Humans aren’t the only animals that think, but they are the only animals that drive themselves crazy with their thinking. 

It’s a problem of proportion. 

In our modern world where information is coming at us from every possible angle, faster than our constitutions can possibly handle, we treat every piece of information as a crisis. 

And when we fail to realize the violent consequences that repeated thinking can have on our psyches, we’re end up thinking ourselves into a negative mood, a bout of depression, or worse yet, a full blown panic attack. 

That’s why we need filters. Tools that allow us to close the open loops of life quickly and easily. Whatever it takes to keep us from putting so much goddamn thought into everything. 

One filter that’s especially helpful for hyper creative, intellectual, racing brain types like myself, is to reduce decision making to a simply binary question. Here are a few examples from my collection. 

Does this make me money or make me happy? 

Is my life better with or without this? 

Is what I’m doing right now consistent with my number one goal? 

Will this course of action simplify or complicate my daily existence? 

I’ve used questions like these for so many years, that they’ve become second nature. Muscle memory. Internalized processes. 

That’s why my stress level is a fraction of what it used to be. Because I’ve freed myself from the obligation to entertain every single thought.

I’ve established healthy mental boundaries that inform the world there are no emergencies. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you vigilant in what you give importance to in your thinking?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

Opening a stubborn jar is a universal human struggle. 

Even
if we do use brute force, then wrap
the jar in a rubber glove, smack the lid with a spoon, run it under boiling
water and whip out one of those handy silicon kitchen openers for old people
with arthritis, sometimes, that stupid lid still won’t budge. 

It’s infuriating.
You almost have to convince yourself that you’re not ever hungry anymore. 

Unless, of course, you hand the jar off to somebody else around the house.
Somebody who has no emotional stake in the outcome. Somebody who will open the
jar in three seconds without contorting their face into a mask of hatred and
rage. 

There you go! Thanks for loosening the lid for me. Enjoy your pickles. 

The creative process works in a similar way. 

What stands
in the way, though, is when we want to be right. And complete and prepared. And
wholly protected as we walk into the board room with our idea tucked under our
arm like a prize. 

We want to be the
one who opens the jar, and nobody else. 

Sadly, that level of security isn’t
always available to us. Sometimes we have no choice but to be intellectually
vulnerable. And humble enough to share our ideas with the group before they’re
fully formulated. 

It’s like a particle accelerator for creativity. We throw the
idea into the void, let it hit the wall and shatter into a million pieces, and
we trust that someone on our team will pick it up and run with it. 

And no
matter who ultimately gets the credit, we can take pride in the fact that we
loosened the lid. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How intellectual vulnerable are you willing to be? * * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

I have a therapist friend who uses an interesting technique to keep clients focused during phone sessions. 

Within the first few minutes, before digging into the heart of the matter, he asks the following question:

Is there anything on the top of your mind that might distract you during this call? 

It’s a simple, respectful and practical tool for setting context. 

Not just for the client, but for the therapist as well. Because he’s working solely from audio. And if his client is secretly checking email during the phone call, he’ll never know. 

But asking this question encourages people to be fully present with each other and acutely aware of what’s on their minds. 

Who knows? Without such a gesture, the first twenty minutes of the therapy session might be biased, distracted, or even dishonest. 

Not exactly a healing environment. 

Next time you sit down with a client, give them the gift of conversational context. 

Ask them to name the mental obstacles that might interfere with the task at hand. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Is communicating with you a relaxing experience?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

What if pooping was gamified?

What if giraffes didn’t doubt?

What if fish fat became spreadable?

What if resting bitch face had its own symposium?

What if you could publicly shame people to make the world more efficient?

In this episode of Steal Scott’s Ideas, Brittany, Sara and Zohar gather in Brooklyn for some execution in public. 

# # #

Execution Lesson 103: Almost everything is noise

Every beautiful thing that has ever been created in this world was made by somebody who didn’t have time.

Tolstoy had thirteen children and he still managed to author one of the longest, most celebrated and bestselling novels in the history of literature. What’s your excuse?

Of course, that was a century and a half ago. Things are different now. The world wants to distract you. In the economy of the past, companies made money by being useful to people. Now companies make their money by distracting us with ads.

The fundamental business question went from, how can we help you, to, how can we distract you? Tragic.

