Is the Internet making us stupid?

This is the question Michael Brown asks in his recent article about Nicholas Carr’s new book, The Shallows.

My take:

The Internet (and the portability of technology in general) is making us more distracted than ever. When it’s harder to focus, your ability to maintain a single line of thought is extremely inhibited, if not impossible.

One distraction leads to another. Interruptions pile on. Next thing you know, you can’t remember what you set out to accomplish in the first place.

So is the Internet to blame? Yes and no.

The Internet itself isn’t necessarily the problem — it’s the lack of boundaries. Without boundaries, there’s very little to control our behavior.

Therefore, I would argue that the heavy, undisciplined use of the Internet (and cell phones, iPads, etc.) is indeed making us stupid.

Want to kick your IQ up a few points? It’s simple, really.

Just turn off all your electronic devices that could distract you and focus on a single task for an hour or two straight. I dare you.

-Ryan M. Healy

In the middle of a big project right now, hence my lack of blogging lately.

But I thought I’d share one little tip with you that I’ve recently discovered.

If you’re working with a client or partner on a project, and you want to strengthen a subject line or email or headline or whatever — Skype can be a great way to do it.

Just hop on the instant chat and bat around your ideas.

For me, I’ve found it really enjoyable — contagious even — to collaborate in this way. You generate a bunch of ideas in a short amount of time, eventually zeroing in on the best one.

Next time you’re trying to hammer out some copy with a partner or client, log on to Skype (or any instant chat program) and see what happens.

-Ryan M. Healy

If you’ve studied business models, you’re probably familiar with the strategy of planned obsolescence.

It’s a strategy where you plan for products that you release today to automatically become outdated a few years down the road.

Planned obsolescence is how the software industry works. Every few years, software programs (and operating systems) get a face lift. Eventually, old versions of the software are no longer supported, which forces people to upgrade.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Without planned obsolescence, I’d probably be stuck in the computing stone age. Plus, planned obsolescence forces innovation — which can be a very positive force.

Here’s an exercise worth doing:

Plan Your Own Obsolescence

Imagine that whatever you do today to generate money is no longer a viable option one year from now. What would you do to replace your income?

At any given time, and in any given industry, there are trends away from certain things and toward other things.

If your income is generated from an activity, product, or service that is in a downtrend, then you really need to be planning for your own obsolescence. Because it will happen whether you’re prepared or not.

Consider:

• The automobile brought about the demise of the railroad barons.
• The invention of fuel injection put carburetor mechanics out of work.
• Online journalism is putting traditional journalists out of work — and killing newspapers by the dozen.

And these are just a handful of obvious examples. There are thousands of subtle trends that are always shifting power (and money) from one area to another. Few people detect these trends until it’s too late.

Keep Your Eyes Open and Your Ear to the Ground

Always be watching the changes happening in your industry and in your area of expertise — both the big changes and the small ones. Sometimes small changes become big quickly (because of new legislation, policy changes, tipping points, etc.).

But most of all, plan for your own obsolescence. How can you maintain (or grow) your business if you’re forced to do something completely different than you’re doing today?

Even better, how can you maintain (or grow) your business without being directly involved in the day-to-day operations?

These are good questions to consider, especially in a day and age when there is so much change and uncertainty.

Here’s your assignment: Start planning for your own obsolescence. Begin making strategic changes now, while you have time and flexibility, instead of later, when you’ll be racing against the clock.

-Ryan M. Healy

It’s not how much you write, but how much your writing matters.

Sometimes I get jealous when I see that somebody’s written 5,000 words in a day (or whatever the case may be). I think: “Man, I wish I could write that much in a day!”

And yet: Of the writing of books there is no end. (Ecc. 12:12)

The real question is not: How much are you writing?

It’s: Does your writing matter?

Wayne Buckhanan tweets:

Personally, I believe that writing more frequently — rather than writing more words — leads you to the writing that matters.

As in so many things, consistency is key.

-Ryan M. Healy

Creativity is vital for any idea worker. But it’s easy to let creativity die.

We get stuck reading the same things, thinking the same things, doing the same things in the same ways we’ve always done them.

Doesn’t matter where you live. A guy in New York can watch the same TV programming in San Francisco. A guy in Fargo, North Dakota can eat the same exact fast food as a guy in Houston, Texas.

Franchise businesses have painted the commercial landscape with a uniform color.

And take a look at the suburbs these days. It’s not much different. Nearly every house blends in in a sea of sameness.

It’s no wonder we have such a hard time being creative.

Copying Instead of Innovating

Here’s another problem:

Creativity often leads to valuable breakthroughs — then idea pirates copy those breakthroughs within days, weeks, or months. This can be very discouraging for the pioneer of ideas.

Not only that, when copying is rampant, it discourages creativity and only encourages more copying. Next thing you know, you’ve got copies of copies of copies.

A flaw in the first copy gets amplified in every successive generation. It’s devolution. For some reason, this process seems to happen faster than normal on the Internet.

Pioneers vs. Pirates

As an entrepreneur, business owner, or service provider, you have a choice. You can be a pioneer or you can be a pirate.

And although Hollywood has romanticized the idea of being a pirate (thank you Johnny Depp!), I believe the better choice is to be a pioneer.

Yes, I know: The pioneer is the guy with the arrows in his back. But making creative mistakes is not lethal. Just because one new idea fails doesn’t mean the next one will fail too.

Creativity takes work. It takes effort. It takes time.

How to Be Creative

Creativity (and its byproduct, originality) can only flourish when you are reading, thinking, and acting differently than you and other people normally do.

