Friends, election day has finally arrived and I love it. For one thing the threshold for talking to strangers has dropped out of the floor. “Nice sticker man!” to the guy passing you in the crosswalk will win you a big smile from just about anyone today. The elevator ride down from my office, normally a silent affair had everyone chatting about where they were heading out to, or what their experience was like in the morning. I got cheers when I shared that I had sent my absentee ballot off to Florida last week.

An Election of WE

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Seth Godin’s lessons from the election. He write about the centrality of stories. Here’s the section that resonates with me down at the bottom.

“So why didn’t the ads work this time?

The tribe that Obama built identified with him. Attacking him was like attacking them. They took it personally, and their outrage led to more donations and bigger turnout. This is the lucky situation Apple finds itself in as well. Attacking an Apple product is like attacking an Apple user.”

Over over again this election season people speak about how “we’ve have to win” and how “we’re going to pull through”. My grandfather has been using the same WE with me since June and I enjoyed reading about Seth and Jackie’s voting stories from across the pond too.

Track Results

There are a ton of places to track election results tonight. I was also happy to find that MSNBC is streaming their coverage live- the quality is pretty good, so if you find yourself without a tv – never fear! You can get a nice bird’s eye view of coverage at Alltop too and Read Write Web has a nifty Election Day Web Tool Kit.

Also, if you’re into the wisdom of crowds you can check out Daily Kos’ predictions contest though that I’d bet that demographic is skewed enough to negate the theory in this case.

Election Day Schwag

There’s a ton of free stuff around town this election day.
(I’m writing this post from Starbucks across from my office as I enjoy my free coffee.)

Happy Election day everyone!

If you haven’t seen Randy Pausch’s last lecture on achieving your childhood dreams that has been floating around the Internet yet, watch it now. I’ll wait.

What an awesome and insightful human being. Seriously if you haven’t seen it it is worth the hour long investment if only to see hear his wry jokes and see him pull off those one-handed push ups.

One of the most insightful things I learned from Randy is the role of brick walls.

“Brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”

What a great attitude. I talked about something similar in my first MeshugAvi Blog post ever. There is no doubt in my mind that Tal Ben-Shahar would have shown a clip of Randy talking about this idea in class for that session. He’s just nailed the right attitude to achieving your dreams on the head and for me it ties in nicely to my earlier thoughts on massive action.

Another quote of Randy’s that gets at the idea of embracing the suck during those times when the needed work isn’t to your liking:

“Don’t bail; the best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap.”

So what are the brick walls in your life? How are you going to throw yourself over them or tear them down? What helps aside from massive action?

photo by viZZZual.com

While blogging I often feel that I want a post to be just right. This has even led me to put off posting something for so long that the content is no longer relevant and I’m forced to abandon the post entirely. Time is precious and timing important so why do I waste so much time over thinking?

Deadlines

I got thinking about this again from a post by Tim Ferris on profitability. In his 11th tenet he discusses the importance of deadlines -

“11. Deadlines over Details – Test Reliability Before Capability:
Skills are overrated. Perfect products delivered past deadline kill companies faster than decent products delivered on-time. Test some one’s ability to deliver on a specific and tight deadline before hiring them based on a dazzling portfolio. Products can be fixed as long as you have cash-flow, and bugs are forgiven, but missing deadlines is often fatal. Calvin Coolidge once said that nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent; I would add that the second most common is smart people who think their IQ or resume justifies delivering late.”

His thinking about products informs my sentiment about deadlines in blogging. I also see a tie in to the Positive Psychology principle of the permission to be human.

Mistakes and Risk

Part of the reason many people are reluctant to hit the publish button is that we are afraid of making mistakes. But mistakes are part of learning! As J.K. Rowling said at my commencement earlier this month, if you aren’t making mistakes, you probably aren’t taking enough risks. Michele Martin, a nonprofit blogger I look up to, posted recently about her desire to take more risk in her professional life. Coincidentally she links to a different but also relevant post by Tim Ferris about big goals.

In any case I have realized that I want to be less of a perfectionist in my blogging and give myself permission to make mistakes. My goal has been to become consistent in my posting and I will never achieve that regularity if I rethink every step I take. Have you noticed yourself setting the bar at perfection or avoiding risk at the expense of growth? In what way? Any advice on how to avoid this trap?

photo by fdecomite

In his Harvard course on Positive Psychology, Tal Ben Shachar talks about the idea of throwing your briefcase over the wall. The sentiment is that sometimes the only way to achieve a goal is to commit yourself entirely. Within the analogy the desire to retrieve the briefcase motivates you to overcome whatever obstacle the wall presents. In the last episode of the first season of The West Wing, President Bartlett references the same idea though the imagery there is of soldiers throwing their hats.

My hope in starting this blog has been to throw my hat and briefcase as far into the void as I can, setting my aspirations high, so hopefully I’ll learn something retrieving them. In this exploration I aim to document some of my discoveries, learn more about my disparate interests – the web, social media, and fun tech tools and nonprofits, social entrepreneurship, history and psychology. With any luck I’ll learn something about the intersection of these two worlds and meet some interesting people along that way. Feel free to get in touch or just say hi, I’m friendly