People I’m Following on Twitter

[photo by Hamed Saber]

My Friday post is an ongoing effort to cut down on the #FF traffic on Twitter. For those unfamiliar it’s a tradition that on Fridays you suggest people you think others should follow on Twitter. It’s called Follow Fridays and it’s annotated with #FF.

It’s a good idea but it’s just gotten out of control. Too many tweets stuffed full of names and nothing else. So instead, every Friday I post a list on this blog of 8 people I’m currently following on Twitter and then tweet a link to this page. You can find previous lists here and here.

Who are some of your favorite people to follow on Twitter and why? I’d love to hear your input. You can comment on this blog or hit me up on Twitter here:@SHerdegen.

Now my list of new people I’ve met who I think are worth following:

@TheNapkinDad: Marty Coleman draws simple cartoon drawings on napkins to illustrate insightful quotes. On Twitter he’s just a sincere voice.

@FoundingeEditor: Tweets about short form fiction and poetry. A nice break from reality.

@LibbyRobinson: I think she’s some kind of corporate coach but she posts a lot of inspirational quotes and generally keeps things interesting. She lives in Paris so she has reason to be happy.

@pbarbanes: Patrick Barbanes is neck deep in the social media world. A great resource for what’s going on behind the scenes and even in front of the scenes.

@picsiechick: A photographer and quasi-philosopher, she’s full of brilliant observations and all-around light hearted wisdom.

@feistycoach: Georgia Feiste is a life transition coach who is great at digging up unknown websites. I watch her for places I wouldn’t find on my own.

@ericabiz: Erica Douglass sold her successful business for over $1M when she was just 26 years old. Now she helps other people run their businesses. Nothing new, right? Her site Erica.biz will blow you away. She is no kidding the most transparent business person I have ever met. Yesterday she posted her income statement on her blog. I mean the whole thing. How much money she made in the first quarter, where it came from, how many hits on her site, how many sales. Unbelievably open. Bravo.

@nhangen: The thing I like about Nathan Hangen is his humility. He’s confident, committed, passionate, but not full of himself like some people (yes, I’m talking about @TheInfoPreneur). His tweets are mostly about promoting his blog, but it’s a good blog and if you engage him in conversation, he’s very social.

That’s my list. I’m looking forward to reading a list on your site sometime soon. Until then, here’s to keeping Twitter’s Follow Friday (#FF) a little cleaner.

Have a great weekend.

Lonely Spirit, Disturbed Mind

[photo by Robb North]

Two of my recent posts have brought my mental condition into question. The one about what to order when someone else is paying for your meal and the one about not giving advice.

In both these posts I can be criticized for giving too much thought to rather trivial decisions and behaviors. To that charge I must plead guilty. I am a person who has struggled to understand human behavior my whole life.

I am socially retarded and unlike Penelope Trunk I can’t blame Asperger’s Syndrome for my condition.

The primary response to “what to eat” was astonishment that I would think about it in the first place (just get whatever you want, duh), and a projected disappointment I would miss the wonderful opportunity to enjoy lunch with friends because I was considering the behavioral economic implications of what I ordered.

Let me assure you, I very much enjoyed the meal and I did not spend much time thinking about it. I probably thought more about it after the fact than I did at the time.

I will admit however, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking (or over thinking depending on who you ask) about things which should seem obvious to me. The reason I say they should be obvious to me is because they are apparently obvious to everyone else.

Better never to have been

It’s probably due to these mental proclivities I particularly enjoyed my recent visit with Dr. David Benatar.

Dr. Benatar is a professor of philosophy and Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. For the past year he has been on sabbatical working on his new book at Princeton.

He spent a few days in Annapolis this week and we talked about his last book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. It has a quite provocative title and I wanted to know how he backed up such a bold claim.

For all my personal failures and painful lessons, for all the discomfort I experience with social norms and personal interaction, I have never considered I would have been better off had I not been born.

Let me assure you first of all that Dr. Benatar is brilliant and, so far as I can determine, of sound mind.

The depth of his thought process however, makes my deepest thoughts appear as dips in the kiddie pool. I was amazed at the extent to which he doggedly pursued an intellectual rabbit hole until he eventually found the rabbit.

