No new year’s resolutions this year. No “one word to capture what I want this year to be about.” I’m committing myself to one thing: s-l-o-w-i-n-g.

S-l-o-w-i-n-g. I think I first learned the term about ten years ago in a chapter by the same name in one of John Ortberg’s books. I’ve always liked the concept and every once in a while I remember it, but these days something magnetic about the idea pulls me into it’s orbit. Maybe that idea of “orbit” and “gravity” is the real issue. The world I so regularly create and commit myself to has such gravitational pull that it holds me in a very close orbit. The closer the orbit, the faster we must move to get around it. Consider this:

Time it takes pluto to orbit the sun: 248 years
Time it takes the earth to orbit the sun: 365 days
Time it takes the moon to orbit the earth: 28 days
Time it takes the International Space Station to orbit the earth: 91 minutes

The closer the orbit the faster we must move. The faster we move the less we see. The less we see the more limited our perspective. The more limited our perspective the shallower our wisdom. The shallower our wisdom the more anemic our life.

I’m slowing. Practically speaking it means I will drive at least 5 miles under the speed limit, especially around town. I will work in focused segments of time, at least 20 minutes in length, doing only one thing. This necessitates not checking email, facebooking, twittering, texting, or answering my phone out of turn. Whenever I have the chance to walk somewhere I will walk. I will “behold” other people when together. I will read one poem a day. I will gaze at artwork every time I am near it. I will put away my iPhone between the hours of 6pm and 6am. I will take my time when I wash dishes or fold clothes or brush my youngest’s teeth. I will keep Sabbath weekly. I’m s-l-o-w-i-n-g.

In his book, The Contemplative Patstor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction, Gene Peterson writes, “It is far more biblical to learn quietness and attentiveness before God than to be overtaken by what John Oman named the twin perils of ministry, ‘flurry and worry.’ For flurry dissipates energy, and worry constipates it.”

If this strikes a chord in you, please join me. I’d love to see your every day practical ideas as to how “slowing” can happen. Jot down your ideas in a comment below.

Today I saw this headline in my notifications from Mashable.

Apple set to be the #1 seller of PC’s next year.

Thoughts of Wow! And Finally! And “They said it would never happen!” all flashed across the screen of my mind.

And then it hit me. Apple doesn’t sell PC’s. Wasn’t that Steve Jobs’ whole point?

“Think Different?”

It would be akin to the headline, “Pepsi set to be the #1 seller of Coke next year.”

If ever there were the blaspheming of a brand, this is it.

Could this signal the beginning of the end for the brand Jobs’ built? He must be turning over in his grave.

My take: Apple didn’t set out to win the “computer” war. Jobs created an entirely different game; one in which they were the only player. That, in large part, explains why apple owns the tablet market. There is no competition. This can’t be summed up as a blue ocean red ocean issue. It’s more like apples and oranges isn’t it.

How might you develop this kind of strategy in your business or on your blog? What about your church or non profit? How many churches operate with the mentality of competing with other churches. I work in higher education, an industry that constantly talks about “comparator” schools. Someone is going to completely reinvent the game soon, leaving the rest of us holding the proverbial bag.

My question: what would it look like to create a new game; one where you owned the playing field–because you were the only player? It takes a lot more imagination and ingenuity to do this. But it must be a whole lot more fun. I

Anyone got any analysis on this?

I’m searching for a new word, one that captures a growingly frustrating everyday phenomenon. Here’s the dilemma:

I’m sitting at my desk, positioned in front of my “screen.” As I move through my email I come across a reminder from a co-worker  to send them a link to that article from the Wall Street Journal by Stephen Johnson.

So I shuffle over a few screens to my internet browser to find the article again. As I arrive at my browser, several pages are already open. I note someone new has joined the new project I am working on. This someone new happens to be a friend I’ve lost touch with from years before.

