Conrey is for Closers

“Doubt is the beginning, not the end of wisdom”

Any salesman will hit a slump. And they’ll begin to doubt themselves. I’ve done it, you’ve done it, it happens. The difference is what happens next. It is easy to trap yourself in the slump and get into desperation mode. You start to flail about in a panic and look at things you should have done right along the way.

Stop that. It’s the mental equivalent of thrashing in quicksand, you’re just going to get pulled deeper.

Take a breath, step back, and get back to the things that you know work. Back to basics and get things rolling forward.

When that doesn’t work, just like when you’re in quicksand, call for help and have someone throw you a rope.

I’m not as concerned about privacy as Andrew Hyde is but he brings up some really good points in his post from a month or so back.

I’m not even really so worried about the ego stuff as Tyler Hurst is in his recent post.

They were super useful at SXSW rather than texting all of the people I wanted to catch up with for dinner or drinks, I could see where they checked in recently (or if they had) and plan that way. But I still ended up texting or DMing them from Twitter anyway most of the time. They’re great sources of past behavior but if someone checked in at IronWorks 20 minutes ago I have no way of knowing if they checked in at the beginning of their meal, their wait in line, or sometime in the middle of lunch. Still it was interesting enough to at least catch the trends of where people I like to hang out with were at for panels etc.

The problem is now that I’m home, I really don’t want to know where people in Austin or NY or LA are checking in to. It does me no value. It doesn’t do a whole lot more value to even know where people in Phoenix are checking in at because I don’t really care. If I’m out and about with no plans, I’ll probably call or DM someone to hang out with them – not look to see what they’re doing first on 4Square or similar. Besides, most people send that stuff to twitter anyway so I can find them just fine thanks.

Maybe I’m just getting old, but I don’t see the value to the end user in these things. What I do see is a huge data mine for marketers, advertisers and stalkers to glean for information. I also see a great way to suck battery life on my iphone and annoy myself with distractions.

So long location-based check in things. I’ll stick to just telling people where I’m at on Twitter.

I’m no art buff, but Hugh MacLeod’s stuff speaks to me. I love getting the daily cartoon in my inbox – one of very very few daily emails I’ll sign up for.

This piece is my current favorite, but I also love the piece that Derek chose on his blog here. The mediocrity piece reminds me that the people who fear change, fear growth, fear new things – those are the people who will bitch and moan and fight you on everything.

The tools exist for you to kick ass and be great, go use them and don’t get lazy and fall back to mediocre.  Hugh does a great job of staying away from norms and expectations to keep from being mediocre.

Thanks Tyler for inspiring this and letting me be 1 of 100.