Welcome to The Three Things, the weekly update of three links, podcasts, videos, or books you can’t miss from Michael Schechter, Howie Goldfarb, and me!
This is the 16th edition and you may notice “books” is becoming a bigger deal here. I’m a big believer in long form reading, as it improves your creativity.
For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t suscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.
Happy Sunday reading!
Measuring Success: First Today, Then Tomorrow
Michael on Influencing Others. Much as I derive gratification from my own efforts, my greatest sense of fulfillment comes from the small influence I have on the work of others. Perhaps I undervalue my own work, or more likely I just can’t keep my eyes on my own paper, but one of life’s greatest pleasures comes in the form of offer feedback and occasionally having an affect on the ideas and creations of others. It seems I’m not alone in this pursuit. Randy Murray has found, after having many of his own successes, his lasting joy comes from being able to applaud those who he helped find a spotlight. Unlike Randy, I still doubt my own accomplishments. I’m believe I’m yet to realize them. That said, I just don’t believe they’ll ever be fully realized unless I put equal measure of effort into helping those around me realize their own.
The Web Just Got a Little Darker
Howie on the Dark Web. Well it really isn’t dark per se. I know it sounds ominous, but I found two very interesting thoughts on this article. First is that so little of the web is indexed. What is indexed is freaking huge…and that is an understated. The second thought is someone actually feels all human information needs to be cataloged and saved. But that would include talking and texting and more, all that would be impossible to catalog/index. I mean 99 percent of our communication is drivel. Why should we save ‘checked in at Starbucks’ or every single blog about Justin Bieber, when three would be fine for history’s sake?
Gini on Lance Armstrong. It’s been a long week for this cyclist and fan of Lance Armstrong. When the USADA news broke last year, I wrote a blog post about what he needed to do to repair his reputation. His interview with Oprah followed that advice (it wasn’t unique advice; it’s crisis communications 101) and he went on the air and answered “yes” in the first two minutes to 10 or so questions about his doping. I still have a lot of emotion wrapped up in this so I’m not ready to provide my take on it, but I have read nearly everything everyone else wrote. This ESPN article by Rick Reilly is my favorite. Not because I agree, but because it shows how huge this has become for more than just Armstrong and his former team.
Now it’s your turn. Is there a podcast, video, book, or article you think we need to see?