[startonebyone]

It's not that common that you want an 8 hour audio book to be another 8 hours, but that is definitely the case with @simonsinek new book; at least in my opinion.

[startonebyone]

Slide 1 from our @Rock_Health application. Fingers crossed.

[startonebyone]

Psyched to have our application in the mix with @Rock_Health - We had a whole 16 min to spare before the midnight deadline :)

[startonebyone]

So excited this book is out today. Love their thoughts. @jasonfried @dhh

[startonebyone]

New post on @Medium - 'It may not apply to you' medium.com/@ryan_vanderbilt

[startonebyone]

I just posted 'Ta-Da List' on @Medium - http://buff.ly/1cDUJ9C

[startonebyone]

Just published on @Medium - 'Which comes first? The most important project, or the most distracting one? - medium.com/@ryan_vanderbilt

[startonebyone]

For a new post on @Medium called: 'Don't look for the next to-do' If u want to check it out it's at: www.medium.com/@ryan_vanderbilt

[startonebyone]

Honored to have contributed an infographic for an incredible initiative to better support survivors of #modernslavery #P4F Thx @helloenso

[startonebyone]

Check out my buddy's project on @kickstarter 'The Butler.' It's dope! 7 days left. http://goo.gl/k3i3hQ

[startonebyone]

Starting to visualize a manifesto. It's turning into a series of smaller 'posters/graphics' so far. #createyours

[startonebyone]

#createyours Create Yours - An Evolving Manifesto

[startonebyone]

Had to #regram this. @paperkary was nice enough to bring some @startonebyone samples into @studiomates The home of many people and companies at the top of my admire/respect/enjoy list :)

[holstee]

The New Holstee

We have come a long way on our mission to encourage mindful living. Our friends send us stories when they bump into the Manifesto in far corners of the globe: from remote beaches in Haiti to cafes in Hong Kong. Additionally, we are humbled every day by the incredible stories our community shares on MyLife.

While we are incredibly grateful for the ways in which Holstee has been received, we have spent a good amount of time thinking about what’s next. We have thousands of ideas we’d like to work on. They are all very different, from creating a sustainable home goods line to starting the Holstee cafe or producing a mindful phone. And in good Holstee fashion, we want to embrace them all.

But in order for us to succeed as a startup, we need to be focused. That’s why we can’t do all of these ideas right now, but rather work on one after the other. We envision Holstee will become a collection of startups, offering many different things. One thing that will remain consistent is that everything under the Holstee umbrella will have a common goal: every service or product will exist to encourage mindful living.

Our big goal is to positively influence 1 billion people on this planet over the next 10 years. The Manifesto gave us a good head start - we estimate that over 100 million people have seen it - but this is only the beginning.

We believe that the inspiring brands of the 21st century will be different than the giants of the 20th century. Instead of defined by their sheer size and power, we believe the brands of the future will be deeply shaped by genuine values. And they will live these values in every breath of their presence. A good example of this model comes from our friends at the Unreasonable Group; they have been (and continue to be) a great source of inspiration for us on this journey as they set out to become the “Virgin of the 21st century.”

So, what does this all mean? Instead of launching more and more products into the Holstee shop, we are launching verticals, which each will live as their own brand and store. Our first step on this journey is Holstee Print, our first vertical.

Holstee Print exists to bring inspiration, meaning and a smile to your homes and offices. We will be selling posters, cards and frames with Holstee content. On our mission to reach 1 billion people, we want to bring mindfulness to living rooms and work spaces across the world. Check out the Holstee Print store.

What do you think of our new direction? And which products and services would you like to see Holstee offering? Please leave a comment here or email me at [email protected] - I’d love to hear from you.

[startonebyone]

A vision and post that has me nodding my head excessively in agreement :)

[startonebyone]

Do you ever search google for something unrelated to what you are doing? It totally interrupts you but you don't want to forget? I do constantly. Would you find it useful to have a tool that would quickly capture your search query, but then it would disappear so you can get back to what you were doing and hopefully not lose your focus. It would gather the search results in the background and you could go view them at a better time. Do you think you would use that? (at In my head)

[plusprojects]

Skills First, or Purpose First? A Call For Y-Shaped People

“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.” Viktor E. Frankl 

“Why did I spend so much time thinking about the design of their corporate office space, or how the teams could collaborate and communicate better, or researching how unhealthy these products were; when my brief was specifically to design beverage packaging for them?” This is what I asked myself a few years ago to help me discover some common threads that existed in my thinking, and how I approached projects.

