DISQUS

Woo-hoo! and Hooray!

Glad you were part of this, and relieved that this part of the process is over. But you're absolutely right -- it's really only *beginning* now.

Here's to your continued fulfillment and success with whatever comes next for you.

An interesting take. I don't have any tattoos, either, and I don't have any plans to change that.
However, I'd offer this as food for thought: Leviticus 19 also includes injunctions to be honest, to use honest weights, to treat the blind and deaf fairly, to treat the aged with respect, and other things that we would all acknowledge as being just as necessary today as they were the day they were written down.
But *some* of Leviticus 19 seems to address the Israelites of Moses's time, rather than all righteous people over the whole span of time. E.g. "When you sacrifice a fellowship offering..." (v. 5), "Do not mate different kinds of animals" (v. 19 - what does that say about mules?), and "Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material" (v. 19).
Consider the immediate context of v. 28:
27 " 'Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.
28 " 'Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.
29 " 'Do not degrade your daughter by making her a prostitute, or the land will turn to prostitution and be filled with wickedness.
I think that most of us would agree that v. 29 is totally valid today, but that v. 27 doesn't apply to modern Christians. Whether v. 28 should be regarded like v. 29 or v. 27 . . . well, it's not for me to say. But I think it's worth pondering.

This is excellent. It's sooooo easy to focus on the things that aren't working, when in fact so many things in life ARE working.

Me: At the micro level, I'm grateful for a fun & mind-expanding SXSW, and then for a fun & mind-expanding history conference in Boise. I'm spoiled for choice for next neat things to work on, which is a real luxury.

Love the fanboy comment. Yesterday I tweeted something giddy about seeing Laura Fitton and Stowe Boyd chit-chatting 10 feet away from me at a tweetup. I mean, those are a couple of smart, nifty folks, but they're not rock stars to the world at large. But I like it that we can have this kind of effect on people who are in our own niche -- and yes, SXSW is the apotheosis of this phenomenon.

Woo-hoo! We'll be ready to welcome you back!

Thanks . . . I think. I'll be blogging about this. As the father of a 9-year-old, I'm . . . I'm . . . Well, I'm nearly speechless, but overall I think I'm just appalled.

Woo-hoo!! Congratulations!

Well, *my* votes are in. Don't know how you like your barbecue, but if you want some of the non-touristy real deal when you get down here, let me know . . .

Hey, I get to be the first to comment on this! I mean, that's gotta be worth something right?

Seriously: P.r. folk -- and their companies, more generally, are left to cry "We're first!" when they know that they can't realistically say "We're best!" or "We're awesome!" What do people say about the best, whether it's Tiger Woods or the best place in your town to get a hamburger? They say, "Oh, the best one is . . ."

Life's a lot harder for p.r./marketers/everybody when you're not doing something extraordinary, and no amount of clamoring will change that. (Wait, I feel like I'm channelling Seth Godin now . . .)

More public mocking!

Seriously, their marginal cost for sending bad pitches must be very low, right? So at little cost, they have the carrot of imagining that one of their pitches will maybe-someday-possibly-somewhere hit the jackpot. To counter this, perhaps it's time for you and your p.r. guildmates to introduce the stick: repeated, inescapable public humiliation.

Yes? (Please?)

Great choices, Tim. I've always liked Paulaner (their hefeweissen is very good too) and Tanzanian Peaberry, and recently my wife picked up some vinho verde, which we loved. And I still remember drinking green tea heated to about two million degrees in a Guangzhou teahouse - we had just driven through tea fields that day. Good times, good sipping.

From Franklin's Autobiography:

"Our city, tho' laid out with a beautiful regularity, the streets large, strait, and crossing each other at right angles, had the disgrace of suffering those streets to remain long unpav'd, and in wet weather the wheels of heavy carriages plough'd them into a quagmire, so that it was difficult to cross them; and in dry weather the dust was offensive. I had liv'd near what was call'd the Jersey Market, and saw with pain the inhabitants wading in mud while purchasing their provisions. A strip of ground down the middle of that market was at length pav'd with brick, so that, being once in the market, they had firm footing, but were often over shoes in dirt to get there. By talking and writing on the subject, I was at length instrumental in getting the street pav'd with stone between the market and the brick'd foot-pavement, that was on each side next the houses."

He was a community blogger, 250 years ahead of time! :)

Overwhelmed . . . by the cuteness . . .

From one happy father to another -- a belated happy Father's Day.