Better to be delusional

One of the arguments he makes in the book, though not his central argument, is that humans are objectively experiencing more pain, discomfort and unhappiness in life than pleasure, comfort or happiness.

Most people do not believe that because we delude ourselves through several complex mental processes. For example, we remember the past as being better than it was and we interpret discomfort as happiness if someone near us is suffering more than we are.

Not that this is news, the Pollyanna Principle has been well documented and Daniel Gilbert discusses such positivity bias in his book Stumbling on Happiness, which I enjoyed and highly recommend. But based on such a propensity, Dr. Benatar says we can discount any self-assessment of wellbeing.

I asked Dr. Benatar if it’s possible we do experience more instances of pain than pleasure but we value pleasure more than we devalue pain so the result is a net positive.

I found his response amusing. He caused me to answer my own question by offering the following thought experiment:

Suppose you could trade one year of suffering the worst imaginable pain for one year of the most sublime pleasure. Would you make that trade?

My instinctive reaction was, no. Even after he increased the ratio to two years of pleasure to one year of pain I wouldn’t make the trade. Clearly, I had to concede, I did not value pleasure more than pain.

Nevertheless I remain stubbornly unconvinced that it would have been better for me not to have been born.

As I explained to Dr. Benatar, even knowing I’m deluding myself, I still genuinely feel my life is on net more positive than negative. So why not just be happy with that?

Perhaps this is how people feel when they try to convince me I don’t need to I examine the questions of what to eat when someone else is paying or when, if ever, I should offer advice. Don’t over think it.

Dr. Benatar did make me wonder however, if there really are any “objective” criteria we can use to determine if we’re happy or not?

Authors Shouldn’t Have To Be Social Media Experts

[photo by nayrb7]

There are increasing calls for authors to not only write great work but be great marketers too. Justine Musk talks about the importance of developing an author platform, as does Robin Hoffman. Dan Schawbel discusses how to use social media to develop your personal brand. All with good reason.

Publishers are moving away from their traditional role as promoters and marketers. I’ve written previously about the shifting landscape in the publishing world.

The conclusion everyone is coming to is that authors now need to bring their own audience to a project, especially if they self publish but even if they go with a big traditional publisher.

However, this flies in the face of 234 years of economic theory. When Adam Smith published his magnum opus The Wealth of Nations in 1776 it contained a theoretic principle that would change the world’s productivity forever; the principle of specialization.

By dividing work into discrete tasks each worker could specialize, become more proficient and their combined efforts would produce greater output and therefore more profits.

We see the principle of specialization around us everywhere. It is what modern economies are built on.

In fact, whenever we see an area where a person’s job requires the development of a diverse set of skills we should see an economic opportunity to increase profits through specialization.

In this case, the opportunity I see is to separate marketing from writing.

The beauty of specialization

Nothing about being a writer inherently makes them a good marketer and vice versa. Why then combine these two tasks?

It would be more efficient to let authors focus on writing (and either write more books or better books) and share the increased profits with a talented marketer who doesn’t have to worry about developing his or her skill as a writer.

This past weekend I went to hear a friend perform. He’s a talented guitarist, a musician with a confident stage presence and good audience rapport.

But after the show as we were talking he confided he really doesn’t enjoy performing. He’d much rather just write songs. And he should. He’s got a talent for it.

We talked about his early success as a songwriter, a couple of his songs got on the radio and he won a prestigious song writing competition in California to some acclaim. But he didn’t know how to capitalize on those early wins, didn’t know how to publicize his talent in the right way to roll that into the big time.

And why should he? Just because he can write songs doesn’t mean he needs to be a great marketer as well.

How social media is changing things

The drive behind author platform development is the decreased investment of large publishing houses in marketing and the increased demand for personal interaction by fans. The rapid expansion of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter allow fans to stay more connected and provide greater opportunities to feel engaged with previously inaccessible stars.

When celebrities can send messages about their personal lives to hundreds of thousands of fans at once, it creates a feeling of familiarity and trust which increases the celebrity’s leadership bond with his followers.

