There is so much cool stuff going on here.

Listen First – Sell Later Hits Seth’s Reading List

Bob Poole’s fantastic book, Listen First – Sell Later, is on Seth Godin’s “latest reading” book roundup list at Squidoo. I’m kind of gooshy and happy about it, since I edited the book and feel somewhat proud / proprietary of it for that reason—plus I love it to pieces. This means you have absolutely no excuse not to pick it up, especially since buying it through Seth’s Squidoo page means donating money to charity, probably Acumen Fund if I had to take a wild guess. GO. DO IT.

Megan Makes Music, and Probably an Album

I’ve been having CRAZY conversations with my sister this month. About writing music (oh my, do I have ideas) and recording, and the availability of studios in LA and the possibility of me just flyin’ out there and putting an album together with her keyboardist, who is also a stunning classical pianist. We don’t have any bits and pieces ironed out, but it’s looking like a good bet; paired with the advent of Awesome Music Project No. 0001, which I have yet to detail for you lovely people, it looks like my adventures in Pittsburgh hail a new age of Megans and Musicks. I can’t send you to look at (or listen to) anything yet, but it’s coming. Soooon.

Free Idea Consulting at the Freak Revolution

Early this week I finished up the final version of the really exceedingly excellent Freak Revolution Manifesto, which you don’t get to see until they release it on the 28th. Uh. Sorry. But it’s great. I can’t wait for you to see it! In the meantime, Pace and Kyeli are running a video contest for the best world-changing video and the deadline is just about 24 hours from now—Friday, September 25th:

Submit inspirational and uplifting videos, approximately one minute in length, telling us something about what’s wrong with the world, how you’re making changes, what changes you plan to make in the future, what you want to see more of in the world, or something along those lines.

They are offering ridiculous scads of prizes, including Idea Blueprint Girl free consulting swag, thank you very much. ;} The due date is Friday, so you have a BUNCH of hours left to submit something that will take you two seconds—okay, two minutes—to put together. People, give it a try. We need more world-changers. You might surprise yourself!

http://blip.tv/play/g6JbgaLJKQA” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”540” height=”335” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”>

Today, I am killing What-Ifs.

I started the week picking them of at a distance. Ping. Pyew. Pzam. Way off on the horizon I could see their little heads exploding. It took almost no effort. Zing. Zow. Their tiny silhouettes crumpled, silent, too far away to see clearly.

Today, they’re closer. They crawl up my shoe and I have to shake them off, kick them away so that I can get a good shot. They’re harder to hit now. Somehow, they move faster. Like zombies, you don’t want them to get too close. Each kill seems to require more effort, because they’re so close.

What if I can’t do it?

What if I’m not as good as I thought?

I take down three of them in a row, bam, bam, bam, and reload. I’m not carrying a gun. My best defense against What-Ifs is far more effective than any firearm, but it means better concentration and quick thinking. My weapon is action.

The fourth What-If is hanging onto my left ankle, rearing back and opening its ugly little mouth wide, getting ready to chow down. Its face is a hole in the universe. I can see its sharp, shiny little teeth. I aim. I fire.

Pow.

The mob drops away front of me, cut down like chaff. I erect new armor and protective barriers, those who have gone before me, reminding me that action is the course I must take. Johnny Truant. Charlie Gilkey. Tim Brownson. Eckhart Tolle. Seth Godin, and my Triiibe. Pages of compassionate accounts, ass-kicking enthusiasm, exploration of meaning, affectionate anecdotes, powerful inspirational passages like battle cries. I wash words across my face like war paint. Another What-If explodes in the distance, splattering darkness and despair like wet black dust.

I will destroy them all.

I’ve noticed that Seth gives one piece of advice in many different situations (though probably not exclusively). When he offers it for group projects, it goes a little bit like this: Set an imminent deadline. Shoot for a month or so—but don’t set it too far out, because the energy might lull.

I agree with him in most cases, most especially because I’m living it. I’ll put off this or that forever but when I set that deadline (or find that the deadline’s been set for me) a sudden three weeks away, everything shifts. I bust my ass into gear. I know I have to move to keep it on the rails, so I do.

If I were choosing a certain level of challenge for myself, I’d almost certainly choose the level just beneath that which creates great change in me. I always want it to be hard, but not too hard. And that, my friends, is the fatal flaw in my default settings, because the great change is what I’m craving. It’s only a matter of being brave enough and strong enough to face it head-on, instead of finding ways to mellow it out (just a little).

If I was not preparing for a vocal competition in Pittsburgh in three weeks, I would be under the gun. You may or may not have noticed, but somehow it’s been almost a year since Marty quit his day job, and things are moving faster around here than ever. Charlie Gilkey worked some productivity magic on my cashflow tracking system and suddenly everything is much clearer: What I want, what I need to do to get what I want, and how quickly I’d better do it. This is wonderful and terrifying and wonderful all in the same gulp. And without any singing at all, it would be incredibly challenging. Incredibly. Challenging.

