Scott Porad

I am a golfer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah…you knock the ball around the course from time-to-time, but I’m not talking about that.

To say that you play golf is a completely different thing than saying you are a golfer.  Playing golf is an activity.  Like fishing or riding a bike.

Playing golf is something you do.  Being a golfer something totally different.

Golf is not like other sports.  In fact, I’m not sure if it’s really fair to call it a sport.  It’s more of an addiction.  Like other addictions, there’s a lot of reasons why you don’t want to get mixed up with golf.

First of all, golf is sort of self-inflicted torture.  On the surface, the task seems sooooo easy: just hit a stationary ball with a metal stick in the middle of a big open field of grass.  Yet that seemingly simple and easy task is invariably frustrating because more often than not it’s completely unfulfilling.

Don’t believe me?  Try it some time.  The ball never goes in the little hole at the other end of the field, but rather into the trees or the water or the sand.

Excruciating.

Then, like a masochist, a golfer will walk down the fairway and go through the entire ordeal again.  I do this with glee regularly, and I cannot think of anything more enjoyable.

And, if you think about it, it’s sort of like a startup.

From a distance, a startup seems fun and glamorous, but on the inside it’s really hard and painful.  The work is hard and stressful because it’s both unclear and uncertain with an added dash of “and you may run out of money next week” thrown in for good measure.

Lots of times I ask myself, “Why do I keep getting involved with these startups?  Why can’t I just be ordinary and get a job working at some big company, living in a cubicle farm and hapily punching in and out every day?”

Why?  Because I’m a golfer.

I was asked last week about a moment of grief I was experiencing.  I was asked:

Are you angry?  Is there part of you that’s pissed off and saying, “why me?”

No, absolutely not.  I can say that with unequivocal conviction.  In fact, it’s absolutely the opposite: I feel a deep sense of gratitude for of having been fortunate and lucky.

Grief is a truly bitter-sweet feeling.  I have hyphenated that word with intention.  Bitter-sweet is not it’s own thing; like the ying and the yang it’s composed of two.

Is all grief bitter-sweet?  I don’t know, but imagine so.  If the sweetness weren’t there in the first place, then I’m not sure we’d grieve at all.

A quick post to update you on my whereabouts.

I’m here as I ever was.  I took a vacation at the end of May, and that got me out of rhythm.

Plus, work has been crazeee bizzy lately.  Did you see that a profile of Cheezburger was the #1 most popular article on the New York Times web site?  Check it out:

I read the New York Times every day, so that feels pretty darn good!

Anyhow, I’m back in the saddle now, and am going to work at getting back into my daily rhythm.

My grandma turns 91 today.

Ninety One.

Just think about how much has changed in 91 years.  Every single piece of technology that is being used for me to create this blog post, and for you to consume it…not a single one of them existed then.

There were no phones, smart or otherwise, no cars, no NFL, no…I wonder if they had radio in 1919?  Sure, they must of had radio.  Yes, absolutely they did.  But they didn’t have all these fancy kitchen appliances or fancy automobiles.

And, as far as I can tell from TV (which they didn’t have back then either) all their clothes were shades of grey.  Can you imagine that?  My grandma didn’t even have color!

Awhile ago I asked my grandma about The Great Depression and she said, “well, it didn’t seem as bad as it does now because nobody had as much of anything back then”.

More recently, she told me that her grandfather (my great, great grandfather) had a men’s clothing store.  I did not know that.  When I asked what ever happened to it she replied, “it went out of business in The Depression, [you idiot,] what do you think happened to it?”

My grandma comes from a different era; and era where ladies were far too polite to actually say, “you idiot”, but her tone of voice subtly conveyed the message just the same.

Thing is, I wonder if they had more happiness back then.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is how I spend my free time.  Or, more specifically, the activities I do when I want to relax.

What I’ve noticed is that my relaxation activities are mainly “consumption” activities—watch the tube, read a magazine or a book, surf the web.   On the other hand, it occurred to me that many people relax via “production”—by writing, or painting, or working in the garden.  I wish I were more like that.

So, I’m trying to find ways to relax by producing, as opposed to consuming.  In other words, by being a light to the world, as opposed to being a black hole.

This is harder than it seems because most types of production seem like work, although the other day I wrote a chapter in my book instead of reading a magazine.  It felt good to do that.

One thing I personally struggle with is “screen time”.  I work in front of the computer for most of the day, and many of the relaxation activities I do—consumption or production, regardless—involve being in front of a screen.  Working on my book—screen.  Watching a movie—screen.  Except for gardening, this is quite a challenge.  (Actually, there’s more than gardening…there’s exercise, I suppose.)

So think about that: how to produce without being in front of a screen.  These days, that’s harder than it seems, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

Following up on my assertion that red is not a color, I wanted to share with you the xkcd color survey.

Read the survey results, and take the survey to see how it works…it’s a fascinating experiment in understanding how the mind works.

