Vince Poscente's Speed Blog

Books Will Not Survive

The Age of Speed is driven by our insatiable need for instant gratification. If we can have it now, that’s a good thing. The debate over paper bound books vs electronic books has been bouncing back and forth like a rumor at a healthcare debate. But digital products like the Kindle and Sony Book Reader will eventually be the death panel for paper books.

 

The biggest argument for book readers has been “loving the feel of paper in their hands.”  It’s a nostalgic notion not unlike the romanticism of riding on a train or in a boat or on a horse. These same people would still readily and primarily hop in a car or travel on a plane. The experience of reading a book is not about the paper folks.

 

The coveted experience is the escape. When you read a book, the only thing that you have consuming your focus is the story or content.

 

Books on laptops or desktops have not, nor will they ever, replace conventional books. Why? Interruptions and convenience. The dominant downside of the Age of Speed are the number of times we are interrupted in a day. Putting multiple functionalities on one computer (ie communication, video, pictures, business applications, etc) have obvious benefits. But add a book, especially a fictional narrative and you lose the escape experience. It’s tough to escape when you have, “You’ve got mail” dinging away.

 

I also predict the books on PDAs like the Treo, Blackberry and iPhone will not get past the early adopter phase. Again, interruptions will destroy the experience of reading a book. A new text message will ding. The phone will play that goofy tune only you think is cute. People will realize they can’t sufficiently dive into the escape experience of the novel.

 

Actually, let’s back up and understand that we humans are driven by an experience. We will buy expensive tickets for a Paul McCartney concert weeks in advance just to experience something we associate with our younger days. Which is what we did recently. Oh, by the way… it was amazing to look around and see how many people where texting while McCartney was performing. So much for “escape.”

 

This is a case in point. If the distraction is available, it doesn’t even need a ding to interrupt us. As your thoughts wander while you read a book or enjoy a concert the simple access to twitteremailtextingchattinginstantmessagingfacebooking is enough to ruin the escape with a compulsive look.

 

The biggest mistake Kindle and Sony Readers could make is to try to become a multifunction unit. Keep it a tablet to read and escape. Leave the PDA at home. Escape and enjoy.

 

And to all you books made out of paper. It was nice knowing ya.

 

Now I’ve got some inventory to unload. Buy those old fashioned books while they last. Why? According to Brian Tracy, the one thing all rich people have in common is a library.

 

So stock up so you can be rich and nostalgic all at once.

 

Click here.

 

Beating the Busy Blues

I’ve found myself cringing every time I say to my kids, you’ll have to hurry. And I seem to be saying this all the time. “C’mon, we have to hurry. Quick, brush your teeth. You have to go potty? Well go fast.”

I marvel at people that can gracefully float from one task to the next. Actually, I don’t know anyone who does that but if I did, I would marvel. With this assumption that these superhuman task-to-task floaters exist, I silently berate myself as I stack one “hurry up kids” after the next.

 

In two weeks The Age of Speed will be launched by Random House in paperback. The media tour will begin and interviewers will want a sneak peek at time saving tips in the book. And here I am, the guru of speed and find that I keep having to explain myself. In the Age of Speed it’s not about being perfect, fast and uber-efficient. It’s about doing the best you can with the time you have.

I heard a story that I was unable to verify. It was about a radio interview with Stephen Covey (author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People). When asked by a reporter what percentage of his day he practiced the Seven Habits he supposedly said, “Oh, about 60%.” What a great, honest answer. He knows what works and does what he can to live a rich life.

Enriching our lives is what most of us want. An enriched life is what we want for our kids.

Recently I came across a new application that speeds up video so that you can view YouTube, Flash or other online video at your own pace. It’s in beta form at the moment. It is supported by Enounce and has a “speed slider” where you control the speed with patented signal processing that prevents “chipmunking” of the audio. Sounds cool. As we launch into another piece of technology that will save us time, let’s never forget the importance of savoring the experience.

My pre-teen kids love YouTube. I immediately wondered if the Enounce app would be a benefit or a curse? Would they use it to save time or would they miss important nuance? But ultimately this is not my choice. How they use their time is their choice. Just the way a BlackBerry is a great tool or a horrible distraction. You choose how to use technology to save time. Hopefully without compromising the richness that life and connection with others has to offer.

My promise to you is that these newsletters never take more than 70 seconds to read. I know you’re busy. You might be in a hurry. Besides, I’ve got to run too. My son needs to get to his guitar lessons. It takes us 17 minutes to drive there if we hit green lights all the way.

“Max. Max? Hurry, we’ve got to go or we’ll be late.” (Or not.)

How's the Book Doing?

The one thing they don’t tell you in Bestseller school is how often you’ll hear the question, “How’s the book doing?”

The answer?

“Good.”

After The Age of Speed hung out on the New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling lists for a few weeks it dropped off the radar. It has been selling well but not breaking any records.

Books like Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Malcolm Gladwell’s, The Tipping Point had somewhat similar experiences. What you might not know is these books didn’t become mega-bestsellers until they went to paperback.

Enter, the Mac-Daddy of publishers, Random House.

On August 26th, The Age of Speed will be released at their lead business book in paperback form. Included in the book are new tips to help save time in our hectic lives.

