Dev.to is a new blog that is focused on developers. A dev is a person who is a developer of solutions to problems. They are mostly focused on CODE however there’s thought leadership in just about every niche here.
Use figma.com
Start dev.to account
Design your header image
Design footer images and links/text
write first blog
repeat
#1 figma.com is free
Use figma, it’s free, and amazing for this kind of development. All things are now in cloud app, you can lose the files on computer and not screw yourself over.
Figma allows for digital sharing, multiplayer usage, and worth your time. It helped me avoid needing photoshop for this kind of basic work.
#2 Dev.to account is required
Create a dev.to account…
Dev.to is a blogging website, blog on that website, and use hashtag #ninja and I’ll like your blogs! You have +1 fan woot.
#3 Design your header image
Find someone you want to mimic.
Example of header being built based on someone else’s cool design i was inspired by on dev.to
Be willing to make edits if it embeds poorly…
Testing what the embed looks like is a best practice.
#4 design footer so it looks legit, like you care
Okay maybe you don’t care, let us not show this in our content, and that means let us get organized, yea?
Copy paste it over and over, and because dev.to is all code, you’re pasting code. Terrific.
Waiting to get started on your idea is the death of the best ideas.
Nothing will be perfect.
The website will never be done.
There’s no such thing as completed in web technology. There is always going to be updates. You didn’t think that web dev put all that javascript, hTML, and CSS together so that it would work forever? Well yes they did intentionally do that but we devs have a tendency of finding new problems and like I said, your website will never be done.
When I was little, I sat around dreaming of things I want to do and who I wanted to be, and most of all I dream of ways it would be very simple and handed to me. That was the culture in america, we watch movies that have things simply happen and the grind is completely skipped.
Like watching Enders Game the movie, vs reading the book. In the movie they skip all of the grinding and jump past virtually the entire good part of the story. In the book they have many chapters on the space games, it was most of the book, yet ripped out of the movie.
People like peanut butter and jelly, maybe the space games would have cost too much to build? Ah yes, the logical Tyler figures out the problem. Ugh.
However life isn’t easy and nothing is handed to you with ease. You’re not rewarded something great because you looked at someone a certain way or did a thing in front of them. There’s a longer sell cycle.
The same with your ideas. You can’t stop in the beginning because it’s hard, someone thinks it’s not smart, or people don’t believe in you. People won’t believe in you and you need to prove them wrong.
Act on your greatest ideas. Then write down the good ideas on paper for the future. I’m still using notes from 4-5 years ago to invent products, training, and content I envisioned many years ago.
If you have an idea, act on your idea now.
Billions of humans living are going to have ideas and often we have the same idea at the same time.
The first human to act on the idea is often the winner. However this is not always the case.
My end goal with this blog is to explain it’s important to get started on your best ideas.
Your best ideas are the ones that keep you awake late at night and get you out of bed really early without a complaint.
The best ideas will be the ideas that cause you to lose track of time while you pursue.
Focus on the ideas that allow you to be you’re true self, the time when you’re most at peace and time goes flying by.
It’s in these moments you’re doing what you should be doing in life.
In these moments we are always left drift between loving ourselves for who we are or wishing we could be something better than we are today. I’m often left awake at night grinding towards a goal, gaming the system we call life, practicing streaming, making music, or learning code. Whatever it takes to pursue a life of tech, music, and inner peace.
There’s a reason to grind, and all that I ask is that you write about it once a week.
Blog about your idea.
If your idea is art, blog about the art.
If your idea is the blog, blog about the blog. (What?) (Yea like im doing rn) (Oh okay.)
Or blog about anything, and link to your art.
No one will steal your idea if your blog about the idea and make it open source. Rather you will form a community. Also, chances are most people aren’t interested in the competition. Me on the other hand, I rebuilt a windows task scheduler in what we consider better frameworks, we call it canopys task scheduler.
