The Art of Information

If you’ve invested some of your valuable time to read my posts over the past 2 months, let me first say, “Thank you”. I hope you found them interesting and they caused you to think, ponder, consider, or reconsider. So as 2009 winds down, and you have an opportunity (hopefully) to leave your inboxes, WordPress queues, and deadlines orphaned for a couple weeks, I’d like to share with you the gift of ideas.

Seth Godin persuaded 70 bloggers, idea people, and other creative types to contribute to a project which Seth has named What Matters Now. The concept is simple - each person contributed a single word that they felt we should all think about, ponder, embody, or avoid in 2010 and beyond. Then, each wrote a single page explanation as to why and how their chosen word matters.

70 simple words - infinite ideas.

You can download the free PDF here.

Reading this will take time - more than it takes to tweet, write an email, post on FaceBook and this is intentional. Invest the time, if not all in one sitting, then perhaps a page per day over the next 2 weeks. I hope you’ll take time, too, to think about what your favorite entries here mean to you, your business, your personal or professional life, or what you may want to pursue in 2010.

May you be moved by it or inspired by it as I have been and repost, retweet, pay it forward, or whatever form you currently use to share useful information with people you care about.

I was inspired by the format Godin chose to use to present these ideas to us, but more so by the diversity of the ideas and the style each author takes to communicate their ideas.

Godin opens the lesson with some straightforward yet inspiring words on “Generosity” - the passage begins, however, with generosity shown against the stark contrast of our “consumer” society.

“When the economy tanks, it’s natural to think of yourself first,” he writes. “Getting more appears to be the order of business. It turns out that the connected economy doesn’t respect this natural instinct. Instead we’re rewarded for being generous. Generous with our time and money but most important generous with our art.” I would add “generous with our ideas”, but perhaps Godin uses “art” to mean all that the word encompasses. Godin goes on to write, “If you make a difference, people will gravitate to you. They want to engage, to interact, and to get you more involved.” Now there is something I can and will inspire to.

Hugh MacLeod, a blogger, cartoonist, and entrepreneur puts a spin on some wisdom my mother once shared with me, while writing about “Meaning”: “Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this Earth to climb,” MacLeod writes. My mother’s take on this was, “The challenge wouldn’t have come if you weren’t met to meet it.”

“Vision is the lifeblood of any organization,” writes Michael Hyatt, blogger and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. “In a down economy,” he continues, “things get very tactical. We are just trying to survive. This is where great leadership makes all the difference. (Leadership) is about reminding people of what  it is we are trying to build - and why it matters. When times are tough, vision is the first casualty. Before conditions can improve, it is the first thing we must recover.”

This got me thinking about what word I would contribute if I were asked to do so. A few came to mind, but the one that stuck with me was “Listen”. How much more important is it today, when each of us is a self-publishing, self-promoting, self-contained media empire, to actually listen to each other. To understand. To ask. Listening takes time. It forces us to think. To ingest. It is more than merely “hearing”. Maybe I’ll try my hand at writing a page on “Listen” over the next couple weeks.

What is your favorite passage?

What word would you contribute?

What wisdom would you share? The world could definitely use it.

I hope you find the time to think about this (and many other important things like family and friends) over the next couple weeks.

Thanks for visiting my blog, and reading my thoughts over the past few months. I’m really enjoying putting my ideas out there again, and I hope that you find something interesting in my posts.

See you in 2010!

All the best.