A wise person once told me that it is always good to have a bias for action.

When we are presented with an opportunity, a challenge or a decision, it is almost always better to lean toward doing something rather than sitting around thinking about it or analyzing it to death.

This also applies to plain ‘ol everyday life (although a life full of action is anything but plain). Do something constructive with your time. Teach people, help people, build stuff, design stuff. We were created to create.

People sometimes ask how I can be so productive. I think it has a lot to do with my bias for action. I try to keep this mantra top of mind.

Do you have a bias for action?

Don’t be fooled into thinking social media is the answer to your marketing problems.

Social media is a communication tool. That’s it.

Communication is nothing new. People have been communicating since the beginning of time. Only now instead of drawing pictures on rock walls, we type words into Twitter or Facebook.

Remarkable stuff is what matters.

If you don’t make or provide great stuff, no one will care about you. It doesn’t matter how much or how often you tweet, facebook, or spam, if you don’t have something remarkable to point people to, you are wasting your time.

I had coffee with a friend the other day who is a brilliant strategist and marketer. He’s doing a lot of social media consulting these days. He said that if a client wants to get into social media and they don’t have a truly remarkable product, the conversation about social media ends there. It’s futile. Social media doesn’t matter because no one is going to talk about your product or service if it’s not truly REmarkable (worthy of making a remark about).

So just make great stuff, or as Nick Campbell would say, “Make Cool Shit“

I recently discovered the blog of a business leader I respect very much.

I was excited. His blog has great content and great insight. It felt very authentic. It felt authentic until I clicked on the huge protruding “LEGAL” button at the top.

Come to find out, the site was “created” by this leader but it is “maintained” by the company. The legal notice goes on and on…and on about how you can and cannot use the site.

I’m not accusing this person of misleading his readers or anything like that. The point I’m making is that authenticity is critical. If you want me to believe that it’s really your thoughts I’m reading on your blog, don’t slap a huge corporate legal notice at the top. At the very least, tuck in down at the bottom.

This one is about keeping things simple. Much harder than making things complicated. Enjoy.

I have a friend whose husband works for the famous Little Debbie snack cakes. He used to work on the factory floor diagnosing and repairing equipment. He loved it. He was so good at it that they promoted him to Management.

My friend was saying that she knows how good her husband’s day has been by how much flour is on his clothes when he gets home. If his clothes are clean, she knows he’s mostly been doing administrative work in his office all day. If he’s covered in flour, she knows he’s been on the floor doing what he really loves.

If you are someone who loves designing, creating, or fixing things, I think it’s really important to keep doing those things even if you’ve worked your way in a “better” position.

For me, it’s making great videos. Sometimes I can use those videos in my marketing efforts. Sometimes I can’t.

What is it for you? Are you happier when you come home “covered in flour?”

Lately I’ve been thinking about where social media is leading us. Some people think we are going to end up with a society full of crazy narcissists. I think that’s already happened.

It’s really not even worth arguing whether social media is good or bad. It’s just a communication medium enabled by technology. And technology is amoral, it’s neither good or bad. It’s what we do with it that makes it good or bad.

I think social media is leading us to a world with absolutely no barrier in communication from one person to another. Throughout history, this barrier has always existed. Be it proximity, time, technology, whatever. The buffer between you and another person has always been there. Until now.

We are rapidly nearing a day when it is absolutely conceivable for two or more people to be inseparably linked via technology. The most imminent reality of this is live streaming video delivered via smartphones. It’s already happening.

This is an amazing time in history. We are on the cusp of a monumental shift in the way we communicate that will forever change the course of human interaction.