Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

This Oldie doesn’t need commentary. It was valid when I wrote it in 2006, it’s even more valid in today’s world of social media and will still be valid at all times in the future.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I frequently tell clients and readers to slow down; unwire themselves; learn to say no.

So my next rule may sound counterproductive, but it’s not.

Don’t live with the brakes on!

Taking off the brakes isn’t about going faster, it’s about taking time for the stuff that stops when you move too fast—such as creativity.

So take the brakes off your imagination; take time to dream; make more time for doing nothing and watch your world expand and sizzle.

Image credit: Paul Fris

Rather than writing today I thought I would share my wonder and show you something amazing.

It’s the stuff of human dreams since time began.

The stuff that fires the imagination of anyone who sees it.

It’s a real-time view of Earth from the International Space Station.

Commentary and explanations from Business Insider.

Enjoy!

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

And in case you are a reader, here’s a link from KG to The Best Science Books of 2014.

Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund, followed in her father’s footsteps only her focus was children. Her insights, however, apply to people of all ages.

She reminds us to look first to ourselves, instead of others, when the going gets tough, “I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.”

She warns that while dreaming is enticing, it lacks substance and will not sustain us, “In our dreams we can have our eggs cooked exactly how we want them, but we can’t eat them.”

She teaches no matter how well we plan, we shouldn’t ignore the things outside it, “Sometimes the most beautiful thing is precisely the one that comes unexpectedly and unearned.”

She chides us for our outlandish expectations, “If some longing goes unmet, don’t be astonished. We call that Life.”

And, finally, she provides hope, “Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.”

Flickr image credit: Carla216

Are you familiar with the power and choices of ‘but me’?

Don’t kid yourself, ‘but me’ is what makes the world go round.

‘But me’ is why people get married; fly in a plane; text while driving; rob a bank or a myriad of other actions—both good and bad.

Heck, if it wasn’t for ‘but me’ they probably wouldn’t even get out of bed.

It is ‘but me’ that feeds the roots of entrepreneurism—from the hobbyist who dreams of turning passion into enterprise to the serial entrepreneurs on their umpteenth startup.

It is ‘but me’ that turns wishes into reality.

All I can say is, “Long live ‘but me’!”

Flickr image credit: John Haslam

I dream; you dream; everybody dreams—without dreams there would be no reason to get out of bed in the morning, let alone do anything else.

Robert Kennedy summed up the human attitude towards dreams when he said, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

Why not, indeed?

Walt Disney tells us, “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”

And Jesse Owens elaborated on that when he said, “We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.”

But if you find yourself dreaming more than doing Baltasar Gracian’s advice should help, “Dreams will get you nowhere, a good kick in the pants will take you a long way.”

Entrepreneurs are dreamers big-time and entrepreneurism is truly a global force; Jack Kerouac understood not only the universal appeal of dreams, but also its universal effect, “All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.”

Entrepreneurs looking to hire would do well to remember the words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and make them their mantra, Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”

When times are darkest and your dream seems unlikely to reach fruition you will find the words of Christopher Reeve inspiring, “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”

Are you ever too old to dream? John Barrymore has a great answer to that, “A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”

Finally, you can do a lot worse than let the words of Malcolm Forbes be the driving force in your world, “When you cease to dream you cease to live.”

Image credit: Melody Campbell

What does it take to be an entrepreneur? According to Anthony Tjan, Founder/CEO of venture firm Cue Ball, you need to be an architect (big-picture planning), storyteller (research and selling), and disciplinarian (executing).

It is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and endless hours, and you often forget that running really hard does not necessarily equate with running in the right direction.

It doesn’t always start with a formal business plan or even with a specific idea. Innovation strikes in different ways as you will see.

Robert Croak is CEO of Silly Bandz, the hottest new kid craze.

Croak is an opportunist who has found the greatest opportunity of his life. “I’m the luckiest guy alive right now. I don’t think you’re going to find anyone who has a reason to be happier than I am,” he says. “I have the hottest toy, the hottest fashion product on earth. All the right people like Silly Bandz. Everyone asks who my publicist is. I don’t have one. We don’t advertise. All we do is viral marketing. This is happening on its own.”

Tod Dykstra, founder of Streetline Networks, watched cars circling the block in San Francisco looking for cheap parking.

Streetline’s system lets parking authorities identify crowded streets and jack up parking-meter rates block by block. The idea is to encourage drivers to stop circling and get off the streets—either paying for a municipal garage or heading to a less crowded neighborhood. San Francisco and Los Angeles are now installing Streetline technology.

Many people believe that entrepreneurs are all risk takers with a horror of working for large companies, but that isn’t true. What is true is that they go through many of the same efforts and traumas as the more traditional ones.

Gary Martz is a senior product manager at Intel, who proves that the three skills Tjan describes are just as applicable in-house as outside.

Intel nearly killed off WiDi… “They literally laughed me out of the room.”

Anil Duggal, a physical chemist at GE’s research labs, had to go to the Feds for funding when Jack Welch was GE’s boss, but it was a different story when Jeff Immelt took over.

