Scott Berkun's Blog, page 37

Book Review: Jung’s Man and His Symbols

I’d heard of the work of Carl Jung by reference, and despite never reading anything he wrote I knew about archetypes and the abused false dichotomy introvert and extrovert. He’s referenced often, even by the Police in the songs and the title of their popular Synchronicity album. I like to read original sources for ideas, and have had a copy of Man and His Symbols for years. I finally read it last week.

The first disappointment is that although this is one of his more popular books, he only wrote the first chapter. The others are authored by followers and colleagues of his who explore different applications of his ideas. It was no surprise that the first chapter is the best in what can be best described as a muddled read. The chapter on symbolism in art was one of the worst for me as I have basic knowledge in art history and found this a second rate walkthrough of familiar turf.

The writing style is an odd kind of academic writing. Ideas are framed in complicated ways and hinge heavily on anonymous accounts of patient’s dreams and their interpretations. While I concede there is much to learn from dreams, and people who study them professionally are better at analyzing them than others, the hand picked cases and their analysis was rarely convincing. It felt like science by unverifiable anecdote, which is fine if the writer admits this, but no such admissions are found here.

The highlights of the book are the general observations of the disconnect in modern life between our unconscious thoughts and our rational, logical lives. The book points out how primitive societies did a better job of balancing expression of those unconscious feelings, through ritual, religion and the attention to dreams, while modern people, despite our mobile phones and streaming movies, are plagued with anxieties born from a lack of socially acceptable means to explore those energies. Dreams represent one opportunity for us to reconnect with these abandoned parts of ourselves, but there clearly are others.

I’m told Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which was Jung’s last book, is more approachable but my curiosity about his ideas has not recovered sufficiently to give him another try.

Here are some choice quotes from the book:

Most of us have consigned to the unconscious all the fantastic psychic associations that every object or idea possesses. The primitive, on the other hand, is still aware of these psychic properties; he endows animals, plants, or stones with powers that we find strange and unacceptable.

Because there are innumerable things beyond the range of human understanding, we constantly use symbolic terms to represent concepts that we cannot define or fully comprehend. This is one reason why all religions employ symbolic language or images. But this conscious use of symbols is only one aspect of a psychological fact of great importance: Man also produces symbols unconsciously and spontaneously, in the form of dreams.

self-control is a rare and remarkable virtue. We may think we have ourselves under control; yet a friend can easily tell us things about ourselves of which we have no knowledge.

A story told by the conscious mind has a beginning, a development, and an end, but the same is not true of a dream. Its dimensions in time and space are quite different; to understand it you must examine it from every aspect—just as you may take an unknown object in your hands and turn it over and over until you are familiar with every detail of its shape.

It is easy to understand why dreamers tend to ignore and even deny the message of their dreams. Consciousness naturally resists anything unconscious and unknown

How To Work With Stupid People

I wrote the popular essay How To Manage Smart People awhile ago, and often heard the feedback: “advice on smart people is easy. Tell us how to work with Stupid people.” I hoped to get to it eventually, but Jason Crawford beat me to it. And he wrote about it in much the way I would have:

 Unless you’re a world-class genius (statistically unlikely), you are probably mis-diagnosing people as stupid.

His post is as a series of questions, almost a checklist, for challenging assumptions. If by chance the person you’re working with is a moron, walking through his post will show you how to think more clearly about whatever it is you’re working on and find a better way to deal with it.

Do you fully understand what they’re saying? Or are you talking past each other?

Are you answering the same question? Maybe each of you is answering a different angle on the question (e.g., “what’s our next step?” vs. “what’s the long-term solution?”)

Are you using terms in the same way? Sometimes disagreements come from differing definitions and terminology.

Are you talking completely in abstractions? Give examples, and ask them for examples, to get clear and concrete

Read the whole post. It’s worth reading once a year, and gift for new leaders and managers.

Inside Buckminster Fuller’s house (w/ photos)

Today is when noted inventor Buckminster Fuller was born in 1895. He’s one of those inventors who had brilliant ideas and inspiring philosophies, but few successful commercial projects or widely adopted inventions. His influence is undeniable as his failures were more inspiring in some ways than the conventional successes of others.

He’s most famous for the geodisic dome, which at the time was heralded as a revolutionary way to build homes and offices using less material. Geodisic means, loosely, forming a curve with straight lines. Spaceship earth at Epcot center (above right) is one of the largest and most famous.  Domes were popular in the 70s, but like many of Fuller’s ideas they proved hard to build and harder to use. Circular buildings are striking to look at, but there are good reasons we build in rectangles,

He also designed the Dymaxion house, first created in 1929. His ambition was similar to the dome: to make construction simpler, while also improving the quality of living homes provide. I visited one of the few Dymaxions in the world at the Ford museum near Detroit. As a fan of his books it was a thrill to get inside a manifestation of his ideas and have a walk around.

