I had a major realization today. I realized that since I was a small child, all I’ve wanted to be is an adult. I had very little interest in most of the things that “children” did: sports, playing with other children my age and so forth. I always felt like I related better to the adults around me than to those who were supposed to be my peers. I never really felt they were my peers. As a second grader, I didn’t want to learn soccer, I learned computer programming.

photo credit: young_einstein

Some aspects of this have been a wonderful gift to me throughout my life, I’ve developed my technical and creative skills, and had the opportunity to do some really wonderful things at a remarkably young age.

But this is all familiar territory for me, today was something new.

Today I realized that maybe being a “responsible adult” was not really what I wanted. It had never occurred to me to consider any other possibility, and even as I write these words my monsters (to use Havi’s term) are going crazy yelling at me: “how could you want to be anything but a responsible adult, what else is there that it would be reasonable to be?”

Today I unpacked the meaning of the words “responsible adult” to me.

I came to understand something really powerful in the process of doing this. I realized that in my mind “responsible adult” was nothing more than societal programming, the set of rules that I absorbed unconsciously from the time I was a tiny baby I’m watching the people around me and drawing conclusions about the rules that they operated by based on what I saw. One of the things that’s interesting to note, is that at the time that I was receiving this programming unknowingly I was not in a position to really understand or analyze what was happening. My two or three or four-year-old brain didn’t understand why people were doing what they did, and some of the conclusions it came to are really not useful to me.

For instance:

Urgency should be the key driver of my decision-making. If the phone rings, it needs to be answered immediately. If an e-mail comes in, it needs to be responded to immediately. If someone needs something from me it’s my responsibility to deliver it instantaneously regardless of what else is going on. This is not useful, at least not to me.

Another example:

The only way to be even remotely okay is to be perfect. Less-than-perfect is completely unacceptable. Once again, this is something which is so limiting since perfection, in the sense I’m referring to it here, is not something that I can ever reasonably expect to reach.

Here’s one that really hit home:

When I’m not able to do something easily and naturally, it means that I’m bad, I’m not good enough. Not only should I be doing things easily and naturally, I should be doing them in a way which is unique, but not too different from how other people do them, because that’s not okay either.

All of a sudden I started to understand why I felt painted into a corner so much of the time.

So what now?

Think the most important thing is to recognize that these things which have been part of my worldview till now don’t have to stay a part of my worldview. I find it hard to put into words, but just identifying and articulating is already changing them even as I write this post.

I’ve also become aware, that it would be helpful to encourage myself to be willing to do things in a more childlike way, at least some of the time. This is something I’ve known before, even something I’ve taught when I’ve worked with other people, but I’ve never really given myself permission to do it myself.

Wow, that feels really big. I can’t wait to see where it takes me!

Come play with me?

This is big stuff, when we talk about programming, and change work, and particularly our own internal process, it often brings up things both for ourselves and other people. If my processing my stuff has triggered you in a way that’s uncomfortable, I’m truly sorry and that is not my intention. This is also not advice, sometimes I do give advice here–talking about how to integrate storytelling into life and business, or maybe about how to make technical things work better, for example–but this is not advice. This is nothing more, and nothing less than me sharing my process.

I would love to hear your responses, or any parts of your process you want to share that were sparked by this in the comments below. So come play with me.

Daniel Pink just posted on his blog about something that got me thinking. Emotionally intelligent signage . . . in an airport? | Daniel Pink.

In short, the folks at Milwaukee’s General Mitchel International Airport created an area, just past security for folks to get their shoes back on and themselves back together, and labeled it the “Recombobulation Area.”

I just wonder, how many of us could benefit by creating “recombobulation areas” in our lives.  Be they physical spaces to decompress when coming home, or coming in to our offices or whatever, or temporal spaces.

Recognizing that we are discombobulated, and taking the time to take care of ourselves in whatever way we need to get back in harmony with ourselves.  I suspect that if this is done mindfully, the time gained in increased productivity and gain in comfort would FAR outweigh way the time it take to do the recombobulating.

So if you need a walk, go for a walk.  If you need a cup of tea, stop and make a cup of tea, and take the time to really enjoy it!

Tune in to whatever it is you really need, and find ways to give it to yourself.

