Erich Stauffer

Tag: Legacy

  • The Digital Arrow of Time

    In the library scene from H.G. Well’s The Time Machine where the time traveling man from the past finds books that have fallen apart amid a new ‘CD’-looking object that plays after he spins it on a big open plate thing. He asks about their books, only to learn they have been left to decay and turn to dust. He’s then taken to an ancient museum, where “talking rings” tell of their history.

    HG Wells Time Machine Talking Rings

    In H.G. Well’s future, books have been converted to talking rings, which are like CDs or DVDs that are more like metal rings that play when spun on a special table-top surface. But it’s not just books that need converted to new platforms, The White Album Problem also applies to digital cities.

    In this Atlantic piece on “What happens when digital cities are abandoned?“, Laura Hall writes, “Ownership…must be continually renewed, the way a garden must be continually tended, lest nature overtake its carefully-arranged borders.”

    The way she talks about revisiting her Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) reminded me of what it’s like to go back into the empty Minecraft server. There it sits, a world past occupied, ready to run for as long as it’s maintained. But what happens when it’s turned off the way collegeclub.com was turned off?

    Laura mentions Geocities, where I too had an address in Athens at “8802”. I still remember it because it was the first time a virtual place was categorized like a physical place and so it seemed like it wasn’t just online, but was a real destination. A destination that got shut down by Yahoo! in 2009.

    “The great paradox about these digital communities is that they’re easily kept around forever, and they are even more easily deleted utterly,” said Jason Scott, an Internet advocate and archivist who launched a digital preservation team in 2009. “These communities had lasting historical and societal value.”

    Laura pines, “It’s up to our future selves, or those who live beyond us, to make sense of what’s being saved today: to curate the data and form the stories around it that will give it meaning.” In H.G. Wells story that was with talking rings.

    Scott said, “This is not a new self-awareness. You’re just keeping it on a hard drive instead of the old family bible. Your diary is now on a server, instead of underneath your room, where your parents throw it out.” I couldn’t agree more.

  • The White Album Problem

    In Men in Black (1997), Kay is showing Jay some new alien technology and says, “This is gonna replace CD’s soon; guess I’ll have to buy the White Album again.”

    The White Album Problem

    At the time of this writing I’m 33 years old, but in my lifetime I’ve seen the progression in music from vinyl records, 8-tracks, and cassette tapes to CDs, MP3s, and Streaming audio. But in the computer world, the change is even more dramatic. I grew up with hard-drive-less PCs that ran off of 5 and 1/4th inch floppies to 5 MB hard drives to 3 and 1/2 inch floppies to ATA to SATA to Flash hard drives.

    I started writing on a DOS-based PC using PFS Write and when Windows 3.1 came out I had to convert my book to Windows by using PFS to “print to file”. This allowed me to open the unformatted files and save them in Microsoft Write. When Windows 95 came out I converted the book again to Microsoft Works, which came with the computer. After Windows 98 came out and I got Microsoft Word, I again had to convert the book to Word.

    Then came the web.

    It was one thing to have to worry about the files stored locally on your hard drive. With the introduction of web applications, we now had to manage digital archives in the sky. My first encounters with web storage was with email, which I accessed via Telnet to Pine. Soon after I started using Eudora as an email client followed by Juno, which was my first personal email address. I didn’t use AOL mail, but that along with Prodigy and Compuserve were popular webmail clients at the time. My first experience with webmail was Hotmail, followed by Yahoo! Mail, and finally Gmail. It’s important to note that with the exception of Gmail, ALL OF MY EMAIL IS GONE. Because I didn’t backup or convert my old email from Pine, Eudora, or Juno and because of Hotmail and Yahoo’s aggressive email deletion policies at the time, all of my past email has been lost. The only archives I have from that time exist in paper letters I saved, audio tape recordings, printed photographs, and VHS tapes.