Here’s a sneak peak of what is offered in this new, improved version:

Spend Extra Time on Significant Experiences - Make sure you spend your extra time on rewarding experiences.  Frequently, when we reduce the time it takes to do something insignificant, we end up using the saved time on yet another insignificant activity. Use the time saved to reward yourself. Predetermine before work or routine personal tasks to spontaneously reward yourself for finding a faster way to do something.
Example: One of Michelle’s values and key experiences is connection. When she saved herself and hour with online grocery shopping she rewarded herself with a phone call to a friend and a business contact she hadn’t been making time for.

Be Conscious of Bonus Time - If you figure out a way to save time at the bank and the grocery store, for example, do you earmark that time for something rewarding, or do you just fill that time passively with other responsibilities that pop up?

Example: Spencer uses the self-checkout kiosk at the grocery store and saves himself from standing in line for ten minutes. He then takes a moment to think how he will fill that extra time. Spencer decides to hand write a thank-you note to a neighbor who stored his mail and newspapers while he was away last month.

The Age of Speed is about understanding the choices you make in the time you have. To eliminate the feeling of being overwhelmed or to thrive in a fast paced world that demands more, you must first identify all the things that are important to you.

Preorder your copy of The Age of Speed with the complete list of tips and tricks in our time-starved lives. If the book becomes a mega-bestseller like Covey and Gladwell’s paperback then the answer to the question, “How’s the book doing?” will be:

“Gooooooooooooood. Real, real, goooooooood!”

Do You Think or Do You Know - The Nurture Assumption

Sara Kathryn was four when she questioned her parent’s position.

“Do you think or do you know?” she asked.

The parents were both agog and flummoxed (pretty fancy words for ‘weirded out’).

Agog because of such wisdom from their obviously gifted child.  Flummoxed because she hit a nerve.  Their position was stated as fact.  The truth was, they were really basing their position on a commonly held assumption.

There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of opinions and assumptions.

Here, this one should do a number on your brain…

Parents don’t really matter when considering the personality of a child.

I can see the emails now.  “You’re wrong Vince.”  “Are you crazy?”  “Do you believe everything you read?”  “This is the stupidest article you have ever written!”

Judith Rich Harris wrote a book titled, The Nurture Assumption.  In it she presents an absolutely persuasive argument on virtually every tenet of child development.  Entire fields of research in the areas of parental upbringing and genetic endowment are convincingly debunked.  This Pulitzer Prize finalist in non-fiction category challenges what we take as absolute truth (things that don’t fit in our belief system) regarding the influence genetics and parenting has with the way children turn out.

Harris uses technical literature from anthropology, cultural history, psychology and behavioral genetics towards a thesis that peers and genes matter – parents don’t.

Now you know and I know, these Speed Blogs are not, Speed bLongs.  So let me leave you with the following.  What’s your evaluation of the next sentence?

A child’s parents shape or modify the child’s personality and character.

“Fact,” you say…

Well Smarty Pants… do you think or do you know?

PS… Before you attempt to engage me in a debate about this position, please read Harris’ book or article from 5/95 Psychology Review. The Nurture Assumption Review

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Vince Poscente
Inspirational Speaker

At the Speed of Trust

Out of the blue…Stephen Covey popped his head in my office… the Stephen-Covey-head that has hair… and we talked about his book, The Speed of Trust.

Stephen M.R. Covey is the son of the handsomely bald Stephen R. Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. But, with a background running a $200 million company, Stephen (the son with the hair) felt it was now time to write a book on trust.

One significant comment he made was… “a fish is the last to discover there’s water.” Regarding trust, we were much more used to trust as a given. But today, with trust eroded in our schools (Columbine), corporations (Enron), travel (September 11th, 2001)…and the list goes on… trust is something that we have begun to notice as an issue that needs attention.

Like a fish not noticing there is water until it is polluted or changed in someway, we are realizing that we need to find ways to bring trust back. Moreover, Covey’s book outlines how trust accelerates business and improves the bottom line.

Covey’s formula is simple:

When trust goes up, speed goes up and costs go down.

When trust goes down, speed goes down and costs go up.

A vivid example of this is when Warren Buffett – CEO of Berkshire Hathaway negotiated a deal with WalMart on the acquisition of McLane Distribution (a $23 billion company).

“Typically, a merger of this size would take several months to complete and cost several million dollars to pay for accountants, auditors, and attorneys to verify and validate all kinds of information. But in this instance, because both parties operated with high trust, the deal was made with on two-hour meeting and a handshake. In less than a month, it was completed.”Stephen M.R. Covey from The Speed of Trust.

You read right. A $23 billion deal was completed in a two-hour meeting, handshake and a month to complete the transaction. (Imagine how cheesed-off some lawyers were who could have ensured the deal cost more money and more time.)

When trust goes up, speed goes up and costs go down. In the Buffett/WalMart example they avoided the opposite from happening.

Stephen M.R. Covey has written a great book. He is a profound thinker, nice guy and has more hair than his dad. What more reasons do you need to buy his book?

Pub Date for The Age of Speed

September 4th, 2007 was more than just a day after Labor Day. It was also the launch of The Age of Speed.

I told Ray Bard, the publisher at the launch party that I have never worked so hard in my life in the last eight months. You don't just write and print a book. There is an entire methodology behind getting a book to market successfully.

If you would like to know how The Age of Speed vaulted to top ten amazon.com books in the first week of September along with being awarded Top 30 Business Books for 2007 by Executive Book Summaries then let me know and I will blog the high points of the strategy.

In the meantime, you can read a sample of the book on 800 CEO Read http://800ceoread.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/6167

Have a great day.

Vince