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What is the source of human motivation? In this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, Dr. Ayelet Fishbach shares the real science behind what motivates people to get things done.

Dr. Ayelet Fischbach is the author of the no.1 bestselling and deeply researched book, Get It Done: Surprising lessons from the science of motivation. She is an award-winning psychologist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the past president of the Society for the Study of Motivation.

What you are about to hear is a powerful dialogue about what it really takes to get and stay motivated, and ultimately get it done.

Dr. Ayelet Fischbach on Tying Productivity with Activity

The conversation starts with Christopher commenting that he feels that he has been less productive compared to his previous career. This was mostly due to his past work being so fast-paced and packed with activity, that he feels he is not as effective as he once was.

Dr. Fishbach responds that this is something that people often get confused about, which is associating productivity with activity. Sometimes people bombard themselves with a lot mundane tasks and call it a productive day, rather than getting something meaningful done that actually makes progress.

“If you took the day to think about a new idea, if you had a new idea for a book today, that would play an incredible day, right? Like, these are the best days for you. And they don’t involve their eight meetings. Back-to-back meetings are often a waste of time and we just fill up our time with all this nonsense.” – Dr. Ayelet Fishbach

You Can’t Put a Schedule on Creativity

One of the things that can be hard to put a schedule on is getting the motivation or inspiration to be creative. You could of course schedule times where you can get yourself in the “zone” to be creative, but it is not a guaranteed thing most of the time.

Dr. Fishbach agrees with this, and says that sometimes, you need to allot time and bandwidth for it to happen. This means that you might have to allow big chunks of your day on just letting your mind think. You might even have to shelve it for later, or sleep on an idea to let it develop further in your head.

“Well, creativity requires that you are able to sleep on something that you are able to, to think about it without reaching a conclusion without having the solution yet.” – Dr. Ayelet Fishbach

Dr. Ayelet Fishbach on the Definition of being Productive

That being said, what is the definition of being productive or effective? What does it mean to get things done?

To answer this, Dr. Fishbach shares the story behind her book’s cover. While thinking of a cover for her book, one of the designs her publisher presented had a to-do list. Dr. Fishbach said that that particular design would not work. Because for her, being productive does not mean having a to-do list.

“(Having a list) is not what I mean by getting things done. (You start off by) thinking about what goals are important for you. Okay, what gets priority? Is it your creativity? Is it taking care of something, of someone, and how these goals work with each other? So we start by identifying where we want to be, what we want to do, and then that the second element is monitoring your progress.

The third element is managing all the other things that are going on in your life. You never want just one thing. So what happens with the rest?

And the fourth is gathering social support. Who in your life is helping you? Who stands in the way? How do you get closer to the people that are helping you be the person that you want to be? This is a very broad overview of the framework of my world, the book, Get it Done, and not the to-do list.” – Dr. Ayelet Fishbach

To hear more from Dr. Ayelet Fishbach and how you can get things done, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Dr. Ayelet Fishbach studies social psychology, management and consumer behavior. She is an expert on motivation and decision making. She has presented her research all over the world.

Dr. Fishbach’s research has been published in psychology, management and marketing journals, including Psychological Review, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Journal of Marketing Research, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Her research is regularly featured in the media, including WSJ, CNN, Chicago Tribune, NPR and was selected to be featured in the New York Times ‘Annual Years in Ideas.’

Dr. Fishbach has served as an Associate Editor on several journals, including Psychological Science and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and she has served on the editorial board of leading journals in psychology and management. She has further served as the president of the International Social Cognition Network (ISCON) and the Society for the Study of Motivation.

Dr. Fishbach is the recipient of several international awards, including the Society of Experimental Social Psychology’s Best Dissertation Award, Career Trajectory Award, and the Fulbright Educational Foundation Award. In 2006, she received the Provost’s Teaching Award from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Fishbach earned a bachelor’s degree with distinction in psychology in 1992, a master’s degree summa cum laude in psychology in 1995, and a PhD magna cum laude in psychology in 1999, all from Tel Aviv University. She joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2002.

Links

Connect with Dr. Ayelet Fishbach!

About Dr. Ayelet Fishbach | LinkedIn | Twitter |  Amazon Books

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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For some, entrepreneurship is a way up in the world. For others, it’s a way out of their current situation. But no matter what the motivation, entrepreneurship is ultimately an opportunity to create a different future. Not only for the entrepreneur themselves, but for their customers, employees, and ultimately an entire community. This is the reason why me and our guest, “IRON” Mike Steadman, love entrepreneurship.

“IRON” Mike Steadman is a retired combat Marine officer. He is also a three-time National Collegiate boxing champion in the military. He’s the founder of Iron Bound Boxing and Education, which is a non-profit in New Jersey. He also founded a company called Dog Whistle Branding, a marketing agency that helps veteran-owned businesses with podcasting, brand, and category design.