    I was still writing paper letters to my girlfriends, my mother, and my grandmothers up until 1999. Even though I had a Juno and Hotmail account at the time, the other parties didn’t. I can remember making lists of people’s email addresses in high school because so few people had them – and those who did have them were usually shared with their parent’s as part of their family’s ISP account. I can remember getting in trouble with one of my girlfriend’s dads for a joke I sent her via email in high school. One AOL product I did end up using a lot was AOL Instant Messenger. It’s how I kept in touch with friends sitting next to me and across state lines after high school. It’s also how I met my wife, but that’s another story. Like my old email, no conversations were ever recorded, kept, or archived. I don’t have them. They are gone. This loss of digital history is part of the reason people still want to know what happened to collegeclub.com. It had all of their emails, pictures, and chats stored there went it went offline. Imagine if Facebook went offline tomorrow – how would you feel?

    Sometimes, digital archive management can even be a problem within a single site. Take Youtube for example. It started out as a site that had it’s own login. People didn’t really realize how they would eventually use it or what exactly it was for at first. They setup accounts, posted weird stuff, sometimes forgot about it, and then came back and setup another account later. Eventually Google bought Youtube and started forcing users to login with their Google Account, which they also had multiple logins for. So now people had multiple Youtube accounts and multiple Google accounts and now Google was forcing you to reconcile the two. Videos uploaded to Youtube could not be transferred between accounts. If you wanted to delete the account, but keep the videos, you had to manually download them and re-upload them again. Then came Google+ and Google wanted you to stop caring so much about your channel name and start using your real name, which caused even more confusion. Despite Facebook’s massive growth and change over the years, their product has remained relatively consistent compared with Google’s products.

    Digital Preservation is a huge problem going forward. As more and more data is created, it first has to get stored, but it then has to be read over time. That either means preserving the devices and programs that can access the data or constantly converting the data over time. That essentially is the White Album problem. In MIB, it is alluded that Kay first bought the White Album on a vinyl record, then bought it on an 8-track, followed by a cassette tape and finally a CD (in 1997 MP3s were not popular enough to mention on a movie). If Kay had not bought the White Album on the latest format, he would have to maintain the older system that was capable of playing the music in the format he originally bought it on. If I were to have saved my old email, I and the service providers would have to have maintained the computers and servers capable of displaying that email information or I would have to had downloaded and converted the data into a suitable format. Does it matter? Maybe not for me, but as a society we have to wonder what is going to get saved and what is going to get lost?

    There is a lot of talk about the “reverse 15 minutes” rule where instead of everyone being popular for 15 minutes, everyone gets to be anonymous for 15 minutes. I don’t know. A LOT of the stuff I’ve created has been deleted and though it may exist somewhere, if you can’t find it on Google or your own hard drive, by all practical purposes, it doesn’t exist. This applies too to those VHS tapes you had converted to DVD in the early 2000’s. If you’re not converting them to Youtube or some other form of digital media you risk losing (yet again) the information you previously sought to keep. In regards to social media, yes, the data is there, but the more data you add, the harder it is to find things. Have you ever tried to look up one of your old tweets? The server only shows you the last 50 tweets or so at a time and loading more old tweets takes a long time, however if you know what you’re looking for, one search can bring back tweets from 2009. Facebook’s Timeline feature made it easier to go back in time, but unless you’re going all the way to the bottom or scrolling slowly, you can’t easily see everything and Timelines aren’t searchable (Update: Facebook Now Allows Users to Search Timelines). While the problems with a lack of a “delete” button on the Internet is not the topic of this post, I’d argue that it’s less of an issue than it might seem. While the government will always have access to whatever information they want, individual companies will go out of business, files will get deleted or not converted, or databases will not be indexed or searchable making the data irrelevant over time.

