Suzan Bond

Love is a mysterious thing. Some of us profess to understand it–um, not me–but most of us don't. Even science doesn't fully understand how love works. If you're not a romantic or in a relationship, you may say that don't care about Valentine's Day. That may be true but I bet you'll think of love–your current one, or maybe a lost love or how to get more love–at least once today.

Given my dating history I may not be an expert at love but I do know how to find people who have a few intelligent thoughts about it. Let's listen in for a bit of a lesson on how the heart–and the brain–on love really work.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

It's that time of year. Yep. New Year's Resolution time.

If you're anything like me let me tell you what's going to happen. Feeling fat and loathsome after a long holiday of eating, being sedentary, spending too much and not doing much you…

Step 1: Make a whole bunch of resolutions that are largely unachievable.

Step 2: Break all of them within a month.

Step 3: Feel like crap about yourself so go back to eating, being sedentary, spending too much and not doing much.

Step 4: Feel guilty. Berate yourself.

Step 5: Go back to Step 1. And repeat.

Don't do this. Now, let me offer you something that really works. Something I also do randomly all year-round is to ask myself a very simple question.

Is my life better or worse than a year ago?

It started as a random wandering of my brain many years ago and has evolved into a practice. This barometer check allows me to quickly break things down in a very black and white way so that I can assess and take action. It's like my very own Timehop but with action.

I did it reflexively today. My mind wandered back to what I was doing a year ago today. At that time I was in an unhappy relationship. I didn't know what I wanted to do next. Trust in myself. Pretty close to negligible. This year? I'm happily single, I'm doing work I love and I trust myself to make decisions that put myself first. Also? I trust that everything I need will come to me.

Like my assessment today the answer is generally yes. On the rare occasion I can't honestly answer in the affirmative it means it's time for a reinvention, refocus or double down.

So…Is your life better or worse than a year ago?

I had FOUR (count 'em) Thanksgivings yesterday. Well, I was invited to Four. I actually only made it to two. Now I know that's only 50% but still–it's probably more than you made it to–am I right? [Smiles smugly]

My second Thanksgiving was with my friends Sarah Welch, Ef Rodriguez, Jeremy Tanner and their lovely other halfs. The reason I never made it to the last two was this little game called Mad Gab. There are all sorts of rules that I'm pretty sure I don't remember so let me just tell you the essence of the game. The goal is decipher a bunch of words into a real phrase. Here's an example:
Puzzle: Plea Center Europe As Ward

Answer: Please Enter Your Password

There's a coach who assists while the rest of the team guesses. The coach's job is to help you get closer to the solution without actually seeing what the rest of the team was seeing. We quickly discovered that reading the phrase over and over again while looking at it got in the way. Even though the guessers knew it wasn't right their brains struggled to see something different. As the coach it was interesting to hear people practically saying the phrase without knowing how close they were to getting it right. As usual, I see parallels to life. What can I say–I'm an observer of life and once a coach always a coach.

As the person looking for the right answer it's sometimes hard to see that you're thisclose. It's easy to feel as if you're lost in an answerless desert. All you can see is what's right in front of you. In the beginning and even in the middle of all that guessing the answer can appear to you as clear as mud covered glass block. And, make you feel like you have swim across the Indian Ocean to get to the answer. Um, that's not fun.

Getting Out of the Indian Ocean

Back to my Mad Gab experience. We won the first game by luck. And lost the second by not paying attention to the rules and won the third by developing a strategy. Our winning strategy was essentially a good old tag team effort. When one person said the phrase while the others listened (without looking at the card) they were more easily able to get it. They were close enough but not too close.

3 Ways to Find The Answers To Your Biggest Questions
When we're too close to the answer here are a few strategies to get around solution block to solve your problem.

1. Take a walk on the beach. Walk away from it for a while. This may give you perspective so that answer becomes more readily apparent.

2. Assume that you're closer to the answer than you think. Rather than believing that you're a mile away from a solution assume that it's mere centimeters away. Then just make tweaks to the solution rather than overhauling it completely.

3. Find a neutral person to talk to. Spill the puzzle as you see it while they listen. Their job is to tell you what they're hearing. Not what they want you to do but what they actually hear you saying. Often times they can hear what you're saying and articulate it back to you so you can actually hear it.

No more feeling like you have to swim across a large body of water for answers. Time to wring out that bathing suit.

Just for fun let's end this lil post with some of the best quotes from last night:

– Which way to Heaven? [My guess. It wasn't right but I swear one day this phrase will be a part of urban dictionary.]

– Say it with an accent. [This actually helped the team guess the right answer  (Panama Canal) very quickly.]

