Break It Down

If you’re stressed out, break it down.

When as a child I felt overwhelmed with school or relationships, my mom very patiently listened to me complain about it. Then she went with me through each item in my litany of miseries and asked, “OK, what can you do about that?” She helped me break it down. By the end of our conversation, I would have in mind what I was going to do, and a great peace would settle over me.

There’s what we can do, and there’s what we can’t do. We can’t control the things coming at us; they simply come. We can control how we will respond.

Sometimes stress comes not from the amount of work before us but from our inability to distinguish between the amount of work and the best way to respond to each task before us. We become overwhelmed with the enormity of it all, and so we dive in, thinking the only way to get things done is to get cracking. The problem is our stress stays with us, so we might get cracking, but soon we’re looking for an escape. We get on Facebook or check email or go eat something.

Escapes are not the same as breaks.

A better approach would be to take fifteen to thirty minutes up front to be deliberate. Make a list, but don’t stop there. Lists help us see the things we need to do, which is good because we’re less likely to forget something. But lists are not enough. In fact, if you stop with a list, you probably end up increasing your level of stress because now all of your work is staring at you in the face. Go the extra step of deciding what you will do to address each item and when you will do so.

Here’s my routine lately. As I’m driving home from work I call my voicemail and leave a message about the things I need to do the next day. When I come in the next morning, I listen to the message and make a list. Then I go to my calendar and schedule time for each item. It's my way of telling myself and others, “I will devote this time to this task and nothing else.”

Creating a list is not a plan. Scheduling time for things, forcing yourself to see how this item fits in with all the others—that is a plan. It’s also a more creative, peaceful way to live.

Run Scared or Jump for Joy?

It’s not every day the transportation industry gets a new medium.

But that is what the railroad companies had with the invention of increasingly sophisticated airplanes.

It’s not every day publishers get a new medium.

But that is what we have with the invention of increasingly sophisticated digital reading devices.

The problem for railroad companies is they didn’t really care about transporting people. What they cared about was clinging to an old model of business and service.

The problem with some publishers is that they don’t care about conveying messages. What they care about is clinging to an old model of business and service.

Some publishers get it, though. They are excited about this new medium. “Wow!” they’re saying. “We get to convey messages in a medium that transcends the limits of the printed page! Imagine videos, hyperlinks, images, audio. We get to dream with authors about the best ways possible of conveying these messages.”

We live in a moment when some folks in publishing are anxious and overwhelmed, while others are excited and overjoyed. Many, of course, are somewhere in between or waffle back and forth.

I say, let’s rejoice!

Making Contact

For the past several years I’ve made a regular habit of going to the gym in the morning. For a long time I said hi to the folks behind the desk as they swiped my card, got dressed, exercised, showered, and left. I may have nodded to someone who made eye contact, but for the most part I kept to myself. And for a long time I enjoyed the relative anonymity.

But a few things happened that have changed all that.

For one I’ve come across some articles about the importance of making contact. Everybody knows that affability is important to success in life, but on a more significant level, connecting with others is valuable to one’s health. Contrary to ideals of rugged individualism and romantic notions inspired by Henry David Thoreau (who wasn’t as isolated as many think), it turns out independence is actually not that good for us.

I also encountered a fellow exerciser who apparently does not know the rules about staying silent in the locker room. It seems natural for Bruce, I’ll call him, to look at a total stranger a few padlocks away and say “Hi . . . how are you doing?” And Bruce seems to mean it when he asks. I think it’s safe to say Bruce and I have become friends because he took the risk of saying hi to a stranger.

I thought about going online and citing all kinds of research to back this up, but I don’t need to—not for myself, anyway. I’ve learned from folks like Bruce, and from my own feeble attempts to connect, that offering a friendly gesture here and there is a better way to live. These days my gym feels like a little community; I know a bunch of people by name now. In fact, I’m becoming attached to these people. One guy, Larry, died a few months back, and I can honestly say I miss him.

All of this is so obvious it would not need stating unless, of course, we didn’t do it.

Imagine a world without bookstores

If the only way to buy books is via online websites like Amazon, suddenly the only marketing that really matters is tribal marketing. Networks are everything. Forget ads. They’re expensive, they’re usually annoying (even to consumers who want what you’re advertising), and in my experience they’re simply not that effective.

How many times have you heard someone say, “Oh, I saw this ad in TIME magazine, so I rushed out to get the book”? You’re much more likely to hear, “My friend told me I had to read this, so I grabbed it off Amazon.”

