Idea Lists

Facebook. Google. Amazon. Apple. Netflix. Uber.

Aside from the obvious answer, what’s the overarching similarity among these massively profitable and revolutionary corporations?

They all started with an idea.

Before anyone coded websites or designed iMacs, today’s crown jewels in innovation could have found their origin stories sloppily scribbled on napkins or pieces of scrap paper.

The Mark Zuckerbergs, Steve Jobses and Jeff Bezoses of the world held no internal or external advantages over you and me when they began their passion projects. Heck, Jobs worked on computers in his garage and Bezos sold books out of his.

So what’s stopping you from exploring your own innovation and creating something new?

Two things:

Distractions

Our attention, one of our five primary resources*, is more divided than it’s ever been. We hear the “ping” of a notification and immediately drop our current activity and shift our attention to the glowing screen of our smartphones. We struggle to focus on one singular activity in the present because we believe there’s always something else worthy of our attention. The onus falls upon us to drown out the noise and focus on the present moment, an increasingly difficult task in today's age.

“I don’t have time”

We have 24 hours in a day -- that’s plenty of time. In reality, it’s an answer you hope the person you’re upsetting will understand as a valid reason for your inability to do whatever they asked of you. It’s also an easy saying we use to excuse ourselves from activities that force us out of our comfort zones. I've always believed that if you really want to do something, you’ll find the time.

If the thought of entrepreneurship excites you, or if you want to explore the limitless capabilities of your brainpower, I present you with this challenge:

Sit in a chair with a notebook and pen. Put the phone in airplane mode. Turn Netflix off. Take out your earbuds. Eliminate the distractions (but a glass of wine or a beer couldn’t hurt, right?)

On a page, write the numbers 1 through 10.

Now, think. Seriously, stare at the wall and think. It's that simple.

Think as micro or macro as you wish. What frustrates you? What changes do you wish to see in the world? How can you create something new and exciting, something unseen by human eyes?

Challenge yourself. If you get on a roll, shoot for more than 10 ideas. Think creatively. It’s for your eyes only, so don’t be embarrassed by anything you write. Too often, pessimists discourage the creativity of the youth and pass our ideas off as naivete. Don’t let anyone criticize you for formulating a “bad idea,” because there’s no such thing.

Your options for these “idea lists” are endless. This very post was created out of my own that I titled “10 Possible Blog Posts.”

So get started today with just some paper and a writing utensil. No distractions; just you alone with the unlimited possibilities percolating in your mind.

And maybe you should start in your garage. That seems to be the way to go.

* (https://bit.ly/2M9RxeC)

Troy Farkas is an aspiring writer. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @tfark04.

Patience

Good things come to those who wait, they say.

But damn, we hate waiting.

With seemingly everything we need just a touch of a button away today, we become prisoners of impatience when we cannot access the answers we crave.

We wish the roads of life were splattered with billboards alerting us to our final destinations laying just around the bend. I’m constantly stressed about my future and often wish to see giant signs advertising everything that’s going to happen in the next phase of my life.

When we venture down untraveled roads, we turn to our GPS to dictate a crystal clear A-to-B route to us. Just follow my path, the automated voice tells us, and we’ll arrive at our destination with ease.

Only if it were that simple in the real world.

The truth is, our life’s journey is so long. It’s never as simple as Point A to Point B because of all the different metaphorical bumps in the road that present themselves. Therefore we arrive at our destinations, the ones we’ve dreamt about since our youth, often via a completely different route than the one we intended.

When we graduate from college and enter the so-called “real world,” we expect everything to come quickly to us because well, that’s the way it generally is in adolescence. We'll find a job a month or two after crossing the stage. We'll spend a year or two at that bottom-of-the-barrel "foot in the door" place. And then we'll certainly have an overwhelming amount of options to choose from because everyone will want us, right? And we'll find our ideal life partner in that time also, right? And then, by age 25, we'll have everything figured out, right?

Wrong.

As I’ve quickly discovered, no matter how much we excel, upward mobility moves at a glacier-like pace. Our savings accounts don’t accumulate as quickly as they once did now that we’re responsible for paying rent and student loans. Employers don’t promote us every six months or care about our development as much as our parents, teachers, coaches and other mentors once did. And god, dating outside of a school atmosphere presents a whole world of challenges unseen before in our lives.

We must push the dreams of our future to the back of our minds and stress that we’ll get there one day, but it will just take a long time. Ater all, nothing worth having comes quickly or easily. We can’t stew in frustration over our snail-like-paced development; instead, we need to embrace the possibilities of the present moment while also keeping our Personal Legends close to heart.

Do this, and one day, the bumps and bruises you incur along the way will not derail you. Like the calluses on the carpenter’s hands, you will eventually become numb to the hardships and accept them as a necessary evil. Just persevere through it and one day, somewhere in the future, you’ll stare in amazement at the mesmerising structure you’ve just created.

