Derek's Blog

In writing, just because you are unsure what to say does not mean you shouldn't begin. Many great works of art have been started before their creator had a concrete idea of what he or she was making. Hell, there are even award-winning pieces about procrastination and not knowing what to say. Don't let "I don't have anything to say" be a false barrier to entry. Great things can come by simply beginning to talk about not having anything to say.  Unfortunately, this probably is not one of those occasions. 

Be constantly moving. Water that is dammed up becomes murky and diseased. Only the vilest of organisms can live in it. On the other hand, rivers give sustenance to all types of glorious life. Running water stays pure. Such is life.

If perception is reality, then isn't it paramount to control perception to the best of one's ability? Instead of lying to yourself and saying you don't care what other people think, why not devote time and energy to shaping how others see you? It starts with how you see yourself. By consciously taking charge of the way you see yourself, primarily through your internal dialogue, you can radically change the perception of You. An objective reality is imaginary. Perception is real. Control the latter and you become the master of your destiny.

Rating: 10/10 Duhigg is a master of his craft. He uses compelling narratives to illustrate his scientific-backed researched. I highly recommend this book . My Notes

You're your own entity. Yet, in some fundamental ways, you're inseparable from the whole. Everything you experience is happening internally. Yet it shapes your exterior world. You're you. Yet, at any given point in time, you're never the same you you were before or will be after. To you, you're the most important thing in the universe. To the universe, you're next to nothing. This post is enlightened. It's also stupid.

Appearances can be deceiving, yes. They can also be vitally important. With this in mind, the need for control of one's own image becomes apparent. Don't just accept the roles society foists upon you; craft your own self-image. After you've done that, be sure it never goes stale. Constantly reinvent yourself. RIP Prince.

Watch the words you hear, but even more importantly, watch the words you tell yourself. The latter is much harder to monitor. This is why I believe meditation is so important. In a world full of so much noise, where billion dollar companies hire the smartest people to figure out how to grasp and keep your attention, your own thoughts can easily be drowned out. Even hijacked. What you focus on tends to multiply. Remember this next time you want to watch some drama-filled reality  TV show, or get sucked into looking at your news feed for the thirtieth time today.

"You're wrong about the past, old sport. You're wrong." It turns out, Gatsby was wrong in this instance. In fact, his insistence that you can go back and recreate the past was his major character flaw. Gatsby was great, but his downfall was precipitated by his obsession with going back in time--a physical (as far as we know) impossibility. Gatsby wasn't Doc Brown--neither are we. Don't spend (waste!) your time obsessing over the past. Oh, if only I did this. Oh, I should have done that. No. Extract the lessons to be learned from past experiences and move on. Conversely, don't spend too much time focused on the future, thinking about your Rome, without taking the action required today to one day achieve this vision. Live in the Now.

Rating 10/10 I can't put it any better than legendary marketer David Ogilvy: "Read it and re-read it. It contains the knowledge of a lifetime." This book is the most comprehensive book on marketing I have yet to come across. As such, I have taken copious notes, notes which I will no doubt refer to again and again.

Everything is an illusion. What's happening is merely your minds interpretation of what it thinks is going on. Plato knew this centuries ago with his allegory of the cave. And what are the smartest people doing nowadays? Working on a way to build a more realistic cave inside the cave we're already in via virtual reality. Life is simply smoke and mirrors.

Grind, and have faith that one day you'll shine.

Greatness, like most words, is hard to define. It takes many shapes and forms. However, I believe there is one key ingredient required for a man to be great. Willpower. In order to be great, a man must have the willpower to push through trials and tribulations that would break an ordinary man. Grit in the face of challenges. The internal drive necessary to bend reality to his will. Whether he's helping create a nation through bloody revolution and adroit diplomacy, or forging his spot as one of the best offensive players in NBA history while winning a handful of championships, he needs an unbreakable will. Happy Birthday, President Jefferson. Congratulations on an amazing career, Kobe.

