The light you see

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jun 3, 2010 in Awakening, Photography | 8 comments

The light you see

Photography’s an interesting art form. At its core, it’s entirely about light. How much light reflected from the world around us dictates what our picture looks like. As a photographer, you have nearly total control over how much light you choose to see, what quality the light is, and what you choose to see with that light. In total darkness, photography is phenomenally uninteresting – but rarely are you ever photographing in total darkness, unless you leave the lens cap on. Even on the darkest of nights, there’s enough ambient light to take a photo.

Don’t believe it? If you have a camera that can hold open the shutter (like a DSLR) and a rock solid tripod, set it up facing out a window one night and press the shutter. It may be a minute or two before you hear the shutter close, but when you look at the result, you’ll see quite a bit. As long as the camera is undisturbed, you’ll have a photo that looks shockingly like the daytime, even when your own eyes struggle to see.

This makes for an interesting metaphor for your life, doesn’t it? It’s not that there isn’t enough light in your life so much as it is your eyes, heart, and spirit might not be open wide enough to pick it up. A camera set up to patiently wait in the middle of the darkest night can see as if it were day.

If there’s not enough light in your life, plunk yourself down like the camera on a tripod, stop the chaos around you, take a whole bunch of deep breaths, and open up your eyes. Don’t think – just wait, watch, breathe, and see if your mental and emotional lens can find the light that’s already there.

The light is there, waiting for you.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.

Music to power your workday

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jun 2, 2010 in Awakening, Music | 8 comments

I listen to a ton of music during the workday to help me power through stuff, especially when I need an extra boost of energy, creativity, or motivation. Since a number of people have asked, here are some of the albums I recommend. Most are either in foreign languages or lyric-free, because the language processing side of your brain is a serial processor. This means it can handle one language stream well, but can’t multiprocess well – so a song with lyrics that you understand is likely to slow you down and reduce your productivity, rather than boost it, if you’re doing anything else involving words (like email). As an added bonus, music without lyrics is guaranteed not to offend anyone in your workplace.

All of the albums are affiliate links that pay me a commission via Amazon.com. (come on, did you expect any less?) Most of the albums are in MP3 format for any player including iTunes/iPod and anything that will support an MP3. Some are physical CDs.

See a larger version here.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.

There is no secret sauce

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jun 1, 2010 in Awakening, Rant | 12 comments

There is no secret sauce

If there’s one expression I’ve heard over the years that demonstrates an executive’s lack of understanding about how business works, it’s the idea of secret sauce, the concept that your company has some secret methodology or recipe that makes you incredibly successful and powerful. Everyone’s questing for this sauce. What’s the right mix? What are the ingredients? The truly paranoid obsess over the theoretical secret sauce of other companies.

There is no secret sauce.

None. The recipe for Coca Cola was derived using gas chromatography decades ago. The Colonel’s 11 herbs and spices have largely proven to be a myth, again thanks to food laboratories. Go read William Poundstone’s Big Secrets if you want the actual recipes.

Your business doesn’t have a secret sauce, either. Unless you’ve got a product that absolutely no one else has, your “secret sauce” is probably in use in some form or fashion at every one of your competitors. The only exception to this might be if you’re deeply incompetent, in which case there are probably ingredients in your sauce that no one wants.

In the grand scheme of things, how much does the secret sauce matter? Let’s take it literally:

• If your restaurant is open for business only on Tuesday nights from 1 AM to 2 AM, your secret sauce won’t save you.
• If your servers are surly and abusive to your patrons, your secret sauce won’t save you.
• If the food that the sauce is placed on is substandard or infected, your secret sauce won’t save you.
• If your financial management makes the entire restaurant a failed investment, your secret sauce won’t save you.

The secret sauce matters much less than having staff that can serve patrons well, having the restaurant open when people want to eat, having a chef that can cook competently, having prices that patrons are willing to pay, and having a product of good quality.

The reality is that if you or your management team are obsessing over a secret sauce, you’re basically asking for a magic wand to fix problems in your business that you’re in denial about. If you’re obsessed over your sauce and someone else’s sauce, you’re probably going out of business soon.

Stop obsessing over secret sauces and start making sure your business is performing the basics well. You’ll sleep better at night, your business will run better, and who knows? With all that stress relieved, you might feel creative enough in the kitchen to one day invent a new, secret sauce.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.