Just a quick update on my upcoming travel schedule…

I’m heading to San Francisco for the Startup Lessons Learned conference this upcoming Friday.  Then, next Friday and Saturday to Chicago for SOBcon 2010.

If you live in either of those cities and would like to meet up, let me know!  Here’s my contact info.

Last summer, I wrote a popular post about 3 Lessons I Learned About Development While Raking the Yard with My Son.  Welcome back again to Lessons from the Yard, Volume II.

I used to make big plans for the yard.  On a sunny weekend day in the spring I’d be inspired to go to the garden store and buy all sorts of supplies.  An entire spring and summer’s worth of supplies.  Plants and flowers.  Soil and compost.  Tools and equipment.

Oh, how I love to buy tools and equipment!  Tools and equipment are the romance of the garden store.  Tools and equipment fill my heart with songs of possibility and joy.

But I digress…

I would spend lots of money, then go home and unload the car.  By now it was lunchtime, so I’d go inside for something to eat, then head back out to begin turning my big plans into reality.  After a few hours I would get lé tired, so I’d start wrapping up and be done with an afternoon’s work by around 5pm or so.

Everything seems to be okay, so then what’s wrong with this picture?

The answer is that I used only about 1/10th of the garden supplies I bought earlier in the day.  Now, in theory, I would use the remainder of the supplies over the course of the summer, but let’s be honest…we all know that isn’t what happens.  What happens is that the sad little garden supplies are shuffled off into the garage where they dream of being called off the bench one day to play in the big leagues.

Not only was this wasteful, but it made me feel awful too.  Looming over my head all summer was the work that remained to be completed; looming was the failure of not having completed my job.

So, now I do things differently: when I go to the garden store I only buy enough supplies for the work I can complete that day.

Yes, that means more trips to the garden store which some would view is less efficient, and efficiency is revered in our culture.  I think it’s worth the trade-off because the other side of efficiency is effectiveness and my new method is much more effective.

Obviously, it’s less wasteful.  I only buy what I need, and don’t end up putting a bunch of supplies in the garage that never end up getting used.  And, more importantly, it makes me happier.  Instead of feeling the weight of work that remains to be completed, I feel the satisfaction of a job completed.

Obviously, these lessons could be applied to the work world as well, and I’m not the first person to state them.  Pretty much, we’re talking Lean.  Like raking pine cones last year, it’s just nice to feel these experiences while digging in the dirt.

I was at an event with my 8-year old son yesterday, a group of about 12 to 15 kids and their parents. As an icebreaker the question was posed, “What’s your favorite color?”  Each parent-child pair answered, child first, then parent.

Of course, the children were dutiful: “My favorite color is red.”  “My favorite colors are purple and black.”  And, the parents likewise, “white”, “fuschia”, “royal blue”…and so on.

Egads, I thought!  Are we teaching our children to be numb to the world!??!

Red is not a color!  Describe red to me?

Or, for certain, it’s not a color you can love!  How is that something that stirs your emotions?!

Let me describe colors you can love: the deep red of cherries, the aquamarine of the ocean, the orange as the sun falls below the horizon, the green of freshly cut grass, the dark blue of a lake in the night, the silver-gray-metal of an overcast day, the nostalgic yellow-orange-brown of fallen leaves in the autumn, the bright white of fresh snow…

I want my children, and all children, to feel the world.  Colors are visual, so I want them to see the color, and I want those colors to stir emotions within their heart.

What is my favorite color?  It’s the feeling I get when I see the rich color of green leaves against the blue sky on a sunny summer day when there isn’t a cloud in the sky.

A friend of the family passed away yesterday at a relatively young age, in his early-60’s.  It’s unfortunate that it takes exceptionally sad moments to remember the things that are exceptionally important…

…to remember that it’s all about people…about friends and family.  That you don’t win the game of life by getting the most money or toys or celebrity or victory.  You win by having friends who will bring you chicken soup when you’re ill.

I’m reminded of a line from a song…in the end it all, piles up so tall, into one big nothing, one big nothing at all.

Yesterday, I had coffee with a friend who had ventured out on his own for the last year, and he was explaining how he had not had as much financial success as he had hoped.

“Were you happy doing it?” I asked.

“Absolutely!” he replied.

In life, there are some things you can’t buy with money, and many things which just aren’t all that important.  That’s not what our society tells us, not what our workplace tells us, not what the hundreds of marketing and advertising messages that we’re subjected to each day tell us, but it’s more true than anything I know.

Perhaps I can say this because, relatively speaking, I’m secure.  Sure…I have to work for a living, but I have a good job doing something that makes me happy, so I’m lucky.  I suppose if this weren’t the case that maybe I’d feel a little differently.

I’m pretty comfortable, however, asserting that’s irrelevant.  There will always be people in life with more or less material things than I have…and more or less security than I have.  For me, for you, for everyone, these things will always be relative.

The people who can rely on me, and who I can rely on in return…when all is gone and we are stripped bare to the world…people are the only absolute.