    What You Can Do to Preserve and Convert Your Data Over Time

    If you’re looking for a place to store your digital files, consider Dropbox for general file storage online. 100 GB is currently $9.99 a month, which probably isn’t enough for all of your files, but for pictures there is Flickr, which can store up to 1 TB of images per year online. Google Drive is another option and one that can convert your Word, Excel, and Power Point files into an editable document. This is one way to keep files ‘always converted’ as long as Google Drive still exists (Google has been known to shut down services often so beware). The bigger Google gets the less likely I am to invest my data with their systems. While I still use them for email (via Google Apps), I use Dropbox for image and document storage and sharing. I also have a second backup hard drive in my computer, an external hard drive, and a network hard drive connected to my home PC. I still have the first digital picture I ever took of myself in high school, but to do that I had to copy that file from a floppy disk to a computer I had in the late 90’s and to every computer I’ve had since. Just one misstep along the way would have meant that file would have been lost. And is there any value to keeping it? Maybe, maybe not.

    When I used to do computer repair, the #1 most heard request when fixing a computer was, “save my pictures”. These people were saving their digital images on their computers and no where else. This is still the case for the most part. The difference is that most people’s pictures are now on their phones and when they drop them in the toilet, their pictures go down the drain. This again is where Dropbox comes in handy as it can automatically upload pictures from your phone to Dropbox. However, there is an obvious and real cost to all of this data storage. Whether you continually buy new hard drives or you continue to pay month after month to Dropbox to store your data there, you are assigning value to the preservation of that data. And storage of the data does not equate with retrieval of the data. If enough time passed and you were no longer able to open a JPEG image with any available software, that data would have become useless. As each new software and hardware platform comes along, we will always have the White Album Problem and those who do not keep up risk losing access to their data, forever.

    The Snapchat Generation, the Forgotten Generation

    The EU recently blocked a bill titled the Right to Be Forgotten, which would have granted users the right to ask service providers to delete the personal information. But Snapchat users aren’t waiting for a law, they’re simply not storing anything online. While it’s technically possible to retrieve the data, for most purposes this means that for a generation of social media users, no data will be stored online. So what will their history be? How will they remember these times? Maybe there are still places online where they will store their pictures and maybe they’ll occasionally use email to communicate, but when your primary mode of communication is text, Snapchat, Skype, or some other form of ephemeral communication, what legacy are you leaving? Maybe they don’t care, but should we?

    Update from Vint Cerf 2/13/2015

    The following are excerpts from Google’s Vint Cerf warns of ‘digital Dark Age’:

    I worry a great deal about that,” Mr Cerf told me. “You and I are experiencing things like this. Old formats of documents that we’ve created or presentations may not be readable by the latest version of the software because backwards compatibility is not always guaranteed.

    “And so what can happen over time is that even if we accumulate vast archives of digital content, we may not actually know what it is.”

    ‘Digital vellum’
    Vint Cerf is promoting an idea to preserve every piece of software and hardware so that it never becomes obsolete – just like what happens in a museum – but in digital form, in servers in the cloud.

    If his idea works, the memories we hold so dear could be accessible for generations to come.

    “The solution is to take an X-ray snapshot of the content and the application and the operating system together, with a description of the machine that it runs on, and preserve that for long periods of time. And that digital snapshot will recreate the past in the future.”

  • In Case You Were Born Yesterday

    As I sit here drinking Yogi green tea I can’t help but think of all the people who don’t know anything yet. These are the people who were born yesterday, the ones who still haven’t heard about Reddit or still believe in Santa Claus. This isn’t a completely exhaustive list, but it’s the stuff that people kind of forget to tell you growing up because they expect you to know it. Take it all with a grain of salt*.