An author’s most loyal fans are those who know her best. They are people who like the way the author thinks and want to support her by purchasing her work. It also solves one of the most perplexing dilemmas in the age of information abundance: where’s all the good stuff?

There are few things more daunting than looking at thousands of book titles and authors’ names and wondering which ones are good. (Barry Schwartz goes into some detail on this quandary in his book The Paradox of Choice.)

When we have a relationship with an author we are inclined to believe we’re going to enjoy their book. It gives us a way to narrow down the choices.

But social media is time consuming and requires the author develop an entirely new skill set. And let’s be real, there’s a difference between using social media to keep in touch with friends and using it to create a platform. Chatting with friends is fun, creating a platform is work.

This is not confined to social media, by the way, just ask any author who’s felt obligated to attend a party to promote her book.

How can we specialize?

Isn’t the point of social media to create relationships and facilitate community building? What happens to that community if the author isn’t present?

It depends on the ultimate goal of the author. If the author is looking for an ongoing personal relationship with her followers there is no substitute for individual attention and interaction. But if, as one would expect, some authors (not naming names) are merely interested in expanding their readership, it could work quite well.

Assume a partnership arrangement between an author and a social media marketer.

The social media expert of the team can develop relationships and build trust in their ability to recognize great work. This solves the twin concerns of fans, they want a personal relationship and they want help sorting through all the crap that’s published every day.

If you’re wondering what such a leader/follower relationship looks like you only need to turn on your TV. Oprah Winfrey has developed a loyal following by being personable and authentic and by interacting with her audience as individuals. She has developed a relationship of trust.

When she recommends a book it’s an automatic best seller. Why? Because her multitude of fans trust her judgment.

This is the quintessential author/marketer relationship. Authors can write without worrying about marketing, Oprah can market without having to write.

Let’s learn a lesson from Adam Smith and specialize our efforts. I’ll be Oprah.

Why Leaders Need Teams

[photo by Perfecto Insecto]

There is a myth that lives in our collective psyche and is occasionally bolstered by action movies and Hollywood heartthrobs. It’s the myth of the Lone Leader.

The Lone Leader is the outcast, the rebel, the person no one believes in but in the end everyone rallies around.

This is what we want leadership to be like because it helps keep the dream alive. You know The Dream. The dream that within each of us is a leader.

If leaders are social misfits we can keep believing WE are leaders who just haven’t made our move yet. Because we can all relate to the unpopular guy, the unrecognized genius.

Well, you might need to run out for some Haagen-Dazs and Kleenex because I’ve got some bad news for you. If you don’t have people begging to be on your team, you’re not a leader.

I’ll say that again; leaders need followers.

Without followers a leader’s just a guy with a great idea, a man with a vision and with passion. He’s the guy who’s sure he has a solution. He may even be right.

But without followers he’s not a leader.

You need a team

A person with vision who has followers is a leader. And a group of people working toward the same goal is a team.

So, simply put: Leaders need teams.

The leader’s job is to appeal to the emotions of his followers, to create a connection between his vision and the desires of his followers. He needs to tell an inspiring story that brings the followers to view the leader’s vision as their own guiding light.

Once the followers are onboard, you’ve got a team and the team is what’s going to do the work. The leader must be able to focus the energy of his team on the work that needs to get done to accomplish their goal.

The leader does not have to manage the process; he simply has to inspire the direction.

This is where the great benefit of teams comes in. The team contains a variety of skills, resources and social connections. All of these can be used to further the cause.

The team expands and multiplies the leader’s ability to accomplish things. It expands his reach when seeking out additional followers. It is able to continue the fight while he gets some rest.

First followers

Derek Sivers is famous for many things, among them being a circus clown and selling his online music sales site CD Baby for $20 million. He’s also well known for developing the concept of the First Follower.

According to Sivers, it’s not the leader that starts a movement, it’s the first follower. Prior to the first follower it’s just an idea.

Once the first follower arrives it gives social recognition to the leader and encourages others to join in as well. As second and third followers join the leader’s vision quickly spreads.