However, that doesn’t justify your lack of execution. That doesn’t make procrastination more acceptable. In fact, it should be easier than ever to get things done.

Because almost everything is noise. Everything. And since the technology to execute is better and cheaper and more available than ever before, all you have to do is press a few buttons.

It’s simply a matter of permission. Believing that people are waiting for the good you can do. Believing that your work is a welcome presence that’s creating value for people and that’s worthy of people’s attention.

Tolstoy didn’t write his masterpiece because there were enough hours in the day, he wrote it because there was enough fire in his belly.

It’s a modern version of the general theory of relativity. Nobody has enough time to do anything. It’s all permission.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What excuses are you still making to justify your procrastination?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Buy my latest devotional! 

A Year in Hot Yoga: 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat. 

Now available wherever books are sold.

Namaste.

When my grandmother turned eighty, we decided to move her into a senior living facility. 

It was a tough transition. 

Edie naturally had a lot of sadness and apprehension about the move, as any elderly person would. 

Can you imagine assimilating into a new community at that stage of life? You’re out of practice making friends, feeling shy about being the new kid, and coming into a strange environment where everybody else already knows one another. 

As if growing old wasn’t scary enough. 

But my grandmother, someone who never met a stranger in her whole life, decided to be proactive. She asked me to write out a stack of hundred nametags that she could wear around the facility. 

Always the comedian, she told me:

Look, most of these old farts have memory problems anyway, so let’s do them a favor. 

After all, she was only eighty. Edie was one of the young ones in the joint. 

Fast forward about a month later, my family stopped by for a visit. And not surprisingly, every single resident and staff member already knew my grandma by name. She was like the mayor. 

The executive director even came up to us and shared some stories about how our grandmother was the only person whose name the other residents could actually remember. 

Lesson learned, approachability isn’t a big thing, it’s a hundred little things. It’s less about labor and time and more about intention and attention. 

Expending emotional energy for people and delighting in the humanity of personalization. 

Next time you find yourself a stranger in a strange land, do people a favor. 

Give them one less thing to worry about. Give them one less thing remember. 

And they’ll never forget you. 

Happy Birthday Mimi.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What’s your nametag? 

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

Getting sick can be painful. 

But getting angry and frustrated at ourselves for being sick, that can be suffering. 

Because it’s an extra layer of resistance and confusion and despair that we create in reaction to our pain, which actually compounds the hurt and makes us feel worse than we really are. 

My own needs insult me. I’m not crying because the stomach bug hurts, I’m crying because I’m the kind of person who shouldn’t even have the bug in the first place. 

The goal, then, is learning to forgive ourselves when our bodies fail us. Not to become disgusted with our own needs, but to accept and respect ourselves as people who have them. 

Gawain’s book on true prosperity puts it perfectly. 

Every one of us is born into this life with the innate power to make our contribution and to create fulfillment for ourselves. However, this power needs to be developed. Most of us have been wounded during the course of our lives in ways that cause us to doubt or deny our own true power. Feeling somewhat helpless to meet our own needs, we repress them. Going through life unconscious of our own real desires. 

It’s all a matter of expectation. We suffer not only because things go wrong, but because things go wrong against a backdrop of what we expected. 

Turns out, though, there are no rules saying that we must be independent. 

Each of us is entitled to have our needs met. No matter how silly they sound.  

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Where in your life do you feel above the situation, as if this should not be happening to you?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

For many centuries, much of human behavior has been driven by the fear of becoming an outcast from the herd. 

Our primitive instincts remind us to keep the spirits happy, keep the tribe’s nest warm and safe, and show allegiance to the chief and the clan. 

Lest we’re banished into the wilderness to go die a horrible death. 

But in the past few decades, there’s been a shift. Now the popular opinion seems to be:

If you’re not an anarchist revolutionary contrarian who’s escaping the corporate grind to start your own business and fight conformity and rebel against the status quo to create an unconventional career on your own terms so you can cash in on your passion…

…then you’re a fucking loser. Your life is bereft of meaning. 

You must reject the herd, or be cast to the bowels of hell. 

Southpark wrote a brilliant television episode about this very issue. Stan asks his new gothic metal friends: How do I join your gang? 

To which their leader replies:

If you want to be one of the nonconformists, all you have to do is dress like us and listen to the same music we do. Plus, drink coffee. You can’t be a nonconformist if you don’t drink coffee. 

