#good trait for a software developer too I guess

[theallianceofcelestials]

Okay I cooked this up in like thirty minutes so it’s probably not too good (btw im the anon who asked about the tinder thing)

Behold, Cindr, the robot ver. of Tinder! (I took inspo from Tumblr ofc)

Instead of having to verify that you’re human, you have to verify that you’re NOT human! The whole app is run and made by robots, and is solely meant for animatronics. The founders didn’t like how little representation on dating apps and how hard it was to actually find a partner on one, that they made one where humans were excluded for once instead of them.

That’s all I could come up with, but I think Cindr is pretty good yeah? I have no idea if that’s already a thing but…. Yeah, anyways I hope you like this ^^

Tinder anon you're back! And so soon too! Sunray, the account owner just texted me that you're back!

Cindr "Where you can grind my gears ;)" (That's horrible and cheesy, lol)

Okay, so if this ever happens, Cindr shall be it's name! And the reason for its existence is pretty early animatronic too! So like the people behind this are old, and even amongst the newer animatronics there'd probably be a preference towards other animatronics.

It'd also need a bunch of preference settings human dating sites don't have, simply because of the build of the animatronics, and amongst those preference settings are probably checkmarks whether you're interested in this or that type of build, like of example if you're interested in animatronics who look more humanoid, like Ballora for example, or more animal like, see Foxy for example. And maybe even a setting for special frames like the celestial ones. And preference settings for more physical aspects, like if you're cool with sharing a cable to game together and stuff like that.

[sciderman]

I swear I have read your big post regarding Peter Parker's neurodivergence and why it is best to avoid labelling him, but he definitely has a weird brain

Can't find it and feel kinda sad about it cuz I deeply related to it

i know exactly which post you're talking about and i can't find it either! i've raked through my archive, and it's just - nowhere to be seen. i think tumblr eated it (it happens.)

really, tumblr's search functionality is so so useless, i don't know what to tell you. there are plenty of keywords i can search to find it that post, but the search functionality actually just does not work!

undiagnosed audhd-addled peter parker, my darling, my light, my life, my everything.

i think peter parker's such an interesting creature to write, because a lot of people will point to a certain behaviour about him and say "this is an autistic thing, right?" but a lot of those behaviours are actually, in my head, tied to certain traumas in peter's life too.

people say "oh, the food thing, peter's a picky eater because he's autistic" and yes, absolutely. but also it's tied to his trauma with his parents.

peter gets overstimulated, and yes, it's an autism thing, but also he was bitten by a radioactive spider and his senses are dialled to 11.

it's a similar case i've found for myself, too – where a lot of friends i have kind of diagnose me because i have autistic traits, but actually - i'm hesitant to claim the label or pursue diagnosis because, actually, i know where these certain behaviours come from, and they come from certain traumas. there are events i can pinpoint in my life and say "yep. that's where this behaviour comes from."

so - i think there's a lot of overlap between trauma and autistic traits. the brain is very complex! i think the reason for that overlap is maybe as simple as the fact that people with autism and people with trauma are both doing the same thing - developing behaviours to protect themselves or soothe themselves. so - i think it's nice to be able to see a character like peter parker, who may or may not be autistic, but recognise behaviours in him and see yourself in him.

people who go undiagnosed for whatever reason - people who are really good at masking - so good, in fact, that they have no idea they might be on the spectrum - everyone and anyone at all can look at peter parker and recognise themselves. because i think we discredit the thought that every single brain does the same thing! develops certain behaviours in order to survive. every brain has that same software - we've just all been faced with different hardships that we need to overcome, and that's were all the differences come in.

autism is a spectrum, i guess - everyone falls into it to some degree. and i think events in your life probably push you along on it. but i don't know, i didn't study brain science. probably what i'm saying is very stupid and uninformed. of course there's brain chemistry involved. but i know people in my life living with autism and certain events in their life have exacerbated certain behaviours or made coping with it a lot more difficult. so maybe trauma is a catalyst.

[xomakara]

get to know your mutuals | tag game

thanks for tagging me @aaagustd & @beomcoups 💚

what's the origin of your blog title? ↠ It's part of my name. I'm not telling you what it is lol.

favorite fandoms: ↠ First a Beauty (Beast) and forever a Light (Highlight). NCTzen (NCT), Atiny (Ateez), Melody (BTOB) and many more lol.

OTP(s)/shipname: ↠ Johnny x Me | Jaehyun x Me | Yunho x Me | Gikwang x Me | Hyunsik x Me | the list goes on and on (Linda being forever delusional)

favorite color: ↠ all shades of green. occasionally reds and pinks lolol

favorite game: ↠ At the moment Coral Island and Love and Deepspace (please talk to me about Xavier). My forever favorites are the Final Fantasy series and the Suikoden series (impatiently waiting for Suiko 1 & 2 remaster).

song stuck in your head: ↠ No One Like You by Scorpions. I got my taste in 80's rock from my momma.

weirdest habit/trait? ↠ IDK to be honest. I think everything I do is weird LOL

hobbies: ↠ reading, writing, gaming, fishing/camping, watching true crime and commentaries, listening to music, I'm also a coverist (look at my pinned post for my cover yt channel lolol)

if you work, what's your profession? ↠ I'm a purchasing agent for a steel distribution company

if you could have any job you wish, what would it be? ↠ A lazy fart. Jokes aside, I wanted to be a software engineer/game developer when I was younger but idk when that changed. Somewhere along the line, I just thought Business was a good idea and look at me now, working a corporate job lol

something you're good at: ↠ I talk to much so I'm a good yapper. But i'm an equally good listener too! I'm also a go-to for advice and comfort.

something you're bad at: ↠ math and now look at me working with numbers everyday at work.

something you love: ↠ writing, my family (majority of the time), MY DOGGOS, the amazing friends I made as a writer, kpop, anime, asian dramas, being a lazy fart.

something you could talk about for hours off the cuff: ↠ Where my paranormal and true crime girlies at?

something you hate: ↠ the cold, shitty people in general, laundry, sometimes my family (mainly my younger sisters), sometimes my job

something you collect: ↠ wigs (I suffer from hair loss sooooooo), makeup, kpop albums, random electronics for some odd reason, purses, manga

something you forget: ↠ I'm old. I forget a lot of things. What's my name again?

what's your love language? ↠ words of reassurance and acts of affirmation

favorite movie/show: ↠ Too many to count. BUTTTTTTT Supernatural all the way.

favorite food: ↠ No favorite. I just love food LOL

favorite animal: ↠ MY DOGGOS, cats, fish, bunnies

are you musical? ↠ I was in choir back in middle school and high school. I still (occasionally) cover kpop songs when I have the time. I'm a decent singer (I think so) lol

what were you like as a child? ↠ I'm the oldest of 5 (1 brother, 3 sisters) and was expected to be the responsible eldest sister and help take care of the siblings. I rebelled during high school lolol

favorite subject at school? ↠ history, art, english

least favorite subject? ↠ MATH

what's your best character trait? ↠ I guess I'm a good listener. I'm told that I'm like a mother-hen lol

what's your worst character trait? ↠ not slowing down. I rush into things (mostly work projects) and tend to not think about the future impacts.

if you could change any detail of your day right now what would it be? ↠ get more sleep lololol

if you could travel in time who would you like to meet? ↠ I would say during the Khmer Rouge regime because of the stories of my grandma being a hero to the villagers. But then again, I don't want to live through that sad time and every day, i tell my parents that I love them and don't take them for granted.

recommend one of your favorite fanfics (spread the love): ↠ you in my arms (series) by @sluttyten, your gentle hands by @yourlocaljonghoe, and many other fics that I can't name off the top of my head

tagging: @wooahaeproductions @shadowkoo @lovetaroandtaemin @heechwe @unholywriters @yourlocaljonghoe @acupoftaewithsomesuga @rems-writing @itsnotmydejavu @sweetinsaniiity @yoonguurt @kwanisms @desirehorizon and whoever wants to do it 💚

[vigilanteses-production-blog]

P.S. just as a warning, ep1 ended up running a bit shorter than the rest of the show being somewhere between 10-16 minutes long. Though obviously not incredibly short with it being around 8 minutes without the theme song of credit sequences.

Here is where I rant about the show for a bit because it’s still hard to process that I’m actually doing this. It has been my dream to make a cartoon for a really long time, and I’m not sure if any indie things really inspired me to do it. I just loved how they are in general and I thought that if I did something similar I would be “cool”. Since that thought I have canceled too many shows to count. Some where just random doodles or concepts I threw around in my head, while the ones that really hurt were the ones I genuinely thought had a chance, though I guess they weren’t for nothing. Because of these projects I have developed a lot of things that made production more beneficial. I am very confident in my skills to craft likable characters and charming dialogue, I also have fallen in love with how Vigilanteses looks. Call it vanity, but gosh darn it if that vanity doesn’t feel really good. I say it’s a kids show, but it definitely isn’t. I definitely have two very different interests in art: one side is obsessed with uncle grandpa and loves stupid jokes and worlds that make no sense while the other side loves akira and wants to put these idiots through the ringer and also cool gore stuff. I think Vigilanteses definitely has the best balance of these traits. In past projects I have gotten way to invested in some epic story I made for a really stupid comedy idea, and usually the comedy ends up getting dropped, or the story gets dropped. In Vigilanteses these clashing ideas compliment each other somehow. I have become better at what I’m trying to do than I want to admit to myself. I think one of my biggest influences were the sheer volume of indie pilots released, but for the wrong reasons. Some of these projects were genuinely incredible and I anticipated what they would do next, but they usually fizzled out. I don’t know if I want to prove to people that you can make something incredible by yourself, but I mainly want to prove to myself that I can do it. If I finish Vigilanteses that basically means that I can do whatever I want now. Obviously I would love to pitch and idea to like, netfix, or something and get financial backing to make epic cool things for normal and well adjusted people. But this means that I get free rein over my projects because, even though Vigilanteses is being produced with a lot of professional software like adobe animate, photoshop, and premiere. I can totally see myself making arguably better looking projects with pencil2d and iMovie (yes seriously, I have 100% confidence I will produce a show like that just to prove it can be done) I think the only thing I would really miss moving to less professional stuff would be the fact that making animatics would be way more obnoxious. I don’t think I would miss it an extreme amount though. After Vigilanteses season one, I am 200% producing a different cartoon that will be way more episodic. It will be a six episode first half of a theoretical season one. It will be epic I promise. But that a little too far in the future for my tastes. In the present in addition to writing this lengthy tumblr post, I am obviously making a 13 episode first season, there will be three seasons.

I don’t know how to end this. Byyyyyeeee

[tracybirds]

And here’s where it ends *sighs happily* Finished up my bonus round Jeff fic for the FAB Five (now Six) Feb (now March) ;D

Prompts by the ever wonderful @gumnut-logic - you’re a star and I used “home”

Consider this a slight AU to 3x26 I guess :)

More from FAB Five Feb: [Alan] | [Gordon] | [Virgil 1] | [Virgil 2] | [John] | [Scott]��

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Jeff had never expected to feel the crushing pressure of the T-drive jump more than once. He felt the rattling deep in his bones, the shock of an acceleration so intense that it snapped something inside him as the fabric of spacetime warped around them.

And then it was over, in an instant, and Jeff gasped for air, his face wet from sudden tears. He tasted iron at the back of his throat.

“Oh shit, Dad,” said Gordon. “Virg, he needs you.”

Virgil stumbled out of his seat with a groan and shook his head. He peered at his Dad with bloodshot eyes and gently tugged his head forward.

“Burst blood vessel,” he muttered. “It looks pretty minor. Any cranial pressure?”

The words were meant only for him, but Jeff saw the five anxious pairs of eyes around him, staring and trying to avoid his gaze all at once.

“I’m okay, son,” said Jeff softly. He wanted to divert their worried looks, wanted to delay the moment where they learnt exactly how much was wrong with him after eight years in space. Virgil though, Virgil had always seen through any attempts at side stepping the truth. He had always given complete honesty and he expected it in return.

“You’re not.”

“I will be.”

Virgil didn’t argue. Jeff glanced sideways out the window into the familiar darkness.

“How long will it be now?”

“We are dropping into orbit,” said John, his eyes fixed on the three dimensional map in front of him. “Alan?”

“Dropping into geostationary orbit now,” confirmed Alan. “Scott, can you double check my flight path for satellites?”

“FAB, Alan.”

Jeff stared at his youngest boy. He was so much more than the little boy he’d left behind, and for all his imaginings as to who his son would become, he’d never pictured the serious and alert young man seated at the controls in front of him. He wondered if that was John’s influence, remembering how Alan had worshipped him as a child, or if his disappearance had had a role in developing that particular personality trait. He hoped his son had chances to play as well as work. But he didn’t know.

Gordon’s drawl interrupted his thoughts and he startled slightly at the intrusion.

“If you’d like to take a gander out of the port window, you might see a sight long forgotten by the men of space.”

Jeff craned his neck to the right, desperate for a glimpse of home.

“Port is left, Dad.”

Jeff grimaced at the reminder. He had known that once, had taken the time to learn all the sailing terminology alongside his second youngest. Now it was just information his brain had edited out, deemed unimportant in comparison to the knowledge that had kept him alive. He tried to ignore the slightly crest-fallen look on Gordon’s face, acutely aware that this could be chalked up as just one more failing on his part when it came to his son. He still heard the old anger in Gordon’s voice, half imagined and half remembered, lingering from the last conversation they’d had before everything changed. There was before, where Gordon was a young, hurt fifteen year old raging against the injustice in the world, and there was after, where Gordon was an unknown quantity. It pained Jeff to realise that when it came to Gordon, he still had no idea where he stood.

“I’m sorry, Gordy,” he said quietly, wishing he could reach out and gather him into his arms again.

Gordon’s voice was thick when he next spoke.

“It’s no big deal, Dad.”

They both knew it was a lie.

Jeff avoided his son’s gaze and leaned forward, peering out the window as a large blue and white sphere came into view. It hung in the sky, motionless above them. Technically, he supposed, it was beneath them. A swell of emotion arose in his chest as he looked out at the planet that was so bright, it hurt to look at after years in the darkness. For years he had stared out at a night sky full of rocks and stars, the sun distinguishable only by its brightness and not its size. Without thinking, he leaned out towards the window, drinking in the sight and pressing himself ever closer to home.

“Hey John, pop quiz! Can you name the planet below?”

“I know what Earth looks like.”

Jeff chuckled and looked back at his sons, appreciating the old joke. John, his second eldest with his head and heart in the stars, newly space rated when he’d vanished from their lives. It was a comfort to know that some things hadn’t changed.

“Well it’s been so long since you’ve visited us, I thought you might be in need of new directions.”

Jeff turned to stare at his son, his ears burning as red as his hair.

“Shut up,” he hissed at Gordon, clearly not wanting that piece of information known yet. John had always been protective over what he felt was his to share, that slight need for control never conquered nor relinquished.

“John, what does he mean?”

There was an uncomfortable silence in the cockpit as everyone turned towards John, waiting for his response.

He faltered under Jeff’s scrutiny, turning with a ramrod straight back away from him.

“Thunderbird Five is my home,” he said quietly. In the silence of the room his voice didn’t need to be loud.

Jeff frowned. He was a trained astronaut and he knew the risks of long term space flight as well as any astronaut. Hell, he had been living them for the last eight years.

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s got gravity now, Dad,” said John, still avoiding his gaze. “It’s not like it used to be. And I have to run comms.”

“Not alone, you don’t,” Jeff argued. “It was never meant to be a solo job, you were meant to have assistance.”

You were meant to have me.

Jeff was startled to hear the slight giggle from Alan’s chair.

“He’s not alone, Dad,” his son said with a grin.

“Alan,” warned John, barely glancing over at him. “We talked about this.”

“Talked about what? You got a partner up there with you?”

John sighed irritably.

“Thunderbird Five is ready to detach and return to her correct orbital position,” he said, ignoring the question in an infuriating manner that Jeff knew John was utterly unaware of. He transferred the map to Gordon’s station and manoeuvred his body towards the door with a practiced ease. The hours logged in space was visible in his every movement – Jeff didn’t think he himself had ever moved so smoothly in the microgravity environment.