– Although it wasn't a quote one of my favorite puzzles had Chewbacca in it. The answer was The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Combining Star Wars with a Victor Hugo novel? Genius.

Over an excellent coin style marg (where all the best conversations happen) a friend made a proclamation. We're diametrically opposed he said. The  biggest differences between us is that he is (and will always be) a glass is half empty kind of person whereas I decidedly am not. And, he announced that his half empty view of the world wasn't going to change.

He was right about my propensity for looking at the bright side of life. I also think he was pointing at a belief that…

We are who we are.

While we can tweak some things, on the whole we're going to stick true to our predispositions. In the past I've wailed and gnashed against my natural predilections. Sometimes I even saw them as a curse rather than a blessing. They had to be changeable. But my views changed as I was largely unsuccessful in changing my natural ways of being. These days I think having a stable predisposition from which we're not likely to deviate from is largely true.

Sure, I can start waking up earlier in the morning but I'm always going to be a whirling dervish  at midnight like the true night owl I am. Another example are my math and accounting abilities. Um, I don't have any. I pretty much made it through high school math by flirting with the smart, cute math geek who sat in front of me. With my inherent communication and persuasion talents you're far more likely to hire me as your CMO  than as your CFO.

Where you stand on this?

Are we the way we are or do you think the Tiger can change his stripes to spots?

Or can he just make his stripes appear a different color?

I'm generally a pretty organized person. A place for everything and everything in its place definitely describes my philosophy. Organized by sleeve length and then by color my closet looks like the stores I used to work in back in my retail days. And I de-clutter on a regular basis in part because organizing relaxes me.

My life was pretty simple but I longed for even more. It lead me to Leo Babauta's new book, The Power of Less. He advocates that you start to simplify one habit at a time.  I've already been doing many of the things on his list except for one glaring omission.

Process your inbox to zero.

This is a tough one for this never-want-to-miss-anything, information sponge connector. It's left me constantly fighting with my inbox. I selected it because it's the #1 tangible thing I complain about most and because it would have a BIG impact in simplifying my life. So I decided to take his 30 Day Power of Less Challenge which means I agreed to Process my inbox to zero daily. Yep, as in everyday.

I am gonna own you inbox!

I've done a few things already to help me win this battle.

• Unnecessary email subscriptions about the latest sales, etc. have been canceled.
• Using HighRise and BaseCamp on a couple of projects so that's definitely helping to keep my to dos and tasks in one place.
• Serendipitously this post from Amber Naslund arrived in my inbox this morning. (It been read AND filed). She uses Gmail features extensively and it's something I'll check out.

How do you quickly and effectively manage YOUR inbox?

I leave for my first SXSW Interactive experience on Friday. I've been madly RSVPing, organizing and making sure I have everything covered and planned. Then my dear friend and veteran SXSWer Tara pointed out what's obvious in hindsight.

You can't plan.

You can't see everything and meet every person there.

It's impossible.

Give it up sister.
 
This woman is seriously wise. It reminded me of a lesson I learned while in Marrakech.

You can't control chaos. The Medina where all the souks (shops) are located is a confusing mess of zig zag, crooked streets. A map is useless. I gave mine up on my first afternoon allowing myself to be thrust into the chaos, trusting that I'd get where I needed to go–wherever that was. I let go of control and let the Moroccan culture reveal what it wanted to me. One of these revelations was a young artist named Benjou who I spent several afternoons with learning Arabic and him practicing his English while sipping mint tea. One of my best memories ever on a trip, it wouldn't have happened with a map stuck in my face.

I try to remember this every time I try to over-plan, over-control, over anything in my world. As I embark on my first SXSW adventure here's what I'm keeping in mind.

There is chaos.

I just have to trust it and…
 
Enjoy the ride.

That's my mantra for chaos that is a major event like SXSW. How do YOU handle uncontrollably chaotic situations where "maps" don't work?

54 intense, action packed hours to create a startup…

from pretty much nothing.

Oh yeah. There are going to be plenty of goofy and even wacky moments. I captured a few of those moments during the latest rendition of Startup Weekend in Boulder and here are some of my favorites. Two of my favorite moments couldn't have been depicted by photos so I'll use their best medium: words.

1st: Eric Marcoullier (OneTrueFan) gave advice that had something to do with having more founders making a better marriage except it's legal–kinda like in Utah. I'm not sure if I got the essence of that message but any time you make a comparison between startups and bigamy I'm going to laugh.

2nd: Micah Baldwin (Graphic.ly) ended his round of advice with a bunch of random swear words to make Eric (a liberal swearer from what I understand) more comfortable. And these both were from the first few moments of the event on Friday night.