    1. Moss grows on the north side of trees because the sun rises in the south. This creates shade, which moss prefers. Consequently, a rolling stone gathers no moss because it’s constantly moving and it all falls off.
    2. There are lots of things buried under the ground and it gets weirder the deeper you go. Besides the normal gas, water, and electrical lines, there are sewers, subways, secret CIA tunnels, aquifers, and molten lava.
    3. Gravestones face east and west and cows eat north and south. This is so people can rise and set with the sun and because of their magnetic compass, respectively.
    4. Fire takes three things to burn: fuel, heat, and oxygen. If you take any one of these three things away, the fire goes out. That’s why a fire goes out when it’s out of fuel, get’s dowsed with water, or gets smothered, respectively.
    5. 100 years from now no one will know who you are. This used to be more true, but with the Internet’s uncanny ability to make history flat, your great, great, great grandchildren may be watching your Youtube videos.
    6. A tree’s age can be determined after cutting across it’s trunk. The trunk of the tree grows a new layer of bark each year and years with more rain and/or sunlight make the rings larger or smaller which gives us indications of the weather.
    7. You dream you can fly because your sheets make you think air is thick like water. When you’re asleep, you forget you’re under the covers and when you jump in your dreams, you feel resistance against the ‘air’ and think you can fly.
    8. We have been to the Moon and to Mars. Once we found out there really wasn’t anything to do there, we didn’t persue it much. If you think you’d like to go, there’s nothing stopping you going nowadays as long as you’ve got the cash and aren’t too worried about coming back.
    9. Banks lend out 10 times what they have on hand. While it is illegal to print money, it is not apparently illegal to lend out money you don’t have. This is how banks make money from money they don’t have. A new bank is called a “de novo”, which means “from the beginning”.
    10. Community does more for your health than food, education, money, or DNA. The more plugged into a community of people who care about you and depend on you, the longer you will live regardless of how much fat you eat, what school you went to, how much money you make, or who your parents are.
    11. The ‘secret’ ingredient that makes food products most successful is not sugar, but *salt. In a comparison of all major cereals, the ingredient most correlated with commercial success was not sugar, but salt. Coca Cola has more sodium than Pepsi, but not by much. Pepsi does however have more sugar than Coca Cola.
    12. Amazon.com started out as an online book store with over 1 million titles. While they now have server farms that power a large portion of the Internet and are the online equivalent of Wal-Mart, they started small in a niche where they could add value – books.
    13. Everybody used to talk the same language, lived a lot longer, and were a lot smarter than you. There was a time when we all used to ‘get along’ and live hundreds of years, but that didn’t last too long. And every generation thereafter has a little less of the core DNA and more mutations, which makes us slightly less smart every year.
    14. The 14th floor of many buildings is really the 13th floor renamed as the 13th floor. This is because people are superstitious and think that the number 13 is unlucky. This is because there are about 13 full moons a year, but only 12 months! Whoa! Watch out!
    15. Numbers and time aren’t real. We made them up. I’m serious. They only mean something because we say they do. You can count in apples and bananas just the same as 1s and 0s. Numbers only serve as variables to denote measurement. They give us a standard language to communicate with. Kind of like they used to have when we lived longer.
    16. The universe is more than meets the eye. I’m not talking just talking about spectrums of light and what we can see with our eyes versus what can be detected in infrared, radio, and x-rays. I’m talking about the other 95% of the mass out there that we have no idea what it is. We call it Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
    17. Intentions set direction. Look at your toes. Are they pointing towards the door? That means you want to leave. Whatever your intentions, it sets your direction. So spend some time figuring out your purpose in life and what you want out of it before you start to work towards it and your intentions will set your direction.
    18. Weddings and babies are both rare and common events at the same time. The amount of things that have to happen just perfectly over time for someone to meet and agree to marry or for a sperm to reach an egg is almost astronomical, yet it happens everyday – several times a day in fact.
    19. College probably won’t help you in the way you think. It’s a key – a gateway past an interview process, but most hiring managers don’t actually believe you know much right out of college. It shows you can complete a program and that’s about it. Know this and spend some time learning a skill outside of school.
    20. There is more to this life than this life. You probably won’t live in this simulation for over 100 years, but if you do, you’ll probably realize that our solar system is pretty small compared to the whole universe, and there are mysteries you won’t uncover until you figure out what all that dark matter is. But by then it will be too late. I’d encourage you to find the oldest book you can find, one that has the most wisdom, and read it. There is a clue that will help guide you. Let me know when you find it.

  • The End of the World

    As the lighting strikes and the thunder rolls this cold, wet, December morning the darkened skies are continually ripped open and slammed shut in eerie foreboding of today’s show. There will be dandelions blooming underfoot as helio-magnetic superstorms bloom above our heads. As the ground begins to shake, hold firm to your beliefs. The time has come for you to act.

