Scott Barstow

For Free

A few weeks back I was having breakfast with Bruce Benedict, the proprietor and creator of Cardiphonia.  Cardiphonia is a music label in the 21st century sense of the word, focused on helping upcoming artists in a niche space (sacred music).  Bruce is one of those guys that you can’t help but love watching.  He loves what he does, and is amazingly good at it.

We have been getting together to talk shop for a few months now, focusing on the challenges of starting and running your own thing.  Anyway, at this one particular breakfast we were talking about the success his label is having.  I asked a fairly innocuous question (or so I thought), which was “How does Cardiphonia make money from all of these artists and the music you write?”

His answer:  ”I don’t ever think about how to make money at it.  I just love doing it.  It’s my art.”

I wonder if being willing to do something for free because you can’t imagine not doing it is, in no small way, a prerequisite to being great at it. 

Would You Like Some Bland With That?

I spent the week between Christmas and New Years in Tulsa, OK visiting family.  On one of the days my wife and I decided to go get some coffee (or tea in my case).  There were, of course, sixteen Starbucks within a five mile radius of where we were, but I wanted something different.  

We stumbled upon a cool little, locally owned, coffee shop called Agora with the help of Google Maps.  What I loved about this place was that they took the time to help us find a coffee and tea that were really perfect for the day and our mood.  I actually ordered something, changed my mind, and got something different without the guy rolling his eyes and treating me like an idiot (or charging me for the first drink).

Later on that same day we went to Pepper’s Grill for dinner.  If you are ever in Tulsa, this is really the only place I would characterize as a must-visit.  They have some of the best tex-mex food on the planet.  Not coincidentally, they are also locally owned.

I am getting to where I will drive a good bit out of the way to have an experience that I can’t get on every corner in every city in the US.  I know people love Panera and Starbucks, but they are all so bland.  Who wants bland?  

How about you?  Do you prefer convenience and consistency over quality and excellence?  Do you look for local and unique over national and same?

Observations from a Rural Outpost

I am spending this week with family in upstate NY.  My parents have lived in the same house for close to 45 years, and I love getting up here a couple of times a year to enjoy a change of scenery.

A few things have jumped out at me since we have been up here.

1. Americans watch a ton of television.  I guess I don’t notice it as much where we live for whatever reason, but as we have been out at night enjoying the brisk winter air it seems that every house has their TV on.  Some of it is no doubt generational.  Many of the people living here are older, and there is but so much that one can do in 30 degree weather.  None-the-less, it’s been eye-opening, and a touch depressing.
2. The migration away from small towns feels very real here.  As I drive down the road, I often try to figure out what the people that live here are doing for a living.  As the factories that powered this area have closed down, it gets harder and harder to find real industry or job-producing engines.  More and more homes stand empty each time we visit.  Living in North Carolina, I know where a lot of them are going.  Charlotte and Raleigh are top destinations for people leaving New York.
   
   
3. I realize why many people crave the small town living experience.  There is something about living in a town of less than 2,000 people that you can’t get in a suburban neighborhood.  I don’t know that the opposite is true.  
   
   
4. Somehow Uggs boots manage to find their way into every crevasse in America.  It’s one of life’s profound mysteries. 

Below are some scenes from here in Franklin.  

My parent’s house

The Franklin Postmaster

The hallowed halls of Franklin Central School

The local houses of worship

The village hall

The Technology Adoption Debt

I am guilty many times of rushing to judgement about how widespread technology adoption is among the general population in the US.  I often presume that because I know about and use great technology every day that most everyone else is doing the same.

It’s simply not true.  There is a significant portion of the population that doesn’t know anything about Dropbox or GMail or dozens of the other time-saving, productivity boosting applications that I take for granted.

The amount of time spent on doing things the hard way, simply because the better way is not known, is overwhelming.  The good news is that the opportunity to make a difference is equally large.

The Privilege of Protest

I witnessed two events in the past week that could not have presented a more different view the world.

The first was a fundraiser last Saturday night for an organization based here in Raleigh called Jobs for Life.  Jobs for Life equips people for the workforce who have had little or no experience in getting or holding a job.  The curriculum teaches how to interview, how to fill out applications, and why showing up for work every day matters.  The organization also works with businesses in the cities where the programs are held to assist with placement where possible.  The most memorable parts of the evening were listening to people stand up and tell their stories of success in the program.  Each of the participants gushed with pride as they talked about the change in their lives brought about by the dignity of work and opportunity.

The second event was the shutting down of the campground in Zucotti Park, NYC, the epicenter of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  As stories of rampant drug use, the spread of TB, and other issues became more prevalent, Mayor Bloomberg of New York decided that enough was enough.  I can’t say that I get the point of view of the whole OWS movement.  In fact, I don’t get it at all.

Setting my personal viewpoint aside for a moment, however, the contrast between these two events could not have been more stark.  On the one hand, I saw a group of people that had been given almost nothing, and in many cases had had everything taken away, working hard to change their lives.  Jail time, extreme poverty and hardship had been replaced by hope and the promise of a better life.  On the other hand, I witnessed a group of primarily well-educated, privileged people spending their days and nights railing against societal ills in the name of the “other 99%.”  

