Archive for the Filling the Void Category
How do you skip the line and get the corner table? (photo: Thomas Hawk)
An evening out should be special, especially if it’s an expensive evening.
But too often it’s a disappointment. Does the following scenario sound familiar? After weeks of trying to score a reservation at that new restaurant that just got a great review, you finally get one – only to find yourself waiting until 9pm for the table you were promised at 8pm. When you’re finally seated, you find yourself waiting – for a drink, for your food, for your check, even for your coat.
It might be somewhat tolerable if you looked around and saw that everyone was treated the same, but that’s rarely the case.
There always seems to be at least one table getting the VIP treatment. It’s like a little oasis: The diners aren’t kept waiting; the waiters are particularly attentive; and the chef may even come out to say hello or send over some extra desserts at the end. Who doesn’t want to be treated like that?
I’m not fussy and I’m not high maintenance. I think those are two reasons I stumbled upon the secrets of being treated like a VIP… Read More
Take 10 seconds today to fill up your karmic bank account. (photo: woodleywonderworks)
Part 1 – The Favor and Bribe
This two-part post is interrelated, so I recommend you read both sections. If you take 10 seconds to do the first part, it should — based on the research — make you a happier person.
The first part is simple. I want to give ten of you $150. More on this a little later…
There are less than 7 hours left to help 100,000 public school students get $1.5 million dollars in much-needed funding for their educations. A single click here is all I ask of you, and I sweeten the pot with a bribe below… Read More
Just take a right at…. huh? (Street signs in Wales)
In the wee morning hours of September, I took my first trip to Wales to experience The Do Lectures, which is held in tents in the Cardigan wilderness.
Not only did I get to sleep under deer skins in a high-end geodesic dome (not kidding), I got to dropkick my brain reading Welsh and drink the best peppermint tea I’ve ever had. Fun times indeed. Even water buffalo came to the party (again, not kidding). I put some pics at the end of this post.
My 15-20-minute presentation — the first video below — was titled “How and Why to Be Unreasonable.” The Do Lectures have a clear environmental focus, but I’ve never done anything large in conservation or enviro-activism, so I decided to explore more universal principles of doing big things.
Here’s the thumbnail description:
“Case studies of how to think big and test assumptions to accomplish the impossible, whether launching a #1 bestselling product, setting a world record, or changing the world”… Read More
The unbelievable Oregon coastline. (Photo: liquidskyarts)
Six weeks ago I conducted my first social media travel experiment. I posed a simple question and let your responses to me on Twitter and this blog dictate exactly what I did on a 12-day roadtrip with my brother from San Francisco to Vancouver, Canada.
No packing or planning was done before jumping in the car (the best proof of this: I needed a friend to FedEx my passport to Seattle so I could get into Canada).
I’d done the trip from SF to Mexico several times, often meticulously planned, and this trip — my first up through the northwest coast — was both more fun and less stressful. Here is the progression of my “tweets” (Twitter entries), beginning with the first question… Read More
SPRING 2005, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
I had to bribe them. What other choice did I have?
My lecture at Princeton had just ended with smiles and enthusiastic questions.
At the same time, I knew that most students would go out and promptly do the opposite of what I preached. Most of them would be putting in 80-hour weeks as high-paid coffee fetchers unless I showed that the principles from class could actually be applied.
Hence the challenge.
I was offering a round-trip ticket anywhere in the world to anyone who could complete an undefined “challenge” in the most impressive fashion possible. Results plus style. I told them to meet me after class if interested, and here they were, nearly 20 out of 60 students.
The task was designed to test their comfort zones while forcing them to use some of the tactics I teach. It was simplicity itself: contact three seemingly impossible-to-reach people—J Lo., Warren Buffett, Bill Clinton, J.D. Salinger, I don’t care—and get at least one to reply to three questions… Read More
Gentle on nature, hard on Jedi. (More great Eco-Boba pics here.)
Boba Fett was always my favorite Star Wars character.
Here’s your chance to emulate him and become a bounty hunter. Prizes go to the bold.
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than 125 million cell phones are thrown away each year, which amounts to about 65,000 tons of waste. That’s just in the US.
I have four old phones sitting in a drawer because I want to recycle them but… well, it’s damn inconvenient. Most people are green only when it is more convenient, cheaper, or faster than the alternatives, plain and simple.
But what if recycling a phone were as easy as “throwing it out” in a public mailbox?
The Solution – Hunt Them Down
How do we convince companies, like LG or AT&T, to make good behavior convenient, helping us and the planet? Simple. Call them on it. Literally.
Here are the steps and bounty… Read More
Napping after lunch at the new Vang Lam preschool in Vietnam. So cute a lumberjack would cry.
Remember LitLiberation, the social media educational experiment I ran with bloggers not long ago?
With zero financing or hard costs, this new model ended up raising more than $250,000 in less than a month, more than Stephen Colbert, TechCrunch, and Engadget combined during that same period.
Hundreds and thousands of you participated and spread the word, helping thousands of children in fundamental life-altering ways.
Here is one fun new example: our first school in Vietnam has been completed and is now full of pre-schoolers! … Read More
Bestselling author David Bach used to use Flonase, Alegra D, and Singulair. He used Advair for almost ten years before he made one change that eliminated all of these medications.
He moved into a The Solaire, a green-optimized building in NYC.
Going green is something we all know we should do, but somehow most of us never quite get around to it, unless an accident or experiment shows us clear personal benefits. David moved into The Solaire for the location, for example, not the green effect.
But what if you could help the world by being self-interested? Self-interest and contribution need not be mutually exclusive, after all.
It can be done… Read More
In Sonoma: Kevin Rose and my attempt at an artsy wine photo.
Thick legs, full body, good structure. Sounds to me like a bad Match.com description. But no, it’s a cabernet sauvignon. Huh?
Alas, maybe wine just isn’t for a lad who grew up on Long Island with a rat tail.
Then again, as the soon-to-be wine demigod Gary Vaynerchuk sayeth: “Most people in the wine business are douche bags.”
Sad but true. So how do you appreciate wine without turning up your polo collar and becoming someone worthy of a slap in the face? I just came back from a weekend in Sonoma, and here are 7 tips I learned to follow after bumbling through wine for a few years in Nor-Cal… Read More
