andy ellwood

Some might say I have an opinion about the downfall of my generation as a result of the toxic and unfounded self esteem enforced by the participation trophies that were a part of our growing up. Others might say that I’m overreacting and a tad bit cynical.

But, Saturday Night Live seems to agree with at least the sentiment as seen in this past weekend’s sketch called “You Can Do Anything!”

Completlely hit the nail on the head. Bravo.

 Tweet

This week I had the great privilege of beginning a new weekly blog about the art and science of hustle on Forbes.

To read the first post about building your network before you need can be read HERE

“The best time to be building your network is when you don’t NEED to be building your network.”

 Tweet

Enough inspirational thoughts from leaders from around the world and across industries that it made more sense to just share the video than to type them all out.

Worth the 6:05 to see it all the way through.

Tweet

This isn’t 3rd grade where there is no such thing as a bad goal, there is. ”Being Happy” is a horrible goal.

The idea of happiness isn’t, but as a goal it is. How do you define “being happy?” When you have achieved that state, do you have to stay there? Or, it is a “more often than not” kind of thing? And, if so, how will you know for sure that you have achieved it? Will you write down the number of minutes each day you were able to keep yourself in that state of happiness?

In my post yesterday, I talked a little bit about the high level story lines that I’ve started to pull out from the unfiltered ramblings that I jot down when planning for the year ahead. But, I realized after getting some feedback (from you the reader, thanks!), that I left out how I determine if something will in fact make it from the hair brained idea phase to the committed and inked phase of the year.

I’ve had the chance to be a part of a lot of “goal setting” meetings, both professionally and personally with mastermind style roundtables. It is always amazing what you can learn about a person by the goals they share and the approach that they take to prioritizing what they think are the have-tos for the next year. But, in those meetings and roundtables, I’ve also hear a ton of really bad goals, like the previously mentioned “being happy.”

For me, in order for a goal to be counted as a legit commitment, it must pass the SAM test.

Significant: It has to be something that you don’t know exactly how it is going to happen and it is going to take your very best to continue to pull the pieces into place so that it can occur.

Attainable: In the time frame of the goal being set, in this case 2012, it has to be something that can be achieved. If not, you will end up failing and knowing that you are going to fail is never a good place to start.

Measurable: If you can’t precisely define when you have arrived and what steps and progress you are making along the way, how will you know your are getting closer? You must be able to tick of units of success as you go.

By having these checks and balances in place, I’ve been able to take big lofty ideas like “Being Happy” and boil them down to specific goals that aim towards the bigger idea AND pass the SAM test.

I had the chance to spend some time with Jeff Swartz, the former CEO of Timberland. In talking about goals he put it another way: “It has to be big enough to matter, but small enough to achieve.”

Happy Resoluting.Tweet

I am in an incredibly awesome position as I think through what I want out of 2012. I haven’t finalized my next career move now that Gowalla has been acquired by Facebook and therefore am thinking about and writing my plans for next year with a ton of unknowns attached. And it’s awesome.

For years, I’ve broken my annual and monthly goals down into 6 categories as I think through what I expect of myself:

- Professional

- Financial

- Relational

- Spiritual

- Physical

- Educational

I start with very broad strokes in each of those categories, everything that pops into my head gets written down. I usually end up with 10-12 ideas for each category. Then, once I have all of those ideas in front of me, I take a big step backwards and look for trends, themes, or story lines that need to be pulled out and highlighted. What did I tell myself about myself in the free flow of goals and aspirations for the next 12 months? With some intentional thought and a large cup of black coffee, I was thrilled by what I found this year. The unknowns of what my business card will say I am and what I do in 2012 actually freed me up to think about things I hadn’t before. I am still refining what I will commit to for 2012, but the big idea(s) are there.

We are all telling a story with every action we choose to take or not take. We are both the protagonist and the antagonist of an epic tale more commonly referred to as our life. Going into the new year feels fresh and full of possibility, but, 12 months from now, one thing is guaranteed to be true: 2012 will only ever be what we choose to make of it.

Happy New Year.Tweet

In a little over 18 months, Gowalla worked with just shy of 70 major global brands to create incredible campaigns built around the experiences that their brand could uniquely curate around the places that people go. Here are a handful of my favorite partners that I had the chance to work with:

Tweet

Most people learn how to play a new game by having someone who has played before teach them. That is the fastest way to get the game going and then “learn as you go.” But, the fastest way to win, and then likely be called a cheater, is to read the rules.

Growing up, my family played a lot of games. Card game, board games, and guess which word I want you to say games. Each time that a new game was introduced, via birthday present or unsuspecting friend, there was a scramble to understand more of the rules faster than everyone else. Whether it was taking turns reading the side of the box, huddling around the small print pamphlet like it was the Dead Sea Scrolls, or reading all the rules before telling anyone else that there was a new game in the house, the rules were a big part of the indoctrination to the Ellwood family game night.

The reason for the clamor around the rules was quite simple: they tell you how to win. And, when it comes to games, that is the only reason to play. (The “let’s not keep score and just have fun” thing just doesn’t work for me.) The rules lay out what exactly you would do to win faster than others and says that these things are illegal. But, in telling you the things that are against the rules, it also paints the picture of what kinds of things should be paid attention to and the areas of the game that advantages might be acquired.