In this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we have a dialogue with “IRON” Mike Steadman as we talk about all things entrepreneurship, including topics such as helping veteran entrepreneurs. This is a conversation you’re going to find incredibly inspiring and empowering, so stay tuned.

“IRON” Mike Steadman on Losing the Ability to Communicate

The conversation starts as Mike responds to a comment about sounding like a podcaster. He shares that being a podcaster helped him become better at public speaking. Now, when he does interviews, people are surprised on how Mike can do it all in one take.

Nowadays, being able to communicate with each other in a clear and articulate way seems like an outlier than the norm. Mike thinks that this is due to the internet and the anonymity it provides, that we lost something essential when talking to other people.

“I think we’re struggling with it. It’s because we’ve lost the ability to communicate with empathy. That’s the thing, right? You can communicate, share your opinion, or something. But you can also be an asshole about it. And I don’t think we are very empathetic anymore.” – Mike Steadman

“IRON” Mike Steadman on being the Loudest in a Conversation

One of the problems we have with communicating nowadays is that there seems to be a lot of yelling going on. Some do it mostly for attention, others to push their ideas further than the others.

For Mike, it’s a matter of respecting the people you are conversing with.

“If you’re the loudest person in the room, you’re also the weakest person in the room. And sometimes I think yelling is, I don’t want to call it a cop out, right? But yelling is we just write (comments), we don’t know how to communicate. We don’t know how to respect people’s opinion.” – Mike Steadman

“IRON” Mike Steadman on Social Media

It is ironic that “social media” has made a lot of people antisocial. Mike thinks it is because people find it easier to just hide behind a computer screen and interact with people that way.

Unfortunately, some people who start a business has the same mindset. But for Mike, it’s just not the best way to do things. Regardless of whether you’re doing things digitally or analog, you still need to communicate with people properly and build proper relationships with them.

“I’ve been saying (that) business is a contact sport. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the generation now when they start a business, they think they can just go on social media. But human to human, you still have to look someone in the eye (and) talk to him convey your value. And I think the default (now) is social media. Even dating girls, the default is an app. So I think we have lost the ability to communicate, actually.” – Mike Steadman

To hear more from “IRON” Mike Steadman and how Social Media is both the cause and the cure for proper communication, as well as how he helps veteran entrepreneurs connect with the current market, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

“IRON” Mike Steadman is a serial entrepreneur based in Newark, NJ, who’s committed to improving the economic and social outcomes of urban youth and military veterans through boxing, entrepreneurship, and new media.

He’s the Founder and CEO of IRONBOUND Boxing, a nonprofit that provides free amateur boxing training, entrepreneur education, and employment opportunities for Newark youth & young adults.

Mike and his partner Keith Colon, oversee the legendary IRONBOUND Boxing Academy, their free boxing gym for youth in Newark, NJ. He also runs IRONBOUND Media, a podcast production company that produces branded podcasts for veteran-owned businesses.

Mike is a three-time National Collegiate Boxing Champion from the United States

Naval Academy and Marine Corps Infantry Officer, with deployments to Afghanistan and Japan/Philippines. He’s currently a Hoover Veteran Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank promoting the principles of individual, economic, and political freedom.

His goal is to raise 1.5 million dollars to build the ever IRONBOUND Courage Academy, a 5,000 sqft boxing facility and small business incubator space for Newark’s youth and young adults.

Through his efforts growing IRONBOUND Boxing and IRONBOUND Media, Mike has established himself as a high-profile veteran advocate and the new face of social entrepreneurship.

To learn more visit www.IRONBOUNDBoxing.org and www.IRONBOUNDMedia.com.

To learn about IRONBOUND Boxing and our efforts in Newark, please visit www.Ironboundboxing.org

Mike is also a Hoover Institute Veteran Fellow.

Links

Follow “IRON” Mike Steadman!

Website: IronboundBoxing.org | IronboundMedia.com | DogWhistleBranding.com

Linkedin: in/Iron-Mike-Steadman

Instagram: @IronMikeSteadman

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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In this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, you will hear one of the most inspiring, horrifying, and yet deeply moving conversations from our guest, Valerie Edmondson Bolaños.

Valerie Edmondson Bolaños is the founder of an extraordinary NGO called Warrior Angels Rescue. She started her own NGO in the way of Hurricane Maria. It was a Category Five storm that devastated her home island of Puerto Rico back in 2017. What started off as an effort to rescue her own family grew into a much larger scale over time.