It’s such a bizarre inversion of social shaming. People are ostracized and judged for not rejecting the herd. They’re shamed for not being a sovereign nation. As if the world only belongs to the ruthless, the radicals and the destroyers of all that has gone before, and if you’re not part of that tribe, off with your head. 

This mindset bothers me. Because there’s no conformity committee that says we can’t embrace the herd in one part of our lives, while fighting the status quo in another. 

It’s not a binary. We can do whatever we want. I’ve run my own business for sixteen years, but I’ve also held a number of other day jobs as well, both part time and full time. 

Because I’m not religious about how I made my money. I want to be smart about providing for myself, making whatever arrangements are needed in order to be fulfilled. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Should you quit your day job to follow your dream, or try folding that dream into your everyday life?* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

People want to be strong. 

They want to figure things out on their own and decide for themselves what a good course of action is. 

And so, we have to prepare ourselves for their stubbornness. Because in order for them to come to their own conclusions, they’re going to conduct exhaustive research. They’re going to question and reject all expert opinions. And they’re going to do whatever else it takes to satisfy their overwhelming appetite for information and justification. 

Regardless of how many times we try to remind them that there is strength in needing others. 

It’s frustrating as hell. The urge to fix and solve is strong. 

But we can’t walk the path for them. All we can do is be patient. And forgiving. And accepting. And loving. And compassionate. 

Buddha said that if we give problems enough time and space, eventually, they’ll wear themselves out. 

Perhaps the same lesson applies to people’s obstinacy. 

They don’t need answers and solutions, they need the magical healing properties of time and space. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How patient are you with people who insist on being skeptical and strong?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

It pains me to say it, but our friendship is running on fumes. 

Our conversations are loaded with quips, but short on heart. Few new memories are being made anymore. And whenever we get together, we spend most of the time looking in the rear view mirror. 

Because despite our history together, we no longer have anything in common. 

Our paths have parted in different directions. 

The good news is, I’m not alone in this moment. There’s a touching article from a modern love magazine that tells a similar story about a childhood friend whose relationship is fading.

For most of us, keeping in touch with long distance friends means a phone call once or twice a month. But we all know how quickly one missed phone call becomes two, and one month becomes six. And looking around to see that a friend has drifted downstream leaves us feeling guilty and too exhausted to do the necessary back paddling to catch up with them. 

It’s the saddest thing. But despite our feelings of guilt and sense of loss around our fading relationship, the question is, can we forgive reality for being what it is? Can we accept that neither person did anything wrong? Can we trust that each of us will find a way to live on without each other? 

And most importantly, can we be grateful for the time shared and memories made and gifts given when that door was still open? 

One can only hope so. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How will you react when coffee dates have drifted past your physical reach? 

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

Carlin used to do a brilliant comedy routine about hair. 

He would complain about guys who shaved their heads completely bald. They were so ashamed that they lost eleven hairs that they tried to transform their look into some kind of masculine statement. 

George said:

Shaving your head is ugly and repulsive and disgusting. If you really want to have no hair, do what I did. Wait a while. In the meantime, there’s no excuse for running around looking like a freshly circumcised dick. 

It’s a perfect metaphor for a much larger human problem, which is our inability to delay gratification. Because we have this insatiable need to get better and stronger and smarter and more mature, right now. 

Time’s a wasting. Better employ every new life hack and force multiplier available so we can speed up the process of growth. 

But the reality is, not everything can be rushed. As the saying goes, nine women can’t have a baby in a month. 

Sometimes the way to improve our situation is to just wait it out. 

There’s a writer that I’ve been mentoring for several years that loves to ask me about which practices and tricks and tools have made me a better writer. And although there are usually recommendations that I can offer, the best suggestion is to echo the words of my comedian hero. 

Wait a while. 

Keep showing up every day, trust the creative process to do its thing according to its own clock, and eventually you’ll wake up and realize that you’re better than you used to be. 

It’s not a very satisfying answer, but there are no shortcuts to meaningful change. The greatest path to grow is not going away.

Lincoln said it best:
 

Time is a great thickener of things. 

If you want to lose your hair, don’t shave your head. Wait a while. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Do you still get outraged when you can’t impose your own time frame on growth? 
* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.