I really believe that it will make all the difference.

So what’s your “recombobulation area?”  Please share in the comments!

Yesterday I talked about Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. I think it is so important that I wanted to devote a 2nd post to it.

This video is a talk that Dan gave at TED in May of 2009 on some of the concepts at are in the book. The material is priceless and will give you a taste of what he does in the book. The presentation is also done amazingly well – notice how as he makes a big deal about how he’s not telling a story that he weaves amazing stories. Watch this right now! you’ll be glad you did. (I know I’m jumping up and down about this, but I really am that excited by it!)

I have been a huge fan of Daniel Pink’s writing since I read his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. In this book, Dan makes a powerful argument that virtually all left brain, sequential tasks are either being automated or outsourced. He goes on to suggest that what is needed is the incredibly powerful combination of creative, right brain thinking, supported by sequential, left brain thinking. If you haven’t read this book, I strongly encourage it. But what I really want to talk about in this post is Daniel pink’s new book: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

It's time to recognize a new type of motivation that actually is motivating.

This book blew my mind, it made my eyes roll back in my head and blink “tilt,” and smoke come pouring out of my ears. Well, not literally, but it kind of felt like that, only in a good way.

Like so many people in our modern society, I was brought up to believe that people are basically motivated by two primary things, reward and punishment. I can remember many times, being frustrated at not being able to get myself to do something which I felt I “should.” I often thought to myself “well I guess not doing this doesn’t hurt badly enough, when it does, I’ll do it.” Dan refers to this as “Motivation 2.0″ and described it as a motivational system of the industrial age. He argues that what we need in the modern world is “Motivation 3.0″ which is intrinsic in nature. He describes this new type of motivation as having three primary aspects: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

He lays out an incredibly solid case of research which has been known over the last 50 years, demonstrating that the industrial age extrinsic motivation concepts are truly problematic and in many cases end up REDUCING motivation rather than increasing it. This fits very well with my own experience.

He gives many powerful examples and suggestions for how to implement Motivation 3.0 in our lives, workplaces, and schools. I’m still processing how to apply this most effectively in my own life. But this is powerful stuff, and I would strongly suggest you read this book — whoever you are, whatever you do, this is something that you need to know, really know, deep in your bones, in order to be truly happy and successful.

Note: the Amazon.com links in this post are affiliate links, and I get a tiny commission if you purchase through them.

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. They seem to have a shelf life of about 10 minutes, and thereby are not all that useful. In fact the very specific kind of goal setting that is often recommended has rarely proved useful for me. Instead, I ask myself what do I want? And who do I want to be? And how is what I’m doing right now supportive or not supportive to the first two questions?

This is something I do on an ongoing basis, and that has worked very well for me. I feel like I’m coming to a point in my development where more concrete goals, particularly around business may prove useful, but I do tend to work intuitively and haven’t felt called to do that yet.

So with that in mind, you can imagine that I was interested, but not terminally excited when I first read a blog post by Hayden Tompkins about How To Rock 2010. (Let me stop here and say that Hayden’s blog Through the Illusion is awesome and very worth reading.)

It did take me a little bit off guard when Hayden, as she often does, put her own spin on the ideas. She talked about choosing a word for the year. A word that would serve as a navigation point for the year. Her word this year is “dance,” if you want to know why you’ll have to read her post.

I casually tossed around in my mind what my word might be, if I were to come up with one, and didn’t really get anywhere. Then I read a post by Erica Douglas called 2010 Goals; 2010 #themeword; Big Announcement! (If you’re at all interested in business, particularly business online, Erica’s blog is a must read. I know this post is starting to sound like a blog pitch fest, but I really love what both of these amazing women write.)

In her post, Erica talks about starting the #themeword meme in 2007, the concept is very similar to Hayden’s. I thought this was interesting, but since I had already decided that I didn’t need such a thing, I noted that and moved on. Except that my unconscious or higher self or muse or whatever or whoever seemed to disagree. I don’t remember exactly when, but it popped into my head (and landed there with a significant amount of force) that my #themeword for 2010 is Freedom. I like this roll around in my head for a while, but the more I thought about it the more right it feels.