Since August of 2021, Valerie and the Warrior Angels Rescue has been evacuating girls, women, and their families from the humanitarian crisis that is escalating in Afghanistan after the United States left. What you’re about to hear is really one of the most inspiring mission-driven founders you can listen to. We hope that it moves you as well.

Valerie Edmondson Bolaños on the Afghanistan Situation

The conversation starts as Valerie gives a perspective of what the situation is in Afghanistan at this moment after the United States withdrawal last August of 2021.

“It’s pretty horrific, which should come as no surprise. We’ve noticed (that) just in the three months that we’ve been working there. It just descended from an absolutely apocalyptic situation into the depths of hell. The messages and videos that we’re receiving directly from the families that we’re helping that are in our evacuation lists are just horrifying. I’ve had nightmares, and I’m not even living through it firsthand.” – Valerie Edmondson Bolaños

These horrors stem from the local terrorist organizations who are trying to root out those who have worked with the US forces when they were still on the ground. They torture and beat them publicly, while abducting and interrogating those who they think had close ties or worked directly with the US forces.

This was on top of the different terrorist organizations jockeying for power amongst themselves, which adds another layer of suffering for those on the ground.

The Taliban Taking Away the Power

Valerie shares that are a lot of shortages on the ground. The economy has all but shut down entirely because people are in hiding. People who had decent homes and careers had to leave almost everything to stay with families that are less conspicuous.

“The Taliban is literally trying to take away power from the people who have even the slightest bit of power. And so much power comes from being educated and being having a profession. So they want to quash any potential viable resistance to their takeover by not only literally taking away power and electricity and connectivity from everyone, but they’re targeting middle class families and upper class families. So everyone’s gone into hiding, which means that most of the mechanisms that keep society going and keep the economy going are completely shut down.” – Valerie Edmondson Bolaños

While the medical care is not completely gone, it’s can still be hard to get in the current circumstances. There are simply too much people that are now relying on volunteer medical professionals who are scared but also want to save as many lives as they can.

How the Pandemic Factors In

On the topic of medical care, Valerie was asked about the COVID spread and deaths in Afghanistan. She shares that there isn’t really any visible evidence of any data being collected at this point. Not to mention any effort for vaccination programs to speak of.

“There’s no data being collected. People aren’t going to hospitals for the most part, because then they’re afraid they’ll be killed. So yeah, I don’t I don’t think any data is really coming out, or being collected. I mean, that would require a functioning government, which is not what the Taliban has created.” – Valerie Edmondson Bolaños

The pandemic really added a few levels of complication of how volunteer NGOs like the Warrior Angels Rescue can operate on the ground, as not only are you worried about getting shot, the idea of a virus ravaging the neighborhood just scares both the locals and volunteers alike. The Taliban are definitely not doing anything to alleviate it. For them, it’s just another way of keeping people in check and not banding together to take back the country.

To hear more from Valerie Edmondson Bolaños and how she and the Warrior Angels Rescue help those in dire need, download and listen to this episode. If you wish to help them in their efforts, check out the links at the end of this article.

Bio

Valerie Edmondson Bolaños

Valerie Edmondson Bolaños founded Warrior Angels Rescue in the wake of Hurricane Maria, a category 5 storm that devastated her home island of Puerto Rico in 2017.

What started out as an effort to rescue her own family quickly grew into a large-scale effort to evacuate hundreds of medical patients, pregnant mamas, and elderly people who could not survive days (let alone months) without electricity. Since then, our 100% volunteer team has responded to 5 disasters: a mudslide, an earthquake swarm, a tornado, a global pandemic, and the international border shutdowns due to COVID.

Since August of 2021, Warrior Angels Rescue has been evacuating girls, women, and their families from the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Afghanistan.

Warrior Angels Rescue has saved hundreds of lives by securing safe harbor in Ecuador and routing our evacuees through Pakistan to Canada and other countries willing to step up and help.

With a resettlement strategy founded on the principles of empowerment and synergy, Warrior Angels Rescue has developed a win/win/win solution that protects the freedom of our refugee families, benefits the local communities from our host countries, and costs the American taxpayer $0.

Links

Follow Valerie today!

Website: WarriorAngelsRescue.org | News Page: WarriorAngelsRescue.org/news

GoFundMe: Evacuate School Girls to Safety

LinkedIn: in/Valerie-Edmondson-Bolanos

More on Valerie Edmondson Bolaños and the Warrior Angels Rescue

Morning Joe on MSNBC

KTLA news

Yahoo! News

Orlando Sentinel

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Today on Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, Morgan Wright is back to talk about all things Security: new geopolitical threats, the new domains of warfare, and how they look at evil crimes through the eyes of the legendary public servants who solve them. This is a very fun, insight-packed real conversation with one of America’s highest profile crime fighting voices.

