This jukebox musical is a playlist on Spotify. I’ve weaved a story out of the following pop songs. It’s something I do for fun. This particular musical is a response to Uptown: The Musical. At the bottom of this post are links to other rock musicals I’ve done in the same way.
If you like this, you might also like:
Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars (definitely the first song): Father is a pimp at the top of his game, walking through uptown to great fanfare
Love You by The Free Design: A baby is sang to by family over time, 10 years pass over the course of the song
One Man Can Change The World by Big Sean, Kanye West, and John Legend: Father sings to his son.
FourFiveSeconds by Rihanna, Kanye West, and Paul McCartney: Father is in a low part of his life and the neighborhood has gone downhilll around them.
See You Again (feat. Charlie Puth) by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth: Father sings to his son and then leaves him. 10 years go by.
Where Are U Now by Jack U, Skrillex, Diplo, and Justin Bieber: Son sings to his father, who never came back.
I Bet My Life by Imagine Dragons
Lose It (In the End) by Mark Ronson and The Business Intl (definitely the last song)
In Cal Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, of which Haden’s article is about, Cal talks about the “adjacent possible”, which is:
A term taken from the science writer Steven Johnson, who took it from Stuart Kauffman, that helps explain the origins of innovation. Johnson notes that the next big ides in any field are typically found right beyond the current cutting edge, in the adjacent space that contains the possible new combinations of existing ideas. The key observation is that you have to get to the cutting edge of a field before its adjacent possible – and the innovations it contains – becomes visible.
I felt this book was a good example of that for me because I was just about to write something similar. It seems this is possible because Cal and I both have similar reading habits and a desire to find out how to do what we love. This book builds on principals from Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Derek Sivers, Daniel Pink, and Reid Hoffman. I will admit that I was a believer in the “passion mindset” and although I thought I was a hard worker, I tended to avoid the mental strain Cal talks about that’s so important to deliberately practice in order to build career capital (these are two terms Cal introduces). This book really does a good job of turning the passion mindset on it’s head while giving you solid, practical advice about how to get the things you want in a job: control/autonomy. The bad news is that it takes a long time, will hurt, and requires a lot of work.
Talk about CIV and UFO Defense
I’m on the cusp of formulating a new way to think about intelligence
I’m thinking about this in terms of a presentation, rather than a blog post, but the general idea is that one way to measure intelligence is a person or system’s ability to cross-reference ideas.
Logic Puzzles
When you were a child, you may have been asked to fill out simple logic puzzles in math class. They were simple rows and columns and a couple of sentences, which you had to fill in using logic.
Imagine if all ideas in the world occupied both all of the columns and all of the rows in a giant logic puzzle and the more ideas are learned, the more columns and rows are added to this puzzle. It is from this idea that I present the following stories.
The Rosetta Stone
Despite being discovered in 1799 by Napoleon’s troops in Egypt, it wasn’t until 1822 that a man named Champollion was able to decode the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script.
He was only able to do this by cross-referencing not just the Ancient Greek, but also Ancient Coptic and other hieroglyphs found at that time. It was this cross-language connections that ultimately helped decrypt the language.
The First Web App
In 1995 Paul Graham, founder of Y-Combinator, wanted to write an e-commerce application, but didn’t want to write it for Windows. After seeing an advertisement for Netscape, he had an idea to try running his Unix application in a browser.
In order for Graham to create Viaweb as the first web app, Netscape, the World Wide Web, the Internet, and Unix all had to be in place first. It was from these technologies that allowed The Adjacent Possible to occur.
The Adjacent Possible
Innovation in any field are typically found right beyond the current cutting edge, in the adjacent space that contains the possible new combinations of existing ideas. The cutting edge has to exist in a field before its adjacent possible – and the innovations it contains – becomes visible.
This explains why things like the discovery of oxygen or DNA occur at the same time around the world because the tools available to do so become available. However, the existence of technology is not enough, the person has to have the intelligence to connect the pieces together.
The Wright Brothers
By the time The Wright Brothers started working on powered flight, “flight” by gliders was already a thing. The problem was not ‘lift’ – the mechanics of that were known. The problem was in maintaining flight and controlling the aircraft.
Because The Wright Brothers were avid tinkers and ran a bicycle shop, they were able to apply ideas from how a bicycle maneuvers through space and recent developments from lightweight aluminum engines to overcome powered flight.