For me 2010 is about creating freedom

Freedom for myself; financially, from a job that I’ve mastered and I’m ready to pass on, and most importantly from my own limiting beliefs and programming.

This year is also about helping other people create freedom for themselves through my Binaural Journeys guided meditation audios. It’s interesting, I didn’t realize that that’s what I was doing when I set out to create audio programs that combined guided meditation, binaural beats, binaural drumming and music. I just knew that I had felt inspired to create programs of this sort, so I did. But, in thinking about my #themeword, Freedom, I realized that Binaural Journeys are really tools for people to use in creating their own freedom.

I am truly excited about the year to come.

So, what’s your #themeword?

I have to say, I’m rather new to actually using twitter but I’m really getting to love it. This morning I saw a tweet from Wendi Friesen. If you don’t already know about Wendi’s work, she’s an amazing hypnotist, who has the biggest array of self hypnosis audio to help you with anything you can imagine that I have ever seen. I’ve known about her for quite a few years, and have a number of her products. One of them is a set of hypnosis sessions to help solve insomnia. This was an almost magical solution for me, when I was really having difficulty sleeping.

Photo by Son of Groucho

But in any case, this morning Wendi tweeted a special gift, particularly for people who were having a really hard time right now. It’s a video and an MP3 download that she is offering for free to help us release our fears so that we can create the things that we most need in our lives to be who we really are.

Now I know to some people, the idea of the “Law Of Attraction” another manifestation techniques seems very strange, and New Age woo woo ridiculousness. And I understand where that tendency comes from, it’s easy to dismiss something that is so far outside the past experience most of us have had. Also, it’s often discussed in the very new age, flowery language which is a turnoff for many people. But I think to ignore this set of tools is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I could talk about why I believe that everything in the universe is connected to an energetic level, and that this is being proven more and more clearly through research in physics. I could also talk about how these manifestation ideas really come directly out of ancient tradition, retold in modern forms first at the turn of the 20th century and then again in recent years. I’m not to do either of those things, maybe I will in another post someday.

It’s all in your head!

I want to talk to you about is fairly straightforward, and it’s what happens in your own mind, no woo woo needed. The Law Of Attraction teachers talk about how we get what we focus on. This isn’t a big surprise, it’s just how our brains work. Have you ever had the experience of buying a new car, and suddenly it seems like every third car you see on the highway is the same model you bought. Or maybe, you’ve bought an item of clothing, and all of a sudden it seems like everyone around you is wearing the same style. We are creatures of pattern recognition, so once we make an important decision our brains are filtering for related information — other people with the same car, or wearing the same outfit.

Likewise, when we concentrate on our fears, on our experience of being stuck, our brains provide us with all of the things around us that we can use that information and evidence for why we should be afraid, and how stuck we truly are. When we shift what we’re thinking about, even if we don’t completely believe it, we’re giving our unconscious minds new sets of things to look for — things like new possibilities. My experience has been, in my own life, but this is truly the case. When I feel stuck, I tend to get depressed and focus on how depressed I am, and then do things to try to make me feel better like watch TV. I think it’s obvious, how unlikely that is to cause a solution to occur to me — I’m just not putting myself in situations where I would be inspired.

I really believe that the most dangerous thing for us to focus on is fear, because it’s so easy to make that fear grow and become paralyzed by it. This is clearly not useful. And that brings me back to Wendi’s gift. In the video, Wendi tells her amazing story of how she used changing her focus to solve a really scary problem in her own life, and then she leads a very brief, but very powerful exercise to start that process in you. The MP3 download is a 20 minute hypnosis session to take this even further and deeper really releasing fear.

So I hope that  this makes sense. And I hope, that if you haven’t tried any of this sort of work, or even if you have, that you’ll go and take advantage of Wendi’s free gift right now.

It’s at: http://www.planetwendi.com/2009/12/my-gift-to-you/

Thank you Wendi! and Merry Christmas!

This afternoon I was sitting in the office of a colleague of mine, looking at some new pictures of his baby. The pictures were spectacular, and clearly professional. I asked him where he had been taken, and was very surprised when he told me that it was in a studio at the mall. Then I thought about it for a minute, and realized that the reason these mall studios were able to be successful, is that they were able to take out the majority of the technical variables for making a good picture. The lighting is set up, the camera is all set, the backgrounds are in place  – the technical details are all taken care of.