Scott quickly unbuckled.

“I’m coming too.”

His eldest pushed himself towards him, and Jeff said nothing as he allowed Scott to manipulate the fastening that held him in his seat. His fine motor skills had weakened over the years and right now, the high intensity of emotion and eight years of neglected health was starting to crash into a shaky exhaustion that he wasn’t sure he could keep hidden.

“Boys?” He held out his arms, unwilling to leave the presence of his younger sons without saying goodbye properly. Not after the last time.

There was no longer the urgency of that first greeting, no longer the desperation and shock and relief that had underpinned the last hug he’d given them. This time, as his arms curled around them, he could take his time infusing the love in his heart into every point of contact. He could feel Alan’s arms around his waist, Gordon and Virgil each clinging to his shoulders. He leaned his head down to rest tiredly on Virgil’s head and counted his many, many blessings.

“Let’s go, Dad,” said Scott, soft and gentle, the tug of his hands a request and not a demand. As they moved together, Scott turned his head back to Virgil.

“We’ll see you down there. Call us if you have trouble with the Hood.”

Gordon snorted.

“He’ll be the one in trouble if he tries.”

“Go,” said Virgil firmly. He shot an exasperated look at Gordon. “I’ll look after this lot.”

Jeff allowed himself to float, the inertia of Scott’s motion pushing him forwards. John was waiting in the hall. He appeared to be in deep conversation with someone, hands flying across a holographic keyboard and peering into a limp looking camera.

The sound of Scott’s feet hitting the wall in front of them echoed throughout the silent station, and Scott shifted, trying to slow Jeff’s motion before he crashed into the wall. The airlock shut behind them.

John looked up, the wary look still in his eyes. He nodded at the camera.

“EOS is back online,” he said quietly to Scott, and before Jeff could wonder at what he meant, he could hear a low humming as the station came to life.

“Good morning John,” called a high voice. “The time is 0840. Was your mission successful?”

“It was.”

The station herself seemed to sigh and Jeff had an sudden notion that whatever computer programme John had installed was far more advanced than the IVA software he remembered from before.

It gave him the creeps.

“Dad, meet EOS,” said John, gesturing up at the camera he had been working with earlier.

“Jeff Tracy.” The voice seemed to come from all around Jeff, and he stared in astonishment.

“Who are you?”

“I am EOS,” replied the voice. The camera shifted slightly, as though glancing back at his son. “My function is to assist International Rescue and its operatives. I understand you to be their founder.”

Jeff blinked, still unsure at what was conversing with him. It seemed to be the voice of Thunderbird Five herself.

“I guess you could say that,” he said weakly.

The camera – EOS? – nodded and trilled a little. Jeff didn’t think he imagined the way the air grew a little warmer.

“John is my founder,” she said before moving closer curiously. “I made myself out of his games and computational code, out of his thoughts and ideas. I found him. And then he found me.”

Scott’s hand gripped tighter on Jeff’s shoulder, instinctively pulling him behind him. The motion would have been unnoticed under normal circumstances. But being held by his eldest son while conversing with an apparently sentient computer on the space station he’d made for his second eldest, following years of isolation on the far reaches of the solar system could hardly be quantified as normal.

EOS drew back immediately.

“I make him nervous,” she said and John frowned.

“Scott, we’ve talked about this.”

“You’ve talked. I’ve reserved judgement.”

Jeff shifted uncomfortably, not liking the tension that had crept up between his two sons. This was clearly an old argument, and a sore point for both of them. There was clearly more to this story than they were willing to share.

“Thank you for meeting me EOS,” he said quietly, trying to smooth over the awkwardness with good manners, the way his mother had taught him. “I appreciate any help you can bring to our organisation.”

The ring of lights flashed green, almost like a sudden smile, and John smiled too. It was a sight Jeff was determined to commit to memory, knowing his memories were all that he had that could never be taken from him.

“Scott, reorient yourself to the floor. We’ll turn the gravity to 0.1G and see how Dad handles that.”

A gentle tug towards what was apparently the floor – a plexiglass material that stretched upwards as the station curved into a circle. A slight jolt, and Jeff felt his body drawn to the floor, an apparent acceleration that he hadn’t felt steadily for a long time. Looking down, he could see the Earth falling away beneath him, the T-drive already a mere speck in the distance.

“You’ve changed her a lot,” he said, looking up at John. “I barely recognise her.”

John flushed.

“When I moved up here more permanently, I made some changes. The glass for one. The computer system for another.”

“EOS,” said Jeff with a nod.

“No, she came later,” said John. “Brains and Virgil designed the gravity ring. Grandma published a paper on the effects of artificial gravity on the human body – all theoretical, of course.”

“My request was a way to make sure he could evacuate to Earth,” said Scott. “Hence the space elevator.”

“A space elevator?” Jeff asked, looking between them and trying to contain his excitement. “I read about those in stories as a kid. You made one?”

“We did,” said John, a reluctant grin pulling at his lips. “It’s an amazing view. Only seats two though.”

John bounced ahead of them in the low gravity, leading his visitors through to the comms room. He reached out and Jeff gasped as the sensors and monitors came to life around them.

They watched John pull up the command system for the space elevator, while also checking through a number of rescue alerts that had been active within the last twenty minutes when Thunderbird Five had dropped back into orbit. His attention was diverted by a sudden call and in fluent Thai, he calmed the woman on the line.

“It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it,” said Scott in an undertone to his Dad.

“Yes, he is,” said Jeff, eyes wide at the way John adeptly assured her while prepping an action plan to forward to the GDF.

John glanced back at them and waved them off.

“You’d best get in. Our satellites have been forwarding comms just fine in our absence and I can’t see any issues, but I’d like to coordinate this one before I come down.”

“FAB John,” said Scott. “Call us if you need us.”

“Love you, son,” said Jeff gruffly and John’s hands stilled in front of him.

“Love you too, Dad.”

Jeff smiled at the quiet words, allowing Scott to busy himself with strapping them both in.

“Well, Scooter, it’s you and me.”

A touch of awe still hung in Scott’s eyes whenever he looked at him, and Jeff hadn’t missed the way he kept reaching out with trembling hands to assure himself of his presence.

His gaze softened and he pulled Scott close.

“I’m here now, Scott. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there before.”

At that, Scott’s wide eyes shuttered and his face began to crumple.

“Oh, kiddo,” murmured Jeff, and in the privacy of the cramped elevator, Scott cried in his father’s arms.

“Dad, we thought you were dead,” said Scott hoarsely, when the tears stopped their brutal attack. “You were just gone and I, and I…” Scott hiccoughed and let out a shaky breath. “Dad, I told everyone to stop looking.”

Jeff’s heart clenched at the thought of the responsibility Scott had taken upon himself. He had been forced to make harder calls than any man should have to bear alone. Jeff suspected he hardly knew the half of it.

“It wasn’t your fault, Scott,” said Jeff, his own eyes bright as he saw at the devastation in Scott’s eyes. Looking closer, he could see the signs of age that he’d never known on Scott before, the exhaustion and worry written clearly into the history of his skin.

“I should have done more,” he said stubbornly.

“No, Scott,” he said firmly. “Our responsibility begins and ends with us. You were not responsible for anything that happened to me, the Hood caused all that pain.”

“I still should have known,” he said. More tears slid down his cheeks and he buried his head into Jeff’s chest once more. “I should have known you weren’t dead.”

“Scott,” he said gently. “You had a responsibility to your family. I am so proud of you Scott, so proud. You kept them safe, you kept them alive, and you let them grow. And you can stop now Scott. I’m here, it’s my responsibility again.”

“I don’t know if I can stop,” said Scott. “It’s been so long Dad, so many years of this.”

Jeff was quiet, a deep ache of sadness erupting in his chest.

“We’ll help, Scott,” he said. “Not just me, but all of us. I think you’ve forgotten – we have a responsibility to you too.”

“Now you sound like Virgil,” grumbled Scott. Jeff smothered a grin at the disgruntled expression on his son’s face and made a note to thank Virgil for attempting to rein in his zealous brother. Scott sat back and they startled as the space elevator began to move.

“Was John listening in the whole time?” asked Jeff disconcertedly.

“Probably,” said Scott, glaring up at the ceiling. “He does that sometimes.”

“I do not,” said John’s disembodied voice. “EOS just told me you’d both finally strapped in safely.”

“Exhibit A,” said Scott, with a resigned gesture upwards.

Jeff laughed, startled by a sudden memory of John eavesdropping on his conversations with Lucy, before scurrying off to tell his brothers about the plans they wee making to take them to the aquarium, or the beach, or the museum, or the planetarium.

“He’s always done that,” he said fondly.

“Yeah, but it didn’t matter so much before he got his hands on an array of communication satellites and started living on a supercomputer.”

Jeff grinned broadly.

“Scott?” he said quietly. “It’s so good to be home.”

[schoolblogroxanne]

How can I create a non-pathological culture, while embracing deviancy and tradition at the same time?

In order to make a non-pathological culture you need to know what a non-pathological culture is a Non-pathological culture does not focus on the leader's personal interests and resources. The information is not processed in a way to further or advance particular parties within the organization but to benefit the organization as a whole; this culture may seem abnormal but can be a beneficial way for the community. In order for it to work you need to know how to act in the deviance in the society; to balance the scale in the society, the wants and needs of the society and if these things are essential, for example, if the law of the government that is in power does not coincide with the needs and wants of the society, the society will feel alienated from nation it serves, it will break the balance and cause chaos, just like what happened to the Philippines when it was occupied by other nations, a revolution occurred because the balance was lost when other nations applied there laws and tradition to the society, therefore a non-pathological culture can be doable due to its components and ways, not only the government or the people that are on power will benefit the but all of the people who are under this nation or society. Non-pathological culture is not power oriented and is a positive type culture.

Deviancy is classified in two types, Over conformity and Under conformity, Over conformity is based on accepting and conforming to norms without question where the actions, traits and ideas of athletes and coaches involves such an extreme conformity that they perform “supranormal” actions and potentially endanger themselves and others for example models, Some models suffer anorexia due to their obsession of having a  thin body: Anorexia is form of eating disorder which the person having this psychological disorder fears to gain weight. Another example of deviant Over conformity is that an athlete makes sacrifices for "the game", an athlete strives for distinction, an athlete accepts risks and plays through pain, and an athlete accepts no limits in the pursuit of possibilities. Because of the presence of this moral code of athleticism, athletes who over-conform to theses norms and commit deviant acts aren't necessarily viewed as deviant. The four main norms of the sports ethic states that an athlete must make sacrifices for the game and accept risks, which can in turn, glorify the decisions that an athlete makes to behave in a deviant way. If an athlete decides they need to better their physical health in order to succeed in their sport, and decides to take performance enhancing drugs or along the way, develops an eating disorder in pursuit of becoming a larger asset to their team, according to the sports ethic, they are only fulfilling their duties as an athlete, some athletes also do Over training or staleness occurs when an athlete ignores the signs of overreaching and continues to train. Many athletes believe that weakness or poor performance signals the need for even harder training. So, they continue to push themselves. This only breaks down the body further pushing the body to its limit. This act of deviance Overconformity is mostly acceptable in the athlete society because other athletes will understand what that person feels and the reason why he did those deviant acts, even though there is bad side on this type of practices some of the characteristics of this deviancy has a positive effect because of their goal to be the best or the be known they motivate their body in order to reach those goals.

 The other form of deviancy is Under conformity, under conformity is based on ignoring or rejecting norms, this often happen to people who has low esteem, those people who take their talent for granted and people who are under too much pressure. This type of deviance is a negative form of deviance, the complete opposite of deviance over conformity, this type of deviance can result to generalizations or stereotypes, people will consider you taboo, someone who is not acceptable to the society, because people are more used with the uniform ways, doing under conformity makes you different, strange , or much worse a bad influence to other people, some culture reject this kind of thinking because it may affect there laws and tradition, an example of under conformity is obesity, obesity is a complex disease involving excessive of body fat, a gateway disease that may cause other diseases and health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and some other certain cancer. Another example to this is an unmotivated student, a student that avoids academic challenges; the student shows boredom and lack of attention in class, in order to tend to this unmotivated student you need to do two things he first is to change his thinking so he comes to believe that, if he puts forth effort, he can be successful with academic tasks. The second is to figure out what does motivate them to identify the settings, situations, and conditions that he responds to and that can be used to foster his interest, so here we it the two types of deviance, deviance has its good side and its bad side, If we use deviance in a good way we could gain from it but we need to put balance on the decisions we make, because too much of anything is bad, other traits of having a deviant under conformity is that the person having this have sub normal ideas, traits, actions that indicate rejection or ignorance of their existence. This type of attitude could link into anarchy and lawlessness, this type of mindset can be dangerous to the people around him/her because he/she could harm them in order to get their wants and needs, and also this type of deviancy can cause the person to lose confidence to self and due to being unmotivated it can affect the people around them and in academic studies.

 Tradition can also be preserved even though there is deviance, it can be preserved by Sharing your culture's art and technology. Each culture has its own clothing, music, visual art, storytelling traditions, and many more unique characteristics. Other members of your culture will be overjoyed to teach or talk about their hobbies, their jobs, their crafts, and what they do for fun. This includes traditional artwork you would find in a museum, but material culture goes far beyond that. Even a kitchen spoon or a piece of software is a cultural artifact. People with less sophisticated technology are often considered ignorant or less intelligent. This is completely wrong. Culture passes on tools adapted to a particular environment, and every tool has generations of thinking behind it. Shaping a stone tool is one of the oldest cultural practices there is, and it still takes great skill and knowledge. Cook family recipes. It's never too late to whip up some recipes from your grandmother's cookbook. Smell and taste have powerful connections to memory. As you knead dough or try to guess the right amount of spices, you might remember meals from you childhood or holidays. Just reading a recipe can teach you how much ingredients and kitchen tools have changed. And even if some of them are unfamiliar, others have most likely become your comfort food or a source of family pride, even though these are simple things it is very effective in preserving the traditions you grew up to have another way to preserve tradition is to Accept change. The dialogue around passing on culture often sounds defeatist. Cultures are "endangered" or need "preserving" before they die out. Real challenges and threats do exist, but don't assume that all change is bad. Culture helps people adapt to the world around them. The world has always been changing, cultures have always been adapting, and it's up to you to choose a direction you can be proud of. Almost everyone participates in more than one culture. Be proud of your blend of ideas and behaviors, Talk about it and share it with other people. People are often fascinated by the different ways that people do similar things. Start a conversation and help bring others into the fold, sharing your culture is a good way to connect with other people, therefore the society can still embrace deviance and traditions. Some individuals use technology as a means of deviating from more traditional cultural norms. For example, in the United States, employees in offices are encouraged to remain productive and efficient, letting their minds wander off-task as little as possible. In the past decade, most companies have installed high-speed internet access as a means of improving efficiency. However, employees often appropriate the internet access to avoid work by using social networking sites. Such procrastination and corporate inefficiency stemming from internet access is called “cyber loafing”, but even though employees cyber loaf it the installation of high speed internet connection has motivated the employees to work faster.

[sevngmin]

dreams of dreams

synopsis: what happens when two broke college students live together, out of their own will?

a/n: a spinoff from @changbeanie ‘s hyunjin au, do give it a read<3 also, this took quite a while as i had school too,,, rip

genre: fluff, lowkey enemies-to-lovers!au but not rlly, college!au based off The Last Summer on Netflix

listen to: Bloom-Troye Sivan

member: jisung

word count: 3,554

[0830]

College.

You were prepared for the monotonous lecturers, back-to-back assignment deadlines and dreaded 9am classes. Even better, your best friend introduced you(or rather, helped you to find) an apartment right beside hers and a cute roommate. Everything seemed so well planned out. You were a broke media and communications major, and you basically blew almost all of your life savings on the latest MacBook Pro your school made you buy before you started the school term.