Once you get past to once a week, start doing it once a day. Then start crossing the days off as you continue to progress down the path of mastery.
Write down what you desire in 5 years, start today. Blog about it. I’ll read it. DM me on twitter.
For whatever reason you’re here and I want to say thanks. I don’t mean to call my content shit, rather I thought that would be an enticing header that people would read. I guess that’s a form of me using click bait. However that’s how you learn. You learn to share a header that may drive readership.
I’m quietly celebrating 21,000+ views on this blog. Thanks so much. With that here’s what you need to know to do this to your blog. It’s not anything more difficult than using your blog.
Below I hope to share information that leads you to understanding more about my website, why I’m writing more, and what it returns.
Recently I witnessed 49 people visit my website. Because I’m a noob, most of my readers are reading content that I wrote when I landed on a bug or attempting to learn something new. This is often because the content I’m writing is to deal with a work-around of some sort.
the most busy day on the website, 49 readers!
I tend to type silly headers, and then edit them when I’m done, often several times.
This header, similar to others, is eager to drive readership. Also, writing more than usual has generated an interesting change in my website Tyler Garrett.
showing analytics related to average user per day, and monthly aggregation of users
The average users per day is increasing because I’m writing more than I usually write, now all my content that is optimized to rank is now ranking higher than usual, and I’m also not sharing this content across my core social platforms like twitter or linkedin.
I’ve shared a few links to personal friends, family, and a few times on my personal and private/locked down facebook account. Here I’m seeing little to no interactions, legit 1 of my mates clicks through and doesn’t spend a ton of time here. However it’s the readers finding the tech blogs who are sticking around and for that, thank you.
I really appreciate the people who are reading, sticking around, and most of all connecting with me via social media. This is all you need to do to support my efforts. I appreciate the love here.
sharing growth of tylergarrett.com data
The goal of showing this information is to demonstrate it’s important to blog, even if you’re writing about content that may not be super relevant to your core content funnel. The robots don’t care that you’re writing good content or bad content, of course you’re going to get better at writing and this shape on the graph happens, however I want to make it clear that simply writing a little bit of blogs each day is all it takes to drive more traffic. Also, my associated websites are gaining more ranking because of this development.
If you ever wanted to chat about your blogs, or send me a link to your website, feel free to add me on twitter.
— More about blogging from wiki; please if you’re new to blogging, be sure to dig in here and learn how you can generate freedom in web2.
A blog (a truncation of “weblog“)[1] is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of a single individual,[citation needed] occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, “multi-author blogs” (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other “microblogging” systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
The emergence and growth of blogs in the late 1990s coincided with the advent of web publishing tools that facilitated the posting of content by non-technical users who did not have much experience with HTML or computer programming. Previously, a knowledge of such technologies as HTML and File Transfer Protocol had been required to publish content on the Web, and early Web users therefore tended to be hackers and computer enthusiasts. In the 2010s, the majority are interactive Web 2.0 websites, allowing visitors to leave online comments, and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.[2] In that sense, blogging can be seen as a form of social networking service. Indeed, bloggers not only produce content to post on their blogs but also often build social relations with their readers and other bloggers.[3] However, there are high-readership blogs which do not allow comments.
Many blogs provide commentary on a particular subject or topic, ranging from philosophy, religion, and arts to science, politics, and sports. Others function as more personal online diaries or online brand advertising of a particular individual or company. A typical blog combines text, digital images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave publicly viewable comments, and interact with other commenters, is an important contribution to the popularity of many blogs. However, blog owners or authors often moderate and filter online comments to remove hate speech or other offensive content. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (art blogs), photographs (photoblogs), videos (video blogs or “vlogs“), music (MP3 blogs), and audio (podcasts). In education, blogs can be used as instructional resources; these are referred to as edublogs. Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.
‘Blog’ and ‘blogging’ are now loosely used for content creation and sharing on social media, especially when the content is long-form and one creates and shares content on regular basis. So, one could be maintaining a blog on Facebook or blogging on Instagram.