Good stuff, Tim. Like the previous poster, I think the big this is the structural question: "Could I live without this?" The reality -- which you've so aptly described in your book -- is that *most* of what we read and *most* of the e-mail we send/receive and *most* of the conversations we have from day to day (. . . et cetera) are fungible. If it's fungible, try doing without it altogether.

Just to throw a wrench in the works: you can even do without e-mail, if you have some other key replacement for communications. Example: Hank Paulson has never used e-mail in his life, but when he was running Goldman he would sometimes make 400 calls in a day, many of them to the v.m. boxes of Goldman staff. They knew how to reach him, he knew how to reach them (or just leave a message without talking to them), and lots of stuff got DONE.

We proceed with our cast-iron assumptions until something comes along that shakes them up. More power to you as you *keep* shaking up our assumptions.

Great interview, Tim. My favorite line to take away from this one:

"You need to make unproductive things inconvenient for you to do."

All too true . . .

Good luck!

Good interview, Tim. I met Robert at SXSWi this year (but I was trapped at work when you were making your presentation - Aargh!) and found him to be just as nice as you say. For a while I resisted subscribing to his Google Reader links postings, but now I find that scanning them is a great way for me to sail through a lot of interesting/job-related tech stuff that I might miss otherwise.

Also, I like how you make the point that, for Robert, a constant high dose of information is what juices him up. For me, one of the takeaways from your book is that each of us should *reflect* on our own *appropriate* levels of work, information, etc. For folks wired like Robert, those levels may be high; for many of us, they'll be much lower. But there's no single definition that works for everybody - we each have to find it for ourselves.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

Ah . . . sweet reason!

On the one hand, there are mad Interweb skillz to hone -- which kids (or potentially anybody) will do on their own if they have the inkling. On the other hand, there are the timeless, "deep" skills . . .

Listening
Treating others humanely
Stopping to think
Being willing to imagine wildly
Asking questions, finding out more, and then asking more and better questions.

Et cetera. When I'm at my best, my own focus with my kids is on these long-duration skills. I figure they'll learn their tech (etc.) chops on the fly, based on whatever the current need is.

I hardly need to tell you that working from home is a *huge* benefit in exposing your children to your own ways of using deep, long-run human skills.

Good for you! When you get up a head of steam (as you obviously have) you can ditch the old shortage thinking in favor of both/and thinking. Since I'm a baseball fan, I compare it to the classic dichotomy between glovemen and hitters at a given position. And yeah, sometimes you have to settle for one or the other with your projects/jobs/career/etc. But now you're in a position to insist on "Willie Mays projects" -- hitting *and* defense, something that excites you *and* fits with what you're doing *and* pays you well.

Keep on rockin' . . .

I lived in Tennessee and Alabama when I was a kid, and we took lots of camping vacations in the Blue Ridge. Try out the diner on the Blue Ridge Parkway that's near the Crabtree Meadows campground. A while back I posted more info on Crabtree Meadows in a blog entry:

http://tewalkerjr.com/blog/?p=135

Enjoy your trip!

I'll be at SXSW, which is easy since I live in Austin. Maybe you can talk to me for free in the lobby? ;)

Your choices are your own, Robert, and I'd be glad to pay or not pay to see you speak. *But*, could you collect a fee (let's throw out a sum: $7,500), and then *also* talk to me in the lobby for free? Some of the best speakers I've ever seen have worked in this vein: they sang for their supper in a compelling way, but then they were also open to side conversations, follow-ups, and so on.

Also, if you like feeling guilty for telling people you just don't have time to speak at their event, go ahead. But there's no need to. And there is a certain virtue in charging a fee to separate the people who'd *like* for you to speak to them ("Yeah, sure if we could get Scoble, that would be cool") versus those who *yearn* for you to speak to them ("What, just $7,500? That's a bargain!"). It's a way of policing your time, which you could also be using to shoot videos, blog, enjoy your family, hike in the woods, or what have you. And if you want to mix in some speeches pro bono - or, on the other hand, bill organizers for business-class seats so you can get better *rest* en route to their conference - that's fine, too.

One small thing that helps: LOTS of icewater. Four quick reasons: (1) If you normally drink soda (even diet), the icewater helps get you UNaccustomed to so much sweetness throughout the day. (2) Ample hydration abets any fitness program. (3) More water tends to suppress appetite somewhat. (4) Icewater actually costs you a few calories to drink as your body invests energy in bringing c. 35-degree water up to your body temperature. It's a small thing, but one that you can do all day, every day.