    There are no more excuses. There is nothing left to wait for. Your body is going to fail you. You are going to die. How is your relationship with Jesus? How have you loved the ones you’re with? When you look back at your life, what have you accomplished? Have you left this world better than you found it?

    This world is full of mystery. Some mysteries are inherent while others are man-made. Some mysteries we cling on to long after the answer becomes clear. Raise your eyelids and drop the veil. Throw the devil off your back and stand up. Be a man and do the work. Get out on the street and bring something home. Build a legacy and a reminder that great thoughts lead to great actions. Be the man you want your children to be. And live.

  • The Apple Tree

    I woke up this morning to a direct conversation with God. I was facing the window, which has no shades, and outside the window is the apple tree. It has not bared fruit for two years and I have been planning to cut it down to allow the sapling maples growing around it to thrive. When people would come over I would say, “I’m going to cut down that apple tree,” but I never would. I made excuses to myself about not having the right tools or the time. I don’t own a chainsaw and the resource I’ve used for one in the past moved out of town. This left me with a goal without execution.

    God told me to cut down the apple tree. I said, “I have stuff to do. I have an appointment this afternoon with a client and I can’t be out cutting down apple trees. I have to prepare!” God then said something about “obedience” and so I said, “Just to make sure I’m not talking to myself right now, I’d like you to confirm this conversation by having someone in my house repeat the word “apple” to me this morning. I made a commitment that if I heard the word apple, I would know that I had indeed had a conversation with God and would cut down that apple tree.

    Let me back up. The night before, as I laid down to go to sleep, I believe God spoke to me by simply saying, “Read my book.” I said, “I am tired. I’m already comfortable, all snuggly in my covers, the light is off, I don’t want to get up, be cold, and have to read. I know what it says.” God tugged on my heart that I didn’t really know what it said and spoke again, “Read my book.” I’ve been keeping my bible under my bed for easy access, so I sat up in bed and opened up to the beginning of the gospel of John (I had John 1:1 on my mind). Instead of starting at the beginning, I read this (John 1:19-:42 NIV):

    John the Baptist Denies Being the Christ
    19Now this was John’s testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Christ.”

    21They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”
    He said, “I am not.”
    “Are you the Prophet?”
    He answered, “No.”

    22Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

    23John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ ”

    24Now some Pharisees who had been sent 25questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

    26″I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

    28This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
    Jesus the Lamb of God
    29The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ 31I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

    32Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 34I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.”
    Jesus’ First Disciples
    35The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. 36When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

    37When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. 38Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”
    They said, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”

    39″Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”
    So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour.

    40Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. 41The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). 42And he brought him to Jesus.
    Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter).

    I had read this passage before, but what struck me this time were these lines:

    When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”

    Before, when I read these lines, I thought Jesus was being short with them for following him in the way that someone who is being followed eventually turns around and screams, “What do you want?!” But last night, I read it as a two-part function of Jesus’ personality:

    1. They followed Jesus.
    2. Jesus asked them what they wanted.

    When they responded to Jesus, they were praying in the literal sense, so lets look at what they prayed after Jesus asked them what they wanted:

    Where are you staying?

    The wanted information. They wanted to know where he would be in the future. Jesus’ response is just as interesting:

    Come and you will see.

    So it starts with following Jesus and it ends with following Jesus. It’s all about obedience to Him. And through obedience, Jesus wants to know what we want. When we pray to him we are asking for things we want, but what I am learning is that we also have to be obedient and follow Him. God had asked me to cut down an apple tree, but for now it was time for breakfast.

    My wife had surgery yesterday, but even if she wouldn’t have, I normally make breakfast on Saturday mornings. I grabbed the last four eggs, some butter, and some cheese and made scrambled eggs with cheese, plus toast with grape jelly, and orange juice. I called the girls down to eat and we sat down to pray. I thanked the Father for our home and our vehicles and the health of our children and my wife’s successful surgery. I then asked for guidance on how to spend my day. In the middle of my prayer, my oldest daughter yelled out, “Apple tree!” I was a little taken aback by it and had trouble praying, but continued, only to be interrupted again by another round of, “Apple tree!”. I finished praying, then asked why she was saying “apple tree.” She said she had found two apple seeds yesterday and wanted to plant them. I was going to cut down the apple tree.