Many of the design decisions, including the round shape, were to achieve an autonomous building, or a building that didn’t depend on the power grid or water system. One advantage of the circle was wraparound windows, something possible because of the centrally supported ceiling. But the curved walls make interior design challenging. There are fewer ways to use the space.

The building featured dozens of clever design ideas. The refridgerator and air conditioner were powered by the exhaust from other systems in the house. Everything was reused and recycled. Runoff water was used in the toilets and (in theory) to water gardens.

Some of the shelves rotated when a button is pressed,  maximizing storage space and minimizing the need to bend or reach inside. As with much of his work, this had a branded name (Ovolving shelves).

Since they left many of the style choices (love that green) from when the house was built, it felt like a strange combination of the past and the future, similar to have steampunk stories feel. For example, the floorboards had ventilations shafts that would collect dust, reducing the need to sweep or vacuum.

I’ve read some of his books and am familiar with his inventions, but it powerful to experience one first hand. If you’re in the Detroit area and interested in design and engineering, I recommended checking out the Ford museum for the Dymaxion house alone.

NYC/Boston: Book tour venues wanted

To promote my upcoming book The Year Without Pants I’ll be touring the NYC/Boston area 10/22 thru 10/28.

Just as in the past I’ll use my network to fill the schedule, but this time I wanted to let you folks in NYC/Boston help, if you’re interested.  If you’re not interested in doing some legwork to get to see me speak in person, no worries – but stop reading now.

Here’s how it works:

The goal is attention for the book (surprise)
I seek the biggest crowds I can find 
Preference given to book buying audiences (corporations & universities are excellent)
I don’t charge fees to organizers/hosts
But I do give preference to venues willing to bulk order books
I’ll speak about themes from the new book, but do long Q&As where anything goes
I’m thrilled when organizations open events to the public

Know an organizer that would host me? Perhaps:

Your corporation
A college
A well attended speaker series
A large community group that has regular meetings
A popular bookstore
Your living room (If I have open slots, I’ll fill them any way I can)

If yes, do this:

If you are the organizer, check the schedule below and get in touch
If you’re not the organizer, here’s early praise for the book and my bio to help pitch them

You can contact me this way.

Tentative NYC/Boston tour Schedule:

Mon 10/21: UIE 18, Boston  (all day)

Tues 10/22: AM: UIE 18, afternoon: Open PM: Open

Wed 10/23: AM: / Afternoon: / PM:

Thurs 10/24: AM: / Afternoon: / PM:

Fri 10/25: AM: / Afternoon: / PM:

Sat 10/26: AM: / Afternoon: / PM:

Sun 10/27: AM: / Afternoon: / PM:

Mon 10/28: AM:  Business of Software, Boston

Why is Our Civilization Dying?

Each week I take the top voted question from readers and answer it.  With 49 votes, this week’s winner was “Why is Our Civilization Dying?”:

Why is Our Civilization Dying? Why are we not moving science forward anymore, but instead get fascinated by ridiculous things like new iPhone model or Facebook or Instagram or 3D printers for that matter? Why no one cares about space exploration, biological research, prolonging human life?

Why one would see things of medieval stupidity now, in the XXI century? Like adult people believing in ghosts, angels, fairies, vampires, what not? Why “rights” of all kinds of morons and perverts are becoming more important than the common good of the human kind? Is this just a natural decline of a civilization, or someone is driving us there?

Before I answer this entertainingly overloaded question directly, I need to set the stage with some supporting arguments.

1. We suffer from projecting false uniformity to support theories. It’s hard to measure trends on the scale of entire civilizations and we sloppily assume uniformity when it’s convenient for our arguments. This isn’t to say there aren’t trends or that we’re incapable of spotting them, it’s just we’re bad at objectively evaluating wide measures in the past, much less the present. Broad strokes are a magnet for the worst acts of confirmation bias and oversimplification. In this case the planet is big enough to support many different civilizations simultaneously, yet the question assumes there is only one and that it’s shared, an assumption challenged by the number of wars and conflicts around the globe.

2. Progress can happen inside regress. It’s possible for a small group of people in one generation to make great progress despite the majority of people at that time being backward, confused, uncivilized or a thousand other disappointing things. There is a reasonable claim that sometimes progress only happens when things are the worst: only then is there enough motivation for people to act. Stated another way, as bad as thing are sometimes they must get worse before they can get better.

