1 reason why making things for everyone is a good idea and 13 reasons why it’s terrible

Saying you’re making things for everyone - it sounds great. Most people will agree it’s a great story to tell… and to hear.

Here’s why it’s a terrible idea:

1) Everyone is no one in particular

2) Average as a proxy for everyone does not describe any person’s real life experience: living on a dollar a day and living on a 1000 dollars a day is not… living on 500 dollars a day on average; it’s totally different

3) My everyone, your everyone and someone else’s everyone are really not the same thing

4) Everyone is a collection of many, many, many, many different someones you can’t please at the same time

5) Everyone is different. Which means we need to create… different things, not one thing, because people want different things, not one thing

6) Everyone means we are not excluding anything, but we’re not really clear what we want either

7) Everyone means we are afraid to choose to make something really outstanding

8) Everyone means we are forcing something on a lot of people that might not really need it or want it

9) Isn’t making something for everyone putting too much unnecessary pressure on us, adding complexity we can’t reasonably solve?

10) Being something for everyone is always less powerful than being everything to SOMEONE

11) Our “everyone” might a very big number, but if we scratch beneath the surface, what does it really mean besides a number to cover our back, a number we use to create the impression that we’re doing something big?

12) Everyone is a fake safe option, there’s nothing in the world that is for everyone

13) The only things everyone NEEDS are water, food, shelter and love. Even these things we might want in different ways, not only one. So even with that, people WANT different things, not one thing. Something… like this and not like that.

So if we want to make something meaningful, that solves and adds value to someone’s life, if we really care, we make it… FOR THEM, for their needs, wants and fears. Maybe they are just like us in a way and that’s our starting point - instead of an average of an average or a number.

Know that what we make cannot and should not be for everyone and that’s ok. It’s for the best. I promise. So choose someone in particular… It’s your move.

It’s much harder to start than to stop

So how can you use this?

It’s really never going to be a perfect time for your dream. But right now is a good moment as ever to start making steps towards it.

Or… You’ve got momentum. Have you heard the universe is continuously expanding? The same is true for possibility. Keep grabbing it, chew on it as much as you can and make it your fuel to keep going.

The stories we tell to ourselves

It might be one of the strongest predictors for our capacity to leave a mark on the world. But how often do we challenge the stories we tell ourselves and test if they’re helping us? How often is it “I’m not good enough” or “if only I had this…”? How often do we consider if it’s a story that is holding us back or something that allows us leap into the realm of possibility?

Neil Gaiman has a quote I love: “Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all”.

What I love about this quote is that while it acknowledges that stories are just that, stories, challenging our understanding of truth or lies, but more importantly, it shows a very intentional purpose of stories, turning them into a set of deliberate choices towards creating change within and between us.

What if the stories we told ourselves could function the same way? If we were more deliberate, more intentional, would this bring us closer to the change we want to make in the world? What are we bored with? Frustrated with? Curious about? What will we do about it?

What makes a maker

Why does it seem like just a small number people CAN create and most of us just consume? If you’re pondering that question you’re much closer to being a creator than you think. The thing is… this question is loaded with a false assumption: that creativity and the act of creation is limited to a few people and off bounds to everybody else.

A lot of the stories we’re told, especially the success stories, assume a brilliant, genius creator. What they fail to recognize is that we’re all born creators. We just grow out of it. As we grow older, we practice is less and less just as school feeds the ideas of others. And that has some benefits, granted. There’s a revolutionary and evolutionary aspect to consuming knowhow - or art: this is how we can stand on the shoulders of giants, how we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. How knowledge and experience are not lost. And it’s evolutionary because it shows us where the edges of what is known, what is explored are. Where the conventions are.

Now, before writing was invented, everyone was a storyteller. What people might not have realized was that they weren’t only storytellers, they were storymakers as well: as they were passing on their story to their children, grandchildren, they forgot some parts, changed others, choose to say things in a different way, take the story to another place. They were not afraid to create. They we not paralyzed by the fact they didn’t have a perfect story, or have not studied the principles of storytelling. They would just do it. Because creating is… natural. The same is true for us as kids: we take a rock, a bunch of LEGO pieces, a doll, a car and we play with them, make up stories about them, create situations and universes where they live, we make them into more than they are.

Usually, when we first learn how to make something, we copy something we’ve experienced before. Then, as we get more comfortable, as we get more practice, we start seeing nuance and space to be explored. We try to expand. Remake. Remix. Interpret in a different way. Perhaps, our own way. It’s so natural we might not even realize or see it as it happens, just like the storymakers of yesteryear, building on the stories for grandparents.