Morgan Wright is an internationally recognized expert on cybersecurity and terrorism, identity theft, and privacy. He was also a senior adviser to the US State Department, anti-terrorism program, and a senior law enforcement adviser for the 2012 Republican National Convention. Morgan has developed solutions in defense, justice and intelligence for the largest technology companies in the world. He is now also the co-host of a red-hot new podcast called Game of Crimes. This new podcast shines a light to the men and women who serve and protect.

So if you are looking for an in-depth update on how our cybersecurity stands today, stay tuned to this episode.

Game of Crimes with Morgan Wright

We open up on the topic of Morgan’s new podcast. Game of Crimes is a podcast that he co-hosts with Steve Murphy, and it is a long-form true crime podcast.

Morgan shares that they were inspired with Follow Your Different, where they go deep into the topic and explore multiple topics related to the guests. They enjoyed the format so much that most episodes end up as two-parters, because they find a lot to explore on each guest and topic.

“Our interviews are long. When I mean (long), we’re they’re always a two–parter. So that’s actually been a fun part because it kind of gets you back into it.” – Morgan Wright

There’s a risk to doing two-parters, but the payoff is if you get people hooked, they’d have to hear both episodes to get more of their fix.

Morgan Wright on Looking at the Problem Wrong

Morgan then talks about the Cybersecurity conferences that he has attended over the years. His shares that his recent favorite opener is what Elon Musk did different to become a rich guy in the world. That is, he thought differently, and revolutionized the space industry through SpaceX.

He then explains that sometimes the problem is not the biggest problem, but the way we think about the problem.

“What I say is the problem isn’t the problem. The problem is the way we think about the problem. That’s not what counts. What really counts is the way our adversaries think about the problem. And they beat us every time because they out-think us about what to do.” – Morgan Wright

Another example he has is about bank robberies. It makes sense that if you want to beef up your security, you need to learn how the people on the other side thinks. Instead, managers and bank owners just get into their conference rooms and say what they think works, which often turns into an echo chamber of sorts.

Prevention is ALWAYS Better than a Cure

In line with this train of thought, Morgan Wright mentions that cybersecurity experts need to start looking at the problem from a different perspective. Because up until recently, the implications on cybersecurity have always been Response and Recovery. While that it all well and good, the problem with that is your systems are reactionary.

Morgan thinks that cybersecurity should be proactive, where you stop and prevent cyber attacks from happening in the first place.

“The reason we keep getting the results we have is because of the words you keep using you keep talking about Response and Recovery. That means it’s already happened to you. What you’re saying is that we should continue to buy effective fire alarms that say congrats, your house is successfully burned down. So let’s start talking about stopping and preventing. And the minute we start doing that, we will start changing what we think about the problem.” – Morgan Wright

To hear more from Morgan Wright and the current state of Cybersecurity and how the fight against cyberterrorism is done, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Links

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

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As we all know, Context is everything. Around here, we believe that thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. So if you want to design a different future, the context of your thinking matters. In this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we discuss context and much more with Kevin Maney.

Kevin Maney is the co-founder of Category Design Advisors, where he and his partners advise CEOs on how to design and dominate market categories. He is also one of the godfathers of Category Design, and one of the co-authors of Play Bigger, alongside Al Ramadan and myself.

We talk about a lot of topics that will help frame your think, and why the barriers to entry for Category Design keep dropping. We also discuss why Category Design is more important now than it was in 2006. To know why that’s the case, stay tuned to this episode.

Kevin Maney On Playing Bigger

It has been five years since Play Bigger came out, and there have been a lot of changes in Category Design over the years. Kevin suggests that they should get together again and pool together what they have learned over the years.

That said, Kevin has noticed a few things that were big drivers of why category creation and design is so important. Some of them they have touched on in Play Bigger, but did not have the bandwidth to delve deeper into. These drivers are what Kevin and the others have been explaining to CEOs over the past years, so they can be aware of how important it is in dominating the market.

Though the most obvious catalyst in the recent years has been COVID. COVID has accelerated the amount of category breakthroughs, mostly brought about by necessity.

 “One of the things that always happens in these times of crisis or radical change like wars, a pandemic, or other things that truly shake up the world (is that) everybody starts doing things in different ways, or looking for new solutions. And it really opens up the possibility of creating new things and new categories that didn’t exist before, solving old problems in new ways or, or addressing problems that have never existed before that arise because of what’s going on.” – Kevin Maney

Kevin Maney on the End of Friction

In any business or market, there will always be friction present. One of the friction Kevin talks about is the friction of geography, and how that can affect the market. Because of such frictions, most people are limited to choose what is available, instead of the category leader for that market.