Waiting for the moment (Photo by ^riza^)

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it means that their photographer is unskilled. What I am saying, is that they have been able to optimize and lock down enough of the technical process that it limits the skill set the photographer needs to get good results. The thing that struck me so powerfully about these images was was how natural the baby looked, and how excited and engaged she clearly was. Getting that an expression is an incredible skill, and by having the technical issues solved ahead of time she was able to focus on relating to her subject and making a great picture.

Of course there is a downside to this, her creativity with how to set up the photographs is limited by the locked down technical setup. A truly skilled, imaginative, creative photographer, with full command of all of the technical issues, as well as having the ability to relate well to a subject will make much better and more innovative images. But, I realized something as I thought about this. It really comes down to knowing when to push the button on the camera that takes the picture. Yes, you need all of the other skills, the technical issues dealt with either by your own skill or by being in a preset studio. However, even if all that is done, it still comes down to the moment that you push the button. Knowing whether you need to push the button right now, or a split second from now.   It really does make all the difference.

This all reminded me of the tittle one of my absolute favorite books about photography, The Moment It Clicks by Joe McNally. Joe is an incredible photographer and teacher of photography, and this book is filled with amazing images and stories about how he made them. If you want to check out the book, click on the Amazon affiliate link below.

It occurs to me, that this idea of moment is an important one in many areas that I’ve experienced, I’d like to hear in the comments about times when you became aware of the significance of having that sense of the right moment. I’ll look forward to your posts.

I woke up this morning with a powerful realization. I have felt for a few days now that I have been getting more and more frustrated with what I’m trying to do online. My realization is rather simple, but profound, at least for me. So here it is:

This is Not a Picture (Image by PinkMoose)

The more time I spend finding resources about doing things online, the less time I spend actually doing the things I want to do online and creating the things I want to create. There is an almost infinite amount of information available about virtually any topic on the web. Some of this information is terrific, some of it is worse than useless, but I just can’t look at all of it. There’s just too much of it, and if I try to look at all of it, or even everything that seems interesting, all I will ever do is read about blogging, or any other topic. I’ll never actually get to writing the post.

So at least for today, I am committing to myself to focus on doing, starting with this post. In the long run, I don’t know how ongoing to find the balance, there is very interesting and very useful data out there. For now though I’m just going to focus on doing.

How do you balance what you do online? Please comment, I’d love to hear your methods.

Contando Dinheiro - Image by Jeff Belmonte

I just read the new post on Joe Vitale’s blog, How Much Money is Bad?. It’s about money and people’s limiting beliefs about money. It really got me thinking.

I realized, that money is just a tool, like a screwdriver. It is no more and no less. It reminded me of Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In fact the specific version that came to mind is from Disney’s version, not the new one that was just released, but the classic version that I grew up with. Burned in my mind, is the image of Scrooge counting his money, literally surrounded by stacks of gold coins. He hoarded his money, like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter. But unlike the squirrel, Scrooge never used any of the money to do anything. It occurs to me, that this is the equivalent of filling room after room after room with every type and size and description of screwdriver, but never using any of them to drive a screw, or do anything else.

When we talk about this in terms of screwdrivers, it seems utterly absurd. On the other hand, we talk about it in terms of money, it seems like a good idea. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I think saving is a bad idea. What I am saying is that I think if we want financial abundance in our lives, we need to be focused on what we really want, not the screwdriver, but the thing that we make with it. Likewise we need to focus on what it is that we desire to do with our money. This could be anything, a new home for family, amazing works of philanthropy that make a difference in the world, helping to make someone’s dream come true or maybe just creating amazing experiences for ourselves. Whatever it is, I think the it’s incredibly important to be focused on that, rather than on many coins we have in our bank account.

I feel in my heart that doing this will make all the difference. So I’ll leave you with this thought, in the words of Tiny Tim: “God bless us, every one.”

Yesterday, in my post about Greg Mortenson’s new book Stones Into Schools I mentioned that I had a realization about social media and Internet marketing while I was reading it. In this post, I want to tell that story.