    I went down to my shop and gathered up my largest whet stone and some honing oil in order to sharpen my axe. They were all my wife’s father’s tools that we inherited when we moved into their home after my wife’s mother got remarried. My wife’s father died when she was 12 and her mother planted a tree every year afterward to honor him. One of the trees was the apple tree I was about to cut down. While the tree had been planted in his honor, it would be his tools that would cut it down.

    I sharpened the blade.

    By this time, my children had become involved, mostly as spectators. It was a brisk morning so my oldest daughter fetched me a coat. I swung the ax and began cutting into the tree. My children went and got cardboard boxes to play and sit in. I was not sure if I would be able to finish cutting down this tree. It was about 30 inches in circumference and my ax, although sharpened, was still making long-work of the process. I prayed for strength to finish it.

    I had cut a wedge about a quarter of the way through into the leaning side of the tree when I considered starting to cut the other side. At that moment, my oldest daughter yelled, “Do the other side now!” I asked her to pray for strength for me to finish and I began to work on the other side. I chipped into the tree, working about an eighth of the way in, then circled around the side, connecting the front and the back. I worked back to the front, then began hitting it as hard as I could, repeatedly. I was in a groove and I thought this would do the trick until a hit rocked my bones to the core. What I thought would work did not, but instead of giving up I decided to switch tools.

    I took the ax down to my shop and retrieved an antique hand saw instead. It was my grandfather’s and is made for cutting dried wood, but it was all I had and since I was mostly through the stickier exterior of the tree, I thought it would work. After choosing the thinnest spot, I began to saw. It was slow work. It reminded me of paying off a debt. With every stroke (or payment) I couldn’t see much progress and it was depressing, but continuing to saw, every once in a while, I saw a large chunk fall off. I was making progress, it was just slow progress – and it was almost all that I could take. I asked my oldest daughter to pray for strength. I continued to cut, my arms were burning. I was exhausted from axing and sawing, so I asked my other daughter to pray for strength too. They both began to pray and I heard God say, “Cut 40 more times and the tree will fall.” I didn’t know if I could cut 40 more times, but I continued to cut, 20, 30, the tree was starting to lean, 38, 39, “Move!”

    The Apple TreeThe tree fell towards the house and towards my daughters. They were safe, just outside the fall line in their card board boxes, but it scared them. I was exhausted, but God had delivered the tree to me. It had been a spiritual journey that I wanted to share. God is good and we can all learn to obey him more.

    By the way, when I went to write this story, my oldest daughter brought me the “apple seeds” she wanted to plant. They were sunflower seeds. We will plant them next spring and remember this day.

  • Top 10 Ways to Live a Purpose-Filled Life

    [Edit: I wrote this post before I heard about Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life. Shortly afterward I found out about it and so I wanted to share a link to his book here. I’ve been listening to it on CD in the car. It’s a great book and it may change your life. 09/13/2009]

    1. Don’t Assume

    I wasn’t being very purposeful when I went to open a door that didn’t budge and ran right into it or when I went to push a shovel down into the ground and hurt my foot when it hit a rock. In both cases I was assuming the door and the shovel would act as they always had. The door would open with little effort and the shovel would slide neatly into the earth. It made me wonder, “What else am I assuming about my life?” This leads us to number 2.

    2. Ask Why

    Ask yourself why you’re doing the things you are doing. Why do you live where you live and work where you work? Why are you friends with your friends? There may be good reason, but there may also not be. If you haven’t asked yourself “Why,” before, start asking and start living a purpose-filled life. There should be a reason for everything you do. This leads us to number 3.

