What could be better to break out my month-long writing block than a conversation post with the always charming Grace Boyle from Small Hands, Big Ideas?  Nothing.    Inspired by a previous post on her site, we had another discussion, this time surrounding the benefits of travel.  Grace’s input can be seen in green and mine in blue.  Join in the conversation by leaving a comment!

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When I started to write this post, I wanted to call it “You Have To Be A Great Traveler to Be My Friend.”  I’m thinking that might be a little harsh.  But I know that I consciously surround myself with flexible people.  I use the term ‘Go With The Flow’ for these types of people and Grace has used the term ‘People Who Are Down.’

A quote that summed up my thoughts when I started writing this post is as follows:  “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain

I love people who are down. I would say, that most of my closest friends are down, into trying new things, like to be spontaneous, they’re adventurous and look for the ‘walk-to-the-edge’ kind of living. With that being said, (and I greatly learned from friends’ reactions and comments from that post) I think the balance of personalities is important. We all react differently and choose our own path, doesn’t make someone more or less fun and interesting. Being down, means different things to different people and I try not to pigeon-hole

Planning aside – traveling opens you up to new opportunities, puts you out of your comfort zone (imminent problem solving situation) and can be challenging. I think we learn the most when we’re challenged and uncomfortable. [Ben: great point!] Furthermore, traveling can also be rewarding because you do learn to problem solve while also thoroughly enjoying yourself in new environments.

That is a great idea, I am actually headed to NYC for this weekend and I am going to attempt to live just out of a backpack.  Not a huge deal for most people, but I am a notorious over-packer. 

Yes, good idea! I also think you can tell a lot about a person with the way they pack

After several months without it, “Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself” is back!  As you read this, it is Friday and I am either driving or will soon be driving to my college stomping ground of Columbus, Ohio.  The plan is to enjoy my buddy’s bachelor party to the fullest and then come back next weekend to stand in his wedding.  Tonight, nothing but six hours of radio NFL draft analysis, pretzel rods and the open road.  Jealous much??  Anyway, below are four amazing articles that deal with things I have been thinking about lately.  As the title of this post says, I couldn’t have expressed these feelings better than the authors below.

I am relatively new to Sara Davidson’s work, but it’s obvious from her Twitter stream that she has been hustling and I have really been enjoying her input to the conversation.  She deserves a hat tip for pointing me towards the topic of one of my latest posts, and really has put into words the DNA of all entrepreneurs in her post titled, “Why I Love Entrepreneurs.”

Derek Shanahan, of 20 Something Blogger fame, has been killing it with his personal blog and there are too many great posts there for me to post here.  But the first post that got me hooked was his post entitled “An Awful Sunny Drive.” You should do yourself a favor and read it. It is beautifully written.  However, the shout-out that I am giving him is for one of his more recent post, titled “Startup Social Life, Missing.” I don’t work at a start up company, but I recently moved to a new state and he captured a lot of the feelings I am experiencing while getting used to my new ‘hood.

J.D. Roth is an all around Personal Finance guru.  JD has been writing for years and just released his book called Your Money: The Missing Manual (non-affiliate link) which I own but have yet to read.  He was the first one of the PF writers that I started following and I feel I owe much of my personal finance reform to his advice.  The post I’d like to feature, however, is a bit different than his normal topic.  It is called “Made By Hand – In Praise Of Amateurs.” I have always been in favor of handmade and custom goods and tend to be fairly good making things because of my mechanical mind.  He discusses why making things yourself can be not only cheaper, but more rewarding and meaningful than store bought merchandise.

This week is a big week for the last person in my CHSIBM list, Colin Wright.  His website, Exile Lifestyle, has been one of the favorites in my Google Reader for weeks now.  Colin sold almost all of his belongings while living in LA to travel the world four months at a time.  His story and his writing are inspiring to say the least.  This week is important because he launched his new e-book, called Networking Awesomely (non-affiliate link).  It is obvious that Colin knows how to network, because he is one of the most approachable people I have dealt with on the web.  Also, several other killer networking friends of mine have contributed to the book.  Although I have not had the time to read it, I plan on devouring the guide soon.

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O.K. I will admit it. Flying makes me a little nervous. I know that it is statistically safer than any other form of transportation and probably hundreds of thousands of people do it everyday. Plus, being an engineer, I know ALL of the reasons why it is safe and could explain to you the science behind every piece of the plane. Seriously, try me.    Still, there is something about it to me that just doesn’t feel natural, whether it is a rational feeling or not.

But then I think of how much I love to fly. Especially since moving six or more hours away from everything I have ever known, I have enjoyed the luxury of flight. I have already flown four times in the four months I have been here in Baltimore. I love that I can afford to do that and also that technology has gotten us to this point.