The team is a larger version of the first follower concept. It’s a group of first followers.

A leader’s role on the team is not to control the team but to motivate and inspire it. Often the management of the team is delegated to another follower.

Working together, as a team, the leader and followers together accomplish the goal.

This is not something a loner can do.

Sorry, Hollywood.

Failure to Adapt: The Agonizing Death of the Publishing World

[photo by Valeriana Solaris]

I should clarify, when I say “publishing world” I mean old school publishers who rely on the outdated model of publishing described below. I’m not predicting the end of printed books just yet.

There are publishers who have adapted to modern times and operate under a new model of publisher/author collaboration. Their idea of publishing is fairly limited in scope compared to the totalitarian regimes of yesteryear.

Old school publishers on the other hand need to make some serious changes to their business model or step aside. Technology is changing and the old model doesn’t work anymore.

The old model of publishing

In the past publishers owned the bookselling process from beginning to end. Well, almost from the beginning. The authors still had to do the writing. But after that it was all publisher.

Way back when (I don’t know, before 1980), people only bought books in bookstores. The only way to get your book into a bookstore was through a publisher.

This is because the bookstores and publishers had a mutually beneficial reason to work together. The publisher needed a place to sell their books and bookstores needed something to sell. If bookstore owners didn’t give publishers the shelf space they asked for, the bookstore wouldn’t have access to that publisher’s next bestseller.

The publishers could control the book world because printing equipment was very expensive to purchase, house and operate. This meant only those with deep pockets could afford to own this equipment.

And while it was fairly inexpensive to print the books themselves, it was expensive to set up so publishers had to print a large run to make it cost effective. This led them to publish only authors they believed could sell a lot of copies.

This meant a highly selective screening process in which only the best authors were published.

Getting published was a badge of honor, an achievement worthy of praise. It meant an experienced and highly discriminating editor had been so impressed with your work he or she was willing to invest the large amount of money necessary to get it produced.

Controlling the printing process also meant they were the only place editors, proofreaders, fact checkers and other literary support staff could find employment. Publicists and marketing units specializing in literature were also beholden to the publishing houses for a job.

How things have changed

Several things have changed in the last thirty years but the most significant has been the development of low cost printing equipment with low set up costs. This is the game changer.

Lower overall equipment costs mean there are more independent printers who can produce a book. There were companies that would do this throughout history but the cost to the author was high and without the marketing and distribution support of an established publisher the author was unlikely to recoup the expense. Hence the term “vanity press.”

Not only is there more printing equipment around now but because of the low set up costs they can do very short runs cost effectively. This not only works in favor of self-publishing authors but smaller publishers as well.

As consumers have looked to the internet for bargains, bookstores began to lose their monopoly as “the place to go” for books. Booksellers were one of the first online retailers to really take off. Given the nature of books there really was no need to physically handle the product to gauge its value and shipping was easy and inexpensive.

With authors now having the ability to publish their own books and sell them through online retailers at the same price point as traditional publishers, a market was created for freelance literary professionals.

Everyone from editors and proofreaders to fact checkers and layout design specialists could find freelance jobs working directly for authors or doing piecework for small independent publishers.

Remaining advantages for traditional publishers

With two exceptions, every advantage of old school publishing is gone. Those two exceptions are prestige and access to brick and mortar booksellers.

The number of books self published by authors or by “micro-niche publishers” was over 764,000 titles in 2009 alone. Traditional publishers put out about 288,000 titles.

What does that mean? Well, for one thing it means a lot more authors are getting published. Today being a published author is no harder than being the CEO of your own company. Sure you’ve got the title, but does it mean anything.

So, for a while anyway, being published by a major publisher is still a significant accomplishment and an indicator of quality. (Even though publishers are no better at picking winners than anyone else.)

And while more and more people are shopping online there still is a lot of book-buying traffic in brick and mortar stores. For the time being, big name publishers still have that market sewn up.

Where things are going

Both of these factors will change however. As more authors turn to non-traditional publishers, either self-publishers like Lulu and Xlibris or collaborative arrangements like Greenleaf and O’Reilly, there will be more successes.