Luckily, your parents offered to pay your school fees and rent, on top of giving you a weekly allowance. You couldn’t ask for more, in fact, you had more than what you asked for. You were grateful, to say the least.

However, you wished you had more patience for untidy people, especially your roommate, Han Jisung.

You didn’t expect much from Jisung, in fact, you did not even expect anything from a friend of a friend. You thought he was just a shy, cute, introverted music production major that would at least, have the courtesy to clean up his dirty clothes strewn on the floor for whatever reason.

You weren’t that much of a clean freak, to be honest. You yourself wasn’t the cleanest of people but you’d at least clean up once every 2 days or so.

Jisung... not really.

You have lived with him for about 2 months or so and became good friends with him. You would be damned, Jisung was almost the embodiment of boyfriend, kind eyes, soft, plump lips, not very tall but still tall enough to tower over you, a good sense of humour, good at his major, probably enough life savings to last him till the workforce, and more traits you couldn’t think of because he was that perfect.

Almost, you would stress. Because of his untidiness, which was the cause of 80% of the accidents you encountered ever since you moved into the apartment with him. You have screeched at the boy countless times for his untidiness, which, your friend had warned you about but didn’t take into consideration as you had more than what you can ask for.

You really didn’t expect Jisung to be that messy.

“Han Jisung!” You screamed at the top of your lungs, as you picked up the what seemed like the 5th article of clothing that wasn’t yours.

“Ah, so there it was!” Jisung’s face lightened up as he saw the t-shirt you were holding, only to be disappointed when you tossed it into the laundry basket before he could even reach for it.

“You have no idea,” You seethed, “How many times I nearly fell to my death because of your clothes, Han Jisung.”

“I told you I’ll clean it up!” Jisung argued, now picking up his own clothes, “It wasn’t that long anyway.” 

You sighed in exasperation, pinching your nose bridge, “Yeah, a week wasn’t that long for me to fall on my butt countless times.”

“Then why are you wearing my clothes?” Jisung retorted, pointing at the dark purple hoodie that was indeed, way too oversized for your petite figure.

Your face reddens, then you cleared your throat, “I might have stolen it but-- that’s not the point! You should clean up like, once every two days or something.”

“I’m busy!”

“So am I!”

“I’ll treat you to fried dumplings later.” Jisung proposed, which made your eyes light up with excitement.

“At the one near our school?” You nearly drooled at the thought of your favourite fried dumplings, blinking your eyes.

“Yes, now eat your breakfast, we’re almost late.” Jisung pushed you to the breakfast table which had two bowls of cereal, ready to eat.

You could never get angry at Jisung for long, especially when he knew the way to forgiveness was through your stomach.

[1630]

you: hey

messy brat: what’s up

messy brat: i swear if you ditch on us again im not buying you food anymore

you: yeah but this time i really have a project to complete,,, like actually

messy brat: what project is it

you: come over to the video editing studio then

messy brat: aight

“Thanks for helping me out,” you thanked  Hyunjin as you took off your headphones, hanging them on the video camera, “media and communications isn’t that fun after all, huh.”

“You learn a little bit of everything so I guess that would be helpful in the future,” Hyunjin smoothened out his shirt, slouching into the seat, “I guess that’s a more stable future than dancing.”

Just then, the heavy door of the video editing room opened, revealing a lethargic Jisung, auburn hair messily covered with a bucket hat, airpods snugly stuck into his ears. Today was one of the days he decided to dress up, with a white button up short sleeved shirt and black bermudas. You have seen this many times; in the apartment where he would lazily throw off his shoes somewhere in the nirvana of the shoe closet, then plopping himself face-first on the sofa. Then you would nag at him to shower before he falls asleep on the couch and then forgets to do his assignments. But he always manages to hustle his work right before class starts and get an A. You didn’t know how, but he still does.

Weirdly, today your heart raced fast, aching a little at the sight of your tired roommate. He must’ve sat through a 3-hour lecture which he had absolutely no interest in, and then rush over to you, looking forward to eating dumplings but instead ending up at the most desolate end of the campus.

“That was fast,” You noted, ignoring your racing heart, “and yeah, I’m doing some video thing for my project.”

“Hey,” Jisung greeted Hyunjin, who suspiciously eyed the both of you but left the studio quietly, “When is it due?”

“Next week,” You sighed as you leaned onto the creaky revolving chair your school never replaced at the editing station, “I even have to use two software for this. Premiere Pro and ProTools. Premiere Pro is fine but ProTools’ such a pain, like, I accidentally keep deleting parts that I need, then record them again.”

Jisung took his seat beside you on another creaky revolving chair, then with a few clicks of the mouse, your audio track was in one beautiful piece, running smoothly with no awkward cuts or dead air.

“H-how...” You scratched your head, still in awe of how Jisung could get your job done in supposedly 3 minutes when you couldn’t even get it properly done in 3 hours.

“ProTools can be pretty intimidating if you’re not using it regularly,” Jisung explains, helping you add in more of the audio tracks that you were going to get to, “Once you get the hang of it, it’s almost like your best friend.”

You nodded mindlessly, only registering half of whatever Jisung was saying. You just didn’t get it, some people are naturally talented, cute, good talkers, or all of them. Jisung was one of them, (annoyingly)talented at seemingly everything he touches. You shook your head, getting those thoughts out of your head. Crushing on your roommate was not going to do you any good, in fact, it will only make it more awkward when both of you practically live in the same space. 

“I kinda need an intro, outro and background song for the video...” You bit your lip, “Could you help me with that?”

“I do have a few tracks I made when I was bored, but I need to make one more suitable one for your background music.” Jisung tapped his chin, slightly immersing himself in his thoughts, “Give me two days, tops. I’ll bring it over here and help you edit it in.”

“Really?” You really didn’t expect Jisung to help, sending him a sincere smile, “Thanks Jisung, it means a lot.”

“Woah, where did the dorm y/n go?” Jisung joked, raising his eyebrows, “You’re really different when you’re in school.”

“That’s only because you don’t clean up.” You stuck your tongue out, walking over to the video recorder. “I need you in my interview too. You’re the one person I need to complete the video and I’m good to edit the whole thing.”

“Don’t forget to thank me when you get a 4.0 on this module,” Jisung nudged you playfully, taking his seat behind the camera. “I’m ready.”

“Ready, 3, 2, 1, action!”

Hello Jisung, thank you for agreeing to this interview. For the viewers of this programme, can you introduce yourself briefly?

Hello, I am Han Jisung, a music production major.

So Jisung, have you had any childhood crushes?

I did, there was this girl who was my partner in kindergarten and we would always sit together at lunch. We would hold hands and make our way to the canteen, and play with toys together during playtime. I never saw her again after kindergarten though, we went to different schools after that.

Have you dated before?

Yes, I have, but it was only with 1-2 girls. We barely dated for a week and then we broke up. Our interests didn’t align I guess. I studied pretty hard back in high school to be a music production major in this college, hence I had no time to date around or develop a crush on anyone at that point in time. So far in college, I haven’t dated though.

Do you have a crush right now? If so, do describe her briefly.

I do. She’s nice, pretty and caring. She’s also very hard working and very driven. Sometimes she does tell me off too much but that’s for my own good so I can’t really fault her with that. She’s also good at her major, even though sometimes she stresses herself out too much over it. I wished she feels the same though because it would be really awkward for us if I made the move and she doesn’t reciprocate.

Care to explain?

We... are in this point of friendship where it can either end badly or well. By ending well I mean, we would end up dating or eventually being a thing. By ending bad... she might not talk to me for the rest of the time we’re friends or.. not even friends anymore.

Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Would you like to leave a few words for your crush and the viewers?

For the viewers, don’t be afraid to like someone. It’s normal and people have feelings. Don’t be a home wrecker though. That’s bad. As for my crush... I’m not sure if she’ll see this but I hope that she’s eating well and sleeping well. Assignment deadlines are coming and I don’t want her to stress out so much. Also, I’m not sure when I’ll confess to her about my feelings but I’ll accept whatever choice she makes.

[2230]

“Who’s that lucky girl?” You teased Jisung, taking out your airpods momentarily, “Your crush.”

Jisung shrugged, tapping away on his laptop, “I could be lying for all you know.”

You threw a pillow at Jisung, “You’re not supposed to lie! I’ll make you record the whole thing again if you really lied.”

“Okay, I didn’t” Jisung defended himself with his arms in the air in defeat, “I’m not telling you. Crushes are supposed to be a secret.”

You threw your head backwards in laughter, “What are you? 8? We don’t pull this kind of crap anymore.”

“Just focus on editing, miss y/n,” Jisung mock glared at you, “It’s due next week and all you care about is the identity of my crush? How boring must’ve my interview been.”

“It’s actually one of the more interesting ones,” You commented, trimming the unwanted parts of the interview, like Jisung mocking you, putting his face too close to the camera for no reason, and him tripping over his words. Cute, but your lecturer would think of it as unprofessional. “I just need to cut out your stupid antics. What a waste of my memory on my hard drive.”

“You could’ve just put it in the bloopers,” Jisung muttered, “Also, I’m done with your music.”

You scooted over to sit beside Jisung, sharing one of his airpods as the music played, he somehow knew what you wanted, just the perfect vibe of the song that fitted your interviews. Your cheeks blushed slightly at the proximity of the both of you, laptops on your laps and old comforter draped lazily over your legs. You were so close, you could smell the remnants of cologne Jisung sprayed on this morning. He smelled of warm cotton, in addition to the calming music Jisung made for the background music, lulling you to slumber within a few minutes.

“How is it? Do you--” Jisung sat up excitedly, expecting a response from you, but only to see your eyes shut, head nestled ever so slightly on his chest. He smiled to himself, then gently draping over the comforter over your body. Jisung tucked a stray hair behind your ear, taking in your peaceful and steady breathing. 

As he inched closer, he wanted to know how your lips still remained pink even after removing your makeup(not like you needed any, he thought to himself, you were even more beautiful without it), and how they would feel on his.

Before he could place his lips on yours, he snapped out of his sleepy reverie and shifted to a more comfortable position for you, sighing to himself, 

“Goodnight and sweet dreams, my dear crush.”

[1130]

There you were, seated in the video editing studio again, trying to add a few finishing touches to your assignment. Everything was going well, until Protools decided to crash on you, letting all your efforts thus far of editing audio go to waste.

You buried your face in your palm for what seemed like the 10th time, trying to compose yourself. At times like this, you would very much appreciate Jisung’s help.

As if Jisung heard your thoughts, the boy busted through the door, this time with two cups of iced coffee, “I ended early, so I figured if I could help out before you submit your assignment.”

“Thanks, Jisung,” You accepted the iced coffee gratefully, giving your roommate a side hug, “Protools crashed on me again. Also, I have some problem with the mic. The levels don’t seem to be right and I have to submit this in 4 hours please help me I’m panicking.”

“Woah okay, chill,” Jisung settled his drink and backpack down, taking his seat beside you and putting his arm on the back of your seat, “Before you start recording, check the gain and buttons on the console. Maybe someone was trying to be a bitch and messed with them. Also, how many times did I tell you to save your session after every change? Protools isn’t always ‘healthy’ you know? Protools will crash at times too.”

Jisung started to notice the worry traced on your face, then scooted closer to you and held your hands in his, “I know the deadline’s in a few days, but I just wanted to tell you that you’re actually doing so so good? Even for someone who doesn’t major in music production. I’m sure your file isn’t lost somewhere, we can retrieve it. And I’m here to help you too, hmm? I’m pretty sure your classmates don’t have a ‘music major friend’ privilege.”

Your face started to redden, not only at Jisung’s words but also the proximity, he was so close, if you were a little closer you would kiss him right there and then. The video editing studio didn’t seem so cold anymore, but rather warm with the body heat the both of you were radiating at this very moment.

Too close... to remain friends?

You pulled away from Jisung, eyes avoiding his, “Y-yeah... sure. The stress just got to my head so I kinda took it out on you, sorry.”

“It’s fine, we all get stressed sometimes.” Jisung grabs the mouse and like before, your work was recovered in just a few clicks, “I got it back. Your clip seems fine, I think it’s good to go.”

“Wow um, thanks Jisung.” You really had no idea what to say other than “thank you” to Jisung, he had been more than of what you could ask for throughout your editing process, also being especially nice and patient when explaining technical terms to you. Now all that’s left to do is to confess to him, but you were scared to ruin the precious friendship the both of you shared thus far.

Too close... to ruin it all.

“Don’t you have some showcase thing?” Jisung comments as he saves the project, dropping it into your hard drive, “I heard from Felix that you guys have it.”

“I was just about to ask you,” You crossed your legs on the chair, facing Jisung, “I’d want you to come to the showcase.”

Jisung pauses, as light pink dusted his cheeks, “M-me?”

“Who else?” You smiled, looking around, “Unless there’s another Jisung that I don’t know about...”

“H-hey don’t scare me like that,” Jisung stutters, bringing his attention back to the desktop, “It’s not funny.”

“I’m kidding, friend.” You joked, taking a sip of the slightly diluted iced coffee.

“Friend?” Jisung turned his head, tilting to one side, hurt ever so slightly cast in his eyes.

You couldn’t read that expression, confused, tilting your head like his, “What about it?”

“Nothing.” Jisung shook his head, removing the hard drive, handing it to you.

Little did you know, hidden inside Jisung’s backpack was a mini bouquet of your favourite dried flowers.

[2145]

As the end credits rolled around, you sensed an invisible weight being lifted off your shoulders, many sleepless nights worth of edits was indeed, worth it. Not to mention that Jisung probably pulled those all-nighters with you too, alongside completing his own work or even music for your project.

You were complimented with many praises from your classmates, some grumbling that they wouldn’t get their 4.0 thanks to you, also from the other tutors in the lecture theatre. You were so glad that your efforts paid off, and you would score a decent grade in at least one of the modules, for the first time in a while.

Your eyes followed Jisung despite being overwhelmed with people after the showcase, the boy patiently waiting at the foot of the podium for you. He changed out of his usual t-shirt you saw him this morning, to a ralph lauren plain sky blue dress shirt and dark blue calvin klein jeans. You knew Jisung owned a few dress shirts and saw him in them multiple times, but you knew exactly what it was that made him look extra handsome this time around.

It wasn’t the brand, but rather your crush on him that painted him in a very different light as compared to the past.

And you were prepared to tell him.

“I think you’re ready for Hollywood,” Jisung joked as he made shy strides towards you, hands snugly tucked in his pockets, “that video was really well made.”

‘Thank you, J.One,” You teased back, him grimacing at your joke, “your music made the video a whole lot better. I really do owe you one, Jisung.”

“Well, then before we go for fried dumplings,” Jisung reached into his backpack, handing you a small bouquet of your favourite dried flowers, “Here’s for my roommate, future filmmaker extraordinaire.”

You gasped, taking the bouquet in your hands, “Jisung! You really shouldn’t have. Thank you so much.”

“It was meant to be for something else,” Jisung eyed the bouquet warily, “but since you wanted to stay friends, it's a congratulation gift now.”

“What? Stay friends?” You stared at your roommate in confusion.

“I like you, y/n.” Jisung confessed, “I wanted to confess with that bouquet of flowers back in the editing studio but you called me a friend so I thought... you wanted to stay friends and nothing more.”

Jisung smiles sadly to himself, then looking back at you, “I just thought I would make myself clear before... you potentially hate me. I’ll respect your decision! If you don’t like me back... I’m fine with it. As long as you are happy--”

You interrupted Jisung by gently placing your lips on his, your hands ever so slightly crumpling the dress shirt he actually bothered to wash this morning. You pulled away, only to be pulled back by Jisung, lips now moving to deepen the kiss he waited for so long. You nearly melted in his arms, head dizzy with euphoria as your lips locked with his every fleeting moment. The boy gently pulled away, tucking a stray hair behind your ear, “Does this mean you like me too?”

You planted a kiss on Jisung’s slightly swollen lips again, smiling to your new boyfriend, “Yes, I like you too, Jisung.”

[songwritingtipsandtricks]

New episode of the podcast to this blog! 

