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rick:caffeinated

discussing online interaction & networking from the corner table...

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Meaningful Together

Written February 6, 2012 by in connections, life attitude

Ever stop to think about what you’re doing and why? about what we as a nation are creating and why?

So here’s a tiny hypothesis: maybe the real depression we’ve got to contend with isn’t merely one of how much economic output we’re generating — but what we’re putting out there, and why. Call it a depression of human potential, a tale of human significance being willfully squandered….

via Create a Meaningful Life Through Meaningful Work – Umair Haque – Harvard Business Review.

Today is Monday, and most of us are going back to work after a weekend, after a Super Bowl. We’re going back to jobs we left last week, to do things we left pending Friday. Some of us are at desks. Others are walking past lockers to an assembly line. Still more are getting things ready for dealing with customers or cleaning up after messy folks.

In the article linked above, Umair asks important questions about what we are doing and how it’s effecting our bottom lines, our lives, and our legacy down the road. He asks if it stands the test of time, if it stands the test of excellence, and if it stands the test of you – in the end, was it meaningful and was it worth it? Those are big questions, deep things for us who are just trying our best to do our thing and to answer YES to each of them.

I’ll add one that, as I read it, is also in the mix of the articles thoughts and questions: does it make life better for those we are with now and for those to follow after?

We do not work in a vacuum. The work we do today impacts people today, and will add something to the mix for tomorrow in ever-widening ripples of influence. I think the way we do that work has as much of an effect as what it is we’re working on. What we make and how we make it is important for now and for later. Yes, economic success is important – but alongside is relational success, being friendly and kind, and working hard with good attitude. Those things all work together to make something worth making. Meaning comes from the experience of the whole, not just the end of the means. Worth comes from the time together and the progress made at least as much as the end result.

So today, we decide to work hard at the same time we decide to play nice together. We add “smile more” and “say thanks” to the to-do list’s tasks and meeting reminders. We will think things through for not only if this will work but also throwing in questions like “is this the best we can do?” and “would my kids be impressed?” - I have the feeling that this is the kind of thing that, if acted upon, will make a bigger difference. And it’s not just the feel-good emotional side, but the very bottom-line economics of our world that will feel the effects of meaningful and relational work practices taking each other into account as well.

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#TweetThat

Written February 1, 2012 by in twitter

This week, Facebook is supposed to be opening the doors for one of the biggest IPOs in history. Around Rick:Caffeinated, you know that that means: LET’S TALK ABOUT TWITTER. So here’s a few notes and thoughts about my personal go-to social platform:

  • My @rickcaffeinated twitter handle has been around since May 2007. 43.5K tweets later, and I’m still pretty sure my food tweets are the most annoying things in my feed.
  • The idea for this topic popped up when someone from Instagram used Kik to tell me about her Mom getting on Twitter. So @rickcaffeinated on IG led to a message to @rickcaffeinated on Kik, and a DM on Twitter to @rickcaffeinated to tell me to check Kik. Once I remembered passwords…
  • … the question was about finding information to share with Seniors about how to use Twitter. I googled it, as I am want to do, and found that there’s a ton of stuff out there: “twitter for seniors”.
  • And I bring all of that up to point out that one of the great qualities for me on Twitter is that it’s a very central platform. It’s a good connector to all those other spaces, and I didn’t miss a beat when someone was trying to ask a question. That’s briliant – having a spot that other spots can point to, can communicate with, can connect to for passing information along the nodes.
  • This post’s title comes from Dabo Swinney‘s infamous post-game rant against the Gamecocks, ending brilliantly with “Tweet that!” – to which Gamecock Nation promptly tweeted the score of the game: SC 34, Clemson 13.
  • And since I’ve titled the post as “Tweet That”, seems appropriate to plug Ricky Gervais‘ new BBC show:

Those are just a few top-of-my-head bulletpoints on Twitter. I apologize for the lack of anything really helpful – except of course that SC Gamecock football score up there.