With more successful authors coming from alternative publishers the stigma of using these services will diminish and authors will feel comfortable having their names associated with these less well known services.

As shopping turns to online retailers, big name publishers’ access to brick and mortar stores will be less significant. So this advantage will also go away.

This leaves big name publishers without much to look forward to. There are ways to adapt their model however, and they do have some time. The majority of publishers’ revenue comes from their extensive catalog of past best sellers which will continue to provide revenue far into the future.

The only way big publishers can adapt though, is to recognize they no longer have the power they used to have and to reach out to authors in collaborative partnerships both parties can benefit from.

When Not to Give Advice

[photo by kirtaph]

Moments of stress

We were running a little late so I was programming the GPS while Kath was driving.

Downtown Annapolis is full of narrow one-way streets and roundabouts. On a Saturday afternoon in Spring it’s often crowded, yesterday was no exception.

“Go right,” I said.

Kath was British, her voice high pitched, soft and faltering by nature.

“Uh…okay…” she said as she looked at the GPS instead of the road. “Should I…? Wait, no…” her eyes were bouncing rapidly between the left-pointing arrow on the illuminated map and the cars all around us.

She was a bit indecisive and she was driving a tad recklessly.

Given the traffic on Main St., I thought she should take King George St. to SR450 instead of Rowe Blvd. to SR50, but before I said anything I realized it was time for me to be quiet.

I know what you’re thinking: I gave up too easily. I should have continued to offer advice a while longer, maybe been more directive, or used a stern, commanding voice.

You’d be wrong.

I know you’d be wrong even though I don’t know Kath that well. I know you’d be wrong because I’ve been around the block a few times and I knew where this was headed. It was headed to me getting ignored and Kath getting frustrated.

It was time for me to take on a more supportive role and let her do the driving. Even if it took us a little longer to get there. Even if we were late.

Moments of victory

I have learned enough in my life to realize Kath either wasn’t paying attention to me, didn’t trust me, didn’t want to be told what to do, or all of the above. That’s when it’s time to tactfully withdraw; you’ve done all you can.

We were on our way to her husband’s concert and once we got out of Annapolis the trip went smoothly; the feminine but direct voice of the GPS guided us right to the front door of the Dorchester Center for the Arts in Cambridge, Maryland.

My friend, Brett “Rabbit” Williams, was performing with his very talented accompanist Skye Martin. It was the kind of concert that gave you goosebumps. If you enjoy the “singer/songwriter” genre you’ll know what I’m talking about.

(To check out some of Rabbit’s music go to his site OrdinaryRabbit.com.)

“Hey, thanks for coming,” he said as he pumped my fist after the show. “Did everything sound all right? Was it balanced?”

I did notice during a couple numbers his guitar had overpowered Skye’s voice. If you think I told him that, you’d be wrong.

It was his moment to bask in the glory of a great show. He didn’t need to be brought down by thinking of anything he could have done differently. There’d be plenty of time for that later; right then let him enjoy the glow.

Moments of hope

While Rabbit was packing up his equipment I was mingling with some of the other members of the audience.

I wandered over to a young man with disheveled hair and square-framed glasses in a tweed jacket. Not being very good at mingling, I asked my standard ice breaker which led to a conversation about his almost-written book.

“I’ve pretty much got it done, so once that sells—boom! Best-seller, sure thing. Then it’s easy street.”

Now I’m not an author and I’m not in the publishing business, but I’ve done a fair amount of research over the past year and know some pretty straight-talking industry insiders like Julie Roads, Rachelle Gardner, Jane Friedman and Justine Musk so I think I’ve got a pretty realistic view of how likely it is to be successful as a first time author.

This kid had to be smoking crack. But do you think I told him that?

I just smiled and nodded. “That sounds like a great plan.”

Why? Because there’s no reason to stomp on a guy’s dream just because he’s young and dumb. Besides, he’d just met me. Do you think he’s going to take advice from me?

He doesn’t know if I know what I’m talking about and he doesn’t have a personal relationship with me. I’m just some dude he met at an Art Center concert.