What is Intelligence?
The ability to cross-reference ideas requires both the knowledge of the ideas and the ability to recall and compare those ideas to each other. The ability to do this as a human generally requires expert domain knowledge or the cross-pollination of ideas across domains in a more holistic view, but some level of depth is required in at least one domain.
Compare this to a computer program that could be programmed to compare ideas at a massive scale. Every time a new paper is published or a new gadget is created, the ‘rows’ and ‘columns’ get bigger and every previous idea can now be compared. The results from a computer program doing this task in a holistic way may result in ideas and outcomes that a human would never come to on their own.
Uploaded on Apr 14, 2008
Lawrence Barsalou PhD Emory University. The human conceptual system contains categorical knowledge that supports online processing (perception, categorization, inference, action) and offline processing (memory, language, thought). Semantic memory, the dominant theory of the conceptual system, typically portrays it as modular, amodal, abstractive, and static. Alternatively, the conceptual system can be viewed as non-modular, modal, situated, and dynamic. According to this latter perspective, the conceptual system is non-modular and modal because it shares representational mechanisms with modality-specific systems in the brain, such as vision, action, and emotion. On a given occasion, modality-specific information about a category’s members is reenacted in relevant modality-specific systems to represent it conceptually. Furthermore, these simulations are situated, preparing the conceptualizer for situated action with the category. Not only do these situated simulations represent the target category, they also represent background settings, actions, and mental states, thereby placing the conceptualizer in the simulation, prepared for goal pursuit. Because the optimal conceptualization of a category varies across different courses of situated action, category representations vary dynamically and are not static. Furthermore, different situations engage different neural systems dynamically when representing a category. Under some circumstances, the linguistic system plays a more central role than simulation, whereas under other circumstances, simulation is more central. Thus, the concept for a category appears to be a widely distributed circuit in the brain that includes modality-specific and linguistic representations, integrated by association areas. Across situations, these circuits become realized dynamically in diverse forms to provide the knowledge needed for cognitive processing. Behavioral and neural evidence is presented to support this view.
If you like this, you might like How to Work a Life of Purpose.
I read #donutrunbecausehappy as “don’t run because you’re happy” and I was like, ‘that’s the old me’, but then I realized that because I read it that way, I still have part of that mindset.
Blue Acorn iCi’s onboarding officially lasts 60 days, but the initial, intensive learning period is 2 weeks. The first part (after the forms) was a bunch of reading. It then went into videos I had to watch of recordings. I was keenly aware that I was self-onboarding rather than being onboarded by a live person. However, I did have 2 people assigned to me. One was to teach me about the clients I’ll be working with and the other was to teach me how to be a BSA. I later realized I could increase the playback speed of the videos to 2x, which helped.
I realized that a lot of the work has already been templatize’d and checklist’d. The rest are simple rules that are repeated in various situations.
As I learned things and started comparing myself to others, I had to keep telling myself that I am a professional, I know what I’m doing, and it’s easy for me to learn new things. I then proceeded to learn new things very quickly.
It’s occurring to me (even more so) that I’m going to be drawing from almost ALL of my past experience for this role (from client demos and working with developers at GoServicePro to executive stakeholder meetings and change control processes at Marine Credit Union to working with e-commerce and integrations at Skinny & Co to SEO and client work with my own consulting services). Even the call center work at First Merchants may come into play here. Blue Acorn even has credit union clients who they help with online check opening web workflows. A big store you’ve heard of also uses Netsuite and “Celigo” (Netsuite integration software), two applications I recently administered at Skinny & Co.
It’s neat learning about clients they have from websites I’ve previously used. One of the companies that I’ll be working with is owned by one of the companies I worked with at Skinny & Co. This particular client I’m working with has been highlighted in the company newsletter as being a client that is utilizing Blue Acorn in ways it was never used before, which means the consulting range is wider than it’s ever been for this company. My client and another one of Blue Acorn iCi’s clients have competitors that Skinny & Co. have listed as competitors (i.e. True Botanicals and Tata Harper).
They practice Agile Methodologies and the Scrum framework, which means they do 2-week sprints (vs a continuous flow as in Kanban). They use a Fibonacci sequence (ex. 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 13) of numbers to represent sprint points rather than a linear sequence.
