Amazing presentation. Outstanding message. Now replicate and be prosperous!

Everyone knows that I’m huge fans of presentation zen masters like Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, Scott Schwertly at Ethos3, and of course, the master of them all – Steve Jobs (and yes, Al Gore!).  I love to design and give great presentations (see here, here, here, and definitely here too)!  It’s something I’m so incredibly passionate about (besides GTD)!

The movement is real.  The work that is resulting is breathtaking.  It’s sticking – and it’s about time.  Gone are the days of Bill Gates‘ like presentations – 12-point fonts, a thousand bullet points, and horrible clip art.  Welcome to the revolution – stunning imagery, bold fonts, and music that meaningfully goes well with the message.

Below is an outstanding example. Obviously, you wouldn’t present this to a client while you’re in front of her, but the message is loud and clear.  We need to take back old school templates and align ourselves with people who know how to do this correctly for assistance.  We can all be more successful with the right tools – and sometimes, it doesn’t hurt to get assistance from others who can already give outstanding presentations.

Enjoy the video below – and if you do ever need some tips on giving presentation … well, I just might know a thing or two! 🙂

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Attention: Yours, Mine, Ours. A thought provoking presentation by Linda Stone.

“If a product or service doesn’t say quality of life, it may not speak to us.”

This is an incredibly thought provoking and well articulated video presentation by Linda Stone (@LindaStone) on the dangers of multi-tasking, why we are so “hyper alert” on all of our devices, and how we create an “artificial sense of constant crisis.”  There’s amazing insight into how we breath is the master of our attention.  Take a look at her thoughts on what she calls email apnea and continuous partial attention.

The reason why I think this is so powerful for you to watch is for 2 reasons: 1) I love learning more about understanding the science behind we’re so focused on multi-tasking; and 2) coming from a person who is so passionate about giving great presentations, Linda Stone masters that to a science.  Simple. Clear. Understandable. Very thought provoking.

After you watch the video, let me know what you think – do you suffer from this as well?  

May I have your attention please? – Linda Stone – SIME 09 from Ayman van Bregt on Vimeo.

A thought provoking journey into your attention span and how new technologies create new (a)social behavior.

Keynote by: Linda Stone, author and thought leader with a background as VP at Microsoft and long time executive with Apple who coined the term “continuous partial attention”.

Seen at SIME 09: http://sime.nu/09/stockholm/conference-agenda/conferenceshedule/

Related articles

• Humanity’s newest low: we’re multi-tasking our leisure time now. (thenextweb.com)
• Is Multi-Tasking a Myth? [Sam Borrett] (ecademy.com)
• The SIME Experience Part 1 (sse4m.wordpress.com)

3 Reasons Why You Should Be Crazy Passionate About Life!

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. –Ferris Bueller

I’m currently grinning from ear-to-ear.  I just landed after a five and a half hour flight from Charlotte to San Francisco.  It’s 1:30 AM EST and logic would dictate here that I should be somewhat comatose.  But I’m not.  I’m grinning.  I’m in a new city for business and I feel like my kids to when they walk through the toy aisle at Target. Granted, it’s dark out, but the glowing nighttime city skyline here is beautiful. And, for just a moment while I was in the taxi, I got to see the Golden Gate bridge all lit up.  I can’t wait to see what this city looks like in the morning!  While I don’t have a lot of time here while on business, I do intend on soaking up as much as I can and being mindful of every moment … which brings me to my message: here’s 3 reasons why you should be crazy passionate about your life.

1. Be Mindful of the Little Moments

My job requires that I travel a lot, so the times I’m home and with the family, I relish each and every minute.  I try so hard to be mindful of the present because I know one day they’re going to be adults and their age of innocence will be gone forever.  I’m mindful of their laughs, their cries, their tattle-tales, everything.  I’m mindful of the moments my wife and I get to relax after they go to bed and just enjoy our company together.

When I do travel, I try to take in my surroundings as much as possible.  I take lots of photos on my HTC Incredible and sometimes post those pics on my Posterous account which is cool because it auto-posts to Flickr, Facebook & Twitter simultaneously.  Going to places like Jackson, New Orleans and Greensboro may not sound terribly exciting, but being mindful allows me to capture great moments on the road. Other places like NYC, DC & LA are more memorable, but I do take note of the small moments because who knows what tomorrow will bring. Maybe my job will change tomorrow and I won’t travel anymore. Living up these small moments make the travel so much more bearable and allows me to enjoy life more.

2. Be Crazy Passionate About Your Job

If you think I’m nuts, read one of my favorite quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

Love your job.  Seriously.  Be passionate about what you do.  If you you’re not, find a new one.  No job is perfect.  No career is perfect.  Life for sure is not perfect.  Your work life dominates your entire life.  Period.  It’s sad when you think about it.  You spend more time with your hall/cube/office-mates than you do your spouse and your children.  If you work from home (yeah!), you still have incessant phone calls, emails, deadlines, etc to respond to and it’s still no holiday.

If you believe in your company and its value proposition, you can spring out of your bed every day excited about selling your products!  Passion is contagious.  When you love what your company does and love what you do for your company, you want to say words like, “gorgeous”, “awesome”, “beautiful”, “crazy cool”!  Sound like someone pictured above, right?  I’m not suggesting we all go out dressed in Levis, New Balance sneakers, and a St. Croix mock turtleneck to work everyday, but enjoy what you do!  Be passionate about what you do!  You’ll be healthier and feel better as a result — and others will feed off of your passion!

