I have a technique I use for modifying my behavior in order to be more successful and achieve my career and life goals. I know I’m neither a self-help guru or a motivational speaker, but I thought I would share this idea in case anyone finds it useful.

Occasionally, I do a little bit of self reckoning and come up with a list of behaviors that I know I need to embrace in order to be successful. I print out the list in a large font and post it in front of my face where I work.

I do this only once every few years, because it takes that long to put the behaviors into action, see the results, and come up with the next version of the list.

I’ve never had a name for this, but today I decided to call it a “To-Be List.” We make a lot of “To-Do Lists” which usually include one-time tasks like “pick up dry cleaning,” “finish client proposal,” or “renew domains.” Unlike a To-Do List, the To-Be List includes behaviors that have to be learned and used consistently, every day, until they become second nature.

Here’s the list I created today. I know what each of these means to me, but I’ve added a bit of explanation so you can see why the item is on the list. Some of this is a little personal, but it’s hard to embark on a personal improvement program without being personal.

Let your character, strengths and personality come through. This is another way of saying I need to be myself. If I’m consistent, and true to my ideals and values, and I let that show all the time, it will improve my business and personal relationships.

Ask for it. Instead of thinking “I hope they cover my client’s new product” or “I hope they award us the contract,” I can increase my chances of success if I come right out and ask for “it,” whatever it is.

Think three steps ahead. When I taught my son to play chess he was around eight years old. I let him win for a while until he learned the game. Then I played harder, winning most of the time, until he became far better than I was. After that, I rarely beat him. I could see that this was because he had the ability to see several steps ahead, and I played a move at a time.

Take the next step and the one after that and the one after that until you get there. This is a reminder to follow-up, to see things through.

Cut back on self-deprecatory remarks. Don’t overdo attempts at humor. This is where it gets really personal. I like to think I have a good sense of humor, but I know sometimes I overdo it. One time, during a keynote review at Sun Microsystems, a senior vice president help up a document I had written and said, “I hope everyone has had a chance to see the brief Joel did. This document is perfect. It is a best practices example of how to do a brief. Every brief at Sun should be done this way. It’s too bad Joel is such a wiseass.”

Since my book came out I have been doing a lot of public speaking. I always interject humorous slides and remarks into my talks. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they bomb. What I need to do is to stop thinking first about the funny line or amusing anecdote. Along with the tendency to be a wiseass, I also make a lot of self deprecatory remarks, which are meant as a show of modesty, but are starting to wear thin, even for me.

Pause for a moment. This is a simple suggestion. I need to remind myself to pause a moment before making that phone call, sending that email or publishing that Twitter update. Despite having been online since the introduction of the telegraph, I still transmit and then regret.

So there you have it, my To Be List for 2009/2010. I hope you’ve found this idea useful, and please share your suggestions on the steps you take to make personal improvement a reality.

I was “tagged” last night by my friend Jeremy Tanner. Jeremy and I are often mistaken for each other. Jeremy lives in Boulder. I live in Boulder Creek. Both have first names starting with “J.” And the closer you look the stranger the “coincidences” appear.

I’ve never before participated in a round of online tag, it being the social media equivalent of a chain letter, and a scam to generate links, but given that something useful might come out of it, I thought what the heck.

The game started apparently with Mitch Joel.

In a moment, my social media “best practice,” but first, a couple of initial ideas that I ended up rejecting:

• Don’t use worn out buzzwords like “best practice.” This particular phrase is ostentatious and not all that meaningful. A student in one of my college journalism classes asked the professor, “What is the most egregious offense a reporter can commit?” to which the professor responded, “the use of the word ‘egregious’.”
• Don’t wear white shoes when posting to your blog after Labor Day. (Trying to be topical here.)
• Add Socialized to your RSS reader.
• I once spilled club soda on the guy in front of me on a plane. I told him a little club soda would wash it out, but he was not amused. It’s true. I did tell him that and a little club soda will wash it out. A best practice, but not related to social media.

So here’s my real suggestion for getting the most out of social media:

• Break out of the social media bubble to get the most out of social media. Ignore the so-called “A-list.” They’re on your newsreader. Links to their posts are on Twitter every few minutes. Everyone’s talking about them. Their ideas will come to you. Instead, seek out something new to read every day. Do a Technorati or Google Blog search on “historical revisionism” or “post-modern literature.” Or find someone who just started blogging, leave a positive comment on their blog and add them to your blogroll. (I know blogrolls are passé, but a link is a wonderful gift.)

And now I’ll tag three of my very good Canadian friends, Martin Waxman, Miranda McCurlie and Rob Cottingham. Have a great Labour Day weekend guys!