First, Duggal had to develop a genius for getting funded. The idea of manufacturing lighting with a method akin to newspaper printing was a tough sell. In the late ’90s, he managed to buttonhole U.S. Energy Dept. officials visiting GE to look in on other projects. The $1 million grant that resulted helped keep the project going. Then in 2001, Jeff Immelt, still new in the role of CEO, challenged GE engineers and scientists to strive for breakthrough ideas. Today, OLED and LED research get about half of GE’s R&D budget for lighting.

As you can see, a common thread that runs through these stories is that entrepreneurs see things differently from the rest of us. They see what is and needs to be, or should be, or could be.

Ben Huh saw the potential of a site called I Can Has Cheezburger, raised some money and $10K of his own savings to buy it and then used the concept to create the 53 sites that make up Cheezburger Network.

“It was a white-knuckle decision,” he said. “I knew that the first site was funny, but could we duplicate that success?”

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedroelcarvalho/2812091311/

I am a digital dinosaur.

I don’t Tweet; I don’t do Facebook; I don’t own a cell phone; I refuse all the invitations to join yet another 2.0 platform; I’m mostly inactive on LinkedIn, not and open networker and wonder, when I think of it at all, how to politely disconnect from the people whose invitations I accepted before I knew better;

I spend my time working on Option Sanity, the new product my company is launching; I write; I spend time with friends, in person and on the phone; I read, not “worthwhile” or business books, but for pure pleasure; I play in the dirt in my garden, which, after seven years, is actually looking good to me; I cherish my brain.

I know many people who are wired; who can’t imagine life without their smartphone; who have hundreds, if not thousands of friends; who totally freak out at the idea of not being connected 24/7.

What about their brains? Is the cumulative effect of all that information and connectivity positive or negative?

A series called in the New York Times this week offers a look at much of the brain research being done on this subject and it’s not a pretty site.

The Risks of Parenting While Plugged In (This one really horrified me—the mother, not the kid.)

The boy, who Ms. Im estimates was about 2 1/2 years old, made repeated attempts to talk to his mother, but she wouldn’t look up from her BlackBerry. “He’s like: ‘Mama? Mama? Mama?’ ” Ms. Im recalled. “And then he starts tapping her leg. And she goes: ‘Just wait a second. Just wait a second.’ ”

Finally, he was so frustrated, Ms. Im said, that “he goes, ‘Ahhh!’ and tries to bite her leg.”

Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price

They [scientists] say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive.

An Ugly Toll of Technology: Impatience and Forgetfulness

Some experts believe excessive use of the Internet, cell phones and other technologies can cause us to become more impatient, impulsive, forgetful and even more narcissistic.

More Americans Sense a Downside to an Always Plugged-In Existence

Younger people are particularly affected: almost 30 percent of those under 45 said the use of these devices made it harder to focus, while less than 10 percent of older users agreed. … One in seven married respondents said the use of these devices was causing them to see less of their spouses. And 1 in 10 said they spent less time with their children under 18.

And if the articles aren’t enough to make you rethink your wired state, here is a review of Nicholas Carr’s new book ‘The Shallows’: Is the Net Fostering Stupidity?

Americans now spend 8.5 hours a day frenetically interacting with their PCs, TVs, or, increasingly, the smartphones that follow them everywhere. In the process, writes Carr, we are reverting to our roots as data processors. “What we’re experiencing is, in a metaphorical sense, a reversal of the early trajectory of civilization: We are evolving from being cultivators of personal knowledge to being hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest.”

It would be unfair not to offer up a bit of hope with all this.

Ear Plugs to Lasers: The Science of Concentration

Or you can recognize your brain’s finite capacity for processing information, accentuate the positive and achieve the satisfactions of what Winifred  Gallagher, author of “Rapt,” a guide to the science of paying attention, calls the focused life.

It’s a lot of reading on a summer weekend, but the information will impact you and your kids for the rest of your lives—whether you accept all of it or just a tiny bit.

Darn! I knew I forgot one link. It’s in one of the articles, but here it is directly.

Test How Fast You Juggle Tasks

Test Your Focus

Test How Fast You Juggle Tasks

Image credit: pedroCarvalho on flickr

Now learn how to disengage your people

Image credit: University of Kent on google images

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.“ –Charles Richards (And it’s your choice…)

“It’s not the plan that is important, it’s the planning”. –Graeme Edwards (Unlike crosswords, plans should always be done in pencil.)

“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”. –John Lennon (Which is why you should use a pencil.)

“You see things and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?'” –George Bernard Shaw (One of the basics of my own plan.)

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Image credit: katphotos on flickr

One way or another I seem to be on a creativity/innovation kick this week, so it seemed reasonable to make that the subject of today’s quotes.

First the practical…

Innovation comes from the producer – not from the customer. –W. Edwards Deming (You can’t want what you’ve never had.)

Innovation is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public. –Ludwig von Mises (Got to love those early adopters!)

Now the inspirational…

There are no dreams too large, no innovation unimaginable and no frontiers beyond our reach. –John S. Herrington (But you have to believe…)

If you open up the mind, the opportunity to address both profits and social conditions are limitless. It’s a process of innovation. –Jerry Greenfield (But addressing the former with no consideration of the latter is a recipe for disaster.)

Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow. –William Pollard (Something that GM and Chrysler still haven’t learned.)

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Image credit: flickr