Jr. Strategy

Only half of your brief, or insight, or deck is on paper. The other half is delivered in your voice over; the accompanying story.

I’m not big on re-blogging, or rather, that’s not what I strive to make this blog about. But, after a crazy night in a tricked out minivan with all kinds of treats and temptations under the sun available, meeting people and making new friends in Orange, CA… this advice rings clear as a bell. I think it’s worth sharing. I even think it’s worth living by.

From 

milajaroniec (How to ruin your life):

Get stuck. Stay in one place your whole life. Always order vanilla even though the menu is four pages long. Become the type of person who sends back lattes. Save up your money for a plasma TV instead of a plane ticket. Talk a lot about things you know nothing about. Have an affair with someone you don’t even find attractive.

Refuse to forget your ex. Make it impossible for yourself to do anything without remembering that you used to do it with them. Hug your knees under the sheets and think about how safe you felt when they held you at night. Remind yourself daily of how empty you feel. Find new ways to make yourself sad.

Get drunk all the time. Consider no Saturday night, national holiday or extended happy hour complete without a vodka-induced breakdown. Graduate college but keep drinking like you’re still in it. Notice that cheap beer tastes watery and stale when you drink it alone but drink it anyway. Look at old Facebook photos wasted and wonder where everyone went.

Never drink. Never do anything that could potentially be “bad” for you. Treat your body like the temple it is and say no to carbs, yes to wheatgrass, go to bed at ten sharp and turn down cake on your birthday. Take fifteen different dietary supplements. Monitor carefully. Succumb to nothing. Miss out on everything.

Compare yourself constantly, to everyone. Allow the standards of image-obsessed, age-obsessed culture to make you feel decrepit at 25. Scroll through skinny girls on Tumblr feeling wistful and inadequate. Pull at the skin on your hipbones, stomach, and underarms in the mirror. Sigh a lot. Sigh all the time.

Don’t fall in love with anyone or anything. Put an impenetrable wall between yourself and other people. Add a fire-breathing dragon and eight yards of barbed wire. Be suspicious of everyone’s motives. Hold grudges long after you’ve forgotten what for.

Fall in love with everyone and everything. Run after the next best thing like it’s a bus you’re perpetually late for. Throw your heart into every other stranger’s hands and be genuinely surprised to be hurt. Refuse to learn. Refuse to ever learn.

Watching footage of bad qual interviews evokes the same feeling as looking for a parking spot and only finding those annoying 4/5 spots between cars that are barely too close together.

Tomorrow afternoon I’m going to be chatting with @Debkmorrison ‘s #UOCreativeStrat class at the University of Oregon. I love talking with these students, they’re so sharp and help me gain insight into the field while I work it out with them. Work it out, work it out.

Deb asked me to ready an assignment for them and I thought I’d share it here:

“What new behavioral trends are happening at the University of Oregon? In what groups of people, and how/where do you see the pattern? And how can you prove this is happening? Bring evidence.”

I want them to uncover their skills of subconscious observation.  Successful strategic thinkers are constantly keeping a log of what’s going on around them and why. Part observer, part private eye. But, in a way, this is something we all do as people. It’s the secret part of learning.