3. Progress is led by minorities. All progress is change and only a minority of people have all three of the necessary qualities:  1) being willing to make sacrifices to make change happen 2) having the superior ideas to pursue and 3) the execution skills required to deliver the idea to the masses.

4. There is an illusion of golden times in the past. When judging the present we often fall victim to comparing it against a mythological golden era that never existed.  Before even trying to answer the original question, it’s helpful to ask another question first: When was our civilization most alive? In America we romanticize the Romans and the Greeks, but both civilizations, despite their achievements, had systematic brutality and inequality. As critical as I am of our species, I agree with Penn Jillette:

Two things have always been true about human beings. One, the world is always getting better. Two, the people living at that time think it`s getting worse.

Given #1 it’s hard to prove this since so much of these observations is subjective, but whenever I step back from my complaints about modern times to carefully review the grand scale of human history, the present always looks far better.

The question, as written, has some easily refutable claims. To say “Why no one cares about space exploration, biological research, prolonging human life?” is at best sloppy thinking. Clearly some people in the world seriously care about all of those things. And given #3 above, I bet the % of people who care about those things is as high or higher than in the past. I’m certain most people have serious interest in living longer, the question is how much of their or their government’s time are invested in pursuing those ideas, which is a different problem (fee free to ask me a follow up question: Why are our governments dying?)

The general fascination with ridiculous and trivial things is hardly new. We have a long and well documented history with being easily obsessed by worthless things. As much as I criticize our technological consumerism, it might also be an indicator of the general health of a civilization. If people are mostly worried about trivial things it means the fundamentals of civilization aren’t daily concerns (food, shelter, employment, etc). Of course when the focus on the trivial could be a denial of real problems that need attention, but interest in Instagram and Angry Birds alone says little.

Freud’s answer to this entire question was to doubt the utility of civilization in the first place. He argued that we traded our sanity for safety on the day we took up permanent shelter with each other, pointing to how our natural psychologies struggle in the systems required to make large scale civilizations work . Some of Jared Diamond’s ideas in The World Until Yesterday run on a similar theme of doubting that civilization itself has progressed us in all the ways we assume it has.

To summarize my answer:

I don’t think civilization is dying.
In many important ways this is the best time to be alive.
I agree there are major problems. We can learn much from the 18th century and other centuries too.
Things will have to get worse before they get better.

Help Wanted: Marketing / research assistant

I’m hiring a marketing assistant to help with the upcoming launch of The Year Without Pants.

I’m hoping one of you smart readers who has skills in marketing and research would dig the chance to work directly with me on a few tasks. Perhaps you’re a college student, or need a part time job, or simply have the right skills and think it would be fun to work with me on something.

Tasks include:

Researching to build a lists of bloggers/media who might be interested in the new book
Planning and executing on outreach to fans and previous reviewers
Finding trade groups and events interested in remote work
Brainstorming with me on fun marketing ideas for the book launch in September

Skills needed:

Excellent Google and web research skills
Master of writing short, clever emails and blog posts
Possession of a wit sharp enough to shave with
Unafraid of mail-merge, mailing lists and large email inboxes
Experience marketing something successfully (be creative if needed)

How you’ll be paid / How much work:

I can pay $25 an hour
5 to 10 hours of work weekly for the next two months
You can work wherever and whenever fits your schedule

How to apply:

To apply I’m asking you do a simple task in line with the job. It should take 20-45 minutes to put together a decent submission. If you’re hired I’ll pay you for this time as well.

Assignment: create a spreadsheet of everyone who  reviewed Making Things Happen
Include fields for source (amazon? Slashdot? Lifehacker? CNN?), reviewer, contact info, and rank of influence
Write a brief summary of how you compiled the list
Include the words “lamiaceous” and “lenocinant” somewhere in your summary
Add a brief statement about your background and why you want the job
Email the above to me at info at scottberkun.com

Want an early copy of The Year Without Pants? (exclusive)

The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work is just a few weeks away from releasing. It’s already earned endorsements from Tim Ferriss, Guy Kawaskai, Tony Hsieh and more.

What happens now is my publisher sends out copies of the book, called gallies, to journalists, magazines and other media so they can review the book when it comes out.

Are you a:

journalist?
magazine editor?
prominent book reviewer?
active blogger?
someone who blogs for a prominent blog?
host of a major TV talk show or owner of a media empire :)

And want a galley? If yes, contact me directly or leave a comment.

Some early praise:

“The Year Without Pants is one of the most original and important books about what work is really like, and what it takes to do it well, that has ever been written.”