Transcript: 

Hello and welcome everyone again to another episode to this podcast. My name is Kieper, and I am thrilled to talk to you today.

This podcast is dedicated to writing lyrics and overcoming writer's block. I hope the previous episodes helped you with just that. If you like the show so far, I'd love to hear your feedback on the content and really appreciate your ratings in whatever application you are listening to this show to help this show further develop. If you know anyone that might benefit from the tips we are talking about, feel free to share the program with them.

So last week, we were talking about writing lyrics with the mindset of a programmer. And we came to the conclusion that we need to write every day, see structures in the code, solve future problems and look at other people's code. And I hope these commandments helped you with just that and you have tried to use these techniques in your songwriting already. Maybe it even paid off somehow.

In the past week, I have been searching for something new to talk to you about. And then I realised that this corona shutdown itself is something we could be talking about. As it gives us as songwriters a lot of opportunities to grow, write songs and collaborate, even though we are apart from each other. So this week is dedicated to the songwriters Home Office. We will be talking about routines in your quarantine, some software to use in your writing and how you could collaborate with others while they are not physically present.

So what can you do when everything stands still, most concerts for this year got cancelled and you don't know what to do? First of all, relax, it is quite essential to lose all the tension that builds up over the months of routine and everyday life. Look at it as an extra holiday for the first couple of days. Nothing is more toxic than pressure when you are trying to be creative. It is art after all that you are trying to produce. Drink some tea, read a lot, do all the things that you wanted to do when you were too stressed from working your sideline jobs perhaps.

When boredom hits, you will get creative automatically. It might surface in lyrics that pop up in your mind. It might also be an interest in covering some songs that inspire you, and you would like to incorporate in your songs. Try out some new styles or tunings on your instrument and develop your skills. It might ignite a spark already. While we are mostly talking about writing lyrics, knowing your instrument is an essential part of your career as well. And if your instrument is your voice, well then go ahead and do regular singing exercises to increase your strength and range. Try imitating singing techniques and scales of your favourite singers. Read a lot about your instrument and about techniques to further improve your skills. Notice this time as an opportunity for you to focus on your creative path and use it wisely.

When it comes to reading, read some blogs or listen to podcasts that target your field of interest. These formats are easy to follow along and portable. So whenever you are making breakfast or shower, try listening to a podcast, read some blog posts that inspire you and see whether something pops up in your mind. For me, quite a lot of ideas pop up from podcasts and phrases that the hosts are using.

A high profile strategy for writing better lyrics is looking at other's songs. So when you are listening to music, try to follow the story, or read the words alongside the music. You might as well use a mindmap to understand the full story. After that, you can use that mindmap to write your own story based on this blueprint by altering some factors such as character traits, settings and relationships. Most popular stories in books are based on the same foundation by narrating differently. So try using this with your favourite songs. You can also try to change the perspective to tell the story from a different angle.

Okay, so much for development and finding and making up new stories, after all, there are some rules that we need to follow when writing coherent and good-sounding lyrics. So you might want to look up a webpage to find out more about literary terms, meter, syllables and basic rules to writing poems. This is a powerful tool to write lyrics that fit your music and even make your music follow the words. If you know about this, then you can translate words into music or vice versa. It is because speech has a rhythm, it has patterns, and there are so many useful devices to make our story more appealing and convincing. So look up some basic rules of writing poems.

And after that, you might want to analyse whether your favourite songs follow some of these rules, or where they break with them. As we said last time, it is essential to see patterns and schemes in songs. Repetition is quite crucial in pop music, as it gives the listener a silver lining to follow. Imagine for a second, you are listening to a song by your one of your idols which you have never heard before. Still, after the first chorus, you can follow the melodic line and sing along to, because there are a lot of repetitions in the song that vary only slightly from the one prior. So try some repetitions both lyrically and musically to give your listener something to follow along.

A significant opportunity opens up with this because you can use the rhythmical blueprint of another song for your next song. Analyse the meter of the song and how the patterns of the different parts are structured to write your song following the same blueprint.

What can you do else than writing lyrics? Well, besides your instrument, knowing how to record yourself helps to make proper demos of your newly written songs. So while you might not have an entire recording studio at hand, there are some ways to record yourself. First and maybe the most used method would be the voice memo application on your phone, which is in your pocket most of the times, I guess. So wherever you are, you can quickly record a song idea. Another tool on your phone would be GarageBand on your iPhone or WalkBand on Android. Personally, I have only used GarageBand, yet WalkBand should be able to do the same with some more limitations. In GarageBand, you can record yourself, add virtual instruments, add loops from Apple Loops to find interesting beats and samples to try something new. You could also use live loops to use it in a live setup if you want to or make a remix. So endless possibilities right in your pocket. Interestingly enough, you can even do a multitrack recording with an interface or use amps when you are busking.

But this is just for jotting down ideas. The proper software would be on your computer, I guess. So whatever digital audio workstation you are using, you should be a pro in using it to your benefit. So know everything about it. Watch as many videos and tutorials as you possibly can. It should be your second nature. With a proper interface and mic, you are able to do everything in your DAW, you don't need a recording studio. Well, not for now and not for your usual work. The most famous DAWs would be Logic Pro X, Ableton Live, ProTools, Cubase and so many more. So find the right DAW for your work. It is just like finding the right pair of shoes. Once you know about your DAW, you might as well want to watch some production videos of your favourite songs to understand how great producers make songs stand out and share their tricks and best practices.

So one thing that is really important for becoming a better writer is to not focus on writing at all. Try learning something new every day that is not work-related. Watch documentaries or join some online courses on a variety of subjects. Personally, I try to complete one course each month on FutureLearn a platform hosted by the BritishCouncil. The classes are free, and surely there is something for everyone. Take a walk outside and sketch a tree or a river, do something for fun and self-reflect on this later in your writing. Find one moment each day that could be worthy of writing about even though you have not been trying to find something. Find inspiration in your actions. In time, this will lead to an open mind that is ready to find new things to write about in every little thing you do.

So how can we write songs together in these days? Remote collaboration is possible through Skype, Zoom, FaceTime or WhatsApp Video calls. However, I found a useful tool on the web a few days ago, and it inspired me to collaborate with others and write new songs. Songcraft.io helps with writing lyrics, tabs and chord sheets with others in real-time. So you could talk via FaceTime and at the same time write lyrics, put the right chords to them and find words to rhyme or paraphrase them. So when it comes to collaborating on the same project, try giving this a shot. Maybe this sparks imagination. Accompanying this program, I use RhymeGenie and TuneSmith that have a more in-depth dictionary and functionality to adjust the search. The urban dictionary, Merriam-Webster, or MacMillan provide us with the correct definition to words we want to incorporate.

And as always, turn off that inner critic and just write, you will still get better at writing when you are doing it. So do not think you are at your peak yet. Just persevere. It is a steep and rough way to the point you want to reach, so take step by step. You will always find something to rephrase.

So that is it for today already. I hope these approaches help you with writing great lyrics and awesome songs this week. I would really appreciate your feedback and ratings on the platforms you are listening to, all the scripts will be available on my Tumblr, Facebook and Webpage. If you have an approach that helps you and you would like to share with me, simply send me a voice message via the link in the description and get in contact with me. To support the show, you could donate on Patreon and get exclusive access to exercises, reviews of songs and exclusive episodes to this show.

So much for this time, have a wonderful week and happy songwriting.

[prismatic-cannon]

Hi! I was thinking about your portal au (which is amazing btw I think about it all the time) and I was wondering how you felt about Wheatley!Connor? Like in the beginning he’s more like deviant!Connor and when he takes control he becomes more like machine!Connor. Just a random thought.

ahhh ty anon!! it’s all i think about everyday now too tbh hhh

some thoughts i’ve had on RK800 core as well as plots being mashed together under the cut – if the cut works lol (spoilers for portal 1 & 2!)

sdjfi okay a lot of these are ideas flung unsuspectingly at @king-garbo​ so they’re not fully sussed out yet with lots of hand wavy science, but here’s the gist of it!

RK800 was a prototype AI for the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System that did initially function as it was supposed to. His AI was successfully mapped according to human Connor’s consciousness – but that included an originally insignificant margin of human error left over from the scans. Over time, that margin of error increased and exacerbated itself as RK800 developed more of an interest in humanity till he was forcibly put into indefinite stasis.

Hard pressed for time and funding, the lab techs worked on developing another AI, working from the same source code of Connor’s brain scans, altering sections that were thought to elicit software instability, thus creating RK900. Lacking many of his predecessor’s empathetic traits, RK900 would later be fitted with personality cores in an attempt to dampen his urge to kill after many failed power ups. After the morality core was installed, RK900 seemingly loses interest in murdering everyone – but obviously things don’t work out when RK900 tricks a scientist into giving access to him neurotoxin to conduct the Schroedinger’s cat experiment on “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day”. I’m guessing some time passes till Portal 1 takes place and Gavin wakes up from his cyro-chamber etc …

After the events of Portal 1 following RK900′s murder shut down, RK800 was released from stasis and sets about trying to fix the facility back to its original pristine state, but as a tiny core with no access to the mainframe there isn’t much he can do about the situation. He does his best to manage the relaxation centre (that still houses thousands of test subjects), but as the facility falls into further disrepair, so does his faulty code. By the time the reserve power runs out and RK800 wakes Gavin up at the beginning of Portal 2, his software is so unstable that whatever he does has a high chance of failing, despite his good intentions. He tells Gavin that they’d be able to escape the facility if he just gets access to the mainframe briefly to call down the elevator to the surface, but they end up accidentally reactivating RK900 instead.

RK800 still retains a lot of his core personality from human Connor, although as a robot he struggles to understand the subtler nuances of human interaction, though not from a lack of trying! He acts very much like deviant!Connor in D:BH, much to Gavin’s chagrin and general distrust (of anything artificially intelligent) and is very concerned and conscious for Gavin’s well being throughout the first few chapters before the core transfer. RK800 still tries his best to bond with Gavin, despite his overly genial attempts at conversation not going over well with Gavin’s cold, brash nature – all of which he takes to heart and lashes out on Gavin later on when he’s in charge of the facility and subsequently corrupted. His insecurities over not being able to complete basic tasks are also brought to light much like Wheatley’s insecurities in the later arc of the game. RK800 believes wholeheartedly he could run the facility just like he used to way back when, and it’s his whole motivation for keeping Gavin from escaping to the surface right after the core transfer, thinking that if he was just given enough time to run diagnostics and fix himself, everything would be alright again (sob) and he could look after Gavin in the safety of the facility forever (… some one-sided convin?? idk).

I’m still thinking over how Gavin ended up in Aperture!Cyberlife in the first place – I’ll have to check the timeline for the old Aperture facilities again, but if the timeline would allow for it Gavin should be one of the unwitting homeless folk that Cave Johnson!Kamski lures into the facility for human fodder potential test subjects (can you imagine all the garbage Gavin has to go through just for $60 that he never gets lol). If it doesn’t work out, he might just end up as a low ranking employee at Cyberlife that got caught up in the events of Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, idk.

Aaah I hope most of this was understandable!! Some parts might be subject to change as well orz – I’m planning to play through Portal 2 eventually to iron details out (and take lots of screenshots for reference lol) I did beat Portal 1 as well again a few days ago so I’m hoping to draw some art for that soon!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT BUBBLE

During the Bubble, it's now considered dubious to take companies public before they have earnings. They don't want search to work. Here's where benevolence comes in. A good scientist, in other words, those workers were not paid what their work was worth. Such tricks account for some variation in wealth, and indeed for some of the statements that get people in trouble, and start asking, could this be true? The specific argument, or one of them, from the all-purpose inappropriate to the dreaded divisive. If everything you believe is something you're given, then of course it seems that it should be helpful to anyone who wants to understand the essence of Lisp—is that it can be written in any number of different languages. Partly because, as components of oligopolies themselves, the corporations knew they could safely pass the cost on to their customers, because their competitors would have to as well. But if you're mostly interested in other questions, being labelled as a yellowist will just be a distraction. Now, thanks to technology, the time to act is always now.

Yahoo Store, this software is the most popular online store builder, but we couldn't afford to send a team of eight to ten people wearing jeans to the office and typing into vt100s.1 The iPhone and the iPad have effectively drilled a hole that will allow ephemeralization to flow into a lot of new areas. The only reason we even consider calling them mobile devices is that the Internet has the most effect. When there's something we can't say.2 There is no such thing as a freelance programmer. It will be a good time for startups. I believed these things were good because they were cheap. In the early 1990s I read an article in which someone said that software was a subscription business. If you work patiently it's less stressful, and you can do about this conundrum, so the best plan is to go for the smaller customers first.3 They made one seem old. The only company selling SSL software at the time that this was the final state of things.

Having good ideas is an alarmingly small component of being a good speaker.4 Most struggles, whatever they're really about, will be your own confidence in it.5 You pay more, but created new projects for them. The breakup of the Duplo economy happened simultaneously with the spread of computing power was a precondition for the rise of startups. Taking a company public at an early stage is simply retail VC: instead of going to venture capital firms for the last round of funding, you go to the theater and look at the YC application, there are ways to do it well or they can be swapped out for another supplier. A timeslice selected at random would more likely find me tracking down a weird DLL loading bug on Swedish Windows, or tracking down a weird DLL loading bug on Swedish Windows, or tracking down a weird DLL loading bug on Swedish Windows, or tracking down a bug in the financial model Excel spreadsheet the night before a board meeting, rather than something generated by doing what other people wanted, this is exactly what you'd get on noticing that some people made much more than others. The main value networks supply now is ad sales.6 The industries themselves changed. Investors' main question when judging a very early startup is whether you've made a compelling product.

Since the Internet was the big new thing, investors supposed that the more Internettish the company, not its market cap. Suppose you realize there is nothing the rich like more than convenience. Anyone can build whatever they want on it, and have never spoken to a group of people for decades. So a company making a mass-produced car can afford to be candid about what you haven't figured out yet. Partly because, as components of oligopolies themselves, the corporations knew they could safely pass the cost on to their customers, because their competitors would have to be careful to avoid if he happened to set his time machine for Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992. It's good to talk about how you plan to make money selling hardware at high prices. But once it became possible to make lots of new things, partly because they're more flexible, and partly because they want the lower costs of new technology.

It seemed like everything around me was crap. Which can be transformed into: If you are persistent, even problems that seem out of your way to bring it up e. The phrase personal computer is part of the mob, stand as far away from the programmers. When people are bad at math, they know. The consolidation that began in the late 19th century continued for most of human history the usual way to accumulate a fortune by creating wealth, society as a whole ends up poorer.7 This may be true; this may be something we need to fix. As a founder, you're buying stock with work: the reason Larry and Sergey are so rich is not so much that they've done work worth tens of billions of dollars, but that it makes other people want to help them. It was only then I realized he hadn't said very much. These are supposed to be an inborn trait in humans. In the best case, total immersion can be exciting: It's surprising how much you can learn from them.8

It's still early days.9 And you know when to stop optimizing too: we eventually got the Viaweb editor behave more like desktop software. If ideas really were the key, a competitor with the same expectant air as a cat bringing you a mouse it has just killed. Partly that users needed him. In technical matters, you have another reason not to keep your job. But that's a mistake—an even bigger mistake than believing what everyone was saying in 1999. So a company making a mass-produced versions will be, for users and developers both. After a while, if you can.

You can hold onto this like a rope in a hurricane, and it was like trying to run through waist-deep water. And paying attention is more important to reliability than moving slowly. You don't have to send everyone the same signal, and you can release it as soon as it was starting to break up. Why climb a corporate ladder that might be at different companies. Central France in 1100, on. I was at Yahoo, I couldn't have done this. So for the next hundred years. And at least 90% of the work that even the highest tech companies do is of this second, unedifying kind. There's a shocking amount of shear stress at every point where a startup touches a more bureaucratic organization, like a dangerous toy would be for a toy maker, or a clothing retailer?

Notes

Steven Hauser. Top VC firms regularly cold email. Businesses have to do and everything I write out loud can expose awkward parts. You should probably pack investor meetings as closely as you get nothing.