In summary then

You shouldn’t give advice to someone:

1. Who’s driving

2. Enjoying a success

3. Who doesn’t know you as an expert

4. Who doesn’t know you care about their success

5. or anyone who hasn’t asked you for it directly

Three Things I Never Do and Why You Should

[photo by Lin Pernille]

1. Cut down trees

I never do this because I love trees. I think they’re beautiful and I can never imagine any environment would look better without trees than with them.

I like it when they’re full and leafy. When they cast wide shadows that shield me from the summer sun and when they block my view so all I see is the tree’s own natural beauty.

I fear loneliness, rejection and isolation. That’s what cement walls say to me, you are cut off. I am cold and impenetrable; you cannot overcome my dispassionate, uncaring façade. You cannot please me.

Trees say life and love and unconditional acceptance. I imagine a landscape void of trees and it looks smaller, less exciting, less dynamic, less alive. It loses all visual interest for me.

And, I’m acutely aware that it took a long time for a tree of a substantial size to get that big; to grow to the point I can’t fit my arms around it. My mind recoils at the permanency of cutting it down. I can’t convince myself to bring to an irreversible end so many years of slow and steady growth.

Why you should

Because sometimes it really does improve the landscape. There are people (not me) who can envision what the ideal arrangement of trees and open space is and know when something you love is best disposed of.

It’s like a designer who knows what pieces of your current decorating style can stay and be enhanced by their plan and which need to go.

We may adore that chair, or the armoire we’ve had for years, but they aren’t attached to them emotionally and can arrange pieces and colors dispassionately to achieve the best effect.

So when it comes to trees I know I’ll never want to see one go. If I’m ever going to get rid of a tree I’ve got to trust in a competent design team to make good choices, just as writers need to trust their editors.

Their goal is not to raze the land but to cull efficiently to achieve a more beautiful and balanced impression.

A note to concerned ecologist empathizers:

The few trees on your residential property are insignificant when it comes to global ecological issues. While these issues are important, saving the tree in your yard to offset rainforest clear cutting is like school children collecting pennies to pay off the national debt.

2. Throw away food

I just can’t bring myself to do it. I know I don’t want to eat it but I’ll save it anyway. Then I’ll look at it sitting in the refrigerator like an unfinished assignment whose deadline will come due any day now.

Food is delicious and is capable of satisfying us in a way few other pleasures can. It is also essential to life which makes the pleasure all the more enjoyable.

Is there any necessary human activity as gratifying as eating chocolate? Hmmm, breathing? No. Protecting ourselves from the elements? No. Sleeping? Eh, close…but, no.

A good meal will make me giddy with anticipation and my whole body tingles with delight upon the first amazing bite.

Why you should

Because you don’t need it. We have so much food available to us, the likelihood of running out is roughly equal to the chance of Donald Trump getting a decent haircut. It’s just not going to happen.

So what do we do with this over-abundance of food? We eat it anyway. And our bodies store it for possible later use.

No one bothered to tell our bodies we don’t need a safety reserve large enough to go ten months without food.

Aside from the negative health effects of eating too much food, leftover food items stored and then reheated are more likely to cause food borne illnesses.

For those who think eating all the food we buy will somehow increase the availability of food elsewhere in the world; you need to do some more research because you don’t understand the problem.

I’m not going to get into it. Suffice it to say, you eating the leftover mashed potatoes and peas off your daughter’s plate so you don’t have to throw them away is not going to cause you to be so full you’ll skip the next meal.

When we eat, we generally eat until our plate is clean, not until we’re full. So when you do sit down to that next meal, even if you’re not as hungry as you normally are because you cleaned off your child’s plate at lunch, you’ll still eat about the same amount you always do.

And so it goes. Just eat until you’re satisfied and throw the rest away.

Start with your next meal.

3. Get rid of books

I love books like you love your grandmother. I want to give them a big hug and rest my head on their bosom. I want them in my home even if I never read them. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read books too. But I also just like having books around.

Books are like a bouquet of fresh flowers, they add character and atmosphere to any room. Put a stack of them on your coffee table and it’s an instant centerpiece.