Forget canvass-type publicity too. Unless your publicity is highly targeted, it becomes a mere blip of exposure. I’m beginning to think this even about big-time programs like The Today Show. Why isn’t there such a thing as “The Today Show Effect,” as there is an “Oprah Effect”? The Oprah Effect is all about Oprah’s tribe. People like Oprah, they trust her, so they buy books she recommends. People like Matt Lauer too, but he’s not allowed to (or simply doesn’t) recommend books on his show.

Big-time publicity may help excite an already existing tribe; it’s not likely to generate a tribe or even add to one.

All that matters the vast majority of the time is helping authors build and cultivate their tribe--folks who are interested in what they have to say. Book promotion must begin, therefore, in a conversation with the author.

PS. I don’t believe a world without bookstores will ever exist. Some bookstores provide a level of service and humanity that makes them immensely valuable in their communities. The others have died or soon will die.

The Future of Publishing

Seth Godin wrote late last year , “Amazon and the Kindle have killed the bookstore. Why? Because people who buy 100 or 300 books a year are gone forever. The typical American buys just one book a year for pleasure. Those people are meaningless to a bookstore. It's the heavy users that matter, and now officially, as 2009 ends, they have abandoned the bookstore. It's over.”

Legendary book editor Daniel Menaker says, “I think that in 10-15 years at least 50% of book-length texts will be read digitally, probably more, and printed book will shrink down to a special, almost boutique market.”

The top two headlines of a recent PW Daily were “Amazon Has Blockbuster Year” and “Borders Eliminates 164 Positions.”

Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson, recently tweeted that he was thinking about selling his iPhone now because no one will care about iPhones when Apple launches the iPad.

And have you seen the iPad? It is revolutionary.

I see two big changes. One has already knocked down our door, stormed us, and is now standing on our chest breathing in our face. The other is on the near horizon.

The change that has already happened is a major shift in the way books are purchased. Seth Godin is right. Bookstores, it’s over.

The near change is a major shift in how people read books. This has already happened to some extent. According to Jeff Bezos, Amazon has sold millions of Kindles (2–3 million, most likely). But the Kindle is nothing compared to the iPad; a better comparison would be the iPhone. Apple has sold over 40 million iPhones in three years. I predict Apple will sell more iPads in the same timeframe. The total population of the U.S. is about 300 million, so in the next three years it’s safe to say 15 to 20 percent of Americans will own a device that enables comfortable digital book reading. This 15 to 20 percent are the people who matter to the book industry—the people who purchase the vast majority of books.

In my next post I’ll discuss what I think publishers need to do to survive these massive and exciting shifts.

How to Handle Big Moments

In a couple hours I will lead our publishing board for the first time.

This is a big deal to me. In the room will be two VPs, two marketing directors, folks from publicity and sales. My peers, my colleagues. People for whom I could not have more respect, and people whose respect I desire.

It is in moments like these that chances for self-sabotage run high. You know these moments. The big job interview. That meeting with an important client. The sales presentation. The talk you're giving at the conference.

Self-sabotage comes in different shapes and sizes, but you know it when you see it. Somebody tries too hard or they don’t try at all. They are awkwardly flamboyant or trip all over themselves. We’ve all been there; we know how awful it is.

Two things give me confidence in this moment.

One is knowing that all the people in the room will want me to succeed. Regardless of any feelings to the contrary, it does them no good to see me fail.

The other confidence builder is knowing that I have only two real objectives for this meeting. If these two things happen, I will consider the meeting a success.

The first is I want to communicate that I’m honored to be in this role. I want them to know that I am a living, breathing human being, and I have good intentions to grow our business. I want them to know that I value their voices, and I want to hear from them; I want them to know this is their team as much as it is mine.

The second is to obtain a realistic sales projection for the books I’m recommending.

That’s it. If these two things happen, the meeting will have been a success.

The problem we have with big moments is we become overwhelmed with their perceived enormity. But the reality is that no matter what we’re facing, big moments usually require only a little bit from us. A little of our best. That’s all.

I don’t know about you, but the people I admire most are not those who put in sixty-hour work weeks and send me emails at 2:00 in the morning. These people have my pity and compassion, not my admiration. The people I admire are those who are productive because they know where to spend their time and energy. They know where to say no so that they can say yes to what matters.

Handling big moments is about saying no to things that ultimately do not matter (sounding impressive, earning accolades, etc.) in service to things that do (serving others, giving gifts, making art, etc.).