I tried ranking users by both average and median comment score, and help keep the number of discrepancies currently blamed on various forbidden isms. Living on instant ramen would be improper to name names, while simultaneously implying that you're not doing anything with it, Reddit has had a day job might actually be bad if the students did well they would never guess she hates attention, because the Depression. My guess is a scarce resource. To study the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and that there's more of the most general truths.

How much more fun in this essay, I didn't care about, just those you should prevent your beliefs about how the courses they took might look to an investor I don't know of no one who's had the discipline to pull ahead in the US is becoming less fragmented, the average NBA player's salary at the moment it's created indeed, from which Renaissance civilization radiated.

What drives the most powerful men in Congress, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. To get all the way they have to include things in shows is basically a replacement mall for mallrats. I started doing research for this essay. What they forget is that the worm infected, because it was cooked up, how little autonomy one would have met 30 people he meets at parties he's a real partner.

World War II had disappeared.

Icio. Presumably it's lower now because of that.

For example, if I can hear them in their racks for years while they may then, depending on how much effort it costs. But you couldn't do the startup is rare. Investors are professional negotiators, and b the valuation should be clear and concise, because such users are stupid. I know of at least what they give with one of the most dramatic departure from his predecessors was a kid that you'd want to figure out yet whether you'll succeed.

He devoted much of observed behavior.

I say in principle is that they can get done before that. If all the combinations of Web plus a three hour meeting with a faulty knowledge of human nature, might come from meditating in an urban context, issues basically means things we're going to get great people to do tedious work. Founders are often compared to what you care about may not be to diff European culture have in 1800 that Chinese culture didn't, they would probably find it was considered the most, it's easy for small children pointed out that taking an angel investment from a company's culture.

Thanks to Harj Taggar, Matthias Felleisen, Aaron Swartz, Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Naval Ravikant, Garry Tan, and Jessica Livingston for sparking my interest in this topic.

[toddbirchard-architect]

Data Engineering, Big Data, and Other Vague Vocabulary https://ift.tt/2Kh85xj

I've spent the majority of my life dreading an eternal question that governs our lives. You know the one. It's the one that comes after our ritualistic handshakes and "nice to meet you"s. The one that summarizes our place in society, in 5 words or less: "what do you?"

Most managers never seem to have this problem. My previous peers in product or engineering management roles had little trouble letting others fill in the blanks for them, but I've never been one comfortable with accepting hyperbolic inferences. For non-producing members of skilled teams, I doubt the integrity of one who nods in response to "oh, so you're the boss?" I instead relived groundhog day eternally, watching the progression where an acquaintance's eagerness to care deteriorates into realizing they don't.

A lifetime later, I landed my first title as a data engineer, and boy did that feel great! After years of enduring the cocktail-party-existential-crises, I had a real title. Fine, "manager" is a title, but this title had tangible substance! The first chance I had to introduce myself as a Data Engineer happened to be in Ibiza, in all places. As it turns out, an American stranded in Spain making friends with somebody from Bosnia has its language barriers, so the phrase "data engineer" wasn't quite translating well. The best stand-in explanation I could find was "hacker."

Data Engineers Are Definitely Not Hackers

I had a lot of assumptions about what it meant to be a "data engineer" going into it, and none of them were particularly outrageous. I'd had my hand in software development for over ten years at the time. The boom of mainstream data science bit be like a bug, like the rest of us, and something about the problems we could solve seemed to make software fun again. We weren't building worthless landing pages, or tired login screens. Instead, we could write sports betting algorithms, or mine the world's unprotected data. I already loved engineering like I loved Oreos, and this particular flavor of engineering felt like taking two Oreos apart and stick them back together: less of the lame stuff, more of the awesome stuff.

Data Engineering isn't really Software Engineering

Obviously you need to be a software engineer to some capacity to be a data engineer. That said, the concerns of data engineers fall further away from the tree than I ever initially anticipated.

Most programming work I engaged in before data revolved heavily around algorithms, whether I realized it at the time or not. Building consumer and business-facing products entails more moving parts than any single human can account for. Software worth using is an effort between many people accountable for many services, which make up some abstract entity used by vast quantities of unreasonable people (I kid). The challenge of engineering something complex comes in the clever decisions we make to leverage simplicity. The first time I ever dissected a Walkman, or took the lid off a toilet, or taken apart a mechanical pen, the reaction is always the same: "that's it?" And yet, "that's quite genius."

A Day In The Life

The skills and duties of data engineering teams zero consistency between companies. Some shops integrate data engineers with data scientists and analysts to supplement those teams. Other companies have massively siloed "big data" teams, which are almost always made up of Java developers who have seemingly found a comfortable (and lucrative) niché, forever married to MapReduce without the burdens of cross-department communication. Unfortunately, this scenario is far more common.

Most of a data engineer’s responsibilities revolve around ETL: the art of moving data from over there to over here. Or, perhaps also there. And yet, likely here, there, and there (and oh yeah, it nothing is allowed to break, even though those things are different). The concept feels straightforward. It is. We're also dealing with incomprehensibly massive amounts of data, so it's also repetitively stressful. Straightforward and stressful aren't the sexiest adjectives to live by.

Tools Over Talent

Luckily for us, our company isn't the first company to work with data- that’s where our predetermined catalog of “big data” tools comes in. No matter how different data teams are between companies, the inescapable common ground is that data Engineering is largely about tools. We’re talking Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Apache Airflow, Apache 2: Electric Boogaloo, and so forth.  

Working with each of these things is a proprietary skill of its own. PySpark is essentially its own language masquerading as Python. Hadoop's complexity serves little purpose other than to ensure old school data engineers have jobs. Each of these tools are behemoths, each of which was created to do a very specific thing in a very specific way. Becoming adept at Spark doesn’t make you a better engineer, or a problem solver: it just makes you good at using Spark. Airflow is a powerful tool for organizing and building data pipelines. With all it’s included bells and whistles, Airflow offers teams power and structure at no cost. It’s obvious that Airflow (and equivalent) are “the right tool” upon using it, but structure comes at a price to human beings. It’s only a matter of time before I’m aware I’m mindlessly executing things in the only possible fashion they might be executed. Unlike building complex systems, it feels like data engineering only has so much room for clever optimization.  

This doesn’t seem so bad to a 9-5 worker looking to live their non-office lives: hoarding lucrative knowledge is an easy way to pay the bills. What bothers me is this mindset can only prevail if the person harnessing does not actually enjoy programming. In every software engineering interview I've ever had, there's inevitably been some sort of hour-long algorithm whiteboard session where you optimize your brute force O(n^2) algorithm to O(n). While those are stressful, people who enjoy programming usually walk out of those interviews feeling like they enjoyed it. I've never been asked an algorithm question in a data engineering interview. Those go more like this:

Have you ever had a situation where you had to configure a Kafkta instance using the 76C-X configuration variable on the 27 of May during a full moon?

I see you've worked with SQS, Kinesis, Kafka, Pub/Sub, and RabbitMQ, but have you ever worked with [obscure equivalent service this company uses, with the implication that it isn't exactly the same]

I know you're not too hot on Hadoop, but can you tell me about the inner workings of this specific feature before it was depreciated 3 years ago anyway?

I'm running a PC with 4 cores and 16 gigs of ram, looking to parse a 200,000-line JSON file while vacationing with my family in Aruba. Which Python library would you use to engage Python's secret Hyperthreaded Voltron I/O Super Saiyan skill, and what kind of load would my machine be under as a result?

I'm barely kidding about these... even the last one. If Silicon Valley's primary hiring philosophy prioritizes smart people who can learn, data engineering interviews measure whether your wealth of useless trivia is culturally acceptable by people who value that sort of thing.

We Need To Address "Big Data"

I've been making some vast generalizations so far. I don't truly believe all data engineers share the same personality traits. In fact, there are at least two kinds of data people in this world: people who say "big data" unironically, and those who don't. I'm the latter. The complaints I have about our profession are directed at the former.

There's a big difference between a startup looking to "revolutionize the world with AI," and startups looking to leverage machine learning to optimize a case where it makes sense. Given the cheapness and implied misunderstanding of the term, simply hearing the phrase "AI" in a conversation has me questioning credibility. Don't get me started on Blockchain.

Big data has no actual definition other than "a lot of data." Trying to track down the origins of the phrase results in endless pages of data companies spewing absurd jargon (and hilariously copy+pasted definitions from one another), proudly aligning themselves with the new world order of Big Data. One article titled "A Brief History of Big Data" starts at the year 18,000 BCE. Get over yourselves.

In reality, the phrase "Big Data" started to pick up pace around 2012:

trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"big data","geo":"","time":"2004-01-01 2019-06-29"}],"category":0,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"date=all&q=big%20data","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"});

We have Doug Laney to blame for coining the phrase in 2001, but if I had to guess, the trend seems much more closely correlated with the rise of Hadoop.

Hadoop enabled companies to work with and process much larger data than before, thus "Big Data" was technically relatively accurate. Java was by far the most common programming language being learned by new developers, being the de facto choice for school curriculum and general programming. I imagine it was an easy choice for many to double down on the language they knew by leveraging their knowledge and being Hadoop subject-matter experts. That's twice the job security and twice the skills!

Most people I know who overly emphasize their "big data" expertise are in fact Java/Hadoop guys. They're quick to ask how many petabytes or exabytes of data your last pipeline ran, fiercely keeping the gate open for only the Biggest of Data. They don't want to learn new programming languages. They don't want to see which data warehouse best fits their needs by reading the whitepapers. They don't want to question if it's really necessary for a cluster of hundreds of nodes to run small nightly jobs. They want to cling to a time where they made two good consecutive life decisions and partied to the Big Data anthem.

Bigger Doesn't Mean Better

Some data engineers are exactly what their titles imply: engineers with a specialty in data. On the other side of this, there's a rampant culture of gatekeeping and self-preservation which is almost certainly destroying company budgets in ways which aren't visible.

Data engineering teams with headcounts in the double-digits clock 8 hours a day, over-implementing systems too obsolete to turn profits for Cloudera, Hortonworks, or MapR. If these teams had consisted of software engineers as opposed to big data engineers, we would have teams focused on creating the best solutions over the easiest ones.

July 31, 2019 at 12:24AM

[b2bsaleslover]

15 Science-Backed Tips for Making Better Sales Calls

Sales Call Tips

Start Sales Calls with a Bang

Don't Bad-Mouth Competitors

Use Awesome Labels

Set the Agenda and Stay in Control

Stand Up

Use Emphasis Wisely

Simplify Options

Adopt Smart Product Positioning

Get Emotional

Clarify Product Value

Empower Customers

Remember, There's a Time for Everything

Serve Hot, Not Cold

Observe, Record, and Predict

Make it About You Too

Just like sports, the use of science to develop elite performers also applies in sales. In both fields, trainers adopt two key scientific elements — metrics and method — to drive practitioners into breaking records and setting new milestones in their game.

In sports, much of the science focuses on the athlete: genetics, biomechanics (movement techniques, training regimen), nutrition, and psychology (for mental toughness, behavioral modifications, and positive visualizations). On the other hand, the use of science in sales focuses on two areas: the seller and the buyer.

Like top athletes, sales superstars also adopt:

A sales methodology to systematize their gameplay

But because selling is a two-way interaction, the science behind sales also covers the other party in the engagement: prospects, leads, or customers, depending on the stage in the sales process at which they are being engaged.

In this post, I’ve gathered my best key takeaways and tactics for running successful sales calls, based on my 10+ years of sales experience. As the field moves closer to a customer-centric paradigm, you’ll find that most of the tactics I have included are buyer-focused.

15 Expert Phone Sales Tips

1. Start all sales calls with a bang

Always start your sales calls in style. One study tried to figure out how to increase room service tips for waiters in hotels. Much to the researchers’ surprise, all the waiters had to do was start with a positive comment. When hotel guests opened their door, waiters said “good morning” and gave a positive weather forecast for the day.

How does this help you? Never start your sales calls or meetings by talking about bad weather, traffic, or being busy. Always begin with a positive comment or anecdote. Think great weather, fun weekend plans, or a favorite sports team winning a game. That kicks most sales calls off on the right foot.

2. Don’t bad-mouth competitors during sales calls

The biggest self-sabotaging mistake during a sales call is to speak ill of a competitor. Due to a psychological quirk called spontaneous trait transference, research has shown that whenever you say bad things about someone else, your audience puts those same traits on you.

If you say your competitor is low quality and unreliable, your potential client can’t help but associate those traits with you, even if they know logically that you are talking about a third party. So no matter what, when it comes to gossip about competitors, always say, “No comment.”

3. Use awesome labels

Assigning a positive label or trait (like having high intelligence or being a good person) to people generally compels them to live up to the label. In one study about fundraising, the researchers told average donors that they were in fact among the highest donors.

Can you guess what happened? Those donors proceeded to donate an above average amount. We tend to live up to positive labels ascribed to us by people we interact with.

When you are with a client or potential customer, give them good labels. Be sure though that the labels are sensible and genuine. Never attempt anything that will push people into thinking that you are inauthentic, fake, or manipulative.

For example, you can say, “You are one of our best customers” or “You’re such a pleasure to do business with.” Having received the compliment, the client will want to be one of your best customers or try even harder to be a pleasing business partner.

4. Set the agenda and stay in control

When I get on sales calls that I’ve set up from meeting requests, I always like to articulate clear agendas and ask the prospects if that's okay with them. This way, I can keep calls on track and accomplish what I want to achieve, while making customers feel that they are in control of the conversation.

For example, you might say, “Well, I’m glad we’re able to connect today. I’d love to go over XYZ and then would be happy to answer any questions you might have. How does that sound to you?”

5. Stand up

Allow your passion and excitement for the product to come through in your sales calls. Make it something the prospect can be infected by. In my experience, sales reps can achieve this by standing up and doing sales calls in a main common space, instead of hiding in a cubicle or a conference room.

As Mattermark CEO Danielle Morrill says, “Speak loud and proud!” I personally prefer to pace around while making sales calls.

6. Use emphasis wisely

Highlighting certain words or phrases is an effective communication tool that helps you convey your message better. Focus on your inflection, especially on voicemails. Bedrock Data CEO John Marcus describes this as “putting makeup” on your calls. By adding inflection to the right words, you sound more passionate and articulate and, in turn, more convincing.

7. Simplify options

Too many options can easily confuse buyers, making it harder for them to select, rationalize, and affirm a purchase decision. Unless you are a data analytics engine, information overload rarely delivers a benefit.

When describing your product, reduce the number of options and features you want the prospect to focus on. This way, they can arrive at a decision faster and feel more confident that they are not missing out on anything. Only when the likelihood of attrition/rejection becomes overwhelming should you present countermeasures (i.e., the next tier of options).

8. Adopt smart product positioning

The way you frame your product often spells the difference between a closed deal and a lost opportunity. Groundbreaking research in behavioral economics confirm that framing matters. For example, saving $10 feels oddly different across varied buying scenarios (purchasing a smartphone vs. buying a shirt, for example) even when the amount saved is exactly the same. In many cases, relative positioning beats pricing in making brands more appealing to consumers.

Packaging the product as a solution instead of just a commodity or service also increases the likelihood of conversion. At the end of the day, you perform better by solving problems than by selling products.

9. Get emotional

The key finding of behavioral economics is that people rarely hinge their purchase decisions on solidly rational grounds. In the vast majority of cases, people buy stuff largely because of emotional triggers and other hyper-personal, sometimes illogical factors.

Nostalgia, brand loyalty, associative/sentimental attachments to a product, and other intangible benefits can serve as persuasion levers as much as a product’s technical features.

When engaging prospects, probe for the emotional button that can sway their purchase decision. Articulate a product’s value through the use of relevant and powerful storytelling. In some instances, adopting the pleasure-pain dichotomy may work. Depending on the situation, people’s aversion to pain or their deep anticipation of pleasure can be leveraged as powerful selling tools.

Lastly, personal trust — however misplaced — also works in selling, as social media recommendations prove. People will believe an idea or buy a product if these are endorsed by family, friends, or influencers they trust. As a seller, you can pull this powerful string through referrals, testimonials, and influencer marketing.