To be sure the protests have their place, and there is truth in some of the issues.  However, it seems that perhaps a little less whinging might be the order of the day.  In the end this is not an “Arab spring” moment.  The relative injustice is incomparable, and we all know it.

Question:  Where does the OWS movement go from here, after the shut downs?

Building a Company

I realized this past week that I have been guilty of not trying to build a company, but rather building something that might sell someday.  It’s not that selling your company is a bad thing.  I wouldn’t mind if it happened.  

However, the focus is not the same.  I was finishing up Steve Jobs biography last week and there is a great section in the very last chapter.  It is essentially his goodbye.  He says “My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products.  Everything else was secondary.”

The decisions that are made every day are heavily influenced by the targets set.  What has dawned on me is that by not being committed to making something great I have reduced any chance of doing something worthwhile to nearly zero.

There are the occasional companies that zoom to the top, get sold, and then evaporate.  However, the great companies, the ones that truly make a difference, seem to have a greater purpose than just the pursuit of wealth.

Question:  What are your motivations for the work that you are doing?

Answering the Question Prematurely

I was at a client site the other day and they were talking about some exciting new initiatives that were getting ready to kick off.  While there was a good bit of excitement around it, there was also frustration with some of the thinking around how to attack these new opportunities.  It seems that there were those who wanted to overload the new stuff with some of the same burdens of the way things had always been done.

There are lots of ways to solve problems.  Many times our experiences shape how we think about the problem, and we draw conclusions because we think we know how the story needs to end.  In my mind, it goes something like this:  I hear someone say “The problem is that I can’t do x”, and I have solved x twenty times in the past five years, so I already go straight to the conclusion.  ”You need y to solve x.  It works every time.”

It’s a tough thing to learn to take a fresh look at the problem each time.  There is generally enough nuance in each situation to make it unique, so the challenge is to have the patience to let the brain do what it does best.  

Our brains are great at churning away at things, and using inputs that are not top of mind to come to the right conclusion.  The issue, at least for me, is opening my mouth before my brain is done.

Question:  What are some ways that you use to interrupt the rush to conclusion?  I would love to hear about them.

Removing My Email Fix

I am an email junkie.  I check my email probably 50 times a day at least, either on my phone or while working at my desk.  To paraphrase an old Chicago lyric “Email, you’re a hard habit to break.”  However, this week I have set about changing my habits.  I did the math on the interruptions around checking email and figured I am probably burning an hour or two each day in focused time by constantly checking mail or having it open on another monitor.

So, as an experiment, I did a couple of things:

• I turned off the automatic email sync on my iPhone (it felt like I was disconnecting oxygen as I did it).  To read email on my phone, I now have to launch the mail app and wait for it to download.  How 1994!
• I put times on my calendar to check email each day.  I check email three times during the work day:  First thing in the morning (to deal with stuff from my team that happened overnight), at or around noon, and then at the end of the day.  There are a few more at night, but I have tried to remain true to the discipline during the normal work day.

It has been really difficult to adjust, I won’t lie.  The glowing red circle on my iPhone was like a beacon calling to me.  ”Scott, someone needs your expertise right now!”  Without it, I have been a bit restless, wondering what I was missing.  It turns out that I am not missing much that can’t wait.  

The other difficulty has been the discipline of getting into Gmail and sending mail without reading all of my unread mail at the same time.  I could really use a different Gmail interface that sends mail only, and doesn’t show me my other mail.  

I also need to get better at processing my email when I am in there.  I need to be sending stuff that needs attention to Evernote so that I can work on it when I am focused, and not have to get back in to email to download that attachment or whatever.

I am now three days in, and I have to say it’s been kind of nice.  It’s not that I have noticed a 50% uptick in productivity or anything, but I have definitely tamed some of the tyranny of the urgent that I felt was overtaking me.  I have a feeling there will be further modifications as I tune what works and what doesn’t, but I am committed to seeing it through in some form.  

I don’t do well with making radical changes to bad habits, but rather by making slow changes and sticking with it.  I imagine most others are the same.

Question:  Have you ever modified your email habits with success?  What has worked for you, and what hasn’t?

Why An Occasional Outage Is A Good Thing

I had a major internet service interruption at my office yesterday.  I called the service provider and found out that the whole block was offline and that it was going to be a while before service was restored.  I had five minutes of panic, thinking about where I needed to go to get back on the grid.  Then I stopped and thought about the work I had queued up for the day.

After looking through my list, it turned out that most everything I had to get done could be done offline.  Yes, I have a mi-fi backup, but instead of immediately cranking that up, I decided to just sit down and go to work on everything on my list and see how much I could get done without the normal interruptions.

I didn’t miss anything important, and got a ton of stuff done.

Question:  Do you ever disconnect from the grid intentionally?  If so, how does it affect your productivity?