Fast forward to today, and those frictions are slowly being removed. Now that people have access to a wider variety of the market, they will tend to gravitate towards the category leaders of said category. Which makes aiming to be a category leader is a must now, lest you get left behind.

“The more that the friction of geography disappears, the more we can all choose the global, or at least national category leader of any particular category. So that makes it all the more important in whatever business you’re in to try to be that category leader, or you’re really just going to get sucked down the drain.” – Kevin Maney

The Prevalence of Disintermediation Today

The conversation then shifts to how different things are done today compared to just a few years back. In a way, there’s more disintermediation nowadays compared to the .com era. One of the way it’s very visible now is how we consume entertainment. With the advent of different social media platforms, normal people can interact directly with their idols, rather than having to go to concerts or shows.

On the entertainers themselves, the old formula is getting discovered and debuting on TV or film. Nowadays, people could go viral on their own efforts, or at least without the backing of a major corporation and such.

All this because we have reduced the friction required to make things possible. In the early 2000s, you’d need a lot of equipment, money, and know-how to shoot a simple video, let alone have it viewed by people. Now, all that can be done with just your smartphone.

“That’s an insane decrease in friction, and allows for the creation of these new categories. It allows for a niche player to find their audience everywhere in the world, and not just in some little location or some little pocket.” – Kevin Maney

To hear more from Kevin Maney and how you can create different futures for your business, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Kevin Maney is cofounder of Category Design Advisors, where he works with CEOs and executive teams to develop and execute strategies to design and dominate markets. He is also a multi-time bestselling author and journalist who writes about technology and society.

His most recent book, UnHealthare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance, was co-authored with venture capitalist Hemant Taneja and Jefferson Health CEO Steve Klasko. It came out in 2020, and tees up how healthcare will evolve in the post-Covid era.

His previous book, Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts are Creating the Economy of the Future, was co-authored with Hemant Taneja and came out in 2018.

His book Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets (Harper Business, 2016), is a collaboration with Silicon Valley veterans Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson and Christopher Lochhead. The book introduces business to the idea of category design and gave birth to the advisory firm Category Design Advisors, where I’m now a partner.

He co-authored, with TIBCO CEO Vivek Ranadive, The Two-Second Advantage: How We Succeed by Anticipating the Future…Just Enough. Merging brain science and computer science, it was a 2011 New York Times bestseller, and predicted much of the conversation we’re now having about artificial intelligence.

He also co-wrote Making the World Work Better, which marked IBM’s centennial in 2001. More than 600,000 copies are in print in a dozen languages.

His other books include Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t, The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr. and the Making of IBM and Megamedia Shakeout.

Over the years, he’s been a contributor to Fortune, The Atlantic, Fast Company and ABC News, among other media outlets. He was a contributing editor at Conde Nast Portfolio during its brief run from 2007 to 2009. For 22 years, he was a columnist, editor and reporter at USA Today.

He’s appeared frequently on television and radio, including CNN, CBS Sunday Morning and NPR, and lectured at conferences and universities, including New York University, UNC in Chapel Hill, and his alma mater, Rutgers.

Kevin also plays music with other New York rockers in a band called Total Blam Blam.

Links

Follow Kevin Maney today!

Website: KevinManey.com | CategoryDesignAdvisors.com  

LinkedIn: in/KevinManey |  company/CategoryDesign

Facebook: fb.com/CategoryDesign

Twitter: @KManey | @CD_Advisors

Instagram: @CategoryDesign

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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In this special solo episode of Christopher Lochhead – Follow Your Different, I just want to share with you an element of conversation around the most recent Kyle Rittenhouse case. What I wanted to talk about is America’s biggest problem when it comes to situations like this. That is, the lack of any authentic dialogue about the matter.

Too Much Yelling, Not Enough Listening

Regardless on where you come out of the issue, there are some things that wasn’t properly address or we didn’t hear from at all. What I hoped we’d hear more was thoughtful, nuanced dialogue and conversation. Instead, what we got is what we’ve been getting a lot of in the United States of late, which is yelling and hardened positions. You’re only pro or anti-something. As part of that, whatever one side does, if you’re on that side, everything they do is right, and everything the other side does is wrong, and vice versa.

I think that’s really sad. Because thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. And it’s only through dialogue, where human beings can achieve greater levels of understanding. There was no dialogue sparked by this horrible circumstance, horrible situation around what do we as Americans want to do about protests and riots? There wasn’t a discussion about that. Nor was there a discussion about self-defense, what do we mean by self-defense? Who decides where there’s a line where we can no longer defend ourselves or not?

“What I do know is we’re not having conversation. We’re not having dialogue. There’s a lot of yelling, and not a lot of listening.” – Christopher Lochhead

Bring Back the Willingness to Listen

If you’re a long-time listener of this podcast, you know that our mission has always been to celebrate real, authentic dialogue. In our case, dialogue around what it takes to design legendary business and legendary life. In hopes that we can bring back curiosity, we can bring back a willingness to listen, a willingness to co create our lives and ultimately, our culture and country together.