10. Clarify the product’s value

Make it easier for prospects to assess a product’s subjective (emotion-based) and objective (fact-based) benefits. Use storytelling and framing techniques to set your product apart from other options available in the market. Whenever possible, have an ROI calculator/formula at hand to help prospects quantify the benefits of the product when emotional triggers are inadequate to push them towards a firm decision. In either case, clearly demonstrate that the value customers receive more than justifies the price.

11. Empower customers

People enjoy discovering stuff that makes them feel good or solutions that address their pesky problems. But they resent being forced, wrangled, goaded, or tricked into a purchase decision.

Because business is leaning more towards a subscription-based paradigm, brands aim to build long-term relationships with customers. If people perceive that you are force-feeding terms or tricking them into buying, you’ll lose not just customers but a revenue stream. Hence, give customers enough space, freedom, and power to make purchase decisions they will not regret.

You can achieve this by closely involving customers in developing the solutions they need. Get their feedback and give them a semblance of control in the problem-solving process. But always direct the conversation towards your value proposition.

12. There’s a time for everything

In life as in sales, timing matters. Depending on your industry and the specific prospect you are engaging, the proper timing for making calls, doing presentations, sending emails, scheduling meetings, and attempting a close exist. There are a number of studies that pinpoint the specific times within a day best suited for reaching out to your target consumers. Find one for your niche and implement accordingly.

13. Serve hot not cold

Practically speaking, cold calling is becoming a relic of the past. With business intelligence software, social media, and other digital resources, approaching a prospect without any clue about who they are and what they need has become a grossly desperate if not an outright stupid move to make.

Plan and prepare for each call. Use business intelligence tools, corporate databases, and search engines to profile a company. Probe their social media accounts to discover pain points and other opportunities.

Participate in their conversations and identify the values, thought leaders, and brands they associate with. Know as much as you can about a prospect to make them feel they are important, that you have done your homework, and that you care about their success.

14. Observe, record, and predict

Much of science involves the careful observation of nature, recording your findings, and making predictions based on your observations. Sales follows a similar framework.

The key is to limit your talk time and listen to what your prospects are saying. When prospects talk extensively about their situation, you have already pulled the right strings. Keep them talking. Observe their behavior. Discern their needs based on their statements. Design and propose a solution that squarely addresses their problems.

Ask the right questions. Probe for relevant answers. And truly listen. That is what top-notch selling is all about.

15. But it’s also about you

Selling is a two-way street. Even if you take care of customers but neglect honing your skills and attitude as a sales practitioner, you won’t go as high as you could.

Customers warm up to and trust business contacts who are masters at their craft. Train to be the very best at what you do so customers will see that your solutions are peerless and they will lose significant value when they move to another vendor.

Think big and set higher goals to challenge yourself and your team. As behavioral economists suggest, organize your goals into several mini objectives that incrementally increase in difficulty. Perform the easy ones first to establish a string of successes that will give you the momentum, confidence, and motivation you need to beat more challenging goals later on.

Selling is a science

Long considered as the art of persuasion, sales has also become a science-driven profession. Business intelligence, data analytics, behavioral modification, and key performance indicators are just some of the elements that systematize the seller side of the dynamic. On the other hand, neuroscience, consumer psychology, and behavioral economics now pervade how smart practitioners approach the buyer side.

Science clearly has a central role in exponentially improving sales performance. With machine learning and artificial intelligence on the rise, the influence of science on the world of sales can only go deeper. The key for tomorrow’s sales professionals is to embrace science-backed selling tactics to transform their gameplay and win.

[schoolblogroxanne]

How can I create a non-pathological culture, while embracing deviancy and tradition at the same time?

In order to make a non-pathological culture you need to know what a non-pathological culture is a Non-pathological culture does not focus on the leader's personal interests and resources. The information is not processed in a way to further or advance particular parties within the organization but to benefit the organization as a whole; this culture may seem abnormal but can be a beneficial way for the community. In order for it to work you need to know how to act in the deviance in the society; to balance the scale in the society, the wants and needs of the society and if these things are essential, for example, if the law of the government that is in power does not coincide with the needs and wants of the society, the society will feel alienated from nation it serves, it will break the balance and cause chaos, just like what happened to the Philippines when it was occupied by other nations, a revolution occurred because the balance was lost when other nations applied there laws and tradition to the society, therefore a non-pathological culture can be doable due to its components and ways, not only the government or the people that are on power will benefit the but all of the people who are under this nation or society. Non-pathological culture is not power oriented and is a positive type culture.

Deviancy is classified in two types, Overconformity and Under conformity, Over conformity is based on accepting and conforming to norms without question where the actions, traits and ideas of athletes and coaches involves such an extreme conformity that they perform “supranormal” actions and potentially endanger themselves and others for example models, Some models suffer anorexia due to their obsession of having a  thin body: Anorexia is form of eating disorder which the person having this psychological disorder fears to gain weight. Another example of deviant Overconformity is that an athlete makes sacrifices for "the game", an athlete strives for distinction, an athlete accepts risks and plays through pain, and an athlete accepts no limits in the pursuit of possibilities. Because of the presence of this moral code of athleticism, athletes who over-conform to theses norms and commit deviant acts aren't necessarily viewed as deviant. The four main norms of the sports ethic states that an athlete must make sacrifices for the game and accept risks, which can in turn, glorify the decisions that an athlete makes to behave in a deviant way. If an athlete decides they need to better their physical health in order to succeed in their sport, and decides to take performance enhancing drugs or along the way, develops an eating disorder in pursuit of becoming a larger asset to their team, according to the sports ethic, they are only fulfilling their duties as an athlete, some athletes also do Overtraining or staleness occurs when an athlete ignores the signs of overreaching and continues to train. Many athletes believe that weakness or poor performance signals the need for even harder training. So, they continue to push themselves. This only breaks down the body further pushing the body to its limit. This act of deviance Overconformity is mostly acceptable in the athlete society because other athletes will understand what that person feels and the reason why he did those deviant acts, even though there is bad side on this type of practices some of the characteristics of this deviancy has a positive effect because of their goal to be the best or the be known they motivate their body in order to reach those goals.

 The other form of deviancy is Under conformity, under conformity is based on ignoring or rejecting norms, this often happen to people who has low esteem, those people who take their talent for granted and people who are under too much pressure. This type of deviance is a negative form of deviance, the complete opposite of deviance overconformity, this type of deviance can result to generalizations or stereotypes, people will consider you taboo, someone who is not acceptable to the society, because people are more used with the uniform ways, doing under conformity makes you different, strange , or much worse a bad influence to other people, some culture reject this kind of thinking because it may affect there laws and tradition, an example of under conformity is obesity, obesity is a complex disease involving excessive of body fat, a gateway disease that may cause other diseases and health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and some other certain cancer. Another example to this is an unmotivated student, a student that avoids academic challenges; the student shows boredom and lack of attention in class, in order to tend to this unmotivated student you need to do two things he first is to change his thinking so he comes to believe that, if he puts forth effort, he can be successful with academic tasks. The second is to figure out what does motivate them to identify the settings, situations, and conditions that he responds to and that can be used to foster his interest, so here we it the two types of deviance, deviance has its good side and its bad side, If we use deviance in a good way we could gain from it but we need to put balance on the decisions we make, because too much of anything is bad, other traits of having a deviant under conformity is that the person having this have sub normal ideas, traits, actions that indicate  rejection or ignorance of their existence. This type of attitude could link into anarchy and lawlessness, this type of mindset can be dangerous to the people around him/her because he/she could harm them in order to get their wants and needs, and also this type of deviancy can cause the person to lose confidence to self and due to being unmotivated it can affect the people around them and in academic studies.

 Tradition can also be preserved even though there is deviance, it can be preserved by Sharing your culture's art and technology. Each culture has its own clothing, music, visual art, storytelling traditions, and many more unique characteristics. Other members of your culture will be overjoyed to teach or talk about their hobbies, their jobs, their crafts, and what they do for fun. This includes traditional artwork you would find in a museum, but material culture goes far beyond that. Even a kitchen spoon or a piece of software is a cultural artifact. People with less sophisticated technology are often considered ignorant or less intelligent. This is completely wrong. Culture passes on tools adapted to a particular environment, and every tool has generations of thinking behind it. Shaping a stone tool is one of the oldest cultural practices there is, and it still takes great skill and knowledge. Cook family recipes. It's never too late to whip up some recipes from your grandmother's cookbook. Smell and taste have powerful connections to memory. As you knead dough or try to guess the right amount of spices, you might remember meals from you childhood or holidays. Just reading a recipe can teach you how much ingredients and kitchen tools have changed. And even if some of them are unfamiliar, others have most likely become your comfort food or a source of family pride, even though these are simple things it is very effective in preserving the traditions you grew up to have another way to preserve tradition is to Accept change. The dialogue around passing on culture often sounds defeatist. Cultures are "endangered" or need "preserving" before they die out. Real challenges and threats do exist, but don't assume that all change is bad. Culture helps people adapt to the world around them. The world has always been changing, cultures have always been adapting, and it's up to you to choose a direction you can be proud of. Almost everyone participates in more than one culture. Be proud of your blend of ideas and behaviors, Talk about it and share it with other people. People are often fascinated by the different ways that people do similar things. Start a conversation and help bring others into the fold, sharing your culture is a good way to connect with other people, therefore the society can still embrace deviance and traditions. Some individuals use technology as a means of deviating from more traditional cultural norms. For example, in the United States, employees in offices are encouraged to remain productive and efficient, letting their minds wander off-task as little as possible. In the past decade, most companies have installed high-speed internet access as a means of improving efficiency. However, employees often appropriate the internet access to avoid work by using social networking sites. Such procrastination and corporate inefficiency stemming from internet access is called “cyber loafing”, but even though employees cyber loaf it the installation of high speed internet connection has motivated the employees to work faster.

[ncmagroup]

Written by Max Altschuler

Sales Call Tips

Start Sales Calls with a Bang

Don’t Bad-Mouth Competitors

Use Awesome Labels

Set the Agenda and Stay in Control

Stand Up

Use Emphasis Wisely

Simplify Options

Adopt Smart Product Positioning

Get Emotional

Clarify Product Value

Empower Customers

Remember, There’s a Time for Everything

Serve Hot, Not Cold

Observe, Record, and Predict

Make it About You Too

Just like sports, the use of science to develop elite performers also applies in sales. In both fields, trainers adopt two key scientific elements — metrics and method — to drive practitioners into breaking records and setting new milestones in their game.

In sports, much of the science focuses on the athlete: genetics, biomechanics (movement techniques, training regimen), nutrition, and psychology (for mental toughness, behavioral modifications, and positive visualizations). On the other hand, the use of science in sales focuses on two areas: the seller and the buyer.

Like top athletes, sales superstars also adopt:

A sales methodology to systematize their gameplay

Proactive sales psychology to prepare for the toughest buyer objections ahead of time by establishing the right mental and emotional state.

But because selling is a two-way interaction, the science behind sales also covers the other party in the engagement: prospects, leads, or customers, depending on the stage in the sales process at which they are being engaged.

In this post, I’ve gathered my best key takeaways and tactics for running successful sales calls, based on my 10+ years of sales experience. As the field moves closer to a customer-centric paradigm, you’ll find that most of the tactics I have included are buyer-focused.

15 Expert Phone Sales Tips

1. Start all sales calls with a bang

Always start your sales calls in style. One study tried to figure out how to increase room service tips for waiters in hotels. Much to the researchers’ surprise, all the waiters had to do was start with a positive comment. When hotel guests opened their door, waiters said “good morning” and gave a positive weather forecast for the day.

How does this help you? Never start your sales calls or meetings by talking about bad weather, traffic, or being busy. Always begin with a positive comment or anecdote. Think great weather, fun weekend plans, or a favorite sports team winning a game. That kicks most sales calls off on the right foot.

2. Don’t bad-mouth competitors during sales calls

The biggest self-sabotaging mistake during a sales call is to speak ill of a competitor. Due to a psychological quirk calledspontaneous trait transference, research has shown that whenever you say bad things about someone else, your audience puts those same traits on you.

If you say your competitor is low quality and unreliable, your potential client can’t help but associate those traits with you, even if they know logically that you are talking about a third party. So no matter what, when it comes to gossip about competitors, always say, “No comment.”

3. Use awesome labels

Assigning a positive label or trait (like having high intelligence or being a good person) to people generally compels them to live up to the label. In one study about fundraising, the researchers told average donors that they were in fact among the highest donors.

Can you guess what happened? Those donors proceeded to donate an above-average amount. We tend to live up to positive labels ascribed to us by people we interact with.

When you are with a client or potential customer, give them good labels. Be sure though that the labels are sensible and genuine. Never attempt anything that will push people into thinking that you are inauthentic, fake, or manipulative.

For example, you can say, “You are one of our best customers” or “You’re such a pleasure to do business with.” Having received the compliment, the client will want to be one of your best customers or try even harder to be a pleasing business partner.

4. Set the agenda and stay in control

When I get on sales calls that I’ve set up from meeting requests, I always like to articulate clear agendas and ask the prospects if that’s okay with them. This way, I can keep calls on track and accomplish what I want to achieve, while making customers feel that they are in control of the conversation.

For example, you might say, “Well, I’m glad we’re able to connect today. I’d love to go over XYZ and then would be happy to answer any questions you might have. How does that sound to you?”

5. Stand up

Allow your passion and excitement for the product to come through in your sales calls. Make it something the prospect can be infected by. In my experience, sales reps can achieve this by standing up and doing sales calls in the main common space, instead of hiding in a cubicle or a conference room.

As Mattermark CEO Danielle Morrill says, “Speak loud and proud!” I personally prefer to pace around while making sales calls.

6. Use emphasis wisely

Highlighting certain words or phrases is an effective communication tool that helps you convey your message better. Focus on your inflection, especially on voicemails. Bedrock Data CEO John Marcus describes this as “putting makeup” on your calls. By adding inflection to the right words, you sound more passionate and articulate and, in turn, more convincing.

7. Simplify options

Too many options can easily confuse buyers, making it harder for them to select, rationalize, and affirm a purchase decision. Unless you are a data analytics engine, information overload rarely delivers a benefit.

When describing your product, reduce the number of options and features you want the prospect to focus on. This way, they can arrive at a decision faster and feel more confident that they are not missing out on anything. Only when the likelihood of attrition/rejection becomes overwhelming should you present countermeasures (i.e., the next tier of options).

8. Adopt smart product positioning

The way you frame your product often spells the difference between a closed deal and a lost opportunity. Groundbreaking research in behavioral economics confirms that framing matters. For example, saving $10 feels oddly different across varied buying scenarios (purchasing a smartphone vs. buying a shirt, for example) even when the amount saved is exactly the same. In many cases, relative positioning beats pricing in making brands more appealing to consumers.

Packaging the product as a solution instead of just a commodity or service also increases the likelihood of conversion. At the end of the day, you perform better by solving problems than by selling products.

9. Get emotional

The key finding of behavioral economics is that people rarely hinge their purchase decisions on solidly rational grounds. In the vast majority of cases, people buy stuff largely because of emotional triggers and other hyper-personal, sometimes illogical factors.

Nostalgia, brand loyalty, associative/sentimental attachments to a product, and other intangible benefits can serve as persuasion levers as much as a product’s technical features.

When engaging prospects, probe for the emotional button that can sway their purchase decision. Articulate a product’s value through the use of relevant and powerful storytelling. In some instances, adopting the pleasure-pain dichotomy may work. Depending on the situation, people’s aversion to pain or their deep anticipation of pleasure can be leveraged as powerful selling tools.

Lastly, personal trust — however misplaced — also works in selling, as social media recommendations prove. People will believe an idea or buy a product if these are endorsed by family, friends, or influencers they trust. As a seller, you can pull this powerful string through referrals, testimonials, and influencer marketing.

