me to break a better sweat, keep my heart rate elevated, lock into flow state and have a more meditative, meaningful experience. 

That’s the way I’m wired. Pure marathon mindset. I’m not playing to win, I’m playing to keep the game going. Of course, countless doctors and fitness instructors and personal trainers and health professionals would disagree with me. Throw a rock and you’ll find yet another ten year longitudinal study that found training at higher intensities was more effective than increased volume for reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease. 

Fine. I’m not a doctor. But what if this wasn’t about exercise? What if duration over intensity was more of a conceptual framework for achieving greatness? 

Mclean wrote one of the great hit songs in music history. But it’s also his only song. Nobody remembers anything else he ever did. Ever. That’s intensity. Good for him.

Morrison, on the other hand, has released more than thirty records and won dozens of prestigious awards and continues to put out great work every year for millions of fans who love him. That’s duration. 

Whose career would you rather have? The flash in the pan one hit wonder who made a splash and then disappeared from the music scene forever, or the steady and solid and consistently working musician who did his art better and better every day until he dies? 

Lefsetz was right when said, momentary blips are not stars, they’re comets. If you don’t last, especially in today’s overloaded, evanescent world, you’re irrelevant. 

Consistency is far better than rare moments of greatness. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you aiming for duration or intensity?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “23 Boundary Questions to Help You Draw the Line,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Rent Scott’s Brain is part mentoring, part coaching, part consulting, but all strategy. 

Whether in person, via phone, or another digital channel, Scott works with you both strategically and tactically to achieve your goals. 

His brain will be a source of profound holistic improvement for your business. 

You’ll learn powerful strategies for: 

Ideation. Messaging. Storytelling. Platform creation. Brand development. Content strategy. Inbound marketing. Thought leadership. 

You’ve seen what he could do with a nametag, imagine what he could do for you.

Learn more @ www.rentscottsbrain.com.