Flow Is the Antidote for Ego

In today's world, we're always striving for more, more, more. More money, bigger companies, more market share, faster times, longer distances, heavier weights, etc. It's all testosterone, adrenaline, and a lot of ego. It's not all bad, as great things do come from it. But where does it end? How long can the effort be sustained? Often, it ends with injuries, burnout, broken relationships, or simply an aging body or mind that can't compete anymore.

You Say You Want a(n Educational) Revolution

The April Metafocus column explores the limitations of VR in the classroom, parodying a lesson plan for a virtual field trip to a farm. It's more lighthearted than my other Metafocus pieces. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

Metafocus: You Say You Want a(n Educational) Revolution

Revisionist Me

In the 2000s, I built several businesses--all within the mortgage and real estate industries--and bought several commercial rental properties in Colorado. I was worth millions... on paper at least. In 2007-2008, the American mortgage and real estate markets tanked. In 2009, I filed a personal Chapter 7 bankruptcy, lost everything, and applied to grad school. Those are the basic facts of the story of my late-20s to mid-30s. How I've told this story has evolved quite a bit, becoming a story of its own.

Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read at Least Twice

I teach a course in entrepreneurship fundamentals, and I also work with many small businesses and startups as a management consultant and executive coach. I frequently recommend must-read business books to my students and clients. These entrepreneurs desperately need to absorb the books' lessons given the chronic and common problems they're each facing in their own businesses. 

The list below is the best of the best. I'm including the list here so I can easily refer my students and clients to one list instead of haphazardly referring books as I remember them. If hundreds of my students and clients will benefit from this list, other entrepreneurs may benefit as well.

Learning the Five Leverages

As a young man, I decided that if I were to make a difference in the world, and I don't mean a small difference, but put a real dent in the world in some positive way, then I'd need leverage. The world is too big and its momentum too strong for one person to create much lasting change without leverage.

I also realized that five kinds of leverage have much more power than any other in today's world: communication, technology, entrepreneurship, capital, and politics.

Busy, Lazy, and Neglectful

Several of my friends and family have asked what I'm growing in my plot in the community garden next door to my house, if I've harvested and eaten anything yet, and why my garden looks different from most.

Austin Is the Deliciousist

Christiana, a fellow gardener in the quaint little community garden right next door to my house in the Clarksville neighborhood of Austin, took these wonderful photos of my strawberries the other day...before she even knew me! We met in the garden two days ago, she sent me the pics yesterday, I watered her plot today, and Saturday we're headed to a local gardening store.

Sustainable food communities FTW!

The World's Worst Vegan

I once named one of my former real estate holding companies Squirrels in the Attic LLC. I had bought a triplex with several dozen squirrels living in the attic, and then they managed to come back again in even larger numbers on two subsequent occasions. The rival squirrel families fought bloody battles inside all the walls every day at dawn, which I thought was hysterical, but my tenants, not so much.

Highly Leveraged Food

Below is a link to an excellent Grist.org article comparing GMOs to mortgage-backed-securities. Quite a compelling argument for anyone at all interested in, say, eating.

Roots

I have a theory: most anyone who leaves their hometown eventually comes full circle and finds, creates, or, at minimum, yearns for the best parts of what they had growing up, often with a slight twist. City kids return to cities, but live in better neighborhoods. Suburban kids find a nice quiet suburb to live in, perhaps near the mountains or ocean or a more interesting city. Hippie kids from California move to Boulder. Hippie kids from Boulder move to California. Nomads buy a new camel. And small town kids return to small towns, but ones near their favorite cities to get their occasional urban culture fix. Apparently, I'm no different.

Go see this movie

Fantstic Mr. Fox

It's one of the best films I've seen in years. This enjoyable Grist review gave me a whole new perspective on it, specifically from a locavore/foodie's slant. Plus, who doesn't love Roald Dahl?