On February 16, 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence. On February 20, 2014, there were around 172 million Tumblr[4] and 75.8 million WordPress[5] blogs in existence worldwide. According to critics and other bloggers, Blogger is the most popular blogging service used today. However, Blogger does not offer public statistics.[6][7]Technorati lists 1.3 million blogs as of February 22, 2014.[8]
As you populate your job info on linkedin you’re ranked against other people around you with the same skill set.
The dark art of spam is now engaged.
As recruiters purchase the ability to contact you, they use filters to find you, and then send you a message.
Linkedin is incentivized to make sure the people responding are good candidates. People who are engaging with their application and others engage with them. Ultimately they want the application to work and keep you there longer.
The longer you are engaged, the higher success they have of earning more money on advertising revenue, and you’re personal data is sold too.
As we browse linkedin, use linkedin, like someones job post, or whatever the case. Linkedin is track that data. This is the algorithm.
You’re getting to know more about algorithms right now.
If you like a lot of successful job posts, you will start to get more recruiter leads/opportunities, and that’s awesome.
These likes don’t show up on your activity feed.
You can like as many as you desire. I don’t think there’s a limit.
Linkedin spam
Unfortunately recruiters don’t know any better and spam people a massive amount of things on LinkedIn. This means you’re getting really low quality content that’s not necessarily aimed directly at you. It’s never specifically aimed at you unless it is and those are the ones I focus on the most. I always get linkedin spam.
However, there’s a lot of good happening in this layer, just be extremely patient and turn everyone into a “you” customer. It’s always practice. You can’t be everything to everyone.
Farming for recruiter leads on Linkedin.com is a task you can automate or do manually. I wrote most of the text below for people who do not understand anything about gaming an algorithm for your personal gain. If you’re a technical person and already understand that software engineers made objectives for you to complete and you’re competing against others for relevance with a system used to score you vs peers, you click here. Otherwise please read everything, slowly and you’ll get more money out of linkedin than you peers.
If you automate generating an increase in job opportunities with code, realize this attempt can appear spammy and you could lose your account because of your greed. So, be sure to minimize the “spam” look and feel to ensure you’re playing above the belt.
I’ve used both code and my hands to help me gain jobs at Fortune5 and below. You will need a good resume to land a job at a Fortune5 company. You will also need to do well in your interview. These are things that you need to perfect as you grow professionally and in this blog I’m not going to cover your resume or your interview skills.
What is digital farming?
Farming is a lot like you would farm in a video game and that means you can automate farming by building macros & scripts. However you need to manually learn what to do by playing the game first. Before building a bot or automation in a video game, you must first fine the right edge to ride and learn it’s a powerful edge.
There’s farming game simulators, but it’s not “exactly” the same.
Not “farming food” but it’s very similar. You can buy more food if you get a good job, maybe my analogy stinks…
Digital farming is a way you can earn gold or points to buy something or attain something you could not attain without “farming gold” and this can be from literally planting plants and waiting, to fighting skeletons, to fishing in an ocean, to literally crafting a fake piece of bread in a fake world online…
Farming…
You’re given a mission. The ways to complete it are opinionated & dependent on your input.
Imagine grinding up a skill class or learning how to bake bread.
Both paths require time, grinding, and farming away at what works best.
Making bread requires farming. You couldn’t beat this analogy if you tried.
Most people in the video game world will start to do what works best.
What works best for the team or personal goals. Gamification of winning requires getting good at native features and understanding their values. To begin winning faster.
Learn to win better trying things.
And optimizing as you go.
Most people making bread will try different ways until they are more successful and people don’t just say they enjoy their bread.
i promise this isn’t about bread
images from pexels, a free website with pictures and stuff.
I spotted a trend on linkedin
The trend is simple. The more you use Linkedin, the more recruiters leads I’m able to generate.