Then maybe the question we should be asking ourselves is not what makes a maker. Everybody CAN be a maker. Intuitively, we know it takes practice. It takes turning lack of time into making time. That’s not easy so maybe we can look at… why do we make things in the first place? To solve problems? To survive? To show off who we are? To express emotions? To help someone? To build something we’re proud of? To leave a mark? To play? To connect? To impress? To explore? These motivations seem rather universal, not bound to creators, right?

But maybe the difference then between creators and those that only consume is that… they do this… to share something with others. But my assertion is that it does not stop at sharing with others just to share: makers, people like us, create… to make a change within and beyond ourselves. Think about it: from cave paintings, pyramids, mathematics, the theater, sculpture, books, movies, videos, it’s all made up and all created to touch people and make change. The best of these things tingle, tickle and sometimes shock hearts and minds, explore the boundaries of what was possible before and take them further. And you might not realize it but now, more than ever in history, the barrier to creating is lower than ever, whether it is about the knowhow, the communities to help you out, the technical means and tools… All of these things are literally a tap or two away. All of these things, combined with your human experience are the what you can play with to make… something.

With that in mind, knowing we can all create, not just consume, think about this: What is the change you want to make in the world? And go, be a maker. The world needs you to grow.

What Starwars and iPhones teach us about pleasant surprises

An alternate title for this could have been… the surprising reason we love some surprises and hate others. But I won’t spoil the surprise. Yet. There are some stories to be told first!

On May 25th 1976 Star Wars hit the big screens. Not all of them, but actually just 32 of them. Not exactly a big bang. Sci-Fi films were not really considered at that point to have a viable audience. How many geeks could there be in the world right? It just wasn’t something that would work for the big screen. Pulp magazines, low cost TV series, sure, but not cinema.

However it did deliver something unexpected. The audience must have felt surprise - and maybe some confusion: after all the intro said that it’s a story set “a long time ago in a galaxy far far away” but it seemed to be set somehow in the… future: it showed a world filled with spaceships, droids, an evil galactic empire, a rebellion scattered in the galaxy, a Death Star…

George Lucas cooked something special together with surprise, something to follow and resolve the confusion. The secret ingredient that makes us love surprises. Following nearly every moment shock, there is something we can relate to, something we see that reminds us of something else, something we have already as reference. After surprise and the tension it generates, he introduced… familiarity.

Star Wars IS set “a long time ago” because it’s the essence of an age old, familiar story. George was obsessed with this idea from Joseph Campbell, the monomyth - the idea that all legends and myths follow the same patterns, a pattern familiar across cultures, times, and, maybe in his mind, galaxies. If you take a close look at A New Hope, you will see it follows the monomyth heroes’ journey almost to the letter.

George sensed that familiarity would make all the surprising elements shine bright in people’s minds, perhaps even unconsciously. In Star Wars you will find the unlikely and reluctant hero - a farmer boy, a call to adventure, a magic mentor, a princess, adventure companions, even a… magic (laser) sword, a dark, evil villain, the hero growing to overcome impossible odds, all ingredients we’ve experienced thousands of times, but all packaged in a surprising way. A surprising AND familiar way.

If you geek out even more… you will see that George stole a lot more things that people were familiar with and packaged them: gritty aesthetics from pulp novels and comics, John Wayne westerns, Flash Gordon, World War 2 airplane battles footage, the Vietnam war and many many many more references. And as much as the surprise and imagination of the Star Wars Universe, it was the familiarity of many of it’s ingredients that pushed it to a global phenomenon instead of a movie shown in 32 theaters.

Resolving the tension of surprise with familiarity, of comfort, is perhaps the biggest magic trick you can pull. If you’re paying attention, you will see it everywhere in mainstream culture, pop songs, technology, history.

The gap between what we can imagine and what is known, between surprise and familiarity is the space we all occupy - and the space we can use to create something new.

So here’s another story on that: by 2007, most of the modern corporate world was familiar with the computers, email and the keyboard. Blackberry at that point was growing for years by combining these three elements into something that was originally both surprising and familiar: a phone with email and… a keyboard instead of numbers pad - playing in a new category for mobile phones - the smartphone.

But on January 7 2007, something more surprising came along. Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone. The design was surprising, it didn’t really look anything like a smartphone - it was more like an expertly designed, minimalist thin, posh soap bar… and most shocking, with no buttons or keyboard to type. Imagine the tension created by this surprise - a smartphone… with no… keyboard? No number buttons?