From a design perspective, they practice “Atomic Design” which is kind of like DRY (don’t repeat yourself) where things are created once and used in many places. A brand guide is a natural output of this as the design elements almost represents the ‘atoms’ in a 1-1 relationship. They call those elements in the style guide, “Design Tokens” or “style tiles” that when viewed together form a UI pattern library. The design tokens are more rigid while the pattern library can change over time based on use case iterations. They also design in high-fidelity first rather than low fidelity.
There are a LOT of new employees here. People I’m working with have only been here for 2 days to 2 projects.
There are many non-American-born team members. The Indian members are more obvious. The others appear to be Eastern European. In the one sprint meeting I was in, it was about 40% Indian, 20% EE, and 20% American.
Almost all other coworkers were wearing t-shirts. I am choosing to wear a dress shirt everyday.
There are many abbreviations being used everywhere by many different people. I’ve been looking them up and making myself a glossary.
They use JIRA, which I have some experience with from Marine Credit Union, but the interface has changed since then.
And as a side note, today I realized that what I learned from a single Shopify app podcast helped me in an interview to get this job (headless architecture and single page applications). It shows the power of intention as I was diving deep in my craft.
At the end of the day I gave my manager an update on where I was at in the onboarding process. I was late by 4 minutes to a meeting today with her and my peers because I didn’t take my watch to lunch. It was really embarrassing, but I learned from it. I’m headed to the gym now.
Step 1 – Create a New Sequence
Choose “Arris Cinema” and then go to “Settings” and change the size to 1080 x 1920. Once the video has been added, in Effects, choose “Auto Reframe” to zoom and crop the video.
Step 2 – Export the Video
Choose H.264 and then make sure the checkbox next to “Basic Video Settings” is checked. Click Export.
I first discovered this effect in March of 2014 when I read the Edison Energy paper on solar energy adoption. They determined that even a 5% adoption of solar energy would be enough to “tip the scales irreversibly”. This is when I coined the term, “The 5% Rule”, which I defined as when 5% change is enough to cause a systemic change.
3 Examples:
1.”Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption…In 2020, 4.2% of new cars were electric.”: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/22/electric-vehicles-close-to-tipping-point-of-mass-adoption
2. 5% of people using solar energy instead of grid energy is enough to tip the scales irreversibly*: http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-utilities-according-to-u-s-utilities/
*Disruptive Challenges: Financial Implications and Strategic Responses to a Changing Retail Electric Business by Edison Electric Institute: http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/Documents/disruptivechallenges.pdf
3. 5% of people buying things online instead of stores lead to the decline of malls in America: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/03/are-malls-over.html
Rather than be specific, which I couldn’t be without re-watching the movie and taking notes, I’ll give you a summary of what happened and make comments along the way.
The main character is a part-time band teacher in a middle school. The movie opens with him getting promoted to full-time work. He immediately feels let down because he really wants to be a full-time jazz musician. I felt that as I’ve often had to compromise on ‘my dreams’ for ‘a job’. And that is part of the central theme of this movie, which I’ll come back to later.
However, as luck would have it, the main character gets a phone call from one of his former students who is in a band with a famous jazz musician and needs someone like him to fill in for someone who recently left the band. He ends up getting the gig, but dies shortly afterwards. The main character is now in the afterlife and very upset that ‘he finally got what he wanted and then it was taken away’ so he escapes to the ‘before life’ where souls are born. We have now seen a second aspect of the central theme, which is ‘for the fish to recognize water’, in other words, a misplaced search for something you already have.
In the ‘before life’, the main character is matched with a soul who hasn’t been able to graduate to earth because they are never satisfied (a kind of opposite twin of the main character). The rules are that you have to get a spark of something you like in the ‘before life’ before you’re allowed to go to earth. The characters mistakenly believe that this is their ‘purpose’ in life and without having it or achieving it, then their life is meaningless. The main character believes their life is meaningless despite people like his students telling them they helped improve their lives. I felt that.
The soul’s name is 22, which is the day of my birthday. I took this personally. 22 was never satisfied with anything. Nothing excited him. He had seen everything and tried everything and nothing moved the needle for him (or her). However, along the way, after being mentored by all of the great minds in history, 22 had become very intelligent, but not necessarily wise (intelligence applied). I felt that too because I’ve often spent a lot of time learning, but never really finding what I want to do in life.