First, I need you to understand that I started out as an extreme skeptic that social media (Twitter, Facebook and so forth) had anything to offer me other than annoyance. I just didn’t understand why so many people were so excited by these Web 2.0 ideas. In general I’ve always been in favor of expert content, written by experts and edited by experts. The idea of user generated content didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Why would I want to look at content created by “average people” rather than researching and finding the best content, which I presumed was created by the best experts. Having grown up in a university town in a relatively scholarly family, then attended college and now spending most of my career working at a university, I guess this view isn’t all that surprising. But over a period of years a number of things started happening.

The first one was a couple of years ago I was involved with a high school play in which one character was a mime. The young woman who played that role (a high school freshman) was absolutely extraordinary. I asked her where she had done her training in mime, and was shocked when she told me that she had none. She had gone to YouTube and search for “mime,” and then figured out what she needed to do for her role from what she saw. Don’t get me wrong, she’s an extremely talented performer, but the idea that she could learn just from YouTube enough mime to do such an extraordinary performance just blew my mind. So I guess, that was my first introduction to the idea that user generated content could in fact be useful.

A year or so later, my friend Dave Gallant who had worked for me as a student at UNH, graduated. I stayed in touch with him, and was surprised to learn that he got his first job through Twitter, a service which had never struck me as having any value. As I continued talking with him I learned that he had really dedicated a significant amount of energy to learning about marketing in social media. In fact he now works at HubSpot, a company that helps business integrate social media into their marketing.

Then I started looking into Internet marketing, and after a substantial amount of research joined Pat O’Bryan’s Portable Empire Coaching Program. Very early in my work with Pat, I learned that he saw social media particularly Facebook and Twitter as important marketing tools. Of course I already heard this from my friend Dave, but I really didn’t get it. Don’t get me wrong, I trust Pat, and I think he really does know what he’s talking about, but it didn’t make any sense to me. I just didn’t get how people use social media to market their businesses. I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do with Greg Mortenson’s Books, I’m getting there, bear with me, this does all come together.

Now by this time, I had finally given in and gotten a Facebook account, but I was using it in a very limited way. I saw it as a way to connect with people who I have lost track of since college who I really wanted to get in touch with, and it had worked for that purpose, but I still didn’t see how this “social media stuff” was useful for marketing. As I remember it, I think that both Dave and Pat basically encouraged me to use the tools to build relationships with people who had similar interests, and through that to build a network. At that time, I guess I wasn’t ready to understand what they were really asking me to do.

When I saw that Greg Mortenson had released a new book I bought it immediately. I started reading it last week, it wasn’t very far into it that Greg reminded us of the primary lesson he learned in the experiences that would become his first book Three Cups Of Tea. I’d like to let Greg share that story with you:

“Haji Ali spoke. ‘If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated but we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.’ That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life. We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly…Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.”
–Greg Mortenson in his first book Three Cups of Tea

I remembered fondly, the first time I heard the story reading the first book. I still didn’t get how it applied to me though. Fortunately, Greg kept returning to this theme of building relationship before trying to do anything else. And then all of a sudden, maybe two thirds of the way through the book, it clicked. This idea of sharing 3 cups of tea, of building relationships before attempting to do anything else finally clicked. I got the message that I had seen, but not understood in so many other places. So I started using Twitter. Meeting people, talking with them, learning about their interests. One of the people who I’ve met along the way is @WarrenWhitlock and I’m pretty sure that he was the one who said in one of his early tweets to me, “people won’t care what you know until they know that you care.” Which I guess really sums it up.

So thanks Greg for two amazing, inspiring books; thanks Dave and Pat for putting up with my cluelessness, and thanks Warren for saying it so clearly.

How would you describe your relationship with social media? Please comment! And if you know somebody who doesn’t seem to get social media, but who you think would like it if they did, please use one of the links below to send this post to them. You might be able to save a lot of time and trouble.

What's your map

I believe, that the key to finding happiness is realizing that you haven’t lost it. Happiness is a choice, a choice that each of us makes every moment of every day.

Now I can hear some of you talking to your computer screens right now saying  ”where the heck did this idea come from, and why is Andy talking about it.”