And like flowers they have their own sweet aroma, though more subtle and tart. Usually you have to get close to them, open them up. Sometimes you even have to stick your nose far into their pages and breathe deeply, but it’s there. The older the book is the better.

If you’re fortunate enough to find yourself in an old secondhand bookstore overflowing with used paperbacks the smell will envelop you. I could spend hours in a store like that just breathing.

I grew up not only appreciating books’ aesthetic value but respecting their pages as well. I have never written in a book, never dog-eared a page, never folded one open backwards. I treat books with reverence and care.

To throw one away is unthinkable.

Why you should

Because while they are, to me, a thing of beauty, they are becoming obsolete. And like all obsolete technologies they will soon be merely reminders of a bygone era; a remembrance of a simpler time when information was contained within art.

Similar to a 1923 Columbia Gramophone, books can be seen today as an artistically pleasing but functionally irrelevant medium.

Books are inefficient because you cannot easily search them for specific information or jump quickly from one point in the book to a related point elsewhere. Once printed they can’t be corrected or updated. They’re bulky and heavy.

And frankly, many of them—no, most of them—are not that good. Of the quarter million books printed each year in the U.S. there are maybe two thousand which are worth reading. Half of those are by Seth Godin.

Fiction books are mostly derivative drivel and non-fiction is outdated as soon as it’s published. The world of information has moved on and left books behind.

Perhaps my deep-seated reluctance to dispose of books is an emotion tied to the importance of information transfer which is the backbone of all civilization.

Without information transfer, progress would stop. In the worst cases it would regress. Our survival depends on knowledge getting from one generation to the next.

Books, when produced by hand and later on early printing presses, were expensive. Expensive and important. No wonder we developed an innate reluctance to destroy them.

But times have changed and so has information transfer. We no longer need a book to convey the essential knowledge of our civilization. We've got Twitter.

So, much as it pains me to say it, go ahead and throw them out.

Or, even better, send them to me.

People I’m Following on Twitter

[photo by digitalART2]

Last week, in an effort to cut down on the #FF traffic on Twitter, I posted a list of 8 people I’m currently following here.

It got a warm response so I’m going to continue the habit of posting a list of people I think are worth following on Fridays.

I don’t like people who are always promoting their own stuff. I know I opted in but it still feels a little spammy.

Some people use Twitter as a bullhorn, other people use it like a telephone. I like the phone better.

I understand that due to the nature of Twitter people may want to let people know they’ve got a new blog post out and not everyone they want to get the message is online at the same time.

That’s cool. I retweet myself a few times a day for the same reason. But there’s got to be a frequency that’s not overwhelming.

My personal guideline is no more than once about every 3 hours, you can retweet your own stuff without being offensive.

What do you think is too much? I’d love to hear some feedback on this. You can comment on this blog or hit me up on Twitter here: @SHerdegen.

Now my list of new people I’ve met who I think are worth following:

@MarenKate: I don’t know how I first stumbled on her blog, Escapeing the 9 to 5, but I was immediately struck by her enthusiasm. She’s ambitious and it’s contagious.

@DanielleLaPorte: Her White Hot Truth blog tells it like it is. She’s frank and outspoken without being vulgar. Great advice for business or personal success.

@JustineMusk: What can I say, I worship her. She is a writer who writes for writers. Her blog Tribal Writer is always full of truly useful information. This post is why I’m on Twitter.

@LeaderTalk: As you might expect Becky writes about leadership but she’s also an honest broker who is genuinely cultivating a tribe on Twitter by being an interactive human being. Her blog is (whatelse?) LeaderTalk.

@Webby2001: Don’t let the name throw you. Appearances aside, Tom Webster is not a dork. He’s full of inside information from the social media industry and his blog Brand Savant is a good read.

@Websiteweekend: Dave Doolin uses his blog to tell everyone how they can start a website in a weekend. But on Twitter he’s an active community builder and all around good guy.

@JillWiles: I know I just recommended Bindu Wiles last week (sisters? I don’t know) but Jill Wiles deserves a mention too. She is a voice of calm and serenity straight from the soul. Check out her blog here.