Creative action leads to creative thought.

This why it helps to get out of your routine every now and then.

Drive a different way. Do things in reverse. Read books outside of what you’d normally read.

Investigate a new hobby. Go somewhere you’ve never gone. Do something you’ve never done.

By breaking your routine and doing things that may even be uncomfortable for you, you’ll cause your brain to think in new ways. You’ll have new thoughts.

And perhaps you can incorporate some of those new thoughts and ideas into your own business. Perhaps you’ll have a breakthrough.

-Ryan M. Healy

If you take the time to look, you’ll discover you already have a number of untapped resources that could be put to work to grow your business immediately.

Unfortunately, most of us get caught up chasing shiny new courses — when the course that’s sitting on our shelf is probably just as valuable.

What assets do you already have that could be leveraged into something more than what it currently is?

Here’s an example to illustrate. Over the last few months, I’ve been getting a steady stream of traffic for the search phrase “interview questions for copywriters.”

But the article that is ranked in Google is my interview with Stephen Dean, so for a couple months I considered writing a new post that would be a better fit for the search phrase.

Finally, I did. And I published that new article as a page here on this blog. You can read the article for yourself: Interview Questions for Copywriters to Ask Their Clients

I then went back to my interview with Stephen Dean and put a blurb at the top to direct traffic to the new page. The result?

Now Google has BOTH pages ranked for the same search phrase. Take a look…

The new article may not displace the original article that got ranked — but a double listing in Google never hurts. And now, I’m noticing even more traffic from the search phrase.

This is just one unique example of an untapped resource in my business. (In this case the resource was “SEO traffic intelligence,” and it was being underutilized.)

How about you? What’s not being fully utilized in your business?

Figure it out and get busy. It won’t cost you anything but a little sweat equity.

-Ryan M. Healy

Why is it that more often than not an artist’s freshman effort outshines his sophomore effort?

And why is “beginner’s luck” so prevalent in just about every field of creativity?

These are questions I’ve been thinking about lately. And just so we’re tracking, let me share an example with you.

Back in 1995, Jars of Clay released their first album. It did phenomenally well. To this day, there are many folks who own that first album, but none of the follow-ups.

Since 1995, Jars has made great music, but (in my opinion) it took them a few years and three albums to come close to topping the beauty and cohesiveness of that first album. And it took them a few albums more (and a total of 14 years) before they released an album that I would consider better than that first album.

So — why did it it take so long to best that initial achievement?

Well, I have a theory about that.

When we’re starting something new — something that requires creative effort — we are moved by inspiration. There is some inciting moment or force that propels us to create.

This inspiration is where “beginner’s luck” comes from. You might think of inspired creativity as the romance of the honeymoon. It feels good, exciting, effortless.

Then, after inspiration has given birth, reality sets in. The moment has passed. Now it’s time to dig in and work.

And it’s during this second phase where so many people fall down. They get so used to the inspiration, they aren’t prepared for exerting themselves without the training wheels of inspiration.

This can lead to a string of mediocre creativity, a feeling of burn-out, and the nagging thought that “Maybe I’m not cut out for this after all.”

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way, especially if you’re prepared. Here are three ways you can move beyond inspiration and continue to tap into the wells of creativity inside you.

1. Create — even when you don’t feel like creating.

Dan Kennedy gets up early every day and has a dedicated writing time. By having this routine built into his schedule, his brain looks forward to that time. There is an expectancy that creativity will happen.

In my reading, I discovered that Dan credits this one habit with much of his success in the copywriting field. He gets up every day and writes, no matter if he feels like it or not. In a very real way, he schedules his creativity.

2. Be inspired by others in your field.

For many people starting out, it’s a dream that inspires you. The idea of achieving wealth and fame as a rock star, a novelist, a painter, a direct mail copywriter.

But this is not the only way to be inspired.

You can also be inspired by other people in your field. More specifically, you can be inspired by their work. Have you ever read the liner notes of music albums? Often the band credits various groups and musicians for how they’ve influenced (inspired) the band’s own direction.

So here’s a suggestion: Study the work of peers you admire. Be inspired by it. Model them when you’re lacking direction or drive. I think you’ll find it easier than you thought to “refill” your creative tank.

3. Master the art of synthesis.

Synthesis is the process of forming new ideas out of old ones. Roger von Oech shares a great example in his book A Whack on the Side of the Head.

What Gutenberg did was to combine two previously unconnected ideas: the wine press and the coin punch. The purpose of the coin punch was to leave an image on a small area such as a gold coin. The function of the wine press was to apply force over a large area to squeeze the juice out of grapes. One day, Gutenberg, perhaps after he’d drunk a goblet or two of wine, asked himself, “What if I took a bunch of these coin punches and put them under the force of the wine press so that they left their image on paper?” The resulting combination was the printing press and movable type. (pp. 5-6)

So arguably the single greatest invention in the last 600 years came from synthesizing two ideas into a new idea. That’s the power of synthesis.

One easy way to become better at synthesizing ideas is to get outside of your field.

If you’re a retailer, for instance, don’t just study other retailers. Go study manufacturing businesses, or service businesses, or advertising businesses. Take the ideas you find there and see how you might be able to apply them in your own business.

This is how innovation happens.

Unfortunately, it’s too easy to get “land locked” in your own industry. And when that happens, you wind up with “idea incest” — everybody recycling the same ideas over and over again.

Don’t let that happen to you. Get out of your bubble and see what other people are doing. You never know when you’ll be re-inspired by some random observation — and be able to easily best your freshman efforts.

-Ryan M. Healy