I got to tell you: sometimes, particularly of late, it feels like we’re losing that war. We might even have lost it completely, and we might never get it back. But I do know that a conversation about authentic dialogue, and why we don’t have it, and how we can have more is an important thing to do, even if very few people want to participate in that.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Almost everything academic ever written about drinking and alcohol is centered on why it is bad for us. In this episode of Follow Your Different, we have the audacity to ask, “How does drinking and getting drunk make a difference to humanity?” And to answer that question, we have Edward Slingerland with us.

A bit of a disclaimer before we proceed: it is clear that for some people, drinking is a horrible thing. If you’re somebody for whom drinking represents a problem, then please know you have our thoughts and empathy. However, this episode is one that is going to celebrate the difference that drinking has made to society. Our guest today delves into that and more on his new book that studied how drinking is great for us as a society.

Professor Edward Slingerland is a distinguished university scholar and professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His new book is called Drunk: How we sipped, danced, and stumbled our way into civilization. We dive deep into that and more on this episode, so stay tuned.

Edward Slingerland on Getting Drunk

Prof. Edward shared that he had fun writing his book, Drunk. On one hand, it’s a topic people are interested in a lot, because it’s about drinking. For Edward, it’s also a mystery worth exploring, despite most people not even realizing it.

Finding books about different drinks and how to get drunk around the world is easy. Finding one about why people like getting drunk, is not.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever explored just the underlying question of why we like to get drunk in the first place. And so, it’s fun to actually problematize something that people take for granted.” – Edward Slingerland

Evolutionary Hijacks

So, why do we get drunk? The easiest answer is that it makes us feel good. But that’s not really an answer, according to Prof. Edward. That answer just opens up another one, which is “why does evolution allow us to get drunk?” In simpler terms, “Why?” This is the central mystery that Prof. Edward wants to explore.

The standard story we’ve been told in psych textbooks is that it was an evolutionary mistake. We somehow discovered something that just happened to randomly hijack reward circuits in our brain. So as clever primates, we figured that we could just take a shortcut and feel good without doing anything.

Prof Edward likens it to masturbation, which is another evolutionary hijack. Orgasms given us pleasure, and pleasure is the best carrot that evolution has to encourage us to pass on our genes to the next generation. Yet we have managed to hijack that with all sorts of non-reproductive sexual hijacks.

“But evolution lets us get away with that because it’s not interested in a perfect system. It’s happy with good enough. And this system is good enough.” – Edward Slingerland

Although unlike masturbation that old people say will make you blind, excessive alcohol consumption will literally blind you.

Reasons to Get Drunk

Despite all that, people have been gathering around the fire and drinking to their hearts content since the start of civilization. This just makes everything all the more mysterious, according to Prof. Edward.

Another thing that Prof. Edward noticed is that the evolutionary mistake story might not have been accurate. For one thing, most of our ancestors that domesticize plants didn’t do it for food. They were hunter-gatherers; they could just simply pick food up in the wilderness. Yet they still tried to grow such plants near their living spaces for easy access.

It was the same for the civilizations that discovered the ancestor of maize. It was a terrible grain to use as a food source, yet people chose to settle and raise this crop. All for the sake of getting drunk. So it was by no means an accident.

“There’s one estimate from ancient Sumer, is that half of the grain production went to making beer. So you’re taking in a place where people are on the edge of starvation, even in large scale civilizations, you’re taking half of your food stuff, and turning it into a chemical neurotoxin, something that’s going to harm your liver, increased cancer risk, lead to, potentially to social chaos, people drink too much of it. The costs that it imposes on humans means that it can’t be a mistake, there have to be countervailing benefits that that pay for the costs. So that’s what most of the book is trying to focus on what those what those benefits might be.” – Edward Slingerland

To hear more from Professor Edward Slingerland and why people love to get drunk, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Edward Slingerland is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, where he also holds appointments in the Departments of Psychology and Asian Studies.

Educated at Princeton, Stanford and UC Berkeley, he has taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder, the University of Southern California and the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Slingerland is an expert on early Chinese thought, comparative religion and cognitive science of religion, big data approaches to cultural analysis, cognitive linguistics, digital humanities and humanities-science integration.

He is the author of several academic monographs and edited volumes from Oxford and Cambridge University Press, a major translation of the Analects of Confucius, and approximately fifty book chapters, reviews, and articles in top academic journals in a wide range of fields, from psychology, cognitive science and linguistics to Asian studies, philosophy, religious studies and international relations.