    3. Give Reasons

    What is the reason you are doing what you are doing? This is different then asking yourself, “Why.” For example, if you answered the question above about why you live where you live, the answer may have been, “Because it’s near where I work, there are good schools here, and it’s where I’ve always lived.” Those are all reasons, which then need analyzed, kind of like playing the 5 Why’s Game. If you’ve never played it, its simply the act of asking yourself, “Why,” four more times after the initial first, “Why.” In this way, you can find out the reason you are doing things. Lets use the response to the question as the first answer in the 5 Why’s Game.

    1. Why do you live where you live? Because it’s near where I work, there are good schools here, and it’s where I’ve always lived.
    2. Why? I don’t like a long commute, I have kids, and my family is here.
    3. Why? I have never had to drive very far to work, because I wanted them, because that is where they moved to.
    4. Why? I have never looked for jobs farther away, because my parents had them, because they found a better job here.
    5. Why? Because I’m comfortable with the job I have, because their parents had them, because this place used to be growing.

    The game doesn’t have to have three threads in it like this one did, but it gives us a glimpse into how you might then ask yourself a new question, “My relatives left their relatives and came here when this place was growing. Is there any value in staying or should I keep looking outside of where I am comfortable for my children’s sake?” This is the kind of dialogue that knowing the reasons behind something can generate.

    4. Take Ownership

    Have someone or something to tie you to this earth. This is a reason for your being. For some it is a job. For others it is their children or partner. It could be all of these things, but if you don’t have anything to build, fix, keep, protect, or improve, then you will find yourself drifting far from living a purpose-filled life. Have you ever left a job or wanted to leave your job because you felt like you weren’t needed or because you had no stake in the outcome of the business? Either you didn’t take ownership or you were not allowed to take ownership and so you withered or are withering.

    5. Exact Standards

    Set thresholds to avoid slippery slopes and compromises that you might make along the way. If you decide that you want to live a certain way, and you start to slip away from that life, what are the consequences of that? Draw a line in the sand and declare in writing what you stand for. Create a mission statement if you have to. This can guide your life just as it guides businesses everyday.

    6. Create Procedures

    A purposeful life is predictable, but has the ability to change. You may expect one thing, but if it doesn’t happen, you implement the contingency plan. You know the procedure because you created it. You are prepared. This is the difference between assuming and predicting. Predictions contain contingencies whereas assuming does not. If I go to open a door by pushing on it and assume it will open, but it doesn’t – I may hurt myself when I run into it. If I go to open a door expecting it to open, but with the contingency that it might not, I will be prepared for it not opening and be able to protect myself.

    7. Have Faith

    Believe in something greater than yourself. The universe is too big, never mind the relative enormity of the Earth, for our brains to live purposefully if we truly believe that there is no more to this life than what we can see and feel with our own eyes and ears. Your spirit, whether you believe you have one or not, will be crushed over time.

    8. Love Some

    Love someone or something. Be passionate. This is like ownership, but you can’t own another human being or the acts like gardening, playing in a band, or eating chocolate. Nothing drives the human spirit like the power of love. It is cliché to say, but true nonetheless.

    9. Leave Behind

    Live your life so as to leave something behind. In 100 years will anyone know you had ever existed? Some people write books. Some people’s legacy is their children. This is a matter of faith and procedure as you will not know what lies ahead after you are gone, but you are preparing for it. Pass on knowledge, help the downtrodden, pay it forward. These are the things that lead to a purpose-filled life.

    10. Be Purposeful

    Be intentional, exacting, reasonable, or whatever words you can think of that relate to being purposeful. If you want your life to have a purpose, if you want to leave a legacy, if you want to love more, learn more, and live more, be purposeful in all that you do. Live a purpose-filled life.

  • A Legacy of Managing Actions

    If you followed the news this week, you probably heard the story of the 4 men who were knocked out of their boat by a wave off of the coast of Florida.  Two of the men were NFL players.  One of them was from my hometown and a childhood friend of my brother.  His name was Marquis Cooper.  Many people in the metro Phoenix area followed the story.  Not as much for Marquis and his football career, but because of his father and the relationship he had with this community through being a sports broadcaster here for over almost 20 years.