I know that many of you have found this blog through hearing me speak about storytelling, technology, teaching and the intersection of those things. The thing is, I believe that the ultimate story that we tell is one that we tell every moment of every day by choosing where to put our attention, and how to live our lives. When things become really interesting, is one we live at the intersection of multiple areas that don’t normally meet. This is where I live, so expect to find interesting connections, some may surprise you, some even shock you, but hopefully all of them make you think.

This morning, I read a post that Craig Perrine made on his blog titled “What would you BELIEVE for a Million Dollars?” Which really got me thinking, so much so I wrote a rather lengthy comment on his blog (which as of this writing is waiting for moderation to determine that I’m human and not a spammer.) But in any case the thought stuck with me and so I thought I would write about it here.   Craig said, “You just have to believe you can be happy now. ”

I think there’s something more to it.

In this case I don’t think it’s just a matter of believing that you can be happy, (although I think that that’s necessary.)  In my experience, you have to *decide* to be happy.   I’m fortunate to have several friends who have made this decision. They have decided to be happy in whatever situation they happen to be in. They have decided that it’s not worth the energy to be negative, and it makes them amazing people to be around.

This ties into the other thing that Craig’s post got me thinking about. It’s so easy for us to forget that our perception of the world is not, in fact, the world. It is just our perception. We are only capable of perceiving, and processing a tiny fraction of the information in the world around us in every moment. We take that information, filter it through expectation and pattern recognition, and act like that’s reality. It isn’t, not even close.

It’s like spending so much time staring at a map that we forget that the map is not the territory. It’s just a map, a collection of data about the territory filtered and organized in a hopefully useful way, but that’s not a guarantee of accuracy or even usefulness.

I have been reminded of this recently, how much it’s worth consistently pouring into my brain things which keep my map tuned up the way I want it to be.   I’ve been spending a lot of time lately listening to books (from audible.com) by people like Joe Vitale and Craig Perrine. Keeping a constant stream of this sort of material flowing into my mind has really moved me into a place where I’m seeing possibility everywhere. It’s a great place to be!

Even the experience of writing this blog has changed my map, my beliefs about myself, in a really significant way. But you’ll have to wait for tomorrow to hear that story. I think it may be the most important blog post that I’ve written so far, so come and check back.

This morning Seth Godin posted something on his blog that got me thinking:

Thirsty

I’ve noticed that people who read a lot of blogs and a lot of books also tend to be intellectually curious, thirsty for knowledge, quicker to adopt new ideas and more likely to do important work.

I wonder which comes first, the curiosity or the success?

To answer his question directly, I’d have to say that I think the curiosity comes first.

Curiosity, and in particular the drive to learn and network seem to me to be key to success.  But at the same time, curiosity on its own is not necessarily useful.   It can be so easy to get caught in endless loops of surfing and “study” that that somehow feels productive, but never seems to actually get anything done.

So to be truly successful, I think the key is more then just being curious, but directing that curiosity in a way that has you networking with people and learning things that are supportive to what you are trying to do, and balancing those activities with everything else that needs to be done….

I think that the idea of “most productive actions” is an important one – and that people who are successful are people who (at least for the most part) are consistently identifying their most productive actions and focusing on them.

One of the things that’s so hard about the Internet is the avalanche of information on virtually any topic that is available.  It’s so easy for a simple curiosity to lead to extensive surfing or research – and sometimes that leads to a breakthrough – and sometimes to wasted time……  Perhaps the real key is an ability to intuit which of those roads you’re going down.

Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and professor of Interactive Journalism at CUNY (and a really smart guy) loves to talk about the need for what he calls curation on the web.  Finding ways to consume the information YOU are looking for, without spending tons of time looking for it, by finding aggregations of relevant materials.  The aggregations may be created by humans, or by machine automatically, or a combination of the two – but I love the concept.  I’d love to open my google reader (or some other tool) and have, as if by magic, a list of news stories, blog posts and podcasts that I’m interested in and that are relevant to what I’m doing.  We have a way to go to get there.  In the mean time, I think success requires being our own curators – making sure we sift though the maze and engage with the material that is significant and interesting, and leaving the rest.

How do you do it?  Post in the comments.