But thinking even bigger picture, there are so many people who fly and whose lives are helped by it. Soldiers are carried back to their loved once within hours. People fly all around the world to conduct business and reunite with friends and family. Even en-route, strangers can become single-serving friends and provide interesting conversation while waiting to board the plane.

In the past year and a half, I have done a lot of other things that didn’t feel natural. I have reached out to amazing people online who I have things in common with, or maybe with whom I have nothing in common, save an interest in constant improvement. I have attended networking events where I knew no one and left with my pockets bursting with cards from promising contacts. After becoming disgusted with how I treated my body in my first 25 years on earth, I committed myself to a gym and personal trainer and have now dropped over twenty pounds in three months. I’m not trying to brag, the point is that all of these things were downright scary intimidating for me at first, but have helped me much more than I thought possible.

Sometimes the scariest, craziest, most unnatural actions and behaviors can yield the best results.

OK, maybe I am being a little dramatic.  But honestly, isn’t that the goal of the big, hairy, audacious goals in your personal notebook?  Or as Chris Guillebeau would call it, Practical Resources For World Domination.  I hope, not that I get sued, but that my work someday gets important and valuable enough to be used as evidence in a court case.  To have any lesser goals is a waste of time.

I have written previously about the need for a note taking system.  Since writing that post, some friends on Twitter linked me to a few posts that can take my previous one to the next level.  One of the articles is by Jill Hubbard Bowman on note taking with the intent of creating legal evidence of your intellectual property.  The other article is one from the productivity guru Tim Ferriss titled ‘How to Take Notes Like an Alpha-Geek.’

Both of these articles were so written so well that I decided to let them explain in their own words.  Hopefully, even though they are segments of the articles, they will do the original posts justice.  First up, experts from Jill about why note taking is so important:

Beware of a few important things when documenting your ideas. Courts don’t trust electronic documents.  Dates are often critical to claims of ownership and patent statutory issues.  Everyone knows that dates can be electronically altered and faked.   Trustworthy records are crucial to have any chance to of standing up in court.

She goes on to describe the type of notebooks that are best to hold up in a court of law.  The notebook should have permanent binding (a composition notebook or lab notebook works well) and all writing should be done in permanent ink.  It makes modifications or plagiarism much more visible.

On the inside cover of the Notebook:

• Prominent, legible, printed name of creator
• Name of employer or IP owner
• Date that notebook is started and finished
• Location where work is being conducted

In the Notebook use the following:

• Legible handwriting
• Project and topic headings
• List of all people involved in each project
• References used or sources of ideas if any
• Ideas described in a way that is understandable to others in the field
• Contemporaneous entry of ideas and research
• Full date on every entry!
• Time of work, if done during off hours and IP ownership is an issue
• Initials on the bottom of every page
• Printouts of key software code sections stapled to notebook pages
• Printouts of key data stapled to notebook pages

You should have a witnessed record of when you conceived of the idea and when you actually made a working version of the idea.  This is critical for patentable inventions.  You need to remember that you are creating potential legal evidence.

Here is Tim about creating an indexing system and why that is so important.

Simple but effective note taking enables me to:

-Review book highlights in less than 10 minutes

-Connect scattered notes on a single theme in 10 minutes that would otherwise require dozens of hours

-Contact and connect mentors with relevant questions and help I can offer

-Impose structure on information for increased retention and recall

My favorite notepads (covered below) generally don’t have page numbers off the shelf. Here’s how you progress with a non-paginated pad:

A. Put page numbers on the upper-right of each right-hand page but not on the left (e.g., 1, 2, 3, etc.). I do about 30 pages at a time, as needed.

B. Whenever you complete a page, put the page number in an index on the inside cover (front or back) and a few words to describe the content.

I hope to employ these practices soon with my blank notebook in the picture above.  Thanks to Jill and Tim, my Moleskine will soon help me to rule the world.  What do you guys think?  Do you see the importance in keeping a notebook like this?  Or am I again being a crazy, too organized guy?

Grace wrote a great post about idea creation and making sure to act when inspiration strikes.  I have this happen to me ALL THE TIME and I am always jotting down cool ideas wherever I can.  I honestly have a problem concentrating if I don’t write them down, because they will be bouncing around inside of my head all day.  But, I wanted to take her post one step further, I created a theoretical Coinstar for the mind.

What happens to ideas once they are written down in a notebook?  I have a lot of pieces of paper floating around my desk and I have been trying to figure out what to do with them all.  During one of these crazy Mid-Atlantic snow days, I sat down and created a system to organize them.

