The Branded and Gilded Life
The Branded and Gilded Life
The Comfort Zone is a trap
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The Comfort Zone is a trap

What was the riskiest thing you've ever done?

Left home late to catch a flight?

Or invested in shares, not mutual funds?

You're living totally in your Comfort Zone.

So why is it a trap?

Because it doesn't give you the space to try new things

You'll find it applies to the smallest behaviors.

Walk into a 2 day seminar

On day 1, you look for a place to sit. Then it becomes 'Your' place.

It's very hard to change from there during the next sessions

People get offended when others sit on 'Their' seats.

So what's the way out of it?

Expand your Zone.  Consciously change your patterns.

Don't wake up and start scrolling through your screen

Shift from the favourite chair you always sit on

Now extend it to your work routine.

Do you explore new options in the programs you work with everyday?

Or stick to what you know for sure?

When the little things add up, they become hard edged.

They are so small and trivial, you don't even notice them.

Did you try something new today? Yesterday? Last week?

The room for making changes gets smaller and smaller 

How are you going to make big ones?


RSS explores rebirth

How will you know when your favourite websites publish something new?

That question was answered over over two decades ago

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) was the technology.

But things got complex really fast when content creation snowballed 

The idea never went away. Now it's back as an experiment.

Let's say you don't want to wade through YouTube's dizzying menu options

Or scroll endlessly to find out what's new from your favorite Instagrammers 

Or the millions of tweets on Twitter just to find the ones you really want to hear from.

Get the idea?

You don't want the big names to determine what you should watch.

Let's say you discover a great song on SoundCloud by chance. 

Or a gamer whose gameplay you like on Twitch

How will you know when they do something new?

That's the whole point of RSS feeds. Figure out an RSS reader you like

You can download Feedly. Or the one of your choice.

And create your own personal digital stream of interests.

Chosen by you. Not an algorithm

Nobody can snoop on you. Or make judgments.

Sometimes a great idea pops out of nowhere. This is one I'm hoping will catch on.

It's really up to you. 

Here’s the site trying to give RSS a fresh perspective


The slow motion life

You've seen those high-speed videos where time freezes?

We're living in that world right now.

What took an instant now stretches endlessly.

The bullet shot at a million frames per second makes a leisurely exit from the barrel

The puff of fire dances around the exit before it vanishes as smoke.

The second hand of the clock is now the hour hand.

A drop of water falling from the tap takes forever to hit the sink.

The hundred meter dash becomes the marathon.

We're seeing things we've never noticed before.

The ways shadows travel through the day inside rooms.

Money zips through virtual channels but takes ages to arrive.

Careers are buffering

Ships sail into ports that recede like the horizon.

You miss being stuck in traffic. 

Home has become the office. The coffee shop. The movie theater. The beach. The restaurant. The resort. The getaway. The mountains. The retail store. The mall. If you're lucky.

If not, the hospital.

We're lab rats in a global experiment.

Nature's not letting us out in a hurry.

Not until we've learned some pretty consequential lessons.

She reached into our lives and turned down the speed dial.

Just when we had assumed we were unstoppable.

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