He is the recipient of several book, research innovation and teaching awards.

Dr. Slingerland’s broad research goals involve exploring the potential of novel digital humanities techniques, introducing more psychological realism and evolutionary perspectives to cultural studies and philosophy, and getting scientists to understand the importance and value of humanistic expertise—especially when it comes to research areas such as literature, ethics or religion.

His first trade book, Trying Not to Try: Ancient China, Modern Science and the Power of Spontaneity (Crown 2014), ties together insights from early Chinese thought and modern psychological research.

His second, Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization (Little, Brown Spark June 2021), targets the standard scientific view of our taste for intoxicants as an evolutionary accident, arguing instead that alcohol and other drugs have played a crucial role in helping humans to be more creative, trusting and prosocial, thereby easing the transition from small-scale to large-scale societies.

Dr. Slingerland is also Director of the Database of Religious History (DRH), an online, quantitative and qualitative encyclopedia of religious cultural history, based at UBC and involving a large international network of postdocs, editors and contributors.

As primary investigator, he has received over $11 million in grants to support projects exploring the origins of religion and their role in supporting large-scale societies or developing innovative digital humanities techniques and platforms.

Dr. Slingerland also teaches two popular MOOCs on the edX platform on “Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science” and “The Science of Religion.”

Slingerland is a US-Canadian dual citizen. He was born in New Jersey and spent fifteen years in California (San Francisco and Los Angeles) before moving to Vancouver, BC, to take up his position at UBC.

An avid ocean kayaker, gardener, cook and appreciator of wine, he splits his time between Vancouver, Canada and Northern California.

Links

Website:

EdwardSlingerland.com

ESlingerland.arts.ubc.ca

Twitter: @Slingerland20

Check out his book: Drunk: How we sipped, danced, and stumbled our way into civilization

More about Professor Edward Slingerland:

WSJ: Drunk review: Two cheers for happy hour

NYTimes: A History of Getting Hammered, and Why Some of Us Should Keep Doing It

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Welcome to part two of our Native Digitals series here at Follow Your Different. On this episode, we have a conversation with Hannah Grady Williams on how your business can tap into the Native Digitals workforce. For those who are not familiar of what Native Digitals are, give part one of this series a quick listen (FYD 250).

Hannah Grady Williams is the Gen Z CEO Advisor, sort of like a Gen Z whisperer for CEOs and executive. She is the author of a new book called A Leader’s Guide to Unlocking Gen Z: Inside strategies to empower your team.

If you are over the age of 35, which is a Native Analog, this is a must-listen podcast. Because Hannah has a tremendous amount of insight for how Native Analogs can bridge the gap to work, recruit, and build our companies with a whole new slew of Native Digitals workforce.

Generation Differences: Gen X vs Gen Z, Native Digital vs Native Analog

When asked if the generation differences also coincide with the category of Native Analogs and Native Digitals, Hannah says that there are overlaps, but they are not completely the same. These overlaps are more on how each generation treats technology.

“Well, Gen Z, you think about all the kids sitting around the table constantly on their phones, not paying attention to anything. To you, you think it’s a distraction or something that’s taking my mind and my presence away from the people around me. The way I see it is a door that opens me to experiences I never could have had in my natural environment. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that distinction of the way that my generation looks at the world.” – Hannah Grady Williams

How Native Digitals Use Technology, and Why Analogs Don’t Get It

Hannah then talks about the time his brother mentioned what he has learned from Tik Tok. If you are a casual user, you might think that the platform is just all dance and viral memes. Yet there are people who use the platform to share important life lessons and tips they have learned themselves, in digestible, bite-size content.

Sadly, most parents’ reaction to someone just spending their time on social media is to just strip their phones or tablets from them. Rather than engaging with them and understanding, they just stop the activity. Because again, to them that is all just distraction.

“What they don’t realize, you know, if I’m looking from a Gen Xers perspective, or a Boomer’s perspective, I think of technology maybe the same way as any other technological innovation that might distract you from family time at the dinner table. But the way my generation sees it is, not only are we getting access to an entirely new world of people. It’s actually a portal to a new world. it’s a portal, it’s a new way of thinking.” – Hannah Grady Williams

Millennials and Gen Z are the New Category of Humans

Hannah states that Native Digitals is a great way of describing the New Age of Humans that we have now. She also thinks that it will become more pronounced once the next generation Gen Alpha, comes around.

Hannah then brings up a book called Ready Player One. It is about living immersed in a digital world and treating the real world as the alternative. While the real-world economy is at a downfall, it didn’t really matter to its citizens. As their life is spent in their digital selves, they saw no need to be lavish in real life.