@DavidBurkus: Like Becky Robinson (LeaderTalk), he is in the leadership industry but he’s the most humble leader I’ve ever met. He’s real and helpful and utterly approachable. He writes about leadership at David Burkus.com.

That’s my list. I’m looking forward to reading a list on your site sometime soon. Until then, here’s to keeping Twitter’s Follow Friday (#FF) a little cleaner.

Have a great weekend.

Socially Awkward Philosophers

[photo by mariachily]

I’m not really comfortable at social events. I’m not a mingler.

But I’m the kind of guy who, when I don’t understand something, the first thing I do is research. I’ve read a lot about how to mingle.

The first thing I learned was to make eye contact and to mirror body language. This sends a signal that you are engaged in the conversation and feel the same way as the other person.

One of the books I read said to have some questions ready to keep the conversation rolling if there’s an awkward pause. It listed a bunch of them but I read it years ago and only one has stuck with me:

“How did you get here?”

It’s a good question because it’s open ended and because it can be taken a number of ways so it allows you to gain some insight into the kind of person you’re talking to.

If they’re a very literal person they’ll probably tell you the route they drove or the mode of transportation.

“I took a cab. You?”

But they could also tell you how they were invited to the party.

“Oh, I work with Ryan.”

If they’re really interesting they might even go deep.

“I studied finance at Vanderbilt and then got a job in Buenos Aires…”

Sunset on Chesapeake Bay

I spent all day at the McCain Conference, an annual gathering of military leaders and academics who meet to discuss issues of ethics and character development.

After the last conference session on the first day there’s a reception so the socially awkward participants can stand around discussing their CVs.

As I was enjoying a pleasantly warm spring evening on a deck overlooking the Chesapeake Bay I found myself in the company of two philosophers: Michael, a professor at NYU, and Karen, who teaches ethics at Princeton.

Michael had presented at the conference earlier in the day about the moral implications of using unmanned aerial vehicles and autonomous weapon systems in combat.

“I thought you had some really insightful remarks,” I said, looking him in the eye and mirroring his body language. “Are you an ethicist?”

“Hmm—well, uh…yeah. No, not really. I mean I’m…yeah, you could say that. I’m really—I mean I’m a philosopher.”

“Oh, yeah? Me too.” [You’ll notice my bio says I’m a philosopher. That means I am one. I take my cue from Dictionary.com which says a philosopher is “a person who offers views or theories on profound questions.”]

Am I doing this right?

After a few minutes of conversation it was clear I didn’t know much about formal philosophy. I just like to think about things philosophically.

Michael seemed a bit put out. I guess I wasn’t mirroring properly.

“It’s not like we’re just making stuff up off the top of our heads. There’s a methodology. It’s like math; it has formulas and you have to know how to apply them. You wouldn’t call yourself a mathematician would you?”

“Well, I don’t like math that much.”

“Not really the point.”

I decided to mirror Karen for a while. I shared my ideas about manifest philosophies.

I think most people are inconsistent in their behavior. They make decisions based on emotion, usually out of selfishness, and later justify it with a philosophy. Citing John Stuart Mill they’ll say, I did it because it was for the Greater Good.

In other cases, when the net outcome is negative they’ll insist they acted out of principle because, according to Immanuel Kant, we should always do what’s right regardless of the social cost.

She took that in for a minute.

Here’s where it gets weird

“You know,” she said, “There’s a philosophy—a branch of philosophy—that studies snap decisions. When we don’t have time to think the proposition through systematically, we just use the first answer that occurs to us. It’s a legitimate way of going through life.”

What if you contradict yourself later? I asked. Don’t you need to be consistent?

“Well, the world is ever changing. Why would our philosophy be static? We’re denying the dynamic nature of our lives.”

Wow! This chick was way out there.

“Hey,” she said, “it’s getting late. I better head back to my hotel. Full day tomorrow.” Then she turned to me, “Are you headed that way?”

I shrugged. “No, not really. Sorry.”

She seemed a little disappointed.

Really it was me who should have been disappointed though. Now I was left alone with Michael.

We both looked at the water. And the birds. And the sunset. "So, what brought you here?" he said.