Avi's Blog

Get Your Hustle On: Accomplish Anything with Massive Action

July 24, 2008 in Uncategorized with Comments Off

I’ve been walking around for a few days now with the phrase “massive action” in my head. I knew that I had read it somewhere as a productivity and motivation hack/mantra, but couldn’t place it. Finally, I turned to google, well the search bar of all my feeds in google reader to be precise, and found that I had come across it in an awesome post on Rock Your Day, a productivity blog from Dave Navarro. I have started to think of this idea of taking massive action to accomplish a goal with the word “hustle”.

Dave’s Pillow Test

One of Dave’s central points is that Massive Action is the proper response to the question

How do I want to feel when I put my head on my pillow tonight?

After a day when I have really worked my butt off I feel accomplished, energized, and confident that my goals are in reach. That’s what massive action can offer.

Consistency

The hardest thing about hustling for massive action is staying consistent. It helps to take things one step at time. Chunking work into smaller pieces can make a project a lot less scary. A good tip for chunking is too tell yourself that you are going to spend a set amount of time doing consistent work- 5 to 10 minutes at most. Set a timer if you want, but force yourself to focus for the time you alot. The idea of this habit is to stretch the length of time you can focus with practice. Eventually you’ll find you want to work longer and, shock of shocks, that you are actually engrossed in the work.

If the work required to move towards your goal is unpleasant, boring, or as a good friend of mine would say, “isn’t to your taste”, then embrace the suck! Dig in, build a rhythm, and get your hands dirty, whatever you do don’t stop and don’t sit idle.

Get YOUR Hustle On!

My main goal right now and the project that I’ve been hustling for the most is networking and searching for my first job. I want to work in marketing, public relations, or community management and apply my hustle and experience at an awesome company or nonprofit organization.

On Monday explore the advantages of baby steps and small actions. Until then…

What are you doing with your hustle? What’s your biggest project or goal right now, or if it’s intimidating to specify the most important, then identify any goal. Share what your hustling for along with a tip or trick you use to stay on target in the comments!

Meshuga Links

June 26, 2008 in Uncategorized with Comments Off

Do You Stand For Something?: Can Money Buy Happiness?

Relevant research on the psychology of happiness tied in to practical advice for companies and orgs.

Tags: psychology of happiness, psychology

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Blogging Procrastination, Perfection, and Permission to be Human

June 25, 2008 in blogging with 6 Comments

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?

awesome esher remix

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

Marine Debris and the Incredible Garbage Patch

June 24, 2008 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine features a worthwhile article about plastic in the oceans today. The problem is especially alarming in the North Pacific where The North Pacific Gyre, one of five naturally occurring ocean Gyres in the world, causes plastic to accumulate at high concentrations as it rotates in the 5 ocean gyres North Pacific.

Differing Approaches

The article highlights a number of approaches being taken in the environmental community to respond to the crisis.

The mission of the International Coastal Cleanup, an annual project to clean beaches across the world, is focused on raising awareness of the problem by educating volunteers. Other organizations, like GoAK which recently completed a months long project to clean the shore of Alaska’s Gore Point, aim to begin the immense work of actually cleaning up the plastic piece by piece.

Charles Moore, who’s work is also discussed in the article, has been conducting research in the famed “Garbage Patch” reported to be the size of Texas at the heart of the Gyre. I discovered a 12 part video series project that he captained recently along with a professor from the University of Missouri in a post from Social Butterfly.

Also check out this embedded video of some of Moore’s work.

All of this has me thinking much more seriously about where the stuff we throw out winds up. Most of that plastic comes from cities dumping their trash directly into the ocean rather than individuals tossing things overboard from ships and piers. The city of Los Angeles is considering a plan to stop all dumping by the year 2016! That’s great, but what does that mean about what we’re dumping now? We don’t know what happens to our trash. It’s burned, buried, and dumped who knows where, but it still has a consequence somewhere.

Are you blown away as much as I am? Does it make you want to recycle more? Start using permanent bottles and tap water more? I’m curious what people think so do share in the comments.

DimP Radical Video Viewing

May 26, 2008 in Uncategorized with Comments Off

Check out DimP now. They’re developing a novel way to view videos with the potential to impact security, forensics, sports, and other fields.

Video: 100 ppl 100 ages

May 26, 2008 in Uncategorized with 4 Comments

Great video that I found over at See What’s Out There.

Video Case Study – American Jewish World Service

May 8, 2008 in social media with Comments Off

Well the contest from my last post didn’t go quite as I had planned. I had hoped to learn from you about your favorite charities, but for now I will be choosing one of mine, American Jewish World Service, to receive the $10 donation. If you’d like to help this cause out too, you can visit their take action page where you can not only donate funds, but also get involved in a number of advocacy efforts as well. Also, I really do want your input though so next time don’t be afraid to take me up on it

AJWS On the Brain

AJWS has been on my mind lately for a few reasons. For one, my sister Leah is starting work for them in the New York office on Monday in her new baller communications job! Hurray Leah I’m so proud of you! For another I heard from Rosie de Fremery, the IT director there, on twitter the other night about the aid word AJWS is doing to help in the fallout from the Myanmar cyclone. It’s impressive that they took advantage of the connections they have from organizations they already support there to get involved quickly with the recovery.

Great Video

Here’s an awesome AJWS video I found in a post by Michael Hoffman called The Age of YouTube: Using Online Video to Reach the Masses.

I find find this video to be very effective mostly because of the way it tells a story and relates that story to tangible values that people can connect with. Images of poor Ugandan children that could have been framed as a typical sob story in the tone of a plea are transformed into a message about fulfilling Jewish values and being a good global citizen. My favorite section is this quote from an AJWS volunteer:

“I am so grateful that AJWS is there to allow me to do this. To take my Torah learning to the streets.”

What I like about this video most is the way it shows AJWS as a positive representative of the Jewish people in the world through its efforts and frames a call to action within the seasonal and traditional context of the (at the time) upcoming Passover holiday. What do you like or dislike about it? How could this be improved? What nonprofit videos have inspired YOU to get involved?

Charity Drawing and Free Stuff from Bloggy Giveaways

April 24, 2008 in community with Comments Off

Earlier in explaining Reader Appreciation Day I questioned the effectiveness of giveaways for fostering community. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it , until I found these people.

Holy cow – 800 bloggers giving it away!

The mix of items is really random – there’s odd schwag, books, and even hard cash. My favorites are the charity giveaway from Give It Away blog (684) and the StarWars cookbooks from the Married to the Empire Blog (743). Perfect for making Wookie cookies!

The sheer number of bloggers participating in this giveaway carnival is staggering, and I wonder how much all the schwag really adds to participation. How many readers enter contests and move on and how many really stick and find sites that keep them coming back? Give It Away stood out for me. Amy has some great tips on giving effectively and an important perspective on charitable giving namely looking at tax rebates an opportunity to do good.

Bringing it Home – What charities do you like?

Dave Bochner thinks I should give away the Afikomen to find out. Since it’s Passover, a holiday with themese of charity, I’m going to take a cue from Give It Away instead. You can enter by either leave a note in the comments sharing your favorite charity with us and how it is meaningful to you, Subscribing to my RSS feed and shooting me an email at avi[AT]avisamkaplan[DOT]com to let me know your have and share your charity, linking to or blogging about MeshugAvi, or all three. In a week on May 2nd I’ll draw the winner and donate $10 to their charity of choice. You can also enter by.

Also, if you find anything hilarious in the giveaway carnival, share it with us. There’s no way to check out all these sites and if the Wookie cookies are any indication I’m sure there’s more hidden in there. Just remember that most of these contests close this weekend.

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