Eventually they figure out a way to escape to earth where the new soul learns about things on earth and realizes…I’m not quite sure….something about ‘living itself’ or ‘life itself’ or ‘the act of learning how to live’ is that soul’s spark. They like to learn, not necessarily do. And once learned, they like to tell other people about what they’ve learned, but not necessarily as a teacher, but as an unintentional mentor. I felt that, too. The fact that I’m sharing this with you right now shows that I’m like that. It’s why I used to blog and vlog.
Eventually they learn, like the fish looking for the ocean, that each person doesn’t have a pre-destined purpose. The barber wanted to become a veterinarian, but he needed money sooner to pay for his daughter being born, so he became a barber. People who know him think he was born to be a barber because he is so good at it. The barber says he has found joy in being a barber despite it not being what he wanted. He realizes that he is still able to help people and in doing so, help himself. That is the theme of this movie – to realize that what you have and what you are doing is your purpose and you are having an impact. Realize what you do have and the impact you are making and think less about what you don’t. That thing you’re searching for…you already have it.
And that’s also the theme of books like The Alchemist who goes on a grand journey for treasure that ultimately leads him back to a treasure under the house where he started. Or the idea of “diamonds in your own backyard”, a famous sermon repeated over the years about a farmer who sold his farm to go looking for treasure only to later realize his farm had a natural abundance of diamonds.
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
Jeremiah 17:9
This is an anonymous guest post from a friend in response to my question: “What motivates you to keep going?”
Trust me it gets dark for everyone.
I feel it gets darker for people like us. Because we hold ourselves to a much higher standard.
I’ve struggled with pride for a long time so much that even a person gave me a book on humility.
Moving past that, people like us have this outgoing and ongoing effort. I don’t feel we can help it, it is a gift from God.
There are big ass road blocks we and others face.
Granted all of us take time off from it and get into slumps.
But we see these glimmers of Hope and Sparkles in our kids. Will see our friends and Associates doing creative things that we know we’re capable of. We are supposed to be around we are supposed to be enjoying, we are supposed to be growing.
And it reminds us that we are Ultra creative and we may not have an immediate answer but we know multiple paths around something. And if we want something we find ways to achieve it or angles to try and eventually it comes.
Then there are plenty of surprise blessings that can’t be explained other than mini miracles. So even being hard on your self there are so many positive reinforcements that your like I have to keep at it.
We run from it sometimes my wife gets mad because I follow many mentors and should put everything up to God.
When I talk to friends and I know they’re going through things and they ask for advice one of my favorite quotes is look no matter what the struggle is ” work like it’s up to you and pray like it’s up to God” dont just sit there and dont dwell on it.
The take-home message for me is I’m always falling forward.
I’ve heard it as failing forward. However that’s not how i feel. Im always falling/leaning forward.
Like an analogy of being top-heavy. But in the sense that I’m always going to push myself toward something I’m going to be working on something, I’m going to be progressing, I’m going to be learning, I’m going to be asking for help.
Personally I’m not the type that can sit back. Some people are like rest and be content.
Me I’d rather be working on something or listening to a podcast. Or talking with a friend or family member.
Even listening to interviews of people struggles and what they did in the amount of years or decades it took them to achieve what they were after. There’s a few rare things if maybe you’re an Einstein or a Tesla.
Most other things you can find someone that’s done it and even written a book about it which proves to me it’s all possible.
There are lots of people that depend on me, but more motivating knowing people BELIEVE in me.
So take home message personally I’m always leaning forward.
Then scientific side being work to get hydrated for 3 days straight and see if you feel better. And workout even if its simple it will change your day by 20-80%
Lean forward.
One of the biggest challenges in life is balancing the “big picture” with the details. You have to have a macro and a micro view of your life at all times.
In life as in film editing, when you’re working on some minor detail, you have to be thinking about how it fits into everything that has happened before and after.
Everyone intuitively understands that years are actually made up of days and days are made up of minutes, but those people who are able to take those minutes with the year in mind – those are the ones who are the most successful.
Jason Cobb said in his video, Your Ideal Day, “When you design that ideal day and you start living it out, you know what starts to happen? You start to have an ideal week. And then you start having a great month. And then you look back and you say, ‘Wow! Look at the year that we’ve had!’”
You have to be balancing that at all times and just try and keep perspective by going from micro to macro. The people who do that the best are the ones who are the most successful in life.