The rest of the weekend did not disappoint. Here are some of the best visual moments I was able to capture from the weekend. And if you don't find them funny well–I guess you had to be there to truly appreciate them.

The first was from a round of the classic rock, paper, scissors for a highly coveted Startup Weekend jacket. This the final round. The guy in the gray won. It's a pretty darn cool jacket. I almost sidled up to the winner with a "How you doin'?" just to get the chance to wear it. But…I think he's married so, not cool.

The few moments are from that evening. The guy in this photo pitched an idea about crowd sourcing something or other political. The bib was pretty priceless as well as patriotic.

There are all sorts of fun cut-outs around the TechStars bunker. My favorites are Chewbaca (who doesn't love some Chewie?) and the one of Co-organizer Jon Rossi with his new girlfriend. I guess he likes a woman who can kick ass while wearing leather and really, who doesn't? I wouldn't mind being that woman.

During the event I took a bunch of random photos including teams working. When I stopped by the ID Weeds team they immediately struck this pose. It's fitting for their startup (a medical marijuana inventory system). And? Still funny since it's not something I see much in the business world I inhabit.

Apparently, you can buy a BMW during Startup Weekend. And there's even a discount on the price as a participant. Since I wasn't one I wouldn't have gotten the discount but if I had…

I might be rolling around in style today.

And finally, there's always a clean-up crew at events right? Well at Startup Weekend Boulder the organizers mean it when they say that no job is too small at a startup. Here are co-organizers Jon Rossi and Dave Mayer as they clean up while I sit watching them and take pictures of them hard at work.

That's all for this edition of Startup Weekend Boulder. Now go forth and startup!

My dad (the one wearing the pocket protector) was a design engineer who developed prototypes for GM back in the day. Being an engineer he liked to break things down into nice tidy aphorisms that made things black & white. My favorite is one he used often.

It's simple but highly effective.

Whenever I have a decision I feel confused about or that am going back and forth on I invoke it. It helps me move past the "sunk cost" rationalizations or anything else that might confuse me as to whether it was a good decision or not. Here's the secret.

Good decisions get better.

Bad decisions get worse.

I woke the other morning to battle lines being erected on Twitter. It was this infographic that caused it all. In a nutshell–it’s supposed to help you figure out which type of female tech influencer you are. I’m not sure if the intent was to be humorous, sarcastic, entertaining or what. Whatever the intention there were people strongly on either side of it. Some hated it while some thought it was fun and tweeted which “type” they were. As for me, I thought it was a bit reductionist, not extremely telling, fun and certainly nothing to take seriously. There are way to many other things to think and talk about.

It did make me think though about attention and ways to get it. This controversial (or fun depending on your perspective) infographic made lots of waves garnering oodles of attention for the author. We all know the old adage about kids trying to get attention in any way they can be it positive–or negative. And often times negative attention gets more play according to anecdotal and research-based evidence. What do you think?

Is negative attention really better than none at all?

Have you ever been “guilty” of taking the negative approach yourself?

Resolutions became extinct for me a number of years ago. I got tired of laying out sky high goals in a NYE champagne induced fever. That never worked out. Shocked right? Instead I started doing a Theme for the year. This set my intention and focused me without setting unattainable resolutions that only served to make me feel worse about myself when I didn’t reach them.

Please understand. I’m not criticizing you if you make resolutions. I know they work for some people. It’s just that through my work as an Org/Biz Strategist and Executive Coach I’ve spent a lot of time helping people create intentions and set goals. I’ve watched lots (I mean crowds) of people fail at this. In order to reach your goals you need to follow the SMART rule: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-boxed. This is when resolutions are most effective. But what if you want to create a more encompassing transformation? This is where setting a Theme (or Word) for the year works far better.

How does setting a Theme work?

I think back about the previous year–what I’ve transformed and what I’m still longing for. I then come up with a few words that articulate the transformation I’m looking for in the coming year. Usually I start with a couple and then one emerges as the clear winner. Let me give you some examples to illustrate this a bit better. Here are a few of the words I chose for the past year.

2005: Money (self-explanatory)

2oo6: Grown-up (also pretty explanatory)

2007: Love (self and otherwise)

2008: Focus (how I used my energy, thoughts & time)

2009: Freedom

2010: Align

Photo Note: The sign in the photo was made by a dear friend who wanted to give me a reminder of my align theme last year. I highly recommend reminders of the visual and other sort.

Doing a Theme for the year has allowed me to create amazing experiences and growth. When I look back at each year I am amazing and all the transformation. It feels good.

Repeat after me. Themes, not Resolutions. Ready, Set…Transform!