Archives for March 2014

We’ll admit it: We got a little verklempt when we watched the (now viral) video of Stanford physicist Andrei Linde get word of a major confirmation of his Big Bang research. Imagine working on a theory back in the 1980s, never expecting to live long enough to receive validation of your idea, only to have it knock on your front door. In shock, Linde asked his colleague delivering the news to repeat it (twice) and still, like a good scientist, only allows himself the barest of hope that the results could be real. After all, that’s what we want in a physicist: A daring combination of dreamer and skeptic, searching for evidence until the very end, more interested in adding knowledge to man’s understanding of the universe than in proving himself right. Guys like Linde spend their lives striving to contribute a tiny drop of truth to what they know will require oceans of effort over hundreds of millions of years (assuming humans are around that long).

That’s one helluva long game. And it got us thinking: What do we hope to add to that ocean? True, not everyone can (or should) be theoretical physicists. We’re not all going to unlock major secrets of time and space. But each of us is here for only so long, and each of us has a unique set of experiences and talents that, when combined, produce insights. At least, they can produce insights when people carve out enough time to read, reflect and just… be. Some of those insights might lead to a new level of achievement at work. Others might lead to a work of art. Still more might lead to a breakthrough in terms of understanding and supporting a loved one — or even understanding and accepting ourselves.

Regardless of what your personal insights produce, they’re not going to happen by themselves. They require intentional investment of time and energy over months and years. But time is a luxury that so few of us have anymore. Today’s culture of immediacy rewards action rather than reflection, breadth over depth and speed above all else. The dominance of emails, texts, blogs and social media as our preferred forms of communication prove that we’ve become all about the short game. Naturally, insight-building time gets pushed aside unless insulated from such attacks.

So each of us has a choice: How do we want to spend our lives? If you’re interested in adding your own tiny drop of truth to the ocean of existence, it’s time to take stock of how you currently spend your time and delegate the distractions. And if you’re in charge of your company’s marketing or public relations, a great place to start is to hire someone else to deal with your social media management and blogging. Why? Because very few tweets will go down in history. Cute though they are, emoji-filled Facebook comments can’t advance our knowledge of humanity. We’re even willing to bet that no LOL cat meme will ever be pointed to as the turning point in a political revolution. In other words, don’t you have better things to do with your time?

We don’t know much about the Big Bang or about the intentions, if any, of a creator-type figure or force in our universe. But we do know that a life lived with intent is crucial to developing life’s long game. And we do this stuff for a living — not just so that you don’t have to, but because it’s where our unique blend of talents and experiences led us (sigh). We like doing it, and it shows in our timeliness, our spot-on copy and our creative tie-ins — all things atypical of social media and blogs run by people who would rather be doing something else.

So when you’re ready to leave the social stuff to us and start working toward your own insights, call us. We’ll jump right in and inform your audience about your products or services (with or without LOL cats per your needs) and leave the big thinking to you.