I’ve tested everything below with 100% success, even today, as I’m editing this blog, I’ve gained two linkedin opportunities per day and all I’m doing is liking someones “new job” notification. I’m not saying “congrats”… I’m only saying “….” and liking their content. That alone is enough to send me new recruiters each day. With that said, you now know a way to generate more leads on Linkedin, however I’m going to dive deeper below an offer several methods.
Imagine you never update your resume, and someone next door to you updates their resume daily. Guess who will get more leads? The robots of linkedin need to use some sort of logic to define a successful pattern for users and “usage” of said application.
Gamification is rather… important.
I have noticed this trend in video games too.
Video games have a similar trend.
IMO, it’s boring to find a pattern and abuse a pattern to win.
I only do it to mentally escape and it’s meditative to make the game harder for myself by doing something complicated or not a best practice… it’s fun to make a bad pattern work because I’m good at the game.
I used to game nonstop, always enjoyed riding the edge of victory, but then I realized this was getting boring. Also, I learned I’m never going to make bread, period.
You don’t learn a lot when you continually win.
After losing for a long time, professionally speaking, I started trying something different, and to my surprise it really worked for me and for a few others I’ve encouraged over the past few years. The others tried the same steps I’m suggesting and it helps them generate more leads on linkedin. More job opportunities and ultimately more money.
But with gaming, I win all the time, and I realize at the top of that mountain, you’re more-or-less performing the same dance. Like making ramen noodles over and over and over.
When you abuse software, you don’t necessarily learn anything, unless you study the data and the inputs/outputs.
Similar to cooking, when you’re good, you don’t need much to make amazing food.
Learning to automate some of the things I’m going to explain will help you have more free time to learn something relevant and important.
Also, it will give you a chance to fail, while figuring out the steps making a tool that automates these things for you.
Ride the edge to win more money
All software has the “cheat path” and I don’t mean breaking the rules, I mean using native features, studying them to the point of data science expertise, and then using this solution to answer more problems, ie kicking butt online.
After awhile you gain “empirical observations” of what works and discuss it with others or you keep it to yourself. My blog is me telling you my observations, bank account increase/decrease, and how it works for others willing to try to use Linkedin like a video game.
Testing the “not really cheating” method and discussing it with others to test. Seeing success across many months, years, okay it’s time to explain it in a blog.
Farming for gold online in video games or offline in video games is the same as farming gold in real life on LinkedIn.
Here’s a blog about how I’m able to earn 1 or 15 new job leads each day and how i don’t get a new job lead each day from linkedin.
If you’re not familiar with linkedin, let me break it down at a high level and advanced level and then go right back to the average user because that’s what I assume will be most people consuming this information.
LinkedIn, for the most part, is an online destination to place your resume and update your resume. For most and all non-engineer users, Linkedin will never become anything more than an input. However, the money maker for linkedin has to do with a lot of automation with recruiting softwares using their API and various ways to gain information via their “job posting” feature, this helps harness the data coming from many people in a single input that most recruiting softwares are able to engineer extremely efficiently within and they do and they do well.
But for most of us. It’s a place to talk about your history, and revise that history as you understand your profession more.
Robots are watching every aspect of your interactions to judge your with your peers for organic “paid” recruiter leads, and the best woman or man wins! Not really true, you can game it.
Showing you’re interested in finding a “job” is as simple as using the product in a respectful and measure-able way…
Measure-able… lol, the ability to measure what you’re doing beyond “looking at sh*t” on linkedin. What you do can be measured or is appearing as a measured value.
Measured meaning, they are looking at it, and likely telling you about it too.
“who viewed your profile” is a biggest one.
They tell you these numbers because it’s how they rate you against others looking for a job right now. The more interest you show… The more jobs you can get from people looking to hire people like you.
“Just looking,” is a measure.
But you don’t want to be that person (manually… you don’t want to do this because you won’t learn anything), rather you need more of those “lookers” on your profile. Who knows, maybe looking at someones profile, and then someone else’s, is a good way to gain more +1’s… I’m throwing out automation ideas left and right.