The purpose of the system was to filter all of my crazy ideas to reach my goals.  Jenny Blake wrote a great post about automating her money, I thought I could use that system with my random ideas.  So first I sat down and thought about what I want to achieve in the next few years.  I thought about what types of ideas I usually have and my goals and connected them all together.  Behold, the idea flowchart.

(Picture of the flowchart on my wall, in all of it’s nerdery…)

The picture is kind of small, so I am going to give you the gist of my the flowchart.  Once ideas pop into my head, I frantically scribble these ideas onto any piece of paper that I can find.  From here, there are four possible paths the idea can take.

Watch/Read/Listen/Eat/Buy Notebook – This notebook is pretty self explanatory.  I write down things to watch on television or the movies, books and articles to read, new music to listen to, things to buy at the grocery store and miscellaneous things that I need to buy at the store.  This is actually a pretty common tactic used to spend less money.  The logic behind the trick is that if you write it down what you would like to buy instead of buying it right away, it makes you think more critically about your purchases.  For me, the watch is replaced with Netflix, read is replaced with Amazon.com, and listen also lives in my iTunes wish list.

Business Idea Notebook – Business ideas and brainstorms go into my business idea notebook that I keep at my desk.  This where a lot of my ideas are going, because most of my interest lately has been in business.  Maybe for you it is a home decorating notebook, a dog training tip notebook, or a notebook with ideas for new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters.

Google Docs – My Google documents account is used for reference, book notes, business strategies and cool quotes that I want to remember.  Also, if there are some reference documents for ideas, I will keep them in Google Docs.

Free Time, Long Term Tasks – I keep a list of random tasks and phone calls that I should make when I have the time to do them.  That is where most of the rest of my jotted notes will go.  “Remember to call Comcast and tell them to come out and service their terrible cable modem.”

Now this all seems kind of OCD, maybe my engineering training has started to work its way through.  What do you guys think about this system?  Is it a great thing or have I developed a case of cabin fever?  I would love to hear in the comments.

(Peyton, the quarterback who never misreads a defense, misread late in the fourth quarter and lost the game for the Colts in Super Bowl XVI)

Obviously, the biggest story out of the sports world today was the Super Bowl highlights and the champion New Orleans Saints. N’orleans played a great game and had many game-changing plays. But most of the debate centered around the mistakes made by Indianapolis Colts players. One of the moments in the game that played over and over on ESPN was the drop by wide receiver Pierre Garcon. Pierre started to anticipate getting hit and lost his concentration while trying unsuccessfully to catch the ball. The other mistake was Peyton’s fourth quarter interception that was returned for a touchdown to all but win the game for New Orleans. Both mistakes changed the momentum of the game and led to the Saints’ eventual win.

What struck me was how much these plays were replayed, criticized and picked apart every half hour on each sports show. “What if someone would have looked at me while I worked for three hours and analyzed it with this amount of detail? I’m not sure how I would handle it,” I thought to myself. Some people would argue that this is the reason they get paid the big bucks, to handle the media scrutiny. I still argue that it would be tough to handle. Peyton was compared unfavorably to Super Bowl quarterbacks from the past, even though he won a championship four years ago!

Another story, definitely not as big as the Super Bowl but worthy of headlines, is the story about how Danica Patrick is headed to NASCAR. She has done pretty well in the Indy Racing League, but never dominated like others (Juan Pablo Montoya) who have made the jump. What’s most interesting is that all of you know who Danica is, but probably few of you know Juan Pablo. If not for her racing records, then you probably know her because she has her face plastered all over the GoDaddy Super Bowl advertisement every year. This most likely is what led to all of her criticism from people who might think that she has gotten by on her looks, even after she posted great results in a difficult professional racing league. There is no doubt that her introduction to NASCAR will bring even more undo criticism to the young driver.

Celebrities and professional athletes are used to this kind of public bashing. It is the widely accepted as the cost of being famous. But now criticism can be leveled at anyone with a website or email address. The internet and social media has given everyone their own voice, which is sometimes used to criticize.  As someone who writes on a blog, I open myself up to criticism every day, even if the criticism doesn’t seem justified. It is a fact of life in our new, highly connected society.

The thick skin of a celebrity is something that is critical to have when writing for everyone to see.  I have been working on my own thick skin as I interact more and more with people online.   There is no doubt that I can learn from Peyton, Danica or other widely criticized celebrities.

What kind of trouble have all of you had with criticism, online or in person? Do you think that relationships over the internet will get more or less civil as the social media removes anonymity from it’s interactions?  I would love to hear in the comments.