6 Reasons I Love My Kindle (For Now)

I know, I know. The iPad is way cooler. Besides, both the kindle and the iPad are super expensive.  If it wasn't for Sarah getting me a kindle for my birthday I wouldn't have been able to afford it.

BUT:

Here are 6 reasons I love my kindle (for now).

1. I bought it used for $100 off.

2. I love that when I was in Mexico I could download books, newspapers and magazines, google and wikipedia for free when everyone else was complaining about international roaming charges.

3. I like to highlight and take notes. I like it even more when the kindle bundles all my notes and highlights from a book into one location and emails it to me as a separate document.

4. I thought I was going to miss the "holding a book and turning the pages" thing. Let me be clear: I don't and you won't.

5. Public domain books are available for free. Since my favorite author is G.K. Chesterton and he wrote in the early 20th century, nearly everything he ever wrote is now on my Kindle for free.

6. As primitive as it is, the e-ink reader technology turns about as many heads as the iPad does. It's still in the early phases of development but it is truly easy on the eyes (especially outdoors). To me, this is the one true advantage over the iPad.

To see where e-ink tech is headed in the near future watch this youtube video.

We should all get excited when there is a low cost device that has the iPad's versatility on a high resolution e-ink technology video touch screen like future kindles.

I give it about 2 years to come out.  4 years to be low cost.

See you in the future.

Interview with the President of Disney Animation

Recently The Economist did an interview with the President of Disney Animation.

If I were to guess, I'd say that most of the people reading this blog couldn't tell you who that is.

Don't feel bad.

His name is Ed Catmull. While you may not have known his name, you know his work since he's part of the original PIXAR team which means he's been a part of every PIXAR film ever made.

The interview, which I think is around 20 minutes long or so, was sent to me via facebook from John Wittig and can be viewed in it's entirety by clicking here.

Now, Ed's a little dry but a total genius. If you stick with it and have a lens for leadership you will come away with at least 3 or 4 gems that could change the way you look at your company, organization, etc.

Here are two quotes that really blew me away:

1. "In a creative culture it's better to fix problems then try and prevent them. If you try and prevent error you screw things up. And the natural tendency for managers is to try and prevent error and over plan things."

I mostly like that quote because I already agreed with it. So sue me.

2. "There is this illusion that this person is creative and has all this stuff, well the fact is there are literally thousands of ideas involved in putting something like [a film] together. And the notion of ideas as this singular thing is a fundamental flaw."

This quote, on the other hand, struck me in a new way that I had never thought of before. This idea has been especially true for me with the creation of Sparks. The initial idea of Sparks incubated through various forms and experiments for over a year. As it evolved (and I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near being done evolving before it dies sometime in the future) there have been literally dozens of ideas from dozens of people that came along and tweaked, fixed and enhanced the original series of ideas.

So sparks aren't an idea. They're a collection of ideas from many different people.

The iPad isn't an idea. It's a collection of ideas from a collection of people.

Ed ends this sentiment by stating that a leader's job is to draw out of a team the thousand ideas you're all going to need in order to be successful.

Genius.

Enjoy the interview.

What's Your Filter?

A few years ago I was in Los Feliz and I got to meet an amazing guy named Michael.

After a few minutes of talking the topic of spirituality came up and I asked him what his spiritual heritage was.

He thoughtfully reflected before answering, looked at me and said, "I guess you could say I was Buddhist."

I asked him what he meant by that and he responded, "Well, there's a lot of different things about all the different religions but I particularly like the calm that Buddhism advocates."

I totally knew what he meant. In my limited exposure to Buddhism I am always attracted to it's transcendent nature, it's sense of peace and connectedness to all things.

He asked me, "What's your story? What's your spiritual heritage?"

"Well," I said, "There are so many things I like about all the different faiths and worldviews that I've encountered so far. I really like the idea of strength in submission from Islam, I like the whole Zen peace in Buddhism, the humility and story-telling culture of Judaism, the puritan work ethic preserved in Christianity, the potential of the human spirit in the new age movements-- even the sincere desire to help people in practical ways that I've discovered through my friends who are Scientologists. It seems like every faith heritage has some merit."

Michael agreed.

I continued, "The hard part is knowing which aspects of different religions are helpful and which are hurtful. Which philosophies of life we should embrace or reject. To make these choices-- which we all make-- we use a kind of filter."

