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Rebirth and the Springtime of Life

For me, the question of identity is crucial. Who I am and what I stand for lies at the core of my intentional action. This is important in my lifestyle and professional activity. In the first three months of 2019, I went through some tough times and difficult events including spending some time in the psychiatric ward of the hospital, the subject of my latest poetry book. I lost a lot over that time. My business, my reputation, and my sense of identity were among the casualties. I plan on spending the second quarter of the year in rebirth, reaffirming my sense of self and the shape of my career.

Rebirth requires shedding the shell of the past and walking away
All hardship incubates the birth of something greater

Suffice to say this process is substantial, if not in reality then certainly in appearance. As I write this it is Easter Sunday, a day historically connected to the renewal of Spring and the rebirth of deities. Appropriate then that I reflect on my own rebirth after a painful ego-death. I should ask the question of what I need to complete this ritual. Are all the tools already within me, or do I perhaps need to collect or build something external? I certainly think the latter and that some external things are necessary to stand as affirmations of the identity I am assuming.

Curating Myself

As I dive deeper and deeper into myself the more I find an affinity towards the art of words. Historically poetry, fiction, journalism and in fact, even this post is a meta-affirmation of my identity as a writer. I’m not as well read as I would like to be or maybe even ought to be, but I’m well informed by means of listening and discourse. Affirming this as something I identify with, I will continue to curate a modest but admirable collection of books and a lifestyle of engaging in profound, or at least engaging discourse. Meanwhile, I want my own words to be recorded. I’d like to publish more and will attach a sense of achievement around my own recorded words and written books. Again, that includes posts here.

In rebirth, the decision of whom you claim to be is an “ownmost” kind of thing. Only you can make the choice and do the work for yourself. Being the only person ultimately responsible for these actions is a hefty and necessary burden, but that doesn’t mean that it’s done in a vacuum. This is a high feedback activity, informing itself from the outside and announcing itself back. Identity is a conversation. It is largely for this reason I have taken initiative to publicly share my journey step-by-step.

So, Who Will I Be Reborn As?

All of these words and the most important question still has neither been answered nor addressed: Who am I? Well, let’s give an attempt at answering this in a few ways. My name is Devon M Scott and I am a poet aspiring for the nebulous but noble title of “warrior poet,” or at least being worthy of it. I live a chronicled lifestyle of writing and speaking, particularly on philosophical and spiritual matters and how they apply to my being “good” or “content” in life. In my own growth, I aim to positively influence the world around me and to act in response to relevant community matters, wherever my community may be.

That all sounds very good and honorable, but what do I want? Leisure. I want time to work on myself and my projects, to participate in my family and legacies, and to find peace and joy through performance and intimate social engagement. This would be most easily maintained through some level of wealth or meaningful support, so I will seek to earn my living by providing useful service through my art and standing as leadership where I am able and effective. Further, I want to continue earnest involvement in the martial arts and reaffirm my sense of identity as a capable martial artist.

Finally, I want to state what I stand for. This is pretty simple for me, as I’ve long devoted myself to a single phrase when asked what I want most. I just want things to make sense. I want to stand for as uncompromising a representative of sense as I am able. Not logic, not reason, but “sense” in almost an aesthetic manner. I want to solve problems and encourage living in such a way that smooths away at the roughness of life, even when that means carrying some of the roughness oneself. This is my idea of a beautiful life worth living.

First Rebirth, Then Growth

The above is the seed of the identity I want to grow into. The activities and lifestyle I described are how I plan to germinate this seed. I am still not able to determine what type of plant this will sprout into, but I feel that a good seed in good soil will grow into something worth cultivating. It’s no secret that I romanticize the concept of Eden, so perhaps the garden in which I grow can become close to a paradise. If not, the things I surround myself with should still represent a beautiful place to enjoy for all who enter and curate alongside me. I hope your seeds also grow into beautiful things that you come to love. May we all blossom and bloom during this time of renewal, rebirth, and resurrection. Thank you and happy Spring.

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Becoming More Valuable – Weekly Goal Update

We are more than halfway through the week, so let’s talk about the goals I planned on Sunday.

My priority was to continue to keep increasing my value. I decided to focus on auditing the following traits:

  • Activity
  • Credibility
  • Engagement
  • Actionability (May or may not be a real word)

Activity

After really looking at the way I log my time I realize that my activity falls short of being the best use of my time. Even this week I have spent time in banal conversations that could have been spent around quality opportunities and managing important projects.. I aim to measure 1/3 of my day as being actually progressive activity. For most of us that means that if you work 8 hours a day to use those 8 hours for work and absolutely nothing else. This also suggest that the work is the best investment of your time, not busy work or filling a space to make wage.

Credibility

I run digital technology companies and like to focus on clients and industries in wellness and well being industries. Do I carry an aura of credibility and authority for my knowledge, skills, mission, and values? Part of this project is to create a high transparency, high accountability system to help instill the habits and actions I will use to improve myself, but it’s also to provide a window towards what I am actually doing. Make your value and experience obvious.

Engagement

Value is a purely human judgement, so to be valuable I need to provide value to others. The old adage “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” comes to mind. If I can add something to a conversation with useful experiential knowledge, or at least well placed practiced wit, I contribute. If I can’t, I listen. If I have no business in that conversation or scenario, it’s a distraction and I walk away.

Actionability (still may not be a word)

I recommend you do anything to remove phrases like “how about this weather” from your vocabulary. The idea here is to work with highly actionable thoughts, plans, and speech. In conversation ask questions that dig deeper around the concepts and subjects of the conversation, and give responses that are direct and lead into follow up conversation. With plans be certain that there is a measurable follow through. And with your thoughts go from “why me” to “I can fix this by…” and from wondering to investigating.