Before you know it, I’m back at my email sending this long lost friend a quick note to reconnect. Then I remember. I shuffle back over to the prior task in the internet browser. As I arrive there again, I can’t for the life of me recall the task that took me there in the first place. Remember the WSJ article I was to send to a coworker? For some reason, I don’t have the foggiest memory of it. I sit there dazed and confused at what to do next. Then a blogpost catches my eye and before you know it, I’m clicking on an embedded link in the blogpost.

Then I hear the “ding” on my iPhone and I reach down to see who’s texting me. And after that, I see the notification that “toocoolforhomeshool” has played a word on Words with Friends. And on it goes. . . . . .

So I’m looking for a word to describe that phenomenon– when you begin to fulfill a task or do a piece of work and by the time you get to the place where the work can begin you’ve become so distracted and disoriented you can’t remember what it was you were going to do in the first place.

I’ll come up with a prize for the best idea.

Mayer began the clinic explaining that, although the industry has changed with the advent of social media, creating music requires the same discipline it always has, if not more discipline to combat the added distraction of online promotion. Referring to the allure of having an instant, albeit often shallow and fleeting, online audience, John Mayer cautioned against seeking out “joy in little, tiny statements – little, tiny applause hits.”

“I remember playing the guitar through the amplifier facing out the window of my house onto the street in the summer time – that was social media in 1992.”

John Mayer explained how this seemingly isolated musical grounding allowed him to concentrate on perfecting his craft and that students’ time at Berklee is perfect for this same level of focus.

“This time is a really important time for you guys because nobody knows who you are, and nobody should. This is not a time to promote yourself. It doesn’t matter. This is the time to get your stuff together. Promotion can be like that. You can have promotion in 30 seconds if your stuff is good. Good music is its own promotion.”

But John Mayer’s main reason for discouraging promotion came from his own struggle to curb using social media, which should have been an outlet for promotion but eventually became an outlet for artistic expression. Mayer shared that he found himself asking himself questions like “Is this a good blog? Is this a good tweet? Which used to be is this a good song title? Is this a good bridge?”

And possibly more alarming, Mayer realized that pouring creativity into smaller, less important, promotional outlets like twitter not only distracted him from focusing on more critical endeavors like his career, it also narrowed his mental capacity for music and writing intelligent songs.

“The tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long. You’re coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes long…I realized about a year ago that I couldn’t have a complete thought anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn’t write a song.”

Although twitter was his most frequent whipping boy, Mayer also targeted the urgency beginning artists feel to update their blogs and youtube channels with new songs or videos to maintain steady flows of interest for their work. Instead, Mayer explained that he found the separation of creation and promotion necessary in his own career, saying “as you start playing music you’re going to stop thinking about getting better. As soon as you flip the switch into showing other people your music, for some reason, the other brain sort of goes away.”

“You got the distraction of being able to publish yourself immediately, and it is a distraction if you’re not done producing what the product is going to be that you’re going to someday use the promotion to sell…I had to go through the same thing I’m talking to you about – what you have to go through – which is to completely manage all the distraction. Manage the temptation of publishing yourself.”

So, to avoid the temptation of publishing himself and to increase his mental capacity for creativity, Mayer deleted his twitter, stopped blogging, and created a strict regime for recording his next album.

“Here are the rules for recording this record… no drum machines, no loops, no keyboards to start out with, no excuses, no breaks, no laptops, no nothing. If you take a break, it’s to eat. If you’re done, you go home.”

In addition to the distractions of promotion, John Mayer also discussed another enemy of creativity – judging songs before they’re finished.

“I can’t stress enough how important it is to write bad songs. There’s a lot of people who don’t want to finish songs because they don’t think they’re any good. Well they’re not good enough. Write it!  I want you to write me the worst songs you could possible write me because you won’t write bad songs. You’re thinking they’re bad so you don’t have to finish it. That’s what I really think it is. Well it’s all right. Well, how do you know? It’s not done!”

Published first here. 

A page without punctuation is like a life without spaces.