—Robert Sutton, professor, Stanford University, and author, New York Times bestsellers The No Asshole Rule and Good Boss, Bad Boss

“WordPress.com has discovered a better way to work, and The Year Without Pants allows the reader to learn from the organization’s fun and entertaining story.”

—Tony Hsieh, author, New York Times best seller Delivering Happiness, and CEO, Zappos.com, Inc.

“The underlying concept—an ‘expert’ putting himself on the line as an employee—is just fantastic. And then the book gets better from there! I wish I had the balls to do this.”

—Guy Kawasaki, author, APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur, and former chief evangelist, Apple

“If you want to think differently about entrepreneurship, management, or life in general, read this book.”

—Tim Ferriss, author, New York Times best seller The 4-Hour Workweek

Book review: Your First 1000 copies – a guide to marketing books

Last night I read Your First 1000 copies: The step by step guide to marketing your book by Tim Grahl of Out:Think. He has done book marketing for Dan Pink and other high profile authors, and the book outlines some of the methods he’s used and why you should use them. It’s a good book and I recommend it.

I’ve read several books on book marketing and this is the first one that was a pleasure to read. Grahl writes well, makes his points directly and unlike the majority of books written by marketers about marketing is calm, clear, hype-free and honest. Although short, the book doesn’t read as a tease to hire his company (which many books do). He justifies the use of tactics that aren’t sexy or the easiest to try, but the ones that have been the most effective. And most surprising of all (for a marketing book), all of his approaches are founded on treating potential readers with respect.

As far as methods: the central tactic he believes in is email, yes email, and how all his data points to its superiority for authors in maintaining connections with readers and leading to eventual sales. He explains why and  how and the book provides many links to his site with his latest answers for the best tools to use for everything he advises (a nicely done win/win for garnering traffic to his site). He offers a sane framing of twitter, Facebook and social media. Minor coverage is provided to blogging, speaking and other common methods.

I was also happy to see his charts that dismiss the singular drive to make bestseller lists, as many books with shallow marketing hit those lists once, and then have sales that plummet, as the marketing wasn’t built to be sustainable. It’s a rarely discussed fact that many books on the bestseller lists are outsold in the long run by books that never come close to having a bestselling week.

Grahl has been heaviliy influenced by Seth Godin, and if you’re familiar with his Tribes ideas, some of Your First 1000 copies will be familiar in philosophy. To market a book you need to build a group of people interested in your work, and the ideas you represent, and the book is simply part of that system of exchange you have with followers. Grahl does detail how to do this, and does it with more precision for authors than you’ve probably seen before. But there’s no gimmick or trick here. This is an authentic  permission based marketing approach to marketing books.

The primary weakness of the book, which perhaps isn’t one at all, is the book requires lead time to be of use. It takes time to build a following, time an author whose book comes out in a few weeks will struggle to do. His methods, like most good marketing for books, make the most sense for authors who believe they’ll write more than one book. Marketing books is hard. It’s an extremely competitive landscape.  It requires a long term commitment, a commitment most one time authors are unlikely to want to make (or can’t make as all of their available energy goes into the book itself). This is a minor criticism since this is simply a fundamental truth.

The book is short and an easy read. I read the whole thing in an hour. It was a pleasure and was worth the time and money.

 

New site feature: Control My Mind (Ask Berkun)

I’ve been working with the folks at FreshMuse on a new feature: Mind Control.

I’ve always enjoyed Q&A with you folks (see reader’s choice) – now I have a way to ensure this happens all the time.

We’ve built a beta version of Ask Berkun. You get to control my mind and pick what I write about each week.

You can:

Submit a question you want me to write about
Vote on other submissions
You get 30 votes a month (for now)

I will:

Pick the top voted question each week and write about it

It’s a BETA version. You may find bugs. If you do, please report them here as a comment.

Have fun.

http://scottberkun.com/ask/

Movie review: Tales From The Script (The business of writing films)

Screenwriting is hard, but what’s harder is selling a screenplay and getting a film made. The best documentary I’ve seen about the business of screenwriting is Tales From The Script, currently streaming on Netflix.

The movie is a series of interviews of the screenwriters behind many famous films of the last decade:

William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)
Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver)
John Carpenter (Halloween)
Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption)


David Ward (Sleepless in Seattle)
David Hayter (X-Men)
Ron Shelton (Bull Durham)
and many more

They each tell brutally honest stories of how they got started, what meeting with film executives is like, the surprising trajectory of their careers, and more. Plenty of lessons for writers of all kinds.

In many ways the film is an endorsement for the DIY movement, as I couldn’t help thing all throughout the film “Why would I bother with the system when I could just do the whole thing myself?”