The process

To work these I took a block of time out to engage in new conversations online and at networking events following a very simple formula. Introduce an interest in a person and ask them about what interested me in them. Ask 2 or 3 intelligent questions as they responded. Craft a short sentence about how our conversation satisfied my interest. Offer a “pitch” about what I do segued from the context of our conversation. Offer to be of some service to them or ask them how I could be helpful to them. This doesn’t mean you have to try and sell something. In several of these conversations the service I offered was an opinion or an introduction.

Three days of this trained and instilled the habit.

Other marks to hit

I began training for the Black Man Running 5k. The week has been rainy but I got one good day of running 4.6 miles and 2 days of cycling to follow up.

To help learn more and promote my business community I have begun writing for Exit Event, a site focusing on startups and entrepreneurship in North Carolina. This puts me in front of many quality professionals and up and comers, as well as teaches me an incredible amount.

Finally I am innovating a product to turn a job I do fairly repetitively into a product to increase revenue. I will be launching this to select existing clients with my consultancy this week.

Thank you and please comment with opinions, experiences, and suggestions.

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Becoming More Valuable – Weekly Goal Update

It’s important to remember that we are all flawed creatures. We all have thoughts that are often wrong and feelings that are often misleading. We can fall off the wagon and get lost in our limited perspective.

I am working on improving my effectiveness in work and life, which can be stressful. By that I mean it is stressful. Very, very stressful. I typically have several very effective stress management systems in place, but will power can be strained, and mechanisms overwhelmed. Especially in my case, when the situation has to do with family.

sigh…real mature

This is (was) my primary working computer. Several months of imaging, configuration, customization made it just right for my day to day tasks. Now it’s just an ugly external hard drive. Why? Simply put, I made a bad decision; one I’m not proud of. I essentially got stressed and threw a tantrum right through the screen. I’m not proud at all, mind you. However, toward the realization of my goal I thought it would be valuable to share some of this information.

First thing of note is the obvious: mistakes are costly. The estimated total cost between time lost, hardware repairs, opportunity costs, and the inefficiency of erecting a replacement system was about $6,000. That’s over an entire month of my goal. The real (measurable) cost was $500 which means I need to hustle to get back to my baseline. This doesn’t include potential damage to my relationships.

All in all what failed in stress management was made up for in risk mitigation. My data was backed up, I had warranties in place, replacement machines (just in case) and all contractors and partners were empowered to do their work while I was putting pieces together. That’s not the point, though. The point is that the screw up can’t be excused by a fast recovery, especially when you have ambitious goals or any sort.

First word of advice, stay cool under pressure. It’s much easier if you take care of yourself. Rest, eat well, work out, etc. All that stuff makes the stress easier to handle. If you feel you’re losing your grip on yourself, step away for a moment. Nap. Drink some water. Just look the other way for a moment.

Second word of advice, don’t invest large hopes in small portfolios. This is a bit close to the heart so let’s dive in a skooch. I lost myself because I put a lot of emotion into a single important person. This is a beautiful, admirable, and unfair thing to do to anyone, including to yourself. Make sure you have enough room in any relationship to disappoint and be disappointed, because as we’ve already established, we are flawed creatures.

I have more updates to make and I’m still totaling up the opportunities I need to make up by my actions (I was supposed to attend a seminar and train for a 5k instead of fixing my RSA key associations) so bear with me as I tidy myself up a bit. Thank you.

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What Gets Measured Get Changed, Getting the Most out of Yourself

I’d like to challenge you to make a weekly self assessment to make to see if you’re getting the most out of your day and your actions.
1) Create a goal
2) Record everything you do that week
3) Determine if it helped or harmed your goal
4) Add up each lost opportunity to get closer to your goal
5) Be honest!

Looking at it on paper will give perspective to how you actually use your time. Making small adjustments based on this will put you on track to making your time more valuable.

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Increasing Personal Value – Oct 28 2015

My goal is to bring in $1,000 more than expected this month as an experiment to test the limit of the value I can capture from myself and to gauge unused potential as measured by monetary value. The initial formula for this was to replace a diminishing habit with a beneficial one, do more high paying tasks by outsourcing my low paying ones, getting rid of one thing I am paying for, and get paid for one thing I already have or do.

Over the past couple of days I have been auditing myself and my life for “value thieves,” any thing I allow or invite to diminish my personal value. The list I identified includes

  • An extra car we don’t need or use
  • Unproductive conversations
  • Distracting emails
  • Poor Spending
  • Bank Fees

This was the list of the ones that were easiest to collect. I feel fairly sure that these are not uncommon, so hopefully this forms a template for an actionable public audit. Cumulatively these have cost me about $800 this month, which is an huge obstacle to my personal value experiment.

Alternatively I also created a list of methods I had available to me to (legally) increase my value this week.

  • Meaningful blogging and journalism
  • Empty labor pipeline early
  • Sell extra car
  • Nap daily

Note that my measurement of value is not limited to finance but also to the number of people I can impact in a amount of time. I aim to research and write prolifically to become a source of educational and actionable information. As a technological consultant, it’s essentially providing my financial model to my social life to provide similar benefits.

So far my additional net income has gotten halfway to breaking even by having maintenance tasks replaced by high value work and being able to serve my clients well, but providing this labor is no way to become financially or socially wealthy. That being said, it’s a more certain and controllable way to reach my $1,000 goal than speculating the sale of my car, especially in conjunction with removing my value thieves.