It will happen. Just be patient.

Personal Legends

I recently reread a childhood favorite of mine, The Alchemist by Paula Coelho. It tells of a young Arab boy and the search for his personal treasure located near the pyramids of Egypt. Along the way, he encounters mankind's demons in the form of thievery and war, and also its greatest gifts like education, friendship and love. This blending of trials and tribulations while in pursuit of his treasure culminates into what Coelho calls the boy’s “Personal Legend.”

Once I finished The Alchemist, I immediately asked myself the question I’ve wrestled with over the past year, albeit without this terminology.

What’s my Personal Legend?

In other words, what’s my mission? Why do I exist?

I’ve never had a concrete answer. I can’t say, “Oh yeah, I want to be a cardiac surgeon and save lives.” A singular option has never presented itself to me.

But I’m O.K. with that. I believe my possibilities are endless, so limiting myself to one outcome would be a disservice to all. Additionally, if that singular goal never came to fruition, then thoughts of regrets and undelivered promises would haunt me forever.

Like you, I get the questions all of the time.You know, the ones from nagging aunts, uncles, or first date prospects about where we see ourselves in 10 years. If you’ve asked me this question before, I’ve probably answered with something like this:

I’ve never stayed up late at night dreaming about any specific path. Throughout my entire life, if I’ve ever only known one thing about myself, it’s that I love performing for people. First, I performed in front of raucous parents and students on the baseball fields and basketball courts of my youth. Then, I roamed the front of classrooms giving presentations on historical figures like Voltaire and Friedrich Nietzsche. For years I poured my emotions out in choir halls, practice rooms, living rooms, showers, streets, and later, on stages. In college, I wrote for the newspaper and talked on the radio and appeared on student television. Now, I write for you.

I’ve spent the last 20 years harnessing and improving upon the vast array of communication skills that run in my blood. With those skills, I’ve mobilized people to action and driven others to tears. I’ve evoked love, hate, curiosity and anger. Taken together, all of this is what will drive me for the rest of my life.

That’s why it’s my Personal Legend.

Unlike the cardiac surgeon example, my Personal Legend permits room for interpretation. It allows some space for deviations and miscalculation, missteps that one must confront en route to realizing one’s Personal Legend. Acts taken to pursue my Personal Legend can come in many forms. At the moment, I write this blog and help produce radio shows that entertain people. Unfortunately I’m not the person directly providing the entertainment, but I help facilitate it. If I felt I were not playing a meaningful role in delivering people valuable content, then I'd have to leave Connecticut.

But in the future, the road to fulfilling my Personal Legend will be filled with exciting creative endeavors. Maybe I’ll write books one day or start a podcast or film a documentary. I might speak in schools and concert venues and coffee shops about harnessing one's creative spirit and how to create something meaningful out of it. I'm confident the right opportunities and the right people will surface at the right time. Because as Coelho repeatedly says in The Alchemist, “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

It’s a lifelong pursuit, my Personal Legend. I don’t know if I’ll ever reach a point where I can definitively say I’ve achieved it because one cannot measure my Personal Legend; it's not tangible. That's O.K., because I know I'll have a hell of a time changing lives along the way. And that's good enough for me.

Troy Farkas is an aspiring writer. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @tfark04. Message him if you need help identifying and achieving your own Personal Legend.

One Year

August 5 marked the one year anniversary of the day I moved to Connecticut to begin the post-graduation phase of my life. So today, I’d like to raise a glass.

But we’re not celebrating me. We’re celebrating you and your impending first foray into the real world.

Your life is unequivocally yours now because no people or institutions control you anymore. Obviously you still must abide by societal rules and expectations, but you’re intelligent enough by now to differentiate right from wrong.

If you have just begun this next phase, or are just about to, I want you to grab a pen open a new notebook. Mark the date in the top right corner and title the first page, “The Beginning." Excitement, nervousness, anxiety, happiness, sadness--whatever emotions you're feeling right now, write about it. Whether you continue writing after this page is up to you, but I want you to revisit the notebook in a year so you can compare and contrast the new you with the old you.

Here’s my entry for August 6, 2017, when I was 21 with a clean slate in my new apartment in my new state, the day before I started my new job:

“Well, Troy, tomorrow’s the big day. Look at you. You’ve got everything in order. Now YOUR LIFE is finally under control. I’m going to wake up early tomorrow and get back to doing what I do best: outworking everyone and destroying my competition. Being disciplined and organized and cutting the bullsh*t. Make the most of it. Be professional, be a grinder, but remember to be a kid too. Find that balance. Go in tomorrow and show them what you’re made of. Be punctual. Be driven. Be a nice person that’s fun to work with. You’ve been waiting for this. You’re ready. And remember, fear is a myth.”