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-01-21-why-you-should-go-see-fantastic-mr.-fox/

Cheeseburger!

Earlier today I walked through the Key Bank parking lot right next door to my house, and I noticed a small stone memorial historical marker with some words etched into the top. Turns out the cheeseburger was invented...AT MY HOUSE!

This Little Piggy Ran Barefoot Hundreds of Miles to Market

Just read a fascinating New York Times article about how humans evolved as excellent barefoot distance runners.

The conventional logic is that humans are physically inferior to most wild animals and that it's our advanced brains and community organization that helped us thrive. That never felt like the whole picture to me, especially given how harshly competitive survival can be in nature.

The Most Important Letter I've Ever Written

"I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."
-Frederick Douglass

Dear friends, family, and readers of my blog,

I recently read a fantastic but terrifying Grist.org article (and subsequent letter found near the bottom of the comment section) by Adam D. Sacks. Here is the link: The Absent Heart of the Great Climate Affair.

Hold onto Your Hats and Glasses Folks...

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything." -Tyler Durden

So this is what climate change looks like. Orange and eerie. Ash from California wildfires, greatly exacerbated due to longer, hotter dry seasons and unprecedented droughts, has drifted into Colorado's atmosphere. The sky is yellowish-orange; the sun, hazy orange; the sunset, spectacular and orange; the moon, an uncanny, big orange pumpkin, all night long.

Walden Lives

I just read a fantastic Jonathan Hiskes article in Grist.com on Henry David Thoreau and climate change and felt compelled to respond.

Like Hiskes, I too am just about to finish rereading Walden at the moment, first time in years. I noticed Thoreau's stunt aspect as well, but I'm reminded also of a bigger philosophy to his experiment that has less to do with environmentalism, economics, and book deals, and more to do with a personal philosophy on living.

Universal Mind at Work?

Seems as though the great (and I don't mean that sarcastically, he's one of my heroes) Thomas Friedman has been thinking along the same lines as my previous post. His most recent New York Times column discusses The Great Disruption of 2008 in both the economy and the environment, and how we (as in, the human race) have begun to move from basing global economic growth on the one-time-use of one-time-mining of resources to creating renewable resource flows for cradle-to-cradle closed-loop products.

In other words, we're knocking down the blocks that comprised the old ideas and economic structures so we can rebuild our society and economy in more sustainable ways. He's even optimistic about our ability to rebuild before the environment and economy are too far gone. If he's got hope, and if Obama's got hope, then I can have hope.

Here's the link to his article: The Inflection Is Near?

Forget the Phoenix and Butterfly, I've Got a New Metaphor

Last night, I had a conversation with a really wise old woman named Carol. The discussion eventually turned to the economy. Carol told me a story of how she used to teach young children. The little boys in her class would inevitably end up at the back of the room playing with the building blocks. They'd build elaborate structures (or not, depending on the creative faculties of the child), and then knock them down in a loud clatter. Sometimes a flying block would hit a child in the face, maybe even hurting him, and he'd cry for a bit, but ultimately, the hurt would stop. More importantly though, they needed to knock down their creations in order to build something new and better and keep learning. Carol made the analogy that that's what's happening in our economy right now. I hope she's right.

Life Improvement Project

I went for a nice walk with a friend through the neighborhood this evening, as we so often do. We noticed that a Victorian house just a couple blocks down was about halfway through a big renovation job. The owners appeared to be doubling the square footage and overall footprint of the house, no doubt also doubling the value as well. Good for them, I thought.

Bee Wars: A New Hope

The bees were in trouble. I don't mean bees as a species, though that's also true. I mean my bees. Our bees. The bees in the beehive my roommate Jennie and I bought just three weeks ago. I heard Jennie shout from the yard. I ran outside to see what was wrong. About fifteen or twenty wasps were attacking the hive, stinging the bees to death, hauling them away for food, and trying to sneak inside the hive. I didn't know what to do about it.