I am tired of planning and toiling

          In the crowded hives of men, 

      Heart-weary of building and spoiling,

          And spoiling and building again, 

      And I long for the dear old river,

          Where I dreamed my youth away; 

      For a dreamer lives forever,

          And a toiler dies in a day.

      I am sick of the showy seeming,

          Of life that is half a lie; 

      Of the faces lined with scheming

          In the throng that hurries by; 

      From the sleepless thought's endeavor

          I would go where the children play; 

      For a dreamer lives forever,

          And a thinker dies in a day.

      I can feel no pride, but pity,

          For the burdens the rich endure; 

      There is nothing sweet in the city

          But the patient lives of the poor. 

      Oh, the little hands too skillful,

          And the child-mind choked with weeds! 

      The daughter's heart grown willful

          And the father's heart that bleeds!

      No! no! from the street's rude bustle,

          From trophies of mart and stage, 

      I would fly to the wood's low rustle

          And the meadows' kindly page. 

      Let me dream as of old by the river,

          And be loved for my dreams always; 

      For a dreamer lives forever,

          And the toiler dies in a day.

          John Boyle O'Reilly

Stage Two: Staying the course.

Stage Three: Steer in the right direction.

Stage Four: Make happy customers, start getting paid.

1+2+3+4 is a measure of getting it right.

Translates to preparation, stamina, (re)focus and yield.

Sent from my iPhone

Some years ago I had a conversation with a layman about flying saucers — because I am scientific I know all about flying saucers! I said "I don't think there are flying saucers'. So my antagonist said, "Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impossible?" "No", I said, "I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely". At that he said, "You are very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible then how can you say that it's unlikely?" But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible. To define what I mean, I might have said to him, "Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence." It is just more likely. That is all.

~Richard Feynman.

Twitter has come up with promoted tweets as part of a plan to generate revenue. Normal tweets that appear on top of the search results page mentioned as promoted by a business or a company. How likely are you to resonate with promotions? Here are a few thoughts:

1.       I do not use twitter for search, not yet. On the rare occasion that I do, I use it to search for people.

2.       I might use twitter to search for businesses that are ‘local’. It might be to locate them or to reach out to them about their service or products.

3.       If I were running a business, I would be keen to have my twitter handle appear as a suggestion for specific key words typed in the search bar. I might even pay for that.

4.       I am more likely to resonate with companies/businesses that respond to my requests/queries or concerns than with those that don’t. More than promotions, I am interested in real time interaction.

5.       A promoted tweet could still work if it is ‘localized’ and lets me find or discover interesting stuff. I am more likely to share that with my friends (RT).

6.       I am more interested in finding and talking about the local café, or my brand new camera than about Godrej hair dye.

7.       It would be great if I could be prompted for the right/authentic twitter handle for a business while I type the name of the business in a tweet. Same applies to twitter handles for people.

8.       It will be interesting to see how companies/businesses participate in twitter conversations with people.

9.       I am very unlikely to ‘follow’ a business on twitter. More likely to follow people.

There are no bad problems, but you can create a lot of phony ones.

You are likely to stick around longer if you think what you are doing is important.

You will quickly discover your limitations, you may choose to address them or you might try to invent coping mechanisms.

It will most certainly take longer than you anticipated.

Entropy is very real and is unmanageable.

Positioning for your market will require more patient effort than you thought.

People are the only secret ingredient.

Execution is the only leverage.

It is scary, but you might be going wrong just because it is convenient.