Let me explain how you can do this in a few ways. And start focusing on the meat of the post.
If people are “looking” at your profile, ie profile views, the number they show you when you login on most pages on Linkedin, that’s the number one contributor to gaining 1 or 15 leads in a day. Below are a few ways to do that, and there are also ways to increase this that I have not studied, feel free to experiment and don’t be like me.
How i don’t get leads on linkedin
Not getting leads is what most people are doing on linkedin. People don’t get leads due to their low account activity.
This is just a big video game.
You now know there is some gamification to consider your account worthy of gaining a lead while on LinkedIn.com.
Higher account quality means higher amount of searches per user. If it worked differently LinkedIn would NOT work for the collective and we would all stop using the application.
If this wasn’t happening, the conversion would be bad, ergo it’s not bad when they deploy this algorithm, which we need to consider.
How to avoid getting recruiter contacts or new opportunities on LinkedIn.
i dont login
i don’t respond to requests
i don’t respond to spam
maybe i do login, but dont do anything to generate impressions
i use a picture that’s 10 to 15 years old (kidding, please update with a current photo, not your high school photo)
Just being a looker isn’t a good win, however it can be used to your power if you understand how to create more lookers on your linkedin profile.
How to do get leads each day on linkedin
Getting leads on LinkedIn each day is possible and I’ve given this solution to a lot of people.
The number one way is “clicking connect” with someone that you do not know. They will be given an opportunity to say YES and there you will now be connected in a way that allows for messages. This also is a way for you to gain a +1 “just looking” and this is a HUGE deal because there’s an exact correlation to the amount of “just looking” and “job leads” i’m gaining for the past few years.
I started this one day while unemployed, and considering losing my business 50% just to keep my home from foreclosuing.
I remember, I was in his car, and I just started saying “f**k this.”
I started spamming “connect” with everyone I could click connect with and it didn’t matter to me where they are located.
At first I did it on my phone, then i made an app to left click in a strategic area.
They have made a lot of changes to linkedin to avoid this from happening and I don’t care because that’s the game I’m given and the task I lay in front of you is rather simple. Get more leads, and more chances to get a job when applying because not only are you applying to jobs…
You’re also getting these things called “leads” from linkedin.
These are recruiters or head hunters who are paying linkedin to find you in a search and this search only shows you if you’re of quality in the local area.
Here’s another variation of ways I use to get leads consistently, without having to spam for “connections.”
1. clicking thumbs up on a “new job” notification.
– people get new jobs on linkedin
– giving them a +1 on their post boosts your profile quality
– you’re showing you’re interested in “jobs”
– you’re showing someone you’re there, growing the relationship
2. starting convos on linkedin.com
– talk to someone, link them to a “linkedin job posting” and ask them about the culture
– say hello to an old friend, link them to a job posting on Linkedin, that’s relevant, and even if you’re not looking, this is smart because you can’t keep your hopes and dreams on one job or one persons “word” or “contracts”
– you’re showing you’re interested in “jobs”
3. Accepting new friend requests!
– you’re showing you’re interested in “jobs” because you’re trying to network on a “job finding” website
– you’re gaining a chance this new friend will look at your profile “just looking” +1 to help you growth hack
– you’re showing you’re interested in networking
– you’re showing you’re interested
Summing up the last 3 steps
SIMPLE: The first step, clicking +1 on someones “new job ding” and outside of this just making you look like a nice person, this is one way you can “simplify” what you’re doing to gain new pipeline. I get about 1-3 job leads per day if I’m doing this on a daily or 3 times per week basis. The more you do this, the more you get leads. I’ve seen it work successfully for the past 3 months since writing this blog as a new test case.
To conclude these 3 steps, realize each of these are a means to an end and a path of least resistance.
Sure, we can all have a great job and then poof, life happens.
Life continues to happen and we continue to need new pipeline to gain a job.