But, well, I am competing in September and the days in front of me are dwindling. There is music to memorize (memorization! O, wicked task) and Welsh diction to refine, traveling to plan, clothes to buy, and maybe (if I’m lucky) seats to upgrade. And of course, the rest of my life doesn’t stop because I’m singing. My bills don’t have a pause button. My forward momentum in all of my projects doesn’t freeze-frame while I get my shit together. And there is no more safety net. The only thing between me and any month’s eviction notice is me. Either of these situations would be a challenge. Adding them together means that I’m enduring a true trial by fire (probably squared, or published in triplicate, or recited by quadruplets nine times a day for the rest of the year).

This means that I’m moving forward, and I’m in survival mode. There’s no time to think about whether I want to do the next thing on my list or not; there’s no time to argue with myself or speculate on the nature of the universe between to-do items. I’m just moving.

And in my customary bizarre fashion, I find I rather like it here.

Oh, I’d probably change it if I could (and you can argue that I can—of course I can, and I haven’t, and what does that say?). I’d probably adjust this piece and that piece and elongate the whole schedule and give myself more room to breathe. Maybe. But in all the great challenges I’ve come through, not one of them gave me that luxury. And I loved them for it.

Chances are, I’ll love this one too if I live through it. I do tend to live through it.

Stick around, and I’ll let you in on the ending. ;}

On this day one year ago, Triiibes.com opened its doors to its first influx of members. It boggles my mind that it’s been a whole year, and I honestly don’t know where all that time went.

Oh, wait. Maybe I do.

There was the Tribes Casebook. And then, almost by coincidence, The Usual Error—because all of us working on it were Triiibes members. I don’t know how the Tribes Q&A ebook happened, but I know that it did and that it was amazing. And Seth’s !MBA (of which I’ve recently had vivid dreams and recollections), where I found out just how tightly we were all connected—and hopped a last minute flight to New York to sleep on my sister’s keyboardist’s parents’ floor for the best group interview of my life thus far. ;}

There was Bob Poole’s book launch, Listen First – Sell Later, a project I would never have been involved in if it weren’t for the Triiibe and the Alternative MBA. (Apparently I’m an editor now!) There was Becky’s bid to Stay Hungry for the Johnny Bunko Lesson Seven prize, where Marty and I worked our asses off for a few days at the last minute just because we could—and Becky won. (And then she went to TED —the prize—and was asked to speak. It was mindblowing!)

Dozens of projects and collaborations and new friends later, there’s That Idea Blueprint Girl.

Triiibes is the reason I met almost all of the most influential and brilliant people who are in my life right now. Triiibes took my spot of ambition and turned it into a taste for impossible successes that’s only growing over time. Maybe I would have done all of this without the Triiibe. Bob said, Sure, you would have found another way. But I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine that scenario where these people aren’t in my life.

I’m really madly in love with you all.

Julie’s post ~ Melvin’s post
The whole list of Triiibes Anniversary posts!

More amazing Triiibes Anniversary posts and videos:

• More Triiibes Anniversary videos on Bernd’s blog—wonderful!
  
• Bob Poole’s awesome Triiibes Anniversary post (I’m in it, too!)
  
• Paul Durban’s Triiibes Anniversary post, When Opportunity Knocks
  
• Marcos Gaser’s Triiibes Anniversary post, Triiibes.com
  
• Michael Vanderdonk’s Triiibes Anniversary post, Who’s On Your Side?
  
• Tom Bentley’s Triiibes Anniversary page!
  

Several things hit me about this video.

The first was that I laughed when he talked about starting businesses out of college instead of getting good grades. Yep, that sounds familiar. I’m not incredibly enamored of the mainstream educational systems that exist. Most of you know that already.

The second was the explanation of how both parties profit in a successful transaction; both sides win. The economics of this are awesome, and always make me a little bit excited. Results build on results build on results, and no charity is necessary.

But the big thing that struck me was the part about competition. An organization like Acumen Fund needs competition in order to accomplish its mission. It needs other people doing what Acumen Fund does, doing it better and more effectively, raising the bar for everyone, driving interest and young minds to get involved and change to be made in the world. Acumen Fund can’t accomplish its mission all by itself.

I believe that we all need this kind of competition in order to be the best we can be. This is why cutting down your competition instead of supporting your competition is insane. Quit worrying about the other guy and step up your game. The goal is not for you to win. The goal is for everybody to win.