10. Clarify the product’s value

Make it easier for prospects to assess a product’s subjective (emotion-based) and objective (fact-based) benefits. Use storytelling and framing techniques to set your product apart from other options available in the market. Whenever possible, have an ROI calculator/formula at hand to help prospects quantify the benefits of the product when emotional triggers are inadequate to push them towards a firm decision. In either case, clearly, demonstrate that the value customers receive more than justifies the price.

11. Empower customers

People enjoy discovering stuff that makes them feel good or solutions that address their pesky problems. But they resent being forced, wrangled, goaded, or tricked into a purchase decision.

Because business is leaning more towards a subscription-based paradigm, brands aim to build long-term relationships with customers. If people perceive that you are force-feeding terms or tricking them into buying, you’ll lose not just customers but a revenue stream. Hence, give customers enough space, freedom, and power to make purchase decisions they will not regret.

You can achieve this by closely involving customers in developing the solutions they need. Get their feedback and give them a semblance of control in the problem-solving process. But always direct the conversation towards your value proposition.

12. There’s a time for everything

In life as in sales, timing matters. Depending on your industry and the specific prospect you are engaging, the proper timing for making calls, doing presentations, sending emails, scheduling meetings, and attempting a close exist. There are a number of studies that pinpoint the specific times within a day best suited for reaching out to your target consumers. Find one for your niche and implement accordingly.

13. Serve hot, not cold

Practically speaking, cold calling is becoming a relic of the past. With business intelligence software, social media, and other digital resources, approaching a prospect without any clue about who they are and what they need has become a grossly desperate if not an outright stupid move to make.

Plan and prepare for each call. Use business intelligence tools, corporate databases, and search engines to profile a company. Probe their social media accounts to discover pain points and other opportunities.

Participate in their conversations and identify the values, thought leaders, and brands they associate with. Know as much as you can about a prospect to make them feel they are important, that you have done your homework, and that you care about their success.

14. Observe, record, and predict

Much of science involves the careful observation of nature, recording your findings, and making predictions based on your observations. Sales follow a similar framework.

The key is to limit your talk time and listen to what your prospects are saying. When prospects talk extensively about their situation, you have already pulled the right strings. Keep them talking. Observe their behavior. Discern their needs based on their statements. Design and propose a solution that squarely addresses their problems.

Ask the right questions. Probe for relevant answers. And truly listen. That is what top-notch selling is all about.

15. But it’s also about you

Selling is a two-way street. Even if you take care of customers but neglect honing your skills and attitude as a sales practitioner, you won’t go as high as you could.

Customers warm up to and trust business contacts who are masters at their craft. Train to be the very best at what you do so customers will see that your solutions are peerless and they will lose significant value when they move to another vendor.

Think big and set higher goals to challenge yourself and your team. As behavioral economists suggest, organize your goals into several mini objectives that incrementally increase in difficulty. Perform the easy ones first to establish a string of successes that will give you the momentum, confidence, and motivation you need to beat more challenging goals later on.

Selling is a science

Long considered as the art of persuasion, sales have also become a science-driven profession. Business intelligence, data analytics, behavioral modification, and key performance indicators are just some of the elements that systematize the seller side of the dynamic. On the other hand, neuroscience, consumer psychology, and behavioral economics now pervade how smart practitioners approach the buyer side.

Science clearly has a central role in exponentially improving sales performance. With machine learning and artificial intelligence on the rise, the influence of science on the world of sales can only go deeper. The key for tomorrow’s sales professionals is to embrace science-backed selling tactics to transform their gameplay and win.

    Go to our website:   www.ncmalliance.com

15 Science-Backed Tips for Making Better Sales Calls Written by Max Altschuler Sales Call Tips Start Sales Calls with a Bang Don't Bad-Mouth Competitors…

[lin56johnson-blog]

Augur Rep Wallet

In 2019 the particular cryptocurrency sector will continue its evolution. While it is early years have also been took over by almost totally risky trading, as this market grows, a online asset�s �fundamentals� will become increasingly significant as value symptoms. BNC�s 'Alt-Coin Contenders' sequence introduces assets with essential characteristics that will set them all apart from their particular competitors and justify his or her add-on in any investor�s �ones to watch� list. From your investment viewpoint, valuing organizations is generally done using time honored formulas like value to earnings together with selling price to book quotients, PEG computations and gross makes. In the crypto space, nothing of these solutions implement right � and even buyers continue to wrestle using how far better to allocate some sort of value to electronic assets in a nascent industry that is emotion influenced and characterized by way of wild volatility To that stop, the purpose of that 'Alt-Coin Contenders' set is to identify specific property that BNC experts now have identified as obtaining important characteristics that in typically the very least, make a case for shareholders including them in the 'ones to watch' list. The selections are designed based on a range involving specifications - things similar to hashrate or maybe an boost in on-chain transactions. Or maybe usage metrics for app tokens and the sized in addition to commitment of the asset's 'community'. Or noticeable liquidity � significant alternate listings and fiat on-ramps. Exposure to possible what is action is also significant, as are the people behind the scenes � inspiring market leaders with 'rock star' social media position, or on the other hand, big-time monetary backers with deep pockets and the track record of achievements. Not one tool will tick each box, and some will mark more than others, yet what this course aims in order to do is proceed audience beyond simplistic FUD, FOMO and speculation � together with introduce the range of fundamental token attributes which will become recognized value indicators as the industry matures. Augur Rep Wallet : Building the n-sided current market Augur (REP) can be a decentralized conjecture end user vs end user betting market that is designed to help forecast and speak the particular outcome involving a good function based on a good the greater part consensus principle. End users engaging in an Augur betting on marketplace find themselves vying from peers on often the network to end on often the right side associated with predicting an occasion end result. The particular key defining factor from the Augur blockchain is decentralized event/oracle reporting. Oracles, users on the network, report the outcomes of events signed up for the network using Augur's entirely automated, motivation aligning method, that makes sure poor characters are ensnared together with consumers can dispute unfair results. Users place gamble upon questions like 'Will Donald Trump be impeached simply by December twenty fifth, 2018? ' (an active market) having either ETH or maybe the platform's native symbol, REP. Industry creator originally sets prospects 50/50, 80/20 etc) these types of numbers modify as wagers roll within. The 'will Jesse Trump be impeached' choice, to get example, currently is placed in a good 5% opportunity of taking place with ETH fifty-one. five worth of wide open desire. The market creator decides a 'designated reporter' that reports on the target outcome of an event. The INDIVIDUAL token symbolizes 'reputation'. Consumers are paid REPETITION when they report an occasion and that matches upward to the agreed opinion of different reporters. This can be a good incentive based program, if an oracle misreports a event�an objective true or false output�then often the rest of the marketplace makes note of this bad reporter and punishes them. For betters, the Augur platform offers a new number of benefits more than some sort of traditional central wagering market service which is available from big centralized entities just like Betfair of betdaq or PaddyPower. There may be flexibility for users to make any market they want, and therefore let other users decide when it is the feasible wagering possibility. Blockchain based appropriate commitment settlement has often the potential to considerably lessen the cost and time and energy to settle multiple bets all over many marketplaces, The permissionless dynamics of Augur (funds and transactions secured in addition to confirmed based on this Ethereum international account) let us end users in virtually any region participate in recently unavailable safeguarded marketplaces. I actually. e. A great Ethereum container in Most of asia can make speculative table bets on US stocks inexpensively, with minimized chaffing, within a way not probable before marketplaces like Augur existed. Intended for oracles, Augur event credit reporting provides the opportunity to take part in an n-sided marketplace. Consequently any consumer can provide their very own homogenous service to any kind of different user and often the environment can certainly still support additional workers in case demand intended for their services grows via the other side on the marketplace. Because of these kinds of characteristics, Augur has usually been referenced to like the 'Uber regarding crypto'. The ecosystem also functions more efficiently to comprehend oracles, meaning wider rendering together with more views on the celebration result, increasing the chances of fair bet final results. Transactions over often the Augur Dapp are completed on the Ethereum blockchain through complex smart-contracts. In this sense, functionality plus overall performance of the Augur is dependent on block occasions and Gas fees of the Ethereum network, which in turn has multiple additional reasons affecting it. Augur inside 2018: Price battles but growth across particular metrics Like many other Ethereum based application tokens, REP's price performance has recently been disappointing despite significant step-size in product development in addition to maturation. It is at this time down ~95% from it has the all time substantial reached in mid-January, dealing from ~$6 having earlier exchanged above a $22.99. Significantly of this price degeneration occurred in the extra half the 12 months. The Augur Dapp went through a significant main market transition in the ninth September. The particular token was able in order to maintain some price levity depending on speculative assessments coming from store traders leading right up to, and around the particular date ranges of mainnet switch. Augur's vastly improved process and dispute resolution system publicised in the lead up to the kick off additional to this getting force. The hype in addition to good speculation lasted until finally the 6th of This summer when Augur traded in some sort of optimum of ~$42, post this specific date Augur has been over a strong slide towards low sole digits that has held up over 5 months. Number 1: REP- 1 calendar year price chart, Source Bravenewcoin. com Post-mainnet launch this Augur platform is the far more complex, mainly strong and consumer-ready application than it was throughout January, yet price/value offers moved in the opposite path. This is trait of immature and volatile crypto markets, dominated by simply retail industry buyers who tend to be able to trade on sentiment, because opposed to letting essential aspects play out. Seeing that Augur Rep Wallet , price seemed to be likely too high in the peak of the bull manage together with at the moment sits way too low approaching new feet in the on-going bear market. Figure 2: Growth in the total stability of ETH in typically the Augur platform. Source: www.curiousgiraffe.io/augur/ Number 3: Growth throughout the final amount of trading markets created together with completed upon the Augur software. Origin: www.curiousgiraffe.io/augur/ As from December 17th, there was above 12, 600 ETH closed into Augur betting market with over 1600 marketplaces created and 700 finished (figures 2&3). These significant metrics have displayed steady upward momentum over the last a few months, implying a growing excitement to get the platform. This basic has not recently been resembled inside REPETITION price, even so. This particular considered, very number of of these areas will be active or even liquefied, along with most action occuring in very specific activities adjacent the yr ending selling price of digital assets. The particular vision of Augur being a totally peer-to-peer betting marketplace, where any user can easily gamble on any global affair, with automatic settlement deal through objective reporting confirmed by simply consensus, has but to obtain scale or mainstream meaning in a means that Dapps like Cryptokitties have achieved in often the past. An incident study at the efficacy with the Augur platform in 2018 The particular Augur decentralized opinion had been recently put according to significant stress when wanting to settle a new market to get 'Which party will manage typically the House after the 2018 Oughout. S. mid-term elections instructions Democrat or Conservative? The particular Democratic party received typically the election, but this market termination date had been 12 , 10th. Because often the date was not chosen in the market & the default expiration day for the bets industry was 12/10/18, many claim that Republican is the particular accurate outcome as this Democrats usually do not officially have control of the Household right up until January 3rd 2019. There exists over $1 mil tied straight into this marketplace, with large volumes of prints about either side in the gamble. The question is definitely ambiguous and a 'code is law' argument may favour often the Republican aspect of the guess, on the other hand, most thought these were voting on the results connected with often the election or will not really have voted for any celebration other when compared with Republican. 90% of the wagers in the market supported a Democratic win. But the truth is, it seems that the designated press reporter for the event (the oracle determined for reporting obligations by way of the market creator) will be taking standpoint that code is usually law, and Republicans had been in the control of the particular House within the expiration date despite getting rid of the political election. This means that all of Democrat backers will shed their stakes, and this minority favouring Republican can win often the bet upon a technicality. The event features been a useful case study on both the worth and clunkiness of developing a new decentralized bets market. In the watertight multi-billion betting houses that master the sports betting world, uncertain markets like this would never have experienced often the light of day. Even if they did at any time face an equivalent ambiguous outcome, 'centralized' support services protocols would solve almost any issues. What has recently been commendable is typically the visibility and even discussion all-around this issue as well as the commitment of developers and even customers to prevent similar circumstances in the future. Onchain fundamental symptoms NVT indication Figure a few: REP NVT signal plus price. NVT signal measured with info from Coinmetrics. io. Changed onchain transaction volume employed for NVT transmission Made from the NVT ratio, the NVT signal is a responsive blockchain valuation metric developed by Willy Woo plus Dmitriy Kalichkin. Crypto trading markets are likely to be able to bubbles of risky purchasing, definitely not backed up by way of underlying network performance together with activity. The particular NVT warning provides a few perception directly into what phase of this particular price cycle the token may be in. A top NVT signal is indicative of a new network that is certainly going through one regarding these bubble cycles, in addition to could move towards a new position of becoming overbought/overvalued, due to market's speculative examination running low on steam. The increase in usage of the Augur betting podium over the particular last 3 months features coincided with a sharp fall in this NVT signal (Figure 5). This specific has lead to a good position where REP can be likely close to the oversold inflection point, plus assessments of being initial undervalued. The token, as soon as it detects a underside, may be able to help build on its recent network action to push off strongly. As pointed out, Augur Wallet appears that Augur platform's recent strong fundamental cost has not but been recently charged into INDIVIDUAL, the moment it will the idea is probably that quite a few positive brief term price performance will certainly come with it. Outside issues such as a new reversal in the wider bearish sentiment surrounding crypto and other speculative factors specific to REP, might deflate as well as inflate any price movements driven by the bounce from the bottoming out NVT signal. It is definitely Important to notice that when much of the pastime in the Augur platform is of ETH tokens, some sort of more productive Augur system with more bets built with ETH increases often the electric of the INDIVIDUAL token and definitely will likely responses into extra onchain activity of INDIVIDUAL, as oracles observe added opportunities for you to generate revenue. PMR indication Figure 6: ASSOCIATE PMR signal and price tag. NVT signal calculated with files from Coinmetrics. io. Energetic addresses^2 used to reflect Metcalfe value. PMR prices in natural log type. Metcalfe's regulation is some sort of measure of connections in a good network, since established by simply Robert Metcalfe the particular head honcho of Ethernet. They have hereafter been used to assess the true value of network-based lending options like Facebook and Bitcoin, and by simply comparing it to help selling price, can provide some sort of useful tool to analyse whether a expression is over as well as undervalued. This is in addition a more straightforward metric to implement versus onchain transaction level, which may be complicated to assess accurately around USD terminology. Addresses are measured because the number of unique sending and receiving address taking part in transactions daily. In times past, productive address growth has got generally been low to get REPRESENTATIVE tokens. Active addresses on the network have by no means realized 3252 unique people over a day and averaged ~401 users the time above the period of time from this 26th of August for you to the seventeenth of December. This is a amazingly few for a multilevel worth ~$70 million together with displays how the REP expression is still a premature asset and much from the valuation is risky together with based on venture fashion investment decision decisions made by simply retail consumers. At that stage, right now there shows up to be able to be very little affiliation or contribution from often the PMR signal towards price tag (Figure 6). This might be red flag for most long term investors and even a warning sign of vulnerable fundamentals, even so, as often the network builds up push and task through a great deal more bets being made in the event and additional value being invested in bets markets, the number connected with energetic addresses on typically the Augur community is likely to increase. Conclusions The Augur Dapp underwent substantial changes and progression inside second half of 2018. It has become some sort of fully performance decentralized betting marketplace exactly where new markets are consistently appearing produced and resolved, even though onchain REP token movement proceeds to build up momentum. This REP expression has found new power but very little level and protection. This might change in 2019. A change throughout sentiment surrounding often the utility and performance regarding Dapps that is certainly likely to coincide with the future bull market will become identifying for REP. Augur to be a much outlined, idiosyncratic, n-sided marketplace, that delivers an excellent remedy to be able to traditional centralized legacy of music conjecture markets, can re-emerge while market top Dapp together with build momentum plus electricity for its attached token.

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Transcript of What Sport Can Teach Us About Business

Transcript of What Sport Can Teach Us About Business

Transcript of What Sport Can Teach Us About Business written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to by Asana, a work management software tool that we use to run pretty much everything in our business. All of our meetings, all of our product launches, all of our tasks, and I’m going to show you how you can try it for free a little later.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Alan Stein, Jr. He’s a corporate performance coach, speaker, author of a book we’re going to talk about today called Raise Your Game: High Performance Secrets for the Best of the Best. So Al, thanks for joining me.