After working at at recruiting software company as a freelance analytics developer, I’ve gained a lot of insights into the stream of HR data from a hiring perspective and from a linkedin perspective. Like getting a job, takes time, and I have empirical observations from my own experience trying to get a normal FTE job… It takes a lot of time to get the ball moving, months and months.
Nothing is fast when you really need a job, everything above will help you have a consistent “lead generation” for your future, and it won’t be a negative to grow your network for future cool things you may want to share or discuss.
Mostly, I’ve needed to come up with a means to an end, gaining jobs, and I hope this helps you provide for your family similarly to the way it has allowed me to provide for my family, and have an opportunity to promote non-profit climate changes work locally.
If you want to connect with me, please add me on linkedin, or twitter and tell me what worked for you.
If you know other ways to game the system, leave a comment and I will feature it in the blog or alternative blogs relative to the growth hack.
Think about it, is life upset? Social media is rather complex, blogging isn’t simple, hosting could be easier, buying domains isn’t easy nor is migrating or selling them. It’s a ramp up.
If you’re willing to learn. Life can get easier or more complicated rather quickly.
No duh material.
I threw away my favorite hobby & life goal to learn tech & support my fam long term
For some reason I thought I needed to focus for the last 10+ years, ignore music, turn it into a x-hobby, and box it up.
Sometimes it’s okay to put a pause on things. With out pausing video games, I would still be playing video games and not learning at night.
I’ve learned putting a pause for a long time will start to creep into other portions of life.
Similar to not stretching enough, now you pulled your neck, or not running enough, now you got a big ass.
Since 8 years old, I’ve played classical instruments, since my mid 20’s, I decided to take a break and focus on work. I thought, “if I worked hard, it will pay off, I will have my own studio, more time to work on my music, and never sell out.”
I worked – non-stop- for ages. It paid off, but some days I just need a microphone, headphones, my family, and a delay pedal.
Building a music studio was everything for me in college
Building a music studio was everything for me in college, and it was everything for me not that long ago.
Another important factor for me in college, was “one up my parents”… do what I can to be better. I wanted to ensure I had a job, that can be remote, coffee shop, or somewhere in a distant country.
Me, growing up in a tiny town in Louisiana, everyone my age wanted to escape, we disappeared into our rooms, our imaginations often leading us to distant lands beyond Louisiana.
What changed?
I love Louisiana, I love visiting, I love the weather, I love the food, I love the people. I would love to live in a small town in Louisiana again.
As a child – I was hungry for traveling – seeing big building – flying on a plane.
After seeing those things and feeling forced to live within that lifestyle, you start to want more distance from the flying, the traveling, the big buildings and busy days.
Finding time for relaxing, in a calm environment, without the big city echoing in the distance becomes important.
Which is one of many reasons why i love living in austin texas! I’m a bit of an alien, weirdo, gamer, etc.
Time away from the screen
Without the light of the city covering the stars, you can see planets, satellites, stars, galaxies. And we all get the same warm fuzzy feeling once you start to notice the size and distance beyond our world, built into a 360 degree view port, without an on or off button.
It’s a good feeling to consider, “maybe it’s not the worst day in my life because I dropped my cellphone, maybe it’s a good day because a large space rock isn’t exploding the planet.”
– Tyler Garrett
That fuzzy feeling.. like going to the beach on vacation, getting in the water feels weird at first, but after a few hours, you don’t want to leave.
You’re connected to the world around you. Almost as if you’re an alien, found home, and now you want to call it your home.
Similar to going skiing or snowboarding. At first, you’re terrible. Crash a lot, hurt yourself. But once you get the hang of it, you feel right at home.
When you feel like alien, different from everyone, I’m learning you need to take life with a grain of salt.
Life is upsetting with every swipe of facebook, instagram, etc. so, maybe less time on social media is a good starting point.
What changed for my music production?