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Kickstarting Monday

Written January 30, 2012 by in life attitude, personal, reputation

Have you thought about what success means for you right now?

Satisfaction is keeping us from our best work

I think it was Steven Pressfield who said that if you do something long enough, if you get serious about any craft (including writing), there comes a time when it begins to “kick your ass.” When you break down and cry, because it’s just so hard — that’s a great place to be.

via Are You Satisfied? | Goins, Writer.

As I watch the GOP debates and last week’s State of the Union, I’ve noticed that “success” is a hot topic. The President wants to point to successes in the economy while the opposing Party wants to point out the lack. Among themselves, some Republicans want to make a big deal of one candidate’s wealth while playing down their own inconsistencies. It’s like we’re not sure what success should be, not completely on board on what it looks like.

Maybe that’s what made Jeff Goins’ post linked above stand out to me: satisfaction might be hiding us from what real success can be. In the context of the election, the debates, and the primaries, all of these folks are successful. As some leave the race, they’re still successful. Win or lose, they are successful in what they’re doing. Are any of them satisfied? I don’t think so – or at least, if a front-runner becomes complacent, it looks like the market corrects itself and that candidate loses a key state or falls too deep in the polls. It’s either a wake-up call or a “suspending my campaign” press conference.

Do we give up too easy, though? Do we press through only so far, then when it gets too tough of things don’t go the way we thought… “well, God must not be in this…” and we stop moving forward. Resistance causes us to change direction at best, to turn around altogether at worst.

But resistance is where we find we need more push. Obstacles show us where we need more dexterity and flexibility. Problems and downturns might be just the thing we need to work out something even better – not to necessarily park the car and stop the journey.

Where there’s satisfaction, there’s not much drive. Where there’s success-to-a-point, we find folks stopped and stagnating. I’m just wondering this morning if I’m ready to push through the good parts, to give some oomph to the resistance, and to find a new level of success somewhere through all that.

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Big Brands, Little Shops, and Branded Twitter

Written January 28, 2012 by in business, social media, twitter

[Management Note: The post below was built with Storify and the Storify plug-in for WordPress, but that does not mean it's all good. Our testing has shown that most netbook/desktop browsers have rendered the piece well. But further time with mobile/tablet devices have been hit-or-miss. Please use caution in opening the following post. Well, at least don't hold it against Rick when you can't read the blasted thing. He's trying, and that's something. Thank you for your continued support. - p.s., there's nothing evil or corrupt about the post, just that it's goofy on some screens.]

[Management Note #2: On second thought, we've replaced the scripted conversation with a link to the Storify page. This has been deemed by our IT/R&D department to be safer for all concerned. Please click through and enjoy - and don't tell Rick. We're keeping it from him to protect his fragile ego.]

I had a conversation on Twitter about the new branded pages they platform was offering. And I’ve added the Storify plug-in to this wordpress blog. So, synergy being what it is, here’s my first storified-twitter-conversation blogpost. Any thoughts?

On Storify: Big Brands, Little Shops, and Branded Twitter

My thoughts in and around the use of social media for business is that most things I learn and try out are very scalable. That means that the big corporate wonks can do something, and the small mom & pop shops can emulate it to a point. In a locale, the two different-sized companies have a more equal footing.

But the new Twitter offering for corporate pages, to me, seems like overkill at best. It’s not necessary for the bigger companies who can already do much of their sales/profits push on other platforms.

At worst, it looks like it’s giving the bigger companies an edge that might not be as scalable for the small local businesses that needs to be able to point to a level playing field in today’s economy. Smaller shops don’t have the time to do much in the way of social media. Where twitter was pretty even for conversations, now having the extra branding/sales capability might be more than a local businessowner is able to bite into.

But that’s just my thoughts, and I see the points in the conversation above as well. I’m open to seeing what’s going on as Twitter rolls out whatever this new thing is. And I hope local/small is able to build on something positive to stay in the game with global/big.

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