Fast forward one year, and I’m confident I’ve lived up to this passage from a year ago. I have every aspect of my life under control. I believe I’m hustling more than others in my demographic at my company. I cut out unnecessary objects, activities, and people from my life so that I can focus on my priorities. I’m professional in the clothes I wear and how I present myself to others. But, I’ve also abandoned certain adult responsibilities in favor of enjoying activities that young people like. Yeah, I’ve made some dumb mistakes, but I don’t regret them. After all, the growing process is rarely linear. I’ve learned how to balance my job with my passions outside of the office and I’ve reassessed my priorities, which has miraculously created a bunch of free time for me. So one year later, I’m proud of where I am.

It's exciting to think about, but I caution you not to get wrapped up in the future. I learned in my first few months that thinking so far ahead into the future causes more harm than good. A long and arduous journey awaits us, and opportunities for mobility and upward advancement simply don't present themselves often early on. So just focus on day-to-day improvements because it's ultimately those that will lead to long-term growth. As T.K. Coleman says, “The best way to get where you want to go is by embracing and respecting the possibilities of the present moment.”

Everything will take care of itself if you're a good person with a good head on your shoulders. So write down today how you’re feeling. Maybe you’re scared. Maybe you’re not. Either way, I want you to keep that notebook handy and pull it out in 365 days to read, reflect, and then write another entry for your second year.

My story began a year ago, yours begins now.

Cheers to you.

Troy Farkas is an aspiring writer. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @tfark04.

Questions

I’m told the following was a milestone achievement in my life:

“This is fun!,” I said to my father, presumably while throwing around a ball of some sort.

Damn, what a first sentence. A pronoun, verb, and adjective all molded into a singular coherent thought.

But it came well into my third year of existence, so I was a little later to the party than some of my day-care peers.

I really didn’t master saying my own name until I was six or seven years old. Before that, kindergarten scared me -- especially after my fourth (I think) day, when my teacher randomly sent us home because of a plane attack in New York City*. After life returned to normalcy following that dreadful day, the narrative eventually changed and I put my days of slow learning in the rearview mirror.

I enrolled in accelerated courses in middle school (shout out to Mr. D and Ms. Blades). My proudest academic accomplishment came in my sophomore year when I received a 5 on the A.P. U.S. history exam after I spent the entire year preparing for it. I took more A.P. classes and finished out with an A average and managed to graduate top 60 in a class of 750+. On top of that, I played Shen basketball, a commitment requiring 46 weeks a year and like, every waking hour of the week.

In college, I got an A in every class, except for my freshman year nutrition class (which, ironically, I learned more in than any class I’ve ever taken). I graduated in my junior year after a semester abroad and an award for top student in the history department.

So, all of that being said, I enjoyed a very successful academic career.

But I sit here today, in an antique coffee shop in Avon, Conn., completely clueless in the world. I know nothing.

Seriously.

Sixteen years of formal education and I’ve only scratched the surface of everything I’ll ever learn.

I find myself in situations every day where I cannot explain what’s happening in front of me. Last week, I walked by construction workers hammering and sawing away on a new house on a 95 degree day. I thought to myself, “I could never do that,” as I observed, attempting to understand the physics and geometry involved in building a stable structure.

It frustrates me how little I know. I could easily resign to this and leave the pursuit of knowledge to the scholars and continue in my ignorant ways. But that would be too easy.

Before ordering this Brazilian dark coffee, I peppered the barista with questions about the art of coffee making and what differentiates one brew from another. I’ve only recently become a coffee drinker, and I’d love to know more about it. So I asked question after question about ideal roasting times, climate factors affecting taste and how cold brew is made.

We have to put aside our egos and recognize how little we don’t know. We cannot be discouraged and embarrassed by our lack of knowledge. View it as a challenge. Where there’s challenge, there’s opportunity -- opportunity to read more, to ask more, and to connect with others.

How do wells bring purified water into your home? I get that solar panels somehow absorb the sun’s energy, but how is that power harnessed and distributed?

I answer “I don’t know,” to these questions. I say it in not a defeated tone, but rather an embraceful one.

To improve ourselves and our well-being, we must always search for answers. Question everything -- why things happen, how things work, etc. And think about all of those people that you wave to every day in the halls of your workplace. Sure, you know what they’re like inside of your company’s walls, but do you really know them?

My favorite sports radio host, Colin Cowherd, says that to be a successful person, you must display two characteristics at all times.

No. 1: Discipline:  Doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, doing it do the best of your abilities, and doing it that way every single time (how could I forget, Coach Dzikas?).

No. 2: Curiosity: Showing a genuine interest in learning and self-improvement.

For our purposes today, latch on especially to the second trait.

Curiosity may kill the cat, but it paves the way for a better you.

*September 11, 2001. I was so young at the time that I didn’t understand the magnitude of what had happened. I don’t want it to come across like this wasn’t a big deal. Sending my best to all affected on that horrible day. #NeverForget



Troy Farkas is an aspiring writer. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @tfark04.

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