While it is an exaggerated version, it does mirror how Native Digitals prioritize their digital lives over their physical ones. You see people buying expensive digital products while in real life, they barely buy new clothes and the like.

That’s what Native Analogs should take note this early. Otherwise, they might be left hanging once almost everything goes fully digital.

To hear more from Hannah Grady Williams and how your business can reel in the Gen Z and Native Digitals of the world, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Hannah Williams’s story began in a blue pickup truck when her father handed 12-year-old Hannah the phone and asked her to close a deal on an investment property. After this unexpected introduction to the world of entrepreneurship.

She found herself thrust into a climate of innovation, challenge, and opportunity and she enrolled in college at age 14 and graduated with a degree in international business at age 18. Now, as a 23-year old Gen Z, she has consulted businesses from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies and is on a mission to help leaders leverage Gen Z talent as a competitive advantage and build #RadicalEmpathy in the workplace.

Links

Web:  www.hannahgwilliams.com

Email: ha****@ha*************.com

LinkedIn: in/Hannah-Williams-Experience-Consultant

Read Hannah’s New Book!

A Leader’s Guide to Unlocking Gen Z

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Originally published in ?‍☠️ Category Pirates: It’s not a weekly newsletter. It’s a weekly mini-book.

Lately, there has been a fundamental, dare I say, seminal change in the category design of human beings. That is to say, the definition of what a human is has changed. You see, if you’re 35 and up, you are the last of a dying breed called Native Analogs. If you’re 35 or younger, you are the first generation of Native Digitals.

Native Digital’s experience life in a digital first way, and an analog way, second. Native Digitals have come of age integrated with the machines. Your smartphone and technology overall is like part of who you are as a person.

Most Native Analogs do not get this. Most people are not ready for the fact that everything is moving from an analog paradigm to a native digital world. So in this two-part series of Follow Your Different, we explore Native Digitals versus Native Analogs, and how it is important to realize that we are shifting to a digital paradigm faster than you think.

Category Neglect

First off, we start as to why it is important to recognize category shifts like the one we are experiencing now. Most category kings and queens tend to fall into a trap, in which they ignore new categories that may be adjacent or indirectly related to theirs.

When a new category arises (seemingly out of nowhere), the incumbent doesn’t topple over because they were unaware of the new category queen. More often than not, they fall because they dismissed what was happening right before their very eyes.

It’s not ignorance. It is arrogance coupled with the gravitational pull of “the way it is.” Because the people profiting in the present want things to stay the same.

This is called Category Neglect. Category Neglect doesn’t come from people being stupid or lacking sufficient data and resources to spot the headwinds and tailwinds of the future. It comes from a refusal to acknowledge which direction the wind is really blowing.

Why do they fall to such a seemingly obvious trap? This happens because the gravitational pull is too strong. A company gets used to earning hundreds of millions, or billions of dollars per year, and thinks it can do no wrong.

The company becomes deeply invested in the present. Anything that threatens the way it is now is dismissed.

Native Analogs vs Native Digitals

One of the most profound shifts happening in the world today is rooted in the ever-escalating debate between generations young and old. It is a shift hiding in plain sight. Just like the Tymshare executives staring out the window at Apple’s cranes building the headquarters of the company that would ultimately put them out of business, most people over 35 years old can’t see this shift happening.

Instead, they say to themselves, “Eh, we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

As Category Pirates, we feel it is our obligation to sound the alarm when we see rocky shores ahead. Some of us are facing a once-in-a-generation set of headwinds that could not just stymie growth, but sink our entire ship. If those of us over age 35 aren’t careful, this divide could result in one of the greatest instances of Category Neglect.

However, those who see this mega shift and act on it, on the other hand, will sail into the sunset a lot of happy pirates, make more money, and make a way bigger difference in the world.

With that said, let’s first give a better definition of what a Native Analog and Native Digital are. We’ll also define where their biggest difference lies.

There are two types of people on planet earth today.

• The first are Native Analogs. These are Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, born anywhere from the 1940s all the way up to the early ‘80s. Today, they range between the ages of 40 to 75, and make up approximately 136.8 million Americans.
• The second are Native Digitals. These are Millennials and Gen Zers, born between the early 1980s to as recently as the 2010s. These demographics are around 35 years of age on the high end, down to as young as 6 years old. They make up approximately 140.1 million Americans.

The difference?

Native analogs grew up in a time where technology was an addition or a distraction from their real lives.

Native digitals grew up in a time where their “real” lives were a distraction from their digital lives.

This is a profound shift—and no one seems to be talking about it. Even more stunning, some of the largest native digital brands on the planet are run by Native Analogs. Who don’t get it either.

To learn why it is important to know more about Native Digitals and how it can affect your category and businesses, download and listen to this episode. You can also check it out at Category Pirates.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!