This weekend, the Sunday New York Times front page above the fold story featured a detailed look into the complex tax planning strategies of the hier to the Estée Lauder fortune.  The headline and the sentiment of the article do little to hide the author’s distain for the ways that Ronald Lauder and his family have structured their finances. Several times throughout the article there are references to his “shrewd use of the US Tax Code.” This is followed by general statements about the complexity of “labyrinth of trusts, limited liability corporations and holding companies” that may or may not have been developed to with their likely favorable tax implications in mind.

Looks like someone read the rules.

Looks like someone else doesn’t like the rules.

And while this article may serve as further proof in the case against the Haves being made by the Have Nots, I took it from a different perspective. What are the rules that I haven’t mastered? What are the advantages that exist in my world that I am not maximizing? What are the angles that I can take in the games I am currently playing that will frustrate others not clever enough to find them?

“If no one is accusing you of cheating, you probably aren’t trying hard enough.” – WinnerTweet

They say it takes doing something 10,000 times before you can gain true mastery of it.

If that logic is true, 922 days after joining Twitter, I can begin to say I am mastering Twitter. This blog post will be sent out as my 10,000th tweet.

To mark this milestone, I decided to take account for what has been shared and sent out over the past couple years and 10,000 tweets. As I looked over all the details I uncovered, here are some stats that I found interesting (to run these stats yourself, check out TweetStats.com and CrowdBooster.com)

Here is what the break down of how far each and every one of my tweets went. Some were retweeted by people with a lot of followers and there for reach a ton of folks. Others were retweeted a bunch of times.

Total reach of each tweet

Even through I joined Twitter in May of 2009, I really didn’t get into it until moving to New York in 2010. Here you can see how many times I tweeted each month over the past couple years. (Average 219/month)

Number of Tweets per month

Another interesting stat that I thought was really interesting was what time of day I tend to tweet. As you can see here, unless I am sleeping, there is a chance that I am sharing something about what is going on in my world. And, this may or may not reveal how little sleep I actually need.  (average tweets/day = 11.6)

Tweets by time of day

Then of course the question of, what the heck am I actually tweeting that much about? Here is a word cloud of some of the top words and hashtags that I’ve sent out over the past 10,000 tweets.

Top words in tweets

There is a very true saying that “what you measure is what you manage.” And, as I look back over this set if data and some of these other points that TweetStats.com and CrowdBooster.com revealed, it begs the question: “What, if anything, should I be doing differently in next 10,000 tweets?”

Tweet

I’m grateful for my parents. I could go toe to toe with anyone and argue my parents are the best ever. But, this weekend, I am specifically grateful for a three things that I can directly trace back to how I was raised: loving broccoli, hating video games, and enjoying chores.

Broccoli: I’m the oldest of four kids. Some where in my formative eating years, no one told me that I had a choice as to whether I could like or not like food. The thought never really crossed my mind. If food was placed in front of me, I was taught to say ‘thank you’ and dig in. As such, I love broccoli and I’m willing to try just about anything (see: chinese chicken feet)

Video Games: As a product of the 80s, the original Nintendo started popping up at friends’ houses around the neighborhood and my buddies dressed up as Mario and Luigi for halloween. I never really made a big push for having my own NES and would from time to time sneak over to a neighbors garage to play Skate or Die. But, I was never any good and went back to collecting baseball cards. All through high school and college I was the guy you didn’t want on your team for Golden Eye or Halo. But, when it is all said and done, being good at video games would serve no real purpose in my life and I was okay with having lived out differently whatever hours I would have devoted to having better first person killing skills.

Chores: Some where along the way, my Mom and Dad created the “Ellwood Chore Chart.” It broke down 10 different household chores into clusters and based on what day of the week it was, my siblings and I could go to the Chore Chart and see what our responsibilities for the day were. Knowing what was expected of us each day made it easy to get into a rhythm and we all got really good at quickly attacking the dishwasher, trash, or vacuuming around the house so we could go do what we wanted. Now on our own, I know for a fact that all my siblings and I can still clean circles around most of our contemporaries.

There are a ton of other reasons that my parents are awesome, but those were the ones I was reminded of this weekend while eating broccoli, not playing video games, and mopping my kitchen floor.Tweet

Conrad Murray is just the latest Amanda Knox who was the most recent Casey Anthony. And, despite the fact that you may or may not have remembered that name after it fell out of the 24 hour news cycle a couple months ago, you took time out of your day to give a rip because… well, why again?

In the same way that our overly connected world has encouraged us to have an opinion and be involved with every worthwhile cause, the sensationalism of “news” is at an all time high. With the wonders of Facebook and Twitter, everyone can be a part of breaking the “news” as it happens. And, while that is an adrenaline rush that I’ve never really understood or invested much time in experiencing, yesterday afternoon when I looked at the content being shared and commented on, it was all about a verdict in a case that, if asked about it a week before, none of the folks I interact with online would have cared about. But, since it was breaking news, it filled my timeline on Facebook and Twitter for about 15 minutes and everyone had an opinion. Then it was done.

I admittedly have a very low information diet. I don’t go looking for news and when news finds me, I don’t pay that much attention to it unless it is actionable and relevant to the priorities I have set for my day or the endeavors I am in the midst of. I use my relationships on the interwebs to filter news the same way that royalty used to have food tasters to make sure they don’t get poisoned. If enough of my friends care about an article or a subject outside of my focus, then I’ll take a look. Otherwise, I let someone else waste their time reading about stuff that doesn’t matter in search of the stuff that does.

Just because a story is on a “news” site, in a magazine, or made it on tv doesn’t mean you have to care. Don’t let the fear of missing out (FOMO) on news paralyze you and cause you to miss out on making the most of the things that actually matter.Tweet