(This was originally posted at Social Work prn, where I write on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you get a chance, check them out. They’re nice folks!)

I’m starting to build a Rules of the Road document (in my head, at least) while reading a book by the excellent Clay Shirky called Here Comes Everybody. Some of these things I knew, but some of them are recently-cemented concepts for me and that’s very exciting. I am madly obsessed with people projects—where many people come together over the internet and accomplish something previously unlikely or impossible. Shirky is talking about this very thing in his book, and it’s making my whole life awesome. Downright thrilling, I should say.

My Rules of the Road so far:

1. The relationship between you and the people you lead is a bargain. You give them what they want (assistance, entertainment, meaning) and they give you what you want (they spread your ideas, give you authority, help your project succeed). If you forget about the bargain—or strike the wrong bargain—you lose that essential relationship. It’s imperative that you find out what the bargain really is before you assume, crash and burn.
   
2. There will always be a cost to the organization of a large number of people. If you lead, you know that a B.I.G. part of that cost for you is time and energy—not necessarily money. But anyone who has been in a leadership position knows that time and energy is often a bigger, more interesting challenge than money. Thinking you can organize a big group of people without dealing with some cost in these terms is unrealistic, but if you can walk into it knowing what effort will be necessary to expend, you’re a step up.
   
3. Our circumstances have changed on a spectacular scale (one word: internet) and they’re not going to stop changing. Get with the change game now and start to expect things to shift—you’ll be ahead of everyone who’s still fighting it. Things may look the same in a lot of ways… but they are not.
   
4. We can have anything we want, if we are only willing to reach out and create it. This is truer now than it has ever been in the past. Our limits, as suspected, are in our heads—not on our capabilities.
   
5. It is less efficient to try to build something you want, and more efficient to wait and watch, keep your eyes and brain open, and seize an opportunity when you see it. A great book I talked about awhile back, Made to Stick, made this point often. A struggle to make something out of nothing is often not as efficient as an ability to see opportunities and leap on them.
   
6. Give them tools instead of instructions. If you can give a group of people the means to self-organize their passion, it’s more effective than trying to tell them how to do it. Self-organized efforts on the internet are often more effective and successful than similar initiatives by large companies with many resources (and many managers). Don’t worry so much about oversight. Give them systems. Give them tools. And then let them do their thing.
   

We’re capable of self-assembling now in ways we never were before, and it’s changing the entire landscape of “people projects”—or PR, or business, or community initiatives, or anything else you can name that has to do with how groups of people interact and make things happen.

I can’t wait to finish this book. Wow.

I’m really looking forward to my birthday. It’s on Monday the 26th, in case you haven’t scheduled it (recurring, ad infinitum) on your calendar. ;}

I have thoughts.

I’m thinking that I’d probably like to move on that raw transition later this week. It’s long overdue. I expect that I’ll use Angela’s new program to help me do it, even though the weight loss part, specifically, is less interesting to me than the raw produce part. (That said, I could use a safe area to run in. I’m going to scout out nearby neighborhoods soon so that I don’t have to spend so much time in the dinky gym.)

I’d like a hitch for the car, so that I can use the bike rack I was offered and start going down to the Veloway more often. It’s amazing down there. How can it be this beautiful outside in January? Last year it was much colder and rainier, but the last few days have been all warm and sunny. Texas, you minx.

I’m thinking that it’s time to get more shelves into this apartment. We have a lot of books, and a lot of other items that still don’t have a proper place after three moves and four years. For my birthday, I could use a willing friend with a truck! Given my way, I would move in five or six new bookcases. (Yes. We actually do need that many bookcases. Impressive, huh?)

I’d like a wall rack for the bikes, too, that hangs them flat against one wall (one above the other). I might ask someone to make one for me. (I think I may already have a willing party.) That’s exciting!

As I level up, I find that I value peace of mind more and more—even as my life gets increasingly more exciting. (Maybe one begets the other.) This week I’ve been adjusting my environment to engender peace of mind, ease of movement, clarity of workflow. It’s not perfect, but it’s improving. There are lots of books and gadgets and fun things I would like to have, and it will be brilliant to have some of them magically appear on my doorstep… but peace of mind is getting almost all my attention lately. Rightly so, I think. Especially considering the challenges I intend to take on in the next few months.

At some unidentifiable point, it became more about what I can do than what I can get. Which means that on birthdays, I look for presents that I can do something with. Things that give me a nudge forward.

First person who gifts me a catapult gets to catapult me. ;}

I’m conscious that I’m moving through my life. Things don’t stand still the way they did when I was growing up. It’s time to make something happen like never before. (If only I had realized this when I was ten.)

Plenty of time left, but none for dilly-dallying.

Part of the forward motion of Virtual Magpie From Scratch—a challenging recipe that historically results in charred dishtowels—has been organization and documentation, boxes that say “TAKE ACTION!” and “FILE!” and the whole process of dealing therewith. And it’s strange how excited I get, immersed in these things, how they even spill over into other parts of my life. For in fact, this afternoon I stood in my bedroom and looked at the clean folded clothes on the bed, and the worn ones in a pile, and thought, my laundry needs a “TAKE ACTION!” box, and a “FILE!” box…

Even more strange, it feels like the kind of thing I’m going to do.