3. A Smile a Day Keeps the Doctor Away!

When I was in college, I minored in religious studies.  I learned about all types of wonderful eastern and western religions. The one that took to me the most was Buddhism.  Thich Nhat Hanh was one of my favorite authors next to the Dalai Lama.  Here’s a favorite quote:

“Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

It’s so true.  Apparently its still up for debate, but the majority of people say it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.  So smile, dammit!  A study was actually done by Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego that documented how happiness spreads through social networks.  It turns out that the researchers “found that when a person becomes happy, a friend living close by has a 25 percent higher chance of becoming happy themselves. A spouse experiences an 8 percent increased chance and for next-door neighbors, it’s 34 percent.” Researchers in Sweden also found that smiles are contagious, citing that “it’s your unconscious mind taking control”! Think about it for a moment – when someone smiles, don’t you also want to smile back at them?  When your partner/spouse/children smile, don’t you immediately smile as well? Don’t you feel better about smiling?

Look, unless you’re, Heaven forbid, Job from the Bible, smile. Be happy about life. Be crazy happy & super excited about all of the awesome things.  The power of positive thinking can actually outweigh all the bad stuff and therefore allow you to ultimately think better and think more positively on how to change the stuff that’s not going right.  Negatively only begets more negativity – or as the Dali Lama once said, “Hate begets hate, and love begets love.”  So smile … it’s contagious!  Who knows, maybe you’ll even change someone else’s day around just because of your smile!

Let me know what you think!

Why Springpad Will Never Replace Evernote

**UPDATE: Please take a look at my latest post called, “Holy Springpad, Batman — I’ve been Sprung … and Why I admit I’m now wrong” for a fresh new look at Springpad’s amazing updates!**

I must have downloaded Springpad … and then deleted it … and then downloaded it … and then deleted it a half dozen times. Why? Because I wanted to give Springpad a fair shake. I love the guys over at 40tech.com and it’s probably because of their post on Evernote vs Springpad that I decided to give it more of a serious look. Reading posts on why people are switching to Springpad from Evernote truly makes me wonder why they’re using Evernote to begin with if that’s the case. As you all know, getting back on task is huge for me.

Here’s the thing for me about Springpad: I just don’t get it … and I like to think of myself as a pretty smart guy. So, I’ve outlined two main (and fairly simple) reasons why I won’t ever switch: creating a note & creating a task.

Creating a note
I use Evernote on my iPad to create notes while I’m at a client meeting. Here’s how that process works in Evernote. Open App. Tap new note. Begin typing. Add tags. Happiness.

 

There’s nothing very mysterious about it. The same applies if I’m at my PC and on a conference call. New note. Begin typing. Add tags. Easy. Happiness.

Here’s how that process works in Springpad for the iPad.

Step 1: tap the “+” sign.

Step 2: tap “Add by Type”.

Step 3: tap “Note”.

Step 4: type the note.

Besides being convoluted and way too many steps — there’s no tags. You can add it to a list – but without tags, there’s no real efficient way of sorting through my meeting notes! I know fromreading comments on Springpad’s blog that there’s plan’s to add mobile tags soon – but until the do, where’s the real value?

What’s equally frustrating, is trying to type new notes online. Here’s how that works:

Step 1: You have to first select the type of note you want.

Step 2: Then you need to title it.

Step 3: Then you need to click on edit once it appears in the drop down to begin typing out your note.

Step 4: Then, once you’ve typed your note and clicked on save,

Step 5: Then, you have to then go back to the list, click on the title to finally categorize and add any tags to the note.

Conclusion: Springpad is definitely not at the place it should be for anyone seriously looking (for whatever odd reason) for an alternative to Evernote; especially for business people!

Creating a task
Equally as frustrating is the ability to simply create tasks in a meaningful way. The big gripe for many in Evernote is the ability to use it as a GTD tool. Search for it on Google and you’ll see what I mean! I completely appreciated those comments; that is, until I downloaded Egretlist through Evernote’s new Trunk offering. See my last post. In any event, within Springpad’s iPad app & online, you can create a task and then enter a due date, category & description of the task. For anyone who is a serious follower of the GTD methodology, there’s substantive problems with this method.

For example, I’d want to be able to tag a task by context (i.e., @home, @office, @computer, @errands), Someday/Maybe, Waiting for, by project, and perhaps whom I’ve assigned the task to with tags (#joe, #chris, #sally). Within Springpad, you can only assign one category. I thought perhaps I might have found a workaround by tapping on “Add to a list”. When you do that, you can either create a list or add to an existing list. Technically, one could use category as context and then under list, add your projects & tags – or some various thereof.

As I pointed out in my post about Evernote & Egretlist, I can easily add tasks in Egretlist see them immediately in Evernote. I can create the tasks in Evernote and see them appear in Egretlist. Again, simple – the way I need it to be for fast moving and on the fly task & project management.

Conclusion

I think Springpad is okay for those people who don’t need a serious task & project management tool. It’s great for what it does, but I subscribe to the theory that your product should try to do up to 3 things right and do it at 100%; not try and be 1,000 things to attract the masses. Springpad I think is trying to do everything – create notes, create tasks, remember your favorite wine, book, restaurant, movie, business, provide reviews of products, helps you shop online, and you can download “apps” of varying types to throw into your account to help you do scores of other things. Again — it’s great, if you like that kind of thing.

Evernote’s core offering is creating notes … and it does a damn good job! It allows you to organize those notes easily through notebooks & tags. With its latest collaboration efforts with other companies through the Trunk, it offers integrations with complementary products to make Evernote more robust — while at the same time, not erroding Evernote’s streamlined interface that so many have come to love.