I thought about my work with Charlie Gilkey and I thought, man, Not everybody can work with Charlie Gilkey, even if he’s the best dude for them to work with. Not everybody can work with Tim Brownson even if he’s the greatest life coach on the planet. Marty can only do so much illustration in a year; he can’t do this work for everybody. All these guys can accomplish an enormous amount, and still not affect everyone on the globe by themselves. And me, I can only consult and generate and write and design so many hours a day. There’s only so much time in the day for any of us. We need competition not only because it makes us better, but because combined with our competition, we can reach so many more people. More people get help. More people see change. This is benefit on a worldwide scale. As conscious capitalists we’re not out to profit for ourselves, though profit must be a piece of the pie in order for us to build bigger and stronger. We’re out to build a culture that thrives and supports itself, a healthy system filled with people who have meaning and vitality in their lives.

I just can’t think of anything better than that.

Brooke Thomas sent me a note not long ago letting me know that she was organizing a graduation gift to commemorate the end of Seth Godin’s Alternative MBA program: For Seth, from the almost-Alternative-MBAs. That is, those of us who submitted an application but didn’t make it into the program!

This was a bizarre coincidence, because I had noticed previously that the Big Thing I was getting ready to launch happened to coincide with the end of the program, and I was forced to reflect on the last six months of my life—six months I might have spent working on projects in New York, but six months that, at the same time, I had done really great things with anyway. Successes I was proud of. Projects I wouldn’t have traded for anything.

As it happens, I’d been putting off this launch for about a week already. Ah, psychology. It’s never quite there, you know? But really, it was already done. Brooke’s note meant I couldn’t put it off any longer.

Also as it happens—today is Seth’s birthday. I can’t think of a better day to make my first official launch post and kick everything off. Thanks to Seth Godin for all his nudges, inspiration, and awesomeness. I wish you a very, very happy birthday.

So that’s it, right? Time to show you the good stuff!

If you want to know all about my project, you can read the Squidoo lens I put together: Idea Blueprint Girl: The (Home Study) Alternative MBA of Megan M.

Or you can go straight to That Idea Blueprint Girl, and start browsing.

Things are about to get pretty interesting around here. ;}

Early yesterday morning Seth Godin wrote that the world is getting smaller every day. You—yes, YOU —have the ability to touch and change the lives of people you’ll never once meet in person, often from your living room. The ways in which we affect the world around us are sometimes thrilling, sometimes humbling, but all of them are important. The smallest thing that makes a difference is still very necessary.

I’ve already started to hear whispers and reviews of Jacqueline Novogratz’ book, first from Seth and then from others. It’s called The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World. There’s no doubt that it’s worth reading—the way it was, doubtlessly, worth living.

Ms. Novogratz actually founded the Acumen Fund, and the things they do are heartening. As high-impact positive enterprises go, the Acumen Fund is impressive. (Not to mention that they have truly great champions.)

For each copy of The Blue Sweater sold this week, an additional $15 will be donated to the Acumen Fund. This will affect the first 5,000 copies sold, and the money is coming from an anonymous $75,000 matching grant. I suspect those copies will go quickly (especially considering Seth’s wide-ranging readership), but each of the people who buy them will be changing the world in just a little way. It will take almost no effort at all. It’s such a small thing to reach out make a difference, somewhere. It’s the little things that add up, and really count.

I want to be a part of that (and I ordered my book this morning).

I’m pretty sure you do, too.

I have a confession to make.

I’m a (super) lazy reader.

I have always read very quickly and easily—reading is fun. Reading is a relaxing, soothing activity. It’s like trying to absorb information while sleeping; it’s effortless. This made especial sense when all I read was fiction growing up (sci-fi, fantasy, dragons, witches, magic horses, you got it) but it continued to be the case when I started to educate myself about people, sex, business and the universe. Reading was “work”, but it was still just as easy.

At a certain point my desire for information began to outstrip my reading speed. I tried not to crave information, but it’s so hard! Listen to me whine. I spent more of my time reading, but the books tended to pile up anyway. I stopped buying everything on my list. I started choosing material more carefully, researching reviews, picking up the ones I knew would be really perfect and letting the rest go. This was a great approach, but it has one flaw: What do I do when the really perfect books breed and multiply?

That’s exactly what happened. I couldn’t choose anymore. There were just too many! How much time was I really going to spend reading?

I decided to learn to read faster. I took a photoreading course (after coming across Steve Pavlina’s posts) and was very pleased! I’d never done any sort of speed reading and I loved how fast I could get through nonfiction, even long before having mastered any of the unconscious processing techniques. But there was one problem, and it’s the problem I’m working to solve now: I’m a lazy reader!

For all its awesomeness, photoreading takes effort. Maybe more accomplished photoreaders than I don’t notice the effort, but many of the photoreaders I’ve met came from hating to read. I came from loving to read, and the idea of taking a relaxing activity and turning it into homework is something I can’t help but balk at. Of course, I still read all my fiction the “usual” way—fiction is less suited to photoreading anyhow—but I’m finding it difficult to adjust and use photoreading as my automatic solution, every time. Part of my brain is a little offended that I’m taking this awesome, relaxing work and making it… work.