This conflict persisted UNTIL you turned on the screen. And that’s where all the surprises land with familiarity: you get a sleek keyboard you can use by touching the screen. Still a keyboard… but a surprising one. Familiar. But new. And then even more familiar things: icons like on Mac, iTunes. And one more surprising Trojan horse: by removing the keyboard and replacing it with a big screen, Apple made room for more surprises - called Apps, which would bring capabilities that was previously only reserved for computers… on smartphones. More surprises… to open the door for more familiar things?

Whenever you are creating something, think about these stories and this simple idea: for every surprise you make, after the tension, how do you bring your audience resolve… with familiarity?

If you’re clever and feel like experimenting, test this when making birthday surprises. Get 2 presents, one that evokes familiarity to your birthday girl… and one that you know doesn’t. Which one lands better? Maybe this explains the difference of the big smiles that go with “I can’t believe you know me so well” or just getting an awkward “thank you”. Maybe.

Permission to be lazy

Bored is fine too. Brief. Evasive. It’s a choice you can revisit.

Habits, streaks and intention

It goes like this: we have a hard time breaking bad habits. We have a hard time making good habits. While bad habits are on autopilot, good ones require something very specific: Intention. Because doing the right thing is hard. Because starting is hard. Because practice is hard.

But here's a cheat for the game of new habits with 3 parts: book a daily time for it, when the time comes, show up to start doing it and don't break the streak of doing it everyday. Will it be hard? Yes. Will there be days when you don't feel like it? Yes. Will there be excuses for why you can’t? Yes. On the other hand, I didn’t feel like writing today to be honest. But if we can show up for work every day, we can do it for our growth as well. We play our game, intentionally.

Oh yes, and it helps to have an artifact to keep us honest on whether we’re keeping the streak or not. Here’s a hack: Buy an old school calendar. Hang it in a place where you can’t avoid to see it every day. And just when you start, cross out the day with an X. See how that feels after a day. After a week. After a month. After a year.

What’s one thing you can do… that a lot of people hate… but still need?

Answer this question. Get great at doing that thing - lots of practice helps and there’s a big need for whatever it is, anyway.

Do it and you have become a valuable and valued problem solver. This is a game you weren’t expecting to play. It’s a gift. Some call this a competitive advantage.

Benefits to saying the same thing in 13 different ways

1) Different people might resonate with different words or parts of what you say

2) Repetition reinforces ideas and comprehension

3) You get to explore and expand nuances of what you’re saying

4) Iterations can improve the quality of what you’re saying

5) It might strengthen your point of view - if it’s a solid assertion

6) It might also weaken your point of view - if it’s a weak assertion

7) It might confuse you - and that can push you to make things more clear in your mind

8) Maybe you like hearing different voices in your head

9) You can have fun with it and play different angles

10) Say it enough times, it starts to ring true - for you or for others

11) Repetition is the mother or learning / Practice makes perfect

12) You have a chance to iron out the kinks and the cliches

13) Maybe at some point you get bored and switch to something else

BONUS: You might be practicing divergence.

Divergence and quantity

You might have heard this before: you need to have a lot of bad ideas to have a good idea. It’s a math game, and it’s very darwinian if you think about it. But how do you get a lot of (bad) ideas so you’re able to get to the good ones? To get to better ones?

A bunch of things can help and maybe the most important are: interesting framing, lots of practice and stimuli. The framing is what helps us converge on a interesting problem to solve and stimuli help us diverge. The practice is of course, the engine.

In today’s knowledge economy, we often need to align, coordinate, colaborate, connect the dots. Convergence is a force that underpins all of that. What school forgets to tell us, or misleads us into believing, is that convergence is how we solve problems.

But what if I told you solving meaningful problems requires you to cycle through loops of converge AND diverge? And that gets you better solutions than if you just converge? Because ultimately, you can have one problem BUT multiple solutions for it. Without divergence though, you don’t really have enough fuel for quantity, for opening up the possibility of more solutions.

Meanwhile, divergence is not really… taught. But it’s one of those things that once you know, it’s a whole lot of fun to play with. Here’s 3 ways you can be better at divergence: steal inspiration from different fields, bring different and preferably conflicting points of view as stimuli, surround yourself with people from distinctly different tribes. We think about it as bringing in different shapes, colours and types of LEGO bricks before getting to build. More fun? Definitely! Can we build more? YEA! Can you have too many? Umm… yes, there’s a diminishing return and a bit of choice paralysis after a point. But then, practice helps us navigate how broad and how deep we do our divergence. Meanwhile, play with it! It will get easier. That’s how you oil the engine of practice.

Trapped genius

It wasn’t always like this. There wasn’t a cell we were locked in to begin with. But as we grew up, chains started pulling us down, door started closing, boxes started fitting us in. Here’s the secret. Within each one of us there is a creative genius. We might not believe it, but that does not change the fact it’s there.