I explained that whether we know it or not, all of us have a kind of filter that helps us figure out what's helpful, what's true and beautiful. Whether that filter is our parents or politicians or the media or our selves. We all have a filter. Often times our filters can be very unintentional which can be very dangerous. And while not all filters can be perfectly applied, some filters are better than others. And at the very least we can at least make our filter intentional.

"So I've tried to make my filter very intentional," I said.

Michael thought for a moment and then asked, "So what's your filter?"

Indeed.

To be continued.

Why Not More?

Let me ask you a question: if you were able to help more people than you currently are, would you do it?

A prediction: many people reading this (if many people read it) will say a knee-jerk "yes." Others will feel a pang of anxiety. Because helping more people sounds, you know, like more work.

More work = more time = more energy = less time on twitter and facebook and with friends and watching The Bachelor or ESPN = less happiness.

But what if I told you that you could help more people and it would actually give you energy, focus your time, make you more productive and increase your happiness?

Again, to some of us we may say, "That sounds great!" But still, we may be a little nervous. A little skeptical, even. There may be a voice that says, "What are you trying to sell, here?"

Where does this voice inside of me come from that is amazing at finding reasons why the impact on the world I'm currently having is good enough?

When I throw an event that I think will help people I find a dozen ways to be satisfied with how many people showed up, even if fewer people showed up than I wanted. Even if the reason fewer people showed up is because I didn't put in the work ahead of time.

"Well, I guess that's who was supposed to show up." I tell myself. The seductive lie of mediocrity.

If I do my best and the event flops, that's one thing. But that happens less often than I'd like to admit.

For some reason I like to keep things manageable.

But I won't reach my full potential keeping things "manageable."

So what's it going to take to help us relentlessly ask the questions, "What more can I do? How else can I help? If I don't have more time, how can I work smarter? If I'm serving 5 people, how can I serve 50. If I'm serving 10 how can I serve 100?"

And how can we not only serve more, but also have more energy and enjoy the process while we serve?

Superheroes are Not Super Leaders

Batman. Superman. Spiderman. Wolverine. The Hulk. Iron Man.

I love 'em. But they're horrible leaders.

Sure, they've got talent.

But if we looked at them in terms of leadership they come up short. Here's 2 big reasons why:

1. Superheroes don't care about leadership succession.

Think about it: that's why they often times don't age in comic books or have to get rebooted like the Batman franchise. They're never recruiting another Batman or Spiderman to take their place. They just run around from one crisis to the next. I want to walk up to Superman, pull on his tights and say: "Do you ever think about what's going to happen when you're old??" Superheros are super-shortsighted.

Leaders in the real world have to deal with leadership succession. Who is going to carry the baton after they die or move on? Don't you wish that whenever the time was ripe we could just reboot the Abraham Lincoln franchise or the series of Martin Luther King, Jr.? Don't you wish Gandhi's only weakness was a rock from another planet?

All those people prepared for leadership succession. Yet Superheroes rarely do.

2. Superheroes don't recruit a team.

If they do have a team the team members usually die-- especially if they're women. This usually gives the filmmakers the opportunity to hire new women (like Maggie Gyllenhaal after Katie Holmes didn't work out in Batman Begins) or new famous co-stars (a la Richard Pryor in Superman IV). Superheroes have friends (to humanize them) and they help in the storyline occasionally but superheroes rarely have teams that they actually need to work with. I mean, even Jesus recruited his 12 to rock his plan of making the world human again. But Superman and the other Fill-In-The-Blank Men are mostly solo acts.

Yet real leaders need teams. Not just for storyline but because real leaders actually have real weaknesses that need real help in order to serve humanity. It's not romantic-- it's pragmatic. While it's true that one superhero can save the world it takes a team to serve the world.

If anything, Superheroes are more like consultants. They come in, assess the damage, fix stuff and then fly away. You don't want them around all the time-- just when crazy people blow stuff up. Then we dust the bat signal off, plug it in and let them do their thing.

That's why I love ensemble cast movies more then superhero flicks. That's why I love films like Goonies, Ocean's 11, Braveheart and The Usual Suspects or TV shows like The West Wing and Band of Brothers. They're teams. Even though they have leaders on these teams, the leaders need the teams to succeed and they have to think about leadership succession.

It's what Superheroes don't. It's what real leaders do.