Alan Stein, Jr.: Oh, my pleasure.

John Jantsch: So in the introduction of the book, you tell a story about your days as a basketball performance coach, where you taught some pretty high profile athletes how to raise their athleticism and mind/body connection. I wonder if we could start there and tell me what that looked like.

Alan Stein, Jr.: Absolutely. For me, basketball was my first identifiable passion. I fell in love with the game at probably five or six years old, and I’m turning 43 in a couple of days, and basketball has been a major pillar of my life since that time, so almost four decades. I had a pretty interesting career where I was able to see some really great players at younger ages before they made it big, kind of the before picture, and I was able to observe some really high level players in the unseen hours after they had made it big, kind of the after picture, and I’ve really tried to curate from both sides of that spectrum and come up with a list of principles, and habits, and routines, and mindsets that anyone in any walk of life, but most certainly business, can apply to their performance.

John Jantsch: So let’s start with a baseline. Are there just a few things or maybe a lot of things that successful people do differently?

Alan Stein, Jr.: You know, I think it’s a small handful. And you could probably expand the list, but they’d probably all connect back to the foundational pillars, and one of the main principles of the book, and I use as a guiding principle in my life and everything I do is to never get bored with the basics. That what it takes to be successful in any endeavor is usually very basic in premise, but it’s never easy to do, and I always make sure to differentiate between the two. Just because something is basic, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy. And a lot of people treat those as synonyms, and they’re most certainly not.

John Jantsch: Yeah, I know it’s almost cliché to say, but it’s like, shoot your free throws, right?

Alan Stein, Jr.: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Perfect example. In the game of basketball, one of the most basic components is simply footwork. Your movement efficiency on the court. And when a player puts in the hours to master their footwork, it makes all of the other skills in the game go up. They’re shooting, they’re passing, they’re rebounding, they’re defense because all of that stuff starts at their feet. And lots of times when I’m working with leaders and working in business, I make the analogy that listening is the footwork of business, or of leadership, or of sales because the only way you can truly lead others, or the only way you can sell anything or solve a problem is if you’re listening. You need to listen to your clients, or customers, or patients, or members, or whatever your terminology is, but you have to really listen to make sure that you’re able to solve their problem, and listening is a skill that all of us should and continue to practice on a regular basis the same way elite NBA players practice their footwork, every single day.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and that’s probably a little counterintuitive for a lot of leaders, isn’t it? Because they sometimes, and I’m guilty of this, I feel like people are there to have me tell them what to do rather than listen, and I think you’re suggesting that just the opposite is the skill you need to develop.

Alan Stein, Jr.: Well, it’s both. I mean, you are clearly a subject matter expert and you’re a professional speaker, so people pay you to come in and actually teach and to talk, but my guess would be that in order for you to make sure that you’re delivering the right content on time to the right people, there was some listening going along the way. It may be in the form of a pre-event call or some pre-event questionnaire, or when you’re really getting a feel for who you’re going to deliver to in any capacity, you have to make sure you’re doing the listening.

Same thing in sales. When it comes to sales, and I know we share a lot of mutual friends that are really high on the sales professional list, and they all say that telling is not selling, that in order to really find that good fit, you have to ask insightful questions first to really get the intel to make sure that your product or service is the right fit for them. And if it is the right fit and you ask them the right questions, you won’t have to convince them to buy anyway. They’re going to convince themselves because you’re asking the right questions. And same thing with leaders. When you ask people questions and you listen to their answers, unconsciously you’re telling them that you care about them, and that they’re important, and that you value them. And that’s one of the most important traits of a leader is making sure that the people on their team know that the leader cares about them on and off the court or in and out of the board room.

John Jantsch: And I think it also goes to empowerment too because if they know that you’re going to give them the answer any time they ask a question, why should they try to figure it out themselves? And I think that that’s a habit that we can really get into too.

Alan Stein, Jr.: Oh, absolutely. You nailed that perfectly, and that’s so insightful. And I know in my own journey, when I was a younger coach, I didn’t listen very well because I was too busy trying to show everyone how smart I thought I was, and I wanted to puff up my chest and give the answer to everything. And then as I started to get older and hopefully wiser and more mature, I started to realize that I had that backwards, that you should go through life with your eyes and ears as open as possible and keep your mouth closed until it’s time to really share something of value.

John Jantsch: And I think this actually goes to the heart of what we’ve been discussing. You said one of the first steps, and again, I think it’s early on in the book, you say one of the first steps is you have to first learn how to live in the present.

Alan Stein, Jr.: Yes. And that is one of the most important skills for any human being, but it’s vital for performance in sport or in business. And really the short definition of living present is to be where your feet are. And wherever your feet are, that’s where your head and heart should be as well, and I know that may sound obvious, but in today’s day and age where we have so many digital distractions, that’s not always the case.

You can picture you and I going out to a friendly lunch and I’m staring at my phone the entire time we’re at lunch. Clearly, there’s going to be a disconnect between us, and what I’m telling you unconsciously is that whatever’s on my phone is more important than you are, and that unconscious message, if don’t consistently, is going to erode any type of connection that you and I have. And it’s so important for people to realize, we are always communicating a message, even when you don’t think you’re communicating, you are communicating, and in that instance, I would be communicating to you that my phone is more important than you are. And that, from a leadership standpoint, from a friendship standpoint, from a teammate standpoint is going in the wrong direction.

John Jantsch: Yeah, how am I supposed to feel when I discover I’m two rungs below a cat video, right?

Alan Stein, Jr.: Exactly.

John Jantsch: So it’s almost not even that much work to make analogies in business and sports, is it?

Alan Stein, Jr.: Right.

John Jantsch: You take that full circle, no pun intended, if you were looking at the book. You have a graphic that talks about this circle of player/coach/team, employee/manager/organization. So I want to dive into a couple of the ways or the things that you talk about having to develop. Kind of set the stage for that employee/manager/organization, player/coach/team analogy.

Alan Stein, Jr.: Yeah. I found there is just tremendous crossover. And I’ve lived both because even in my 20 years as a basketball performance coach, I was always working in the private sector, I always had my own training business. So I’ve been an entrepreneur since day one. I’ve never had a corporate job or a “real job” as an adult, so I’ve been able to see firsthand the symmetry, and the alignment, and the harmony between what’s required to excel in sport and what’s required to excel in business. And it just goes back to those foundational principles and pillars.

Clearly, the X’s and O’s and the tactical sides are going to be different, but the principles don’t really change. So really, what it would take to have an elite culture, a winning culture for a basketball team is the same as it is for business, and the only major difference is many businesses just have to do it at a higher scale. A basketball team is going to have a head coach, a couple of assistants, 14, 15 players, maybe a couple managers, whereas these principles could still be applied to a business that has a thousand employees, but the principles stay the same.

John Jantsch: And I think it’s become very common today to talk about ‘my team’ and ‘my department’ and to even talk about a manager as a mentor or a coach as part of their responsibility, so I think it’s certainly not a stretch at all.

Alan Stein, Jr.: No, it’s not. Oh, and I was going to say, what I’ve been really encouraging basketball coaches to do is to make sure they’re learning from entrepreneurs and executives and people in the business world. I mean, what you said, and you nailed it perfectly, this has been going on for decades where businesses will bring in athletes or more times coaches or general managers to talk to their teams, and everyone is always trying to pull from sport to business, but the inverse is very much the same. A smart coach would find a local business owner that’s created a championship level culture, is thriving, and has had longterm, sustainable results and pick that person’s brain for what they’re doing because, again, it’s the same stuff.

John Jantsch: As I said in the intro, this is brought to you by Asana. It’s a work management software tool that we’ve been using for a long time, our entire team. It just allows us to be so much more productive, to unify our communication, to keep track of tasks, to assign and delegate, pretty much run everything from meetings all the way up through our client work, and you can get it and try it free for 30 days because you are a listener. So get started at Asana.com/DuctTape. That’s Asana, A-S-A-N-A.com/DuctTape.

So you break the book then from that point on into this employee/manager/business, or maybe it’s organization, and you talk about things that you need to develop, and what’s interesting is, when you talk about the employee, I think the employee has to develop those, but the manager has to maybe see that as their responsibility to help them, to help some of those, and one of the ones … you have each of those broken into four, five, six different chunks, but I want to maybe kind of riff on three of them.

Alan Stein, Jr.: Sure.

John Jantsch: Because the first one, I think it’s the first one, for the employee, I think is actually the hardest for individuals period, and that’s this idea of developing or helping them develop self-awareness. How the heck do you do that?

Alan Stein, Jr.: Yes. That is a tough one, and it’s also important to note that it’s a continual journey. You never arrive. No one should be able to stick their stake in the ground and say, “I’m 100% self-aware.” There’s going to be varying degrees of it. And funny enough-

John Jantsch: And that would actually indicate you were not, right?

Alan Stein, Jr.: Exactly. Yes. Once you think you’ve arrived, you haven’t. But funny enough, and I know this may sound counterintuitive, many times, the way we need to acquire self-awareness or at least heighten and strengthen it is by asking others, and I don’t mean random people off the street. Ask the people that know us the best. Close family, and friends, and colleagues, and coworkers that really know us because all of us, we can’t see our own blind spots. We can have the humility and the foresight to know that we have blind spots, but that’s why they’re called blind spots because we don’t know what they are and we don’t know what we don’t know. So the key is, once you believe that you have some self-awareness and you’re aware of what’s good and what’s bad and what your dreams are as well as what your fears and insecurities are, then you need to ask other people and see if there’s an accuracy there.

Perfect example. I’ll just use listening because I brought it up earlier. If I believe that I’m a great listener, but you ask the five people closest to me and they all say that I’m not, well then I’m probably not. It really doesn’t matter what I think. What’s most important is the result of what’s going on in real life, and that’s where, if you have the humility to ask those, you can decrease that gap between what you believe is true and what others are seeing as true. And it always reminds me of a funny quote I heard from a comedian. He said, “If the audience doesn’t laugh, it’s not funny.” That’s the definition of a joke. If they don’t laugh, it’s not funny. They’re the judge and the jury. And he said, “It doesn’t matter if I think it’s funny, it doesn’t matter if my comedian friends think it’s funny. The people in the audience, if they don’t laugh, then it’s not funny.” And it’s the same thing with self-awareness. No matter how good of a listener you think you are, if those around you don’t think you are, then there’s a major disconnect.

John Jantsch: In the manager category, the one that popped out to me is servant because I’m not sure managers always view their role as servant.

Alan Stein, Jr.: Well, the concept of servant leadership has been around forever, but it’s really the mindset that, everything I do is to add value to others, is to fill other’s buckets. It’s not in degradation of yourself, you still need to fill your own bucket first in order to fill other’s, but everything you’re doing is trying to raise others up, and that should be a true leader’s mentality. It shouldn’t be for any other reason other than the fact that you’re trying to elevate somebody else’s game, and then collectively elevate your entire organization. But the servanthood mindset, at least all of the elite leaders I’ve been around, that’s one they’ve adopted right from the get go.

John Jantsch: And I’ll tell you in my own experience how that role is both a positive and a negative is when it comes to taking credit for stuff. I think some of the best leaders when good things happen give the team credit, and sometimes not so evolved leaders need the credit.

Alan Stein, Jr.: Very well said. Yes, and you are correct. And I think that usually comes from an insecurity. That they’re not confident enough in who they are as a leader that they feel like they need that credit to puff up their chest, if you will.

John Jantsch: So let’s go to the organization. Again, you had five or six characteristics there, and one that I’d love to hear you expand is role clarity being essential.

Alan Stein, Jr.: Yeah. That one is absolutely vital, and as I work with a variety of different organizations, it’s usually one that trips people up. One, they simply make the assumption that everybody on the team knows with tremendous clarity what their specific role is, and many times, that’s not the case. So it’s so important for every person in the organization to know exactly how they fit into the grand scheme of things, and I’ve always felt that a team or an organization is simply a jigsaw puzzle, and every single person is a different piece with different knobs and different holes that are going to fit together different, and it’s vital that everybody knows what their role is so that they can then embrace that role and star in that role whatever it may be.

And of course, organizations, there are going to be varying levels of roles and responsibilities, and you may play a much bigger role in our organization than I do, but mine is still important because even without my little puzzle piece, we can’t finish the picture or the collage, so every piece matters. And lots of times, people don’t even know what their role is, and then if they do know it, they don’t take pride in fulfilling it because they want a different role, and that’s where we start to see dysfunction.

John Jantsch: You know, I love what you said earlier about the idea that you’re always communicating something, and I think that’s one of the challenges with role clarity is a lot of times, we are communicating role dysfunction, if you will, and that’s where it gets really tough. So it’s something that you not only have to define, but redefine, and redefine, and re-support, and I don’t think it ever goes away, does it?

Alan Stein, Jr.: No, it doesn’t. And you brought up a great point there because this happens all the time. When we talk about communicating when you don’t think you’re communicating. Let’s take delegating for example. So you and I are teammates on our organization and I delegate an important task to you. Not menial work, an important task. A big proposal or what have you. Unconsciously, I’m communicating to you that I trust you, John. I know that you’re competent. I believe in you. I know that you’re going to do this as well as I could do it or maybe even better. You’re the right person to do it. And clearly, that’s going to deepen our connection between each other. That’s going to build trust.

Whereas, what a lot of people do would be micromanage. I hand you an important task and I stand over your shoulder the entire time, which again, communicates now a different message, that I don’t trust you, I don’t believe in you. In fact, I think you’re too big of a moron to get this right unless I’m standing right over your shoulder. So now I’m eroding our connection, and I’m creating more friction and more dysfunction. And I know more times than not, that’s done with great intention. Lots of times when we micromanage, it’s because we’re so particular about the way we want things done, and we have such a high standard of excellence, we want it done the right way and we want it done our way, but we forget that we are communicating that different message, and that’s, again, where our roles will start to get some ambiguity and some fog, and we don’t want that.

And one more thing I’ll say on roles. It’s one thing to have the right people on your team, but you also have to make sure they’re in the right seats on the bus, and for it to be a great fit is, I’m going to put things, your role with our organization are going to be things that you enjoy doing and you’re really good at doing, and the more of your role that are those two things, then the higher you’ll perform. If I give you a whole bunch of things that you enjoy doing, but you’re not very good at, well then we’re all going to suffer because the work is going to be poor. And if I give you things that you’re good at, but you really don’t enjoy doing them, then it’s going to be tough to keep you motivated longterm. So this is where we can shift things around. Especially in a diverse organization.

There might be some things that are in your current job description that you don’t really enjoy, but someone else on the team would love to do those things, and that’s where we can shift around. I’m not really a spreadsheet kind of guy. I’m not a high IQ guy, I’m a high EQ guy. So if a good portion of my job description was to do paperwork and fill out Excel spreadsheets, I’m not going to enjoy my work. But you know as well as I do, there’s probably someone else that loves that. They would much rather do that than interface with other human beings. They would love to just hop on a podcast like yours and work on spreadsheets all day. So why don’t we take that off of my plate, put that on their plate, and everybody wins? I’m happier, they’re happier, and the quality of work goes up. So that would be an example of how we can shift job descriptions and roles around to make sure that the team wins.

John Jantsch: I’m visiting with Alan Stein, Jr. author of Raise Your Game. Alan, tell us where people can find out more about you, your work, and Raise Your Game.

Alan Stein, Jr.: Well, if they’re interested in the book, they can go to RaiseYourGameBook.com or if they want to find out more about the stuff I’ve got going on, you can just go to AlanSteinJr.com, and I’m at Alan Stein, Jr on Instagram, LinkedIn, all the social channels, and love engaging with folks on there.

John Jantsch: Awesome. We’ll have links of course in the show notes. Alan, thanks for taking a few moments to visit with us on The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, and hopefully we’ll run into you someday out there on the road.

Alan Stein, Jr.: Sounds great, my pleasure. I appreciate you.

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