It happens to me constantly. I bet it happens to you too. Just this morning I scrambled around to get ready. Someone was picking me up for work around 8. I somehow managed to be ready a full 5 minutes before 8. I walked out onto the front porch and felt the cool morning air. Birdsong rang out from the trees. The garden still dripped dew. In response to that I sat down on the front porch swing, promptly pulled out my iPhone 4 and began to check email. That’s when it hit me.

A page without punctuation is like a life without spaces.

Everywhere we turn we see it happening people riveting their attention on a little rectangular device in the palm of their hand these devices for all the good they do can literally consume every square inch of space in our lives wherever there is a pause instead of a inserting a comma I pull out my phone and see if it’s my turn on Words with Friends on the short walk from my car to my office instead of inserting the (ellipses) my mind so desperately needs before launching into a full day of work I pull out my phone and fire off a text or two about who knows what on the short one mile commute from work to home instead of inserting a (question mark) and preparing my heart for home I pull out my phone and squeeze in a quick callback and most unfortunately after I arrive at home instead of the joyful interjecting exclamation marks of joy I pull out my phone and scan my twitter stream or update my facebook

A page without punctuation is like a life without spaces.

See what I mean? So much meaning is missed without proper punctuation. So it is with life. So much meaning is missed without those gifted spaces and brief interludes. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving up my iPhone. It’s not Steve Jobs fault. I’m taking back those little spaces. I’m learning to restore attention to the little mysteries offered by an ordinary day. So the next time I’m in an in between moment, instead of pulling out my phone, I’m going to put in a punctuation mark.

It’s really that simple.

I recently happened on a few lines in a Mary Oliver poem that stopped me in my tracks. The verse both gladdened and challenged me. They distilled the complexity of daily life into the simplicity of basic instructions. Somehow I believe if I can live by these words everything will work out fine; despite the inevitability of them not always working out in the way I think best.

So what are these words? She places them at the center of a poem called, “Sometimes,” in their own little section. They don’t seem to have a lot to do with the rest of the poem. The three lines come after an initial phrase that captions them. The caption over these 7 little words reads, “Instructions for living.”

7 words……. Simplifying…….Clarifying……….Distilling………..Purposing……………Empowering……………Captivating………….Orienting

And No, those aren’t the 7 words.

So these 7 words…… Can they possibly live up to the preceding prelude of unparalleled expectation? Probably not, but it’s a definite maybe.

Here they are:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

These are the words of Easter.

Your reactions appreciated.

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for a real VIN diagrammer see INDEXED.

Take 6 minutes and watch the bit below.

Last Friday night I braved the journey to the local Apple store to buy an iPad 2. Upon arrival I learned they sold out; the line began forming the night before and almost ran the length of the entire mall.

Apple imagined it all over 16 years ago.

So I ask myself, “Self, what are you imagining today that might come to fulfillment in 2027?”

I encourage you to ask that question too.

Ideas? Anyone?

Here’s a blog I think I am going to like a lot in the coming season.

This is a pretty cool trick to make a website into a desktop app icon (i.e. give your favorite websites their own dedicated apps) TRY IT WITH YOUR GMAIL OR CALENDAR

Get the (RSA) Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts here.

Click on the image and read the page– begin with “The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind. . . .”
It wouldn’t surprise us to think this was written by another fluffy consultant type. The surprise? Tom Peters wrote it. The excerpt captures part of #25 in his book, “The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence.” (Quote from the slightly fluffier Dan Pink.)

Tom Peters’ is a bottom line business thinker. Leadership guru Warren Bennis, the only person close to both Tom and the late Peter Drucker, told a journalist, “If Peter Drucker invented modern management, Tom Peters repainted it in Technicolor.”

Whatever kind of movement you lead or organization you run, be on the lookout for “artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers,” and you get the point. Make sure they sit at the tables of influence.

If you’ve crossed over the frontier of reading, I’d encourage you to get this one in the Vook Edition. and the price is right!