    Bruce Cooper’s most recognizable quality was his love for life.  His next most obvious quality was his love for his family.  Bruce always spoke of the respect of the game and the honor of being a good sport.  He coached his son in community sports all the way up to high school and always supported Marquis in what he chose to do with his life.  They were more than father and son….the were best friends.

    On Tuesday night, a prayer service was held at Central Christian Church in Mesa, AZ.  It was to pray for the rescue and/or recovery of the 3 remaining men still lost at sea.  I was moved by the entire situation and attended the service.  Leading the prayer and scripture reading was a young man that I knew from my younger days.  He was even a couple of years younger than Marquis.  He spoke with poise, respect, care, and compassion.  He was no longer the boy I knew from my youth.  He was now a man.  There was little doubt where he had learned so much of his touch as a pastor.  His name was Jeremy Jernigan, son of the church’s senior pastor, Cal Jernigan.

    As I watched Jeremy comfort the family and indeed all of us who were hurting, still reflecting on how all of this was affecting Bruce, I was struck by how proud of his son Cal would be if he were in town, and not away on church business.  There was so much of Cal in Jeremy.  Both were gifted speakers, but there was also the clear evidence of repetition and refinement of their speaking craft.  I could almost see the father as I looked up on stage at the son.  As we bowed our heads for prayer, I asked God to give strength to Marquis to hold on, and that help was coming.  I prayed for his father to have strength to lead the family through their fears.  I prayed for God to give comfort to everyone.  I particularly thought of Bruce.  Then, to my surprise, the voice from the stage was no longer Jeremy’s.  Cal had broken from his business trip to be back for this service.  He was now speaking of comfort and hope to the family.  He prioritized this service over everything else, and came to give support to a grieving family.

    The legacy of both fathers is clear.  Marquis will have a memorial fund set up in his name, and his father will oversee and support its impact on the community that he had lived for all of his life.  Jeremy will continue to grow into his own kind of pastor, but will cling tightly to all that he has assimilated from his mentor, his father.

    The least we can do is be responsible for our own actions.  If we are blessed, we will be able to see what legacy will remain from those actions.  What can we do today that will remain?

  • Life ROI

    How to judge the return on investments you’ve made in your life.

    Using the base point of a high school graduate or GED equivalent aged 17-18 years old, what life investments show the greatest ROI (return on investment).  Is it better to start working for another company right away to build experience and move up the corporate ladder or is it better to sit it out four years in college, then start at the bottom working for another company?  Is it better to attend a trade school or 2-year college then enter the workforce as a type of hybrid?  Is working for someone else better than starting out on your own in the beginning, middle, or late in your working life?  How does being married affect your success in life?  Does it matter if your spouse supports you or if you have an unhappy marriage?  How do children affect success?

    There are many metrics and many examples of each scenario.  It is hard to know how you want to end up when you are 17-18 years old, but if you could do it all over again – if you could share your experiences with someone just starting out – or just laid off and starting over – what advice would you give them?

    My Path

    After high school I attended college for 5 years during which time I got married and had children.  I graduated with a bachelors degree and a mountain of debt, going to school and working full time as a bank clerk during and after college.  It wasn’t until I went back to school to get Microsoft certifications that I could get beyond the clerk job.  The 6-month certification training nearly doubled my 5 year investment in college tuition and board.  I watched as peers who didn’t go to college at all were at or above my clerk level and were without the college loan debt.  The only thing that allowed me to move up was going beyond the BS degree.  Because of that experience I tend to recommend going straight into a technical training field or apprenticeship straight out of high shool whether you plan on working for someone else or yourself.  Become an expert in your field and above all, follow your passions, but listen to those around you.  If you keep hearing the same advice from different people, its probably right and should be considered.

    Success can be measured many different ways.  While children may take your time and energy, they also give you motivation and fulfil your innate desire to leave a legacy behind.  The joy and agony that comes from raising children is uncomparable to any other duty in life.  Have you ever heard that behind every good man is a great woman?  This is usually true if the man and wife are supportive and loving of each other.  A constant bickering under one roof can only restrain what could otherwise be successful endeavors.  How can we measure success?  How do you measure success?