Perseverance
What Is Humans?
Perseverance is the act of pushing through despite difficulty or challenge. How often are we faced with adversity? The anwer is quite a lot. On a regular basis we have challenges that come our way without warning or heads up. This isn't an excuse to give up and curl up into a ball, but rather an opportunity to push forward. There is a school of thought which says that we should hide weakness and ignore pain or suffering. Remove it from your vocabulary and it's like it never happened. This path can be detrimental and ineffective in the long run. It doesn't serve us to live outside...
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Buy In
What Is Humans?
When it comes to buy in, it is two fold. As an individual you have to be bought in to your career, hobbies, and life. The flip side of the coin is that you have to have buy in if you are going to lead a project yourself, whether that be a family, a company or a team. A team has to be bought in to be able to implement long lasting instrumental changes. This notion has been studied and analyzed time and time again. The question is how do we create it and better yet how do we maintain it. How do you build something that people want to be a part of? That is the real question. Do you...
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Alex Edge: How To Chase Your Dreams While Being The Nicest Person In The Room
What Is Humans?
Almost Friday Media today is an established brand in the new age media world. Boasting more than a dozen channels, multiple podcasts, and sketches, Almost Friday Media has grown significantly since its early days as a proverbial meme page on instagram. A lot of that growth is in part thanks to our guest on the podcast today. Alex Edge is the VP of operations at Almost Friday Media. The individual that has helped create the systems and processes that have scaled this company from 6 employees to approximately 40 in about 2 years. Alex is quick though to pass the praise and admit the growth and...
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Do You Care?
What Is Humans?
The correlation between how much you care and how much you succeed is palpable. You could be the most talented baker in the world, but if you don’t love to bake there is only so high that you will be able to go. Caring and passion push those that are good into greatness, and it’s not something that comes in time or develops more as you go, it seems it truly is there or it isn’t. Whether this is in our careers or in our relationships we have to care more than anything about them to be able to fight through adversity. There is a difference however between external and internal care. ...
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Nothing Owned
What Is Humans?
No idea is original? Every single idea that you have had has been informed by a million different stimuli before you. Your childhood, the sandwich you ate yesterday, the way your shoelaces didn’t tie quite right every single thing is a culmination of experiences that have crossed your mind. This can be a sobering thought…one that shouldn’t be digested lightly. There is a piece of us that wants to hold on so tightly to ideas, sentiments and beliefs that we believe to be our own. We take pride in them, they are ours aren’t they? The reality is this idea of hubris and...
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Doubt Your Work
What Is Humans?
Rick Rubin said in the Creative Act, “Doubt your work, but don’t doubt yourself.” Or something to that effect. The idea was that doubt might not be the worst thing in the world. Doubt is vilified in society. “Doubting Thomas” is even a saying that we use to describe people who are nervous or anxious about a plan, idea or themselves. Doubt can be detrimental though when it is tied to all or nothing statements. Those statements might include, “I can’t” “I could never” “I hate”. These statements are finite or concrete. There is no room for growth. Doubting your work on the...
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Tanner James: Lead With Curiosity, The Evolution of a Creator
What Is Humans?
Ok we realized that when we originally aired this episode it didn't necessarily get the credit that it was due. Our guest Tanner James is a long time friend and mentor to both of us, and we released this episode when Shane and I were both travelling and a little all over the place. We want to rerelease this episode because of how valuable the conversation was not only for ourselves, but also for others at home. I hope this time you are able to better enjoy the ups and downs of Tanner's creative journey. "This episode was recorded at 7ish in the morning. Tanner sat down in the studio with us...
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Economies of Scale
What Is Humans?
This is a finance term, we will not be trying to explain finance in this episode because as everyone knows we are not experts in this subject. Rather we are going to explore how the idea of economies of scale informs other facets of our lives inside and outside of business. Economies of scale primarily refers to the connection between the costs of production as a company grows. In layman’s terms this is the advantage that you or a company may have by increasing production. If we are planning for success which we always should be we have to be looking down the road a little bit to see...
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Attack on Attention
What Is Humans?
In this digital era, one of our most valuable resources is our attention. Every single moment of every day, we are inundated with new information and stimuli that may or may not add to our lives. We are more connected than ever for better or for worse. Our family can reach us all the way across the world, but so can our boss. We can hear about a deadly attack on another country, but we can also be subject to memes at 3 in the morning. This bombardment on our dwindling attention span is being too easily traded, like a commodity instead of the luxury that it is. Our focus and...
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Phases of Being
What Is Humans?
Our Central Nervous System sits behind our brain and dictates over all other things how we act and behave. We have three phases inside of this central nervous system; ventral aka free, sympathetic aka fight or flight and then dorsal aka depression. Those three phases supersede our feelings and our moods. Your CNS can be affected though by your daily habits and routines. When we are operating at a high capacity we are resting and working equally creating a flow state where we feel free and creative. In society we are often told that more is more. The harder we work the more...
info_outlineIt’s the end of the year and whether it is our yearly review with our bosses or Santa who is checking to see if we were naughty or nice it seems like we are always receiving feedback. Feedback in both of these cases is often given without our request and has some consequences associated with it. We have an emotional response built up around feedback cycles, maybe its a pat on the back that leads to a raise or maybe it’s the fear that we have done something wrong, and a weakness in our skillset will be brought to life. Regardless what the feedback is there is a high stakes connotation that surrounds feedback and the faults that we perceive within ourselves.
Exposing weaknesses and bringing them into the light feels like one of the most vulnerable things that we can do. Allowing others to judge our performance from superiors to peers to people that rely on us is terrifying…or is it? When we receive feedback infrequently we put undue pressure on ourselves because it feels like the stakes are higher than they are. If we only do promotions once a year then you’re damn right your yearly review is going to be an important one. On the other hand if we constantly ask for feedback we begin to flex that muscle, and become immune to some of the fear of vulnerability.
By asking for feedback consistently we aren’t hiding behind things we already know rather we are putting it out there in the light and asking for help. When we ask for help we not only improve our own performance but we improve the lives of others around us. That means our relationships and lives of our coworkers, customers, family and friends. By hiding behind our vulnerabilities we not only hurt ourselves but we create a less than great version of ourselves for those around us as well. During this year’s feedback session, think about ways that you can work on asking more frequently for feedback throughout the year in order to implement change all year long rather than a nail biting end of the year meeting!