What the hell? my brain says, indignant. Who do you think you are?

I’ve been mulling this over for a few weeks, and I’ve thought of a few probable solutions. I still photoread quite well (if not perfectly), so all I need to iron out is my motivation.

I speculated recently about starting a super-fast readers club, so that anticipating conversation about many different books in short spans of time would give me a “reason” to read them fast and be ready to discuss. (I’m letting that percolate. Something might come of it. Right now, I’m taking advantage of the Alternative Alternative MBA, and that’s a great “reason”—though maybe we should have another discussion, sometime, about why I feel I need more of a “reason” than just wanting to read the damn book!)

I’m thinking about coming at new books from a direction Seth suggested a few months ago: Use information to do something, not just learn something. This is great because photoreading involves setting a purpose for yourself, information you’re looking for, questions you want to have answered and identifying the most useful parts of the book—and the next step, after finding what you want, is to use it to make something happen. Well, of course! If I start to associate reading with an active approach (instead of with relaxing and getting all the information I want without expending any effort), I may find that my motivation as regards reading changes a lot.

This is all just speculation so far, but you’ll know what it means when I start making posts about books and actions together in the same space, instead of just gushing about my recent reading crush. It’s time for this to happen. I have a hell of a lot of books to get through, but feel free to translate: I have a hell of a lot of change to make.

Just like the last one, I was only ten pages in before I started saying Whoa.

I define “fundamental change” as a society where every individual comes to accept every social problem as a problem of his own making, and sees the wisdom of changing himself (into a happier and compassionate human being) as his way of changing the world.

Have you ever picked up a book and seen your thoughts reflected almost perfectly in its pages? This happened to me with most of Chris Guillebeau’s ebook, nearly all of Seth Godin’s Tribes, and probably only a few others that I can think of. Snow Crash wasn’t a reflection—it was a new adventure for me that fit perfectly into what I wanted, right then. (It was crazy inspiring, too.) But Republic of Tea is reading my brain like a… like a book.

So those of you who’ve read it and remember its particular turns of phrase will find it very funny when I say: The Republic of Tea is reading me.

There are parts that have created bizarre chemical changes in my brain, like this:

In The Republic of Tea we embody Chuang Tzu’s “time before history,” when people were kind to one another but did not call it “being kind to one another,” when people naturally looked out for each other and for the world around them but didn’t see it as “being caring and responsible.” Incidentally, the reason Chuang Tzu called this the “time before history” is because it was an era that came and went without leaving a trace of itself. Since nothing went “wrong,” nobody had any reason to write anything down. It was lived, not recorded.

And there are parts that are constantly making me laugh, even as I consider how true they can sometimes be:

...reflects that business is life and life is business and our understanding that anybody who separates the two is just looking for a way to rationalize his uncivil behavior in business.

And geeze, I’m barely halfway through. It’s a decent first edition, so I had to strong arm myself into enacting my customary dog-ear’d note-taking learning process. (Any book, to me, is worth more as a lesson than a museum piece. Well, unless it’s a museum piece.)

It gets more heavily into business territory as it goes. It’s teaching me really interesting things about physical product development, and it’s showing me a lot of process that I’ve never seen anywhere else. But it’s so much more than that; it’s based on ideas that give me chills.

People thrive on happiness. There is nothing elusive about happiness. It’s here always; the only problem is that sometimes we’re not here for it.

Read that one again, guys.

I don’t know whether you’re interested in tea or business, but great big parts of this book are just about life, and it’s already so worth reading.

The Republic of Tea and Snow Crash (among many others) were picked up on !MBA recommendation. So far it’s steering way true. (Thanks, Seth!)

Man, do I love good books.

At least to the half point, this one’s a doozy. I’ll keep you updated, but I doubt I’ll change my mind. ;}

[Edit: That’s what I get for posting before sleep! Snow Crash was actually on this list. Made to Stick is the other from the !MBA. I’ll tell you about that one shortly!]

I don’t think “Bunko” is pejorative anymore. ;}

(John made this video. Isn’t it fantastic!?)

When we started, we were in last place. Over the course of the last few days, we brought ourselves up 30+ percentage points—and we were leading by at least 1% before somebody special dropped a bomb. A good bomb. Now, well…

You never really know what’s going to happen (and hell, voting doesn’t close until tomorrow) but I’m pretty damn proud of us. I have had such a FUN week! Becky and Marty, who worked their asses off, and the folks who helped us out, and the Triiibe that got behind us. Man, you people are awesome.

Don’t even get me started on the freaking ebook...!

So if you haven’t voted yet… you might take a minute to go be a part of something. (And no matter what happens now, Stay Hungry!)