There is no such thing as right and wrong. There are only circumstances. If this were not the case, laws would be transfixed; all laws would be right . Instead, they're dictated by A) the belief in what is good  by the majority of people and more often B) the self-interest of people in power. This principle can perhaps be best drilled home by something a professor put forward in one of my freshman English classes. "Every single person living is the offspring of a murder. Our ancestors had to kill in order to survive and reproduce." That, for me, was paradigm-shifting. Is it right or wrong? Neither, It merely  is . Instead of making moral judgments about everything you encounter, lighten your cognitive load immensely by simply observing the actions of others, and asking yourself concerning your own actions "how's that working out for you?" Circumstances don't make something right or wrong. Your interpretation of them does. Free yourself from thi...

Rating: 8/10 Growth Hacker Marketing is a thin volume filled with concise insights on how to approach marketing in the digital age. My Notes Step 1: It Begins with Product Market Fit PMF is a feeling backed by information  and data .  Step 2: Finding Your Growth Hack To be successful and grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products.  Not all people--the right people. Examples: 1. Create aura of exclusivity with invite-only. 2. Create 100s of fake profiles (artificial popularity). 3. You can target a single service or platform and cater to it exclusively (as PayPal did with eBay).  4. Launch for just a small group of people, own that market, and then move from host to host until your product spreads like a virus (Facebook).  5. Host cool events and drive users manually.  6. Absolutely dominate the App store be...

If something doesn't look right--or upon surveying the field you see the potential for a huge play--call an audible. Life, for the most part, is negotiable. Trust your intuition. Intuition is simply improved pattern recognition from experience. In this sense it's like a muscle; the more you use it, the stronger it becomes. Sure, you'll still call the wrong play sometimes, but you'll learn from those mistakes, increasing your accuracy. Plus, you'll be a lot happier you trusted yourself. When life shows blitz, don't get scared and run the set play just because it was what you called in the huddle. Audible.

Ideas, like time, are fleeting. Last night I had a great idea for what today's blog post would be. I even had some of it composed in my head prior to drifting off to sleep. I repeated it multiple times to ensure I wouldn't forget. This morning: nothing. Nada. I don't even have a general idea of the topic I was going to write about. Always keep something close by to jot down ideas. Inspiration doesn't keep a schedule. With this in mind, I've written down the first line of tomorrow's haiku. Memory is fallible. Record your thoughts, if only for your own sake.

This is an article I wrote for InfoBarrel. It was rejected because they do not accept news or current events at this time (bummer, dude). What Happened?  On April 4th, 2016, 11.5 million documents were leaked from the world's fourth largest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. These documents were procured from an anonymous source by a German newspaper. A leak of this size and nature is unprecedented. The documents are simply being called the  Panama Papers . Who is Named in These Documents? In short, a lot of people and businesses around the world. It is reported that 143 politicians, including 12 national leaders are involved. Most notably, there is a  2 billion  dollar trail that lead to Vladimir Putin. Other national leaders named include Pakistan's prime minister, Ukraine's president, and the prime minister of Iceland.  What is Mossack Fonseca?  It is a Panama-based law firm--though they boast of having a global presence with 600 employees ...

Setbacks are only failures when you quit--sometimes not even then. Quitting is at times the right play. In these cases, the only way to fail is by not learning from the experience and repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Change the narrative to embrace challenges. Challenges are opportunities to learn and grow. Growth is essential. If you're not growing, you're decaying--dying.

My Rating: 10/10 Considering this is revered as the Bible of writing texts, I would not feel comfortable giving it anything less than a 10 out of 10. Stephen King highly recommends it in his great book, On Writing . The Elements of Style is a timeless book, essential reading for anyone interested in writing concise copy. My Notes

Obstacles are the key to growth. Easy things don't challenge us. Therefore they don't change us. Growth hurts. Change is scary. But these are necessary components to realize our true potential and genuine self-expression. One of my biggest obstacles is tone. Nobody wants to be lectured to, I get that. The challenge for me is purging a habit ingrained essentially from day one. My male model for how to communicate delivered authoritative commands on the reg. But ultimately my communication style is my responsibility. I'm working on it. Please bear with me.