Author Archives: Steve Mays
Do you have any marketable skills?
If you asked 100 people “Do you consider yourself a success?”, I’d expect 90 of them to answer one of two ways: a) Yes b) Depends on how you define success. (Which sounds like “no” to me)
During my working years (I never thought in terms of ‘career’) I don’t recall thinking in terms of success. My defining question was “Am I enjoying what I’m doing?” Yes. I did, I am. Did I have a system? I would have said, no, I was just lucky.
Reading Scott Adams’ How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big got me thinking about success.
“The best way to increase your odds of success — in a way that might look like luck to others — is to systematically become good, but not amazing, at the types of skills that work well together and are highly useful for just about any job.”
Adams provides a list of skills in which he thinks every adult should gain a working knowledge.
- Public speaking
- Psychology
- Business Writing
- Accounting
- Design (the basics)
- Conversation
- Overcoming shyness
- Second language
- Golf
- Proper grammar
- Persuasion
- Technology (hobby level)
- Proper voice technique
In the book he makes his case for each of these skills. As I read, I evaluated my own knowledge of these skills.
- Public speaking – Got my BA in Speech and Theater, taking lots of public speaking course along the way
- Psychology – a course or two
- Business writing – several books and some courses
- Accounting – almost zero knowledge
- Design – Yeah. Spent the last 10 or 15 years creating and websites for the company and clients
- Conversation – co-hosted daily radio show for a dozen years. Hundreds of interviews
- Overcoming shyness – college and community theater; 10,000 hours of airtime on the radio
- Second language – nope
- Golf – nope
- Proper grammar – writing courses, public speaking, radio, all contributed
- Persuasion – a couple of course in college; wrote countless radio commercials
- Technology – geek wannabe. Got the computer/internet bug early and never lost it
- Proper voice technique – see above
Turns out I had a pretty good handle on 9 of the 13 skills in Adams’ list. Not by design, mind you, just luck. Looking back, however, I can see how these skills combined and overlapped to make me well-suited to the work I wound up doing.
I can here all those zippers coming down, ready to piss on any idea that has Scott Adams’ name on it but I’d challenge you to read his book first. This little bit is just one idea in a couple of hundred pages.
I read a butt-load of management books during the first half of my working life but stopped after reading The Dilbert Principle and seeing myself lampooned on every page. Never read another management or self-help book, until this one.
How to Fail at Almost Everything
The full title of Scott Adams’ book is: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. Kind of the Story of My Life. (Too long to fit in the headline space above.) Easily one of the better “how to succeed” books I’ve read. And I’ve read a bunch of them. I won’t try to explain how Mr. Adams’ approach differs from the others. As always, the best I can do is share a few excerpts that spoke to me.
Consider the people who routinely disagree with you. See how confident they look while being dead wrong? That’s exactly how you look to them.
In our messy, flawed lives, the nearest we can get to truth is consistency.
Sometimes the only real difference between crazy people and artists is that artists write down what they imagine seeing.
My optimism is like an old cat that likes to disappear for days, but I always expect it to return.
Things that will someday work out well start out well. Things that will never work start out bad and stay that way.
If no one is excited about your art/product/idea in the beginning, they never will be. Don’t be fooled by the opinions of friends and family. They’re all liars.
Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.
Everything you learn becomes a shortcut for understanding something else.
I don’t read the news to find truth, as that would be a foolish waste of time. I read the news to broaden my exposure to new topics and patterns that make my brain more efficient in general and to enjoy myself, because learning interesting things increases my energy and makes me feel optimistic. Don’t think of news as information. Think of it as a source of energy.
Skills in which every adult should gain a working knowledge:
* Public speaking
* Psychology
* Business Writing
* Accounting
* Design (the basics)
* Conversation
* Overcoming shyness
* Second language
* Golf
* Proper grammar
* Persuasion
* Technology (hobby level)
* Proper voice technique
When politicians tell lies, they know the press will call them out. They also know it doesn’t matter. Politicians understand that reason will never have much of a role in voting decisions. A lie that makes a voter feel good is more effective than a hundred rational arguments. That’s even true when the voter knows the lie is a lie.
The point of conversation is to make the other person feel good.
People who enjoy humor are simply more attractive than people who don’t. If you don’t have funny friends, find some.
Escape from my cell, free the other inmates, shoot the warden, and burn down the prison.
HAPPINESS
(Happiness is) a feeling you get when your body chemistry is producing pleasant sensations in your mind.
We’re all born with a limited range of happiness, and the circumstances of life can only jiggle us around within the range.
The single biggest trick for manipulating your happiness chemistry is being able to do what you want, when you want. […] A person with a flexible schedule and average resources will be happier than a rich person who has everything except a flexible schedule. Work toward having control of your schedule.
Happiness has more to do with where you’re heading than where you are.
Pessimism is often a failure of imagination. If you can’t even imagine an improved future, you won’t be happy no matter how well your life is going right now.
Dying at age eighty isn’t worse than dying at a hundred. If you meat diet is a bomb with a long enough fuse, it might kill you at just about the time you’d want it to.
The Watchers
Changing listening habits
“A new Edison research study warns that among the six most common places where listeners consume audio media, broadcast radio dominates in just two of them (in car, at home); is tied with Internet radio for two (at work, on public transportation); and is defeated by Internet radio in two (while working out, while walking around). Another red flag in the study for broadcasters is that 50 percent of at-work listeners who listen to Internet-radio-only stations/services (that is, stations/services that don’t broadcast on FM/AM) have replaced their FM/AM listening time with Internet-radio-only stations/services.”
“According to Triton Digital, at any given moment among online listeners (M-F 6am-8pm), Pandora has more than twice the audience of all of the radio stations owned by Clear Channel, CBS, Cumulus, Entercom and the next seven broadcasting companies combined.”
— All Things Digital