Join the Literacy Program of the Volunteer Center in making new friends with the 1st Annual Kitchen Tour on August 24th from 12-4PM. Driving from Seacliff to the Westside, you’ll stop at nine gastronomic sanctuaries. At each kitchen you will be served delicacies from local bakeries and peruse top of the line appliances, cabinets, and architecture. Buy your tour guide for $15, which includes home photos, descriptions, and directions to each kitchen at one of the many local business options:

Bookshop Santa Cruz
Bookworks Aptos
Capitola BookCafe
Outback Trading
Bailey Properties
GreenSpace
John Fuchs
Baker Brothers Watsonville

A lazy, delightful Sunday afternoon looking at other people’s handiwork, noshing and sending support to the Literacy Program at the same time. Yes!

I don’t generally post local items, but literacy is very important, and I know at least a handful of Santa Cruz people read my blog. Others, pardon the interruption.

Tags: kitchen tour, literacy, santa cruz

I’m involved in social media for one reason. I want to help clients get into the global conversation to engage transparently with influencers. And for the money. And the girls. And because sometimes I get to do things I would never otherwise have been asked to do, like promo the latest episode on Buffy Between the Lines, one of the web’s top Buffy the Vampire fan sites.

Tags: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy Between the Lines

Award-winning Los Angeles-based graphic designer Ophelia Chong is working on a couple of designs for Socialized. While much of Ophelia’s art takes its themes and inspirations from Web 2.0 and the digital world, she uses techniques drawn from the pre-digital era, combining hand-carved woodcuts, letterpress printing, and other materials.

Right now, Ophelia is working on some Socialized patches, that are similar in approach and materials to this piece:

Copyright Ophelia Chong 2008. All rights reserved.

She’s also designing the long awaited Socialized t-shirt. I learned growing up in the Valley that when you have your own company you get to (have to) make cool t-shirts.

Here are two wood blocks that Ophelia hand-carved for the background of the patches. The woodblocks themselves are works of art.

After printing these, she will overprint the patches on a letterpress using movable wood type. (This method originated either with Johannes Gutenberg or the early Chinese depending on whose version of history you believe.)

I’m very familiar with hybrid creative models, and the synthesis of old and new methods and design. My wife is an amazing graphic designer who combines a hip modern style with frequent historical references. She designed the awesome business cards and other identity for Hyde Park Associates, my first blog and consulting company. The centerpiece of Hyde Park’s design was a post card of a speaker (actually, not figuratively) standing on a soapbox orating in London’s Hyde Park, which I saw as the perfect metaphor for the public speaker today.

My parents are prototypical steam punks. I learned about letterpress printing from my mom, who took up the hobby around 40 years ago and still maintains a print shop in a barn nearly a century old. As a kid, I loved the whirring and clanking of her Chandler and Price press, and the smell of ink and solvents in the print shop. I still do.

As I understand it, my dad “showed up” at our house one day with a printing press for my mom and sort of “forced” her to take up the hobby. Whatever. She’s still doing it and seems to love it.

My dad is a technologist whose experience goes back to the vacuum tube era and who, at 81, consults the Veterans Administration on technological and computing solutions for rehabilitation. One of his many hobbies is designing computer interfaces for pre-digital technology. He designed an interface for a Linotype typesetting machine so that he could compose on a Mac in Microsoft Word, and then send pages to the Linotype to be cast using hot lead. He briefly worked on a similar interface for a Jacquard loom, a design which requires hundreds of relays, and is also doing one as the front end to a pipe organ. That’s my dad.

Wood type is really cool. This beautiful type is often seen being sold a letter at a time at flea markets and antique stores, and having grown up in a letterpress household, seeing this is heartbreaking. In many cases the amazing fonts that produced the “handbill” graphics look of the Victorian era are lost to us.

In the book world, people who tear apart beautiful books and sell the illustrations one page at a time are known as “breakers.” It is not meant as a compliment.

So I am thrilled when I see someone who understands the appeal of letterpress printing, and still takes the time to do it. And I am equally thrilled to have someone as creative and tuned in as Ophelia designing for Socialized. In the words of Wayne Campbell, “We’re not worthy!”

One final note. I have received mostly positive comments on the design aesthetic for the Socialized blog. Understandably, most people dislike the totalitarian regimes of the last century, and some have uncomfortable associations with their iconography. I chose to mimic these designs for several reasons. For the most part, it’s a joke. I am mocking myself and the “social media movement” for sometimes taking ourselves too seriously. In a general sense, I am also mocking anyone who “takes up the flag” and follows a movement without understanding its underlying implications, or who fails to look to the history books for lessons that can be learned from failed utopian movements. If I am making any “political” statement with this, it is “watch out for politics and politicians.”