I had a kid? President? Media? Married? Started a company for word of mouth equity, it crashed and burned, almost lost my home due to people being terrible humans… Started another company….
Sounds like a lot of pressure.
But what changed?
I learned a lot… I’ve been locked into learning, screen time. It felt important to be able to figure out how to find people looking for services I can offer.
In the process of learning this, I learned about searching. I learned people are all searching for something.
My theory, we are are all searching for a tribe, a place to call home, and once we enter a new tribe of people who don’t have a lot of hobbies, it’s easy to be looked at as an alien.
Did you know there’s a tribe of people dedicated to your passion projects and all you need to do is find them. Twitter, Instagram, having a blog, and meeting people in the real world are great ways to establish your tribes.
And if nothing fits in your area, maybe you need to build a tribe online.
Focusing on a few things…
Everyone told me, “you’re too spread out, you’re doing too much, you need to focus on what you’re good at.”
My thoughts, “I’m bored with your filters and way of thinking.”
What I’m noticing is, I’m comparing myself to other people.
It’s normal to compare yourself to others, we all want to relate to each other to find common ground, and we all want to be a part of a tribe. It’s our micro process to survival.
“A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.” ― Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
For millions of years humans have been apart of a tribe or the other. The tribes learn to communicate, and if the communication pattern is filtering your life, it’s time to find a new tribe!
Not all tribes are built for helping each other, take what you can from the tribe, and leave the rest in the trash.
You’re you. Not every piece of advice will work for you. This includes advice from friends, family, people you think are “blood tribe.” Sometimes they are jealous of your youth, looks, talents, and that’s not the right tribe for you.
You need a tribe who supports you, not everything you share – people are busy and that’s not probable.
You need a group of folks you can confide in, a tribe of people who understand your turmoil….
A tribe of people who know how to direct you to focusing on using your time to benefit you or others around you. Sometimes we need tribe in person, digitally, but end of day you need a tribe.
Being the alien in the tribe means you’re the smartest person, you don’t need to be in that tribe, go find a tribe where you’re not the coolest, best, smartest, and go stand next to that person, do what you can to learn and help them.
For some reason I thought focusing on a couple of things made sense.
Focusing on Tableau consulting, focusing on digital marketing, focusing on web development, focusing on user persona, graphic design, tech tech tech tech technology… techy tech tech.
Never do I consider re-focusing on music production. I built musicblip and stopped because I thought I needed to monetize it. But that was not why I built musicblip, that was advice from other people who did not know why I built musicblip. I built musicblip to give back, it is was never a goal to turn it into a massive money machine.
So, what changed?
My tribe. My influences. But that tribe is dead, so why don’t I go back to my hobbies?
Cutting out passion hobbies for LIFE, WORK, FAMILY… is like cutting off your good arm.
It becomes a phantom limb.
I removed the limb thinking a “sane” minds would prevail. But all I gained was a painful neck, repeated work stress injuries, repetitive reaching to computer and typing & clicking for prolonged periods of time.
What am I missing?… Oh my outlet.
Music production helped me learn a lot about workflow, working smart, optimizing how I work, and it allowed me to take my learnings into my professional life.
I would tell analogies about how making bad music is normal, just like building dashboards, they always suck in the beginning but after a good bit of time making crap dashboards, you 1 day make a good polished piece of crap, and it it impresses everyone.
That is the dumbest analogy every, but when I say something that simple, obvious, easy to connect,… well it becomes easy to become a part of this micro tribe. A group of my peers, customers, friends… Captivated by my story telling.
Having an outlet makes you more human.
Having an outlet makes you seem like you have a life outside of work.
People don’t like robots, sometimes you need to fake this part of you if you’re struggling to tribe up in micro meetings.
Aliens find friends online easy, but we can’t live online.
Living online does not work, they make netflix documentaries about it.
It’s OK to make digital mentors, friends, etc… It’s important to learn to be able to network and a few hours a week – learning from someone online – is not a negative.