It didn’t matter if I was doing branding for consumer goods, or a customer journey for an airline, or furniture design, or fashion, or tech; there were some common themes I always tried to embed in the projects. The ‘what’ (the project) didn’t matter because I had a much stronger interest in ‘why.’ I wasn’t always aware or this, or consciously making these decisions, I think it was just part of my authentic self.

“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” John F. Kennedy

I first heard the term ‘T-Shaped people’ about five years ago when I joined Google. I liked it, I thought it made sense and was a good thing to consider as we worked on growing the team, but it didn’t connect with me on any deep level.

If you haven’t heard the term before, here is an explanation from wikipedia: 

The concept of T-shaped skills, or T-shaped persons is a metaphor used in job recruitment to describe the abilities of persons in the workforce. The vertical bar on the T represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, whereas the horizontal bar is the ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in other areas and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than one’s own.

The T-Shaped term and idea was first used in 1991. I’ve continued to hear and read about T-Shaped people, and how they are the desired type of person for todays work environment. I feel like we are missing something huge though. I think there is another way to look at other people, as well as how we look at ourselves.

To stay on the ‘letter’ theme, I’ve been thinking about the idea of ‘Y-Shaped’ people. A quick search shows I’m not the first to think of using ‘Y,’ but my definition probably differs.

The Y-Shaped person has a ‘why’ or purpose that runs through them, and through everything they work on or take part in. Their values, their over-arching beliefs and philosophies are a part of everything they do.

When I looked back at all my projects a few years ago, I realized I’m like this. I always had some consistent themes running through the projects I worked on. For work I was a designer, but I don’t mean themes that were driven by aesthetics or trends; they were/are themes driven by my interests, values, and ‘big-picture’ goals in life. 

I’m now much more aware of what consistently drives my thinking, and I make a conscious effort to apply them; but even before I was conscious of these themes, I couldn’t help but let the deep feelings and concerns become a part of everything I was doing. 

The Y-Shaped person struggles when they are doing things that go against their core beliefs and values; or when projects simply don’t feel like they are coming from a meaningful place to begin with. It doesn’t really matter how much they are get paid, or how respected they may be; something just doesn’t feel right. The Y-Shaped person senses that the only thing we can’t catch up on in life is time, and the Y-Shaped person wants to use that time for things that align with their values.

The interesting thing is that unlike T-Shaped people, everyone is a Y-Shaped person; but many, maybe even most, aren’t paying enough attention to their values, and seeing how valuable it is to bring them to life in everything they do. 

At times it feels like the world is changing and starting to value this more, but there is still a deep rooted ‘system’ that seems to keep the ‘Y’ and the ‘why’ out of us. The education system, systemized tests, emphasis on memorizing and grades vs. learning and applying, resumes, job descriptions with 30 bullet points of ‘must haves,’ GPA, SAT, IQ over EQ, and on and on. It’s not surprising how few people bring their ‘Y’ to the foreground. But no one is a victim, we can all take steps to re-discovering our ‘why.’

There are many people moving us in the right direction. Simon Sinek’s book and TED Talk on ‘Start With Why,’ investment funds like Collaborative Fund focusing on mission driven companies, platforms like Skillshare who are facilitating education that starts with individual interest, Google admitting their focus on GPA for reviewing and hiring people had no benefits, the B-Corp business structure which only accepts mission driven companies solving social and environmental problems, and there are many other examples.

I hope we get to a point where everyone is a Y-Shaped person first; we may or may not be the right fit for a certain company or job, but that will be very clear quickly because both sides will know ‘why’ they are doing what they are doing; and time, energy, money, resources, and stress can be eliminated by knowing that from the beginning. This will lead to better individuals, better connections, better teams, better companies, better projects, better outcomes, and maybe even a happier and healthier world. At least, that’s my ‘Y’ and ‘why.’

[startonebyone]

Another good one: "To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world." Josephine Billings (Steve's tail was holding the page down :)