Have you ever wondered why it’s easier for us, mentally, to fail in a game than at work? Why it’s safer? Or why it’s easier to get creative in a game than in relationship? Games, just like life, work, relationships, have rules. And in games, just like in life, work, relationships, you can fail.

My bet is that what keeps our creative genius in chains is the fear that we’ll fail. And the rules… well, they are all made up. Useful maybe, but made up. Within their set rules, games make it easy for us to fail. Most times, you need to fail a lot in order for you to get better. And when you do succeed, it feels awesome, right? But then again, why wouldn’t it be the same in life, work and relationships?

There is this story I love. I’m not sure where I picked it up. It’s a story about pots. An arts teacher splits his class in 2. He tells the first half of the class that for their grade, they need to make their best pot. He tells the other half that they need to make as many pots as possible, and choose the best one to be graded. At the end of the semester, most of the pots of the first half of the class are… average. Sure, some have bells and whistles, but it’s mostly average. However, the second half of the class is where magic happened: they have much much better pots, as they’ve explored different shapes, techniques, materials and maybe made say 30 pots each, allowing them to experiment, learn, iterate. Compared to the first half of the class, would it be fair to say they have failed 29 times? Or would they say…. we played until we found something that worked?

Which takes us the question… what is failure for? Maybe it’s for the creative genius within to awaken. If only we’re ready to rewrite the story we tell ourselves.

The burden of absolutes

One common barrier to growth is the belief of absolutes. You might see it everyday - people thinking they have absolute truth, or struggling to find that one thing that explains everything, the one answer. It’s just as much about safety in certainty as it is about fear of the unknown. What’s funny is that fear of the unknown might mean fear of possibility.

One important thing I’ve learned is that any single problem has more than one solve. It might seem obvious in retrospect, but it’s not- especially when we cling to OUR SOLVE. THIS WAY IS THE WAY. ABSOLUTELY.

Of all things, role playing video games taught me that different people can solve the same problem in different ways. Say you’re in the middle of a snowy pass, on your way to a city and see a yeti ahead, blocking the path. What do you do? In a role playing game, a druid can charm the yeti, a thief can hide in shadows and pass around it, a mage can put a spell on it to make it sleep, a fighter can… fight it. Is one way better than others? Maybe. But these are all roles you can play, options to solve the same problem.

Let’s bring it closer to home. Day to day life, magic happens when you steer away from what you know, the one role you usually play or the path that you already know. Here’s something you can try right now: instead of the more efficient taxi or metro or bus… take a walk to your friend. Better yet, when you visit her again, take another route altogether. And next time, another one. And instead of passing through, take your time to observe your surroundings, to feel your way around the city. And therein lies possibility. Discovery. Growth. Curiosity. Instead of a traveller, you become an Explorer. A Detective. A Pathfinder.

Do what you’re doing… differently. If you’re stuck, you might get someplace else this way. ABSOLUTELY.

Our Personal Newsfeed?

It's a solid title. But it's missing something. Something newsfeeds have struggled with. They still do. They deliver novelty, yes. But how could they deliver more value? Deep embedded in the name newsfeed, there's a symbiote - "news". What if we could plug in something else there? What if news is not where growth comes from?

I frequently encourage people to extract LEGO pieces they think they could build with from the things they read, watch, observe and do. That's the very powerful art of observation - and more broadly, empathy. Sometimes, the LEGO pieces are just a post it. With 3 words on it, like this title. A post it captured from a conversation. And then from those few words, we build. Reshape. Remix.

In processing "the personal news feed", I want to make it better, to connect it with growth. So I decide to take away "news" from newsfeed. A spark of intuition said: "ideas" could replace "news" for something better. Then I looked it up: "idea, /ʌɪˈdɪə/, noun, a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action". It then hit me why it made sense. News you are meant to consume. But ideas, you are meant to use, act on.

Instead of newsfeeds, maybe we could be ideasfeeds. Wouldn't that make the world better?

Compound focus

What if everyday, we book a little bit of our time to be focused on something we want to learn? Something we want to do? Something we are curious about? Should it be 10 minutes? 60 minutes?

Maintaining that streak has an added benefit. It compounds into a daily habit. One we are intentional about. One that helps us grow. How much time can we afford for this? For our growth?

It sounds simple to be deliberate about what we do. But often times we feel don’t have a choice and we let others in charge of our time. Other times, we let chance dictate how we spend our time. The caveat? Despite all of that, small things add up to make a difference for the better - their benefits compound if we keep at it. For me, that one thing to do every day to grow… will be writing. What will you do?