And if you haven’t taken a break from Facebook, give yourself a chance.
Staring at the computer, to drive a digital needle, based on an algorithm I believe is easy because I can build the same solution…
Does not mean it’s a good usage of time, it means it’s a usage of time.
As an alien, who plays mystical instruments since childhood. Sending vibrations into the world needs to continue to ensure I’m apart of my history tribe. The tribe you build for yourself through your experiences and hard work. Often times these grinds are attributed to your ability to tell the story of your success in the future. We can share online, we can make music online, but we don’t come up with the best ideas when sitting around online.
Often the best ideas come from silence, doing boring stuff, exercise,…
Be okay with your work being stolen, and stealing good work.
Long ago, my work was stolen. It was stolen because it was good, not because they wanted to piss me off, frustrate me, or keep me from producing. Likely not the case.
So, I stopped making music. Turned off my soundcloud. Had a great excuse to stop making music.
But, my removed arm is needing to be re-attached.
I feel more alien not having my hobby in my life, it’s time to start changing the way I think.
Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started.
Write the book you want to read. (swap book for music)
Use your hands.
Side projects and hobbies are important.
The secret: do good work and share it with people.
Geography is no longer our master.
Be nice. (The world is a small town.)
Be boring. (It’s the only way to get work done.)
Creativity is subtraction.
I never made music for anyone but myself.
I made music I wanted to listen to at the time.
I made music I wanted to listen to.
However culture, media, life, movies, tv, school, college… they had to teach me right from wrong…
We should not be mentally fighting, physically fighting, always working towards consumerism and destructive behaviors due to frustrations with my neighbor.
Always looking to right wrongs, like a super hero on the internet… Just like superman, who was an alien.
Do you ever feel frustrated or hyper connected to events?
I compare getting upset about people cheating in digital marketing, to landscaping…
It’s easier than explaining why I’m upset about politics.
My competitors cheat, it makes marketing more complex.
Every competitor of mine is cheating, I was upset for a long time….
I fought about it, I was not being kind. I was upset, trying to right a wrong…
There’s a positive side, it did a few things.
It taught me about traffic, it taught me about cheating, and instead of worrying about this cold lemon squeeze that life is handing me, I grab that lemon, shield my eye from the drip, and squeeze the mother f*** out of it.
That’s how you make SUPER LEMONS.
Think about the last thing that upset you…
Are you getting a positive return from being upset about this political, police beating, knock out video, sex tape, celebrity, boxing, mma, etc….
When was the last time someone paid you to watch netflix?
Do you earn money from being upset about life?
Let me use an analogy…
What is a weed in the grass? We know it’s there but do we need to point it out and make a big deal? What can you learn from this roadblock?
Do we need to peel apart the reason for the weed?
Do we need to call attention to the weed?
Do we need to think about how the weed will spread?
Notice all these internal dialogs and let them pass. You don’t need to greet the door of every concern in your life.
We need to shut the computer off, go outside, pick the stupid weed, pick another 10 weeds while you are at it.
Go throw it in the right bucket, don’t sweep it under, otherwise you’re gonna have a bunch of dead weeds under there.
Start making your digital life more analog or you will fade away. And it’s not the kind of drowning you need. Covered in lemon juice, hooked on netflix, worried about the weeds growing in your front yard.
Carve out a schedule, spend 30 minutes alone without asking for next steps, without solving problems, take a deep breath and fucking chill. The world will give you every answer you need. The thing you’re looking for, is you.
If you’re upset with how things are, wishing for more…
Go steal someones hard work, make it your own, they will never notice you stealing their work, and give yourself a limitations to getting your work completed.
You don’t have unlimited time, you don’t have unlimited money, and “why didn’t I think of that?” Is a few steps away from, “I just thought of something better.”
I stole all the cheaters cheats, I squeeze the life out of the lemon life gave me, I cloned that lemon, now I have super lemons. Super cheats. Super life hacks.
