willie jackson

Blog

  • What you believe (out loud)

    I discovered by accident how powerful writing down my beliefs can be. When I used to do freelance design and development work, clients used to reach out by saying “I love [something from my about page or a random post]!”

    It gave them something to identify with, a sense of shared purpose and trust. Similar to how putting your interest at the bottom of a resume is recommended in case the reviewer also likes to ride horses or jump out of airplanes.

    The queen of this is probably Amber Rae, who lives life out loud in a way that causes causes others to gravitate toward her in droves. Droves, I tell you.

    Living with conviction brings others into your gravity, and making a habit of sharing your perspective creates magic. People are looking for something to believe in, and I’d be thrilled if that something came from you.

  • How to avoid crisis when resting

    You’re committed, you work hard, and you put in the hours necessary to realize your dream. And every once in a while, you need to take a step back and recharge your batteries.

    So how do you stay on top of things while you recover and preserve your health and sanity?

    The only way I know how to do this is by staying far enough ahead of where I need to be, so things go from being ahead to on schedule instead of on schedule to omg-everything’s-on-fire.

    Your mileage may vary.

  • Better and less painful with practice

    Pushups used to be something I avoided.

    I’m a big guy, so supporting my upper body does not come without strain and the nagging feeling of impending death. When I started doing yoga and noticed how difficult certain positions for me, I started changing my workout to compensate.

    On the chest press, I started focusing less on reps and more on emulating the positions that were causing me to strain. This morning when I did a quick home workout, I was encouraged by how easily my pushups were knocked out.

    Progress.

    Something similar happened when I went from dreading my monthly financials review (which I nearly outsourced) to realizing that the task was easy if I did a bit of it daily as needed instead of relegating the whole thing to the last day of every month.

    The lesson for me is that the undesirable can become trivial with enough practice. Lean into the pain, I guess you’d say.

  • A winning identity

    You might be a surgeon, a writer, or an engineer professionally.

    But who you are? You’re a winner.

    Under different circumstances, you might have become an attorney, an NFL head coach, or a classically-trained pianist. My hunch is that you would be just as successful. Winners win.

    So fret not at the thought of layoff or things out of your control, you possess everything you need to overcome and succeed and prosper.

  • Enthusiastically anticipated

    Yesterday, a friend of mine announced an event that’s being planned for Q1 of next year. On the strength of the previous event’s success, every recipient enthusiastically responded and updated their calendar accordingly.

    The organizer (let’s call him Nick, since that’s his name) earned our trust, demonstrated value, and with a four-sentence update caused busy freelancers and entrepreneurs to fall in sync with something that’s almost a year away.

    This kind of influence only comes with meticulous planning, many hours of hard work, and bold execution. Nick has earned it.

  • TEDxHarlem

    I’ve lived in Harlem for more than a year now, and I enjoy it quite a bit.

    It’s a neighborhood rich with history and culture, and it’s in the middle of what many are calling the “Second Renaissance”. Next Tuesday, TEDxHarlem comes to the historic Apollo Theater.

    Get ready for a day-long conference that seeks to understand, celebrate and empower the informal methods of social innovation that grow organically in Harlem and throughout communities around the world. The conference day is broken out into four movements designed to explore the newest ideas in innovation and expose you to concepts and dialogue that are exciting, engaging and inspirational.

    Tickets can be purchased here.

  • What people actually hear

    You’d be forgiven for thinking that what you say is what makes it into the mind of your intended recipient(s). The truth is that your statements become colored and tainted by a host of influences before entering into another person’s consciousness.

    How this person feels about you, whether or not they know you, what they’ve come to expect from you (if anything), inflection (if they know what you sound like), trust, intent, and a number of other things — these filter your words in the subconscious before the first statement is processed.

    So the wise marketer then doesn’t speak to express a point, he to speaks create an understanding within the mind of the person listening or reading. Once you develop this sensitivity, you can play to biases and skepticism and openness is a number of different ways.

    There are ethical and perhaps slightly less ethical ways to do this, but that’s another post for another writer.

  • In the absence of competition

    Competitors can often be characterized by unimaginative and overconfident megalomaniacs duking it out over razor-thin margins in a race to the bottom*.

    The number of companies shoehorning yesterday’s electronics into iPhone and iPad-looking exteriors is at once depressing and encouraging, for example.

    Depressing because these companies (despite their billions in funding and vast supply chains) are so out of touch that they shamelessly copy what’s working and in some cases dare to even sue the originators for patent or copyright infringement…**

    …and encouraging because the gulf between true excellence in product design and the ripoffs will in the coming years become so vast that a discriminating customers will vote with their wallets in a way that causes companies to innovate or die.

    When I think of innovation, I think of James Cameron and Elon Musk. People willing to rethink entire experiences and limitations on human achievement.

    Steve Jobs was onto something, too.

    * = It was a lot of fun writing that sentence.

    ** = I recognize that Apple is not the originator of many of the ideas upon which several of its products are built, my point here is about execution and leadership.

  • No replacement for pain

    If you have the ability to completely avoid catastrophic mistakes and failures, then you probably don’t need to be reading my blog, or any blog for that matter.

    If you’re like the rest of us, however, there simply no replacement for the lessons that come in the wake of a disaster. Some of my most powerful and longest-lasting lessons have come from cataclysmic failures and embarrassments.

    The memory serves two purposes that are equally important: 1) a strong incentive to figure out things the next time and 2) a reminder that failure (even mortifying, gut-wrenching failure) does not result in sudden death and excommunication.

    Not usually, anyway.

  • Personal motivation

    Not all of us are at the point in our career where we only do things that interest us. This is why it’s called “work.”

    So when your overflowing inbox is calling and spreadsheets must be updated (a particularly unpleasant task for me), what keeps you going? What motivate me wont necessarily motivate you.

    We often try to borrow lessons and insights from others without doing the necessarily self-reflection. This results in a faux motivation that doesn’t last when faced with adversity.

    This is also why your competition can become less relevant in the long term — you can do things for the right reasons, make excellence a habit, and determine what it is that makes the work worth it.

    If you’re doing it for the wrong (or even undiscovered) reasons, I’m afraid that burnout might be on the horizon. Get to know yourself, ask the tough questions, and correct course as aggressively as possible when you find yourself off track.