After  giving a short talk at TEDxBristol about the failure swapshop it was great to run one in the break, lessons learned:

Take a friend shopping
Relish the things you’re good at
Don’t be afraid to fail
Share your failure
If someone needs your help, give it to them
Listen to your inner voice
Ask for help
Remember – you’re just a guy
Doubt kills dreams
Follow your instincts
Always learn
Stand up on your own
Tests aren’t reality
Keep on shooting
Do things that scare you
Don’t worry what others think
Check it yourself
Don’t think too much
Turn your tank on
Just do it!
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel
If you fail, be creative
Learn to delegate
Ask for help
How success looks can change
Perseverence is good
Take ownership
Track everything – get a system
Don’t give yourself a hard time
Focus on the good stuff

I continually see articles hyping Google+ and if you follow me on twitter you’ll hopefully know 2 things:

1) I actually like Google+ as a network, it looks good, it has some neat features like hangouts

2) other than reserving a presence and setting up authorship I don’t think it’s worth spending much time on, yet

I’m not going to rehash my points on misleading posts/statements that claim g+ is the 2nd largest network, in summary: usage is not the same as active users. If an expert doesn’t understand that they are very different, walk away.

That said there are a few things that I’ve been thinking about recently.

1) SEO benefits: At best guess it’s likely to help having links from g+ as they do pass page rank unlike other networks like twitter or Facebook. See this great Moz blog post, causation isn’t proven conclusively above the fact G+ creates links to your site.

2) Try the pub test: Go to a bar and ask anyone (non marketing/social media types) who’s used g+ more than twice this week to put their hand up – buy all of those people a drink – how much did it cost you?

UPDATE: With Google plus now being in use on YouTube, we’ll get another round of these “G+ is here” type headlines, there really will be no way of knowing the difference between YouTube use of G+ and actual G+ posts… especially when you have to uncheck the “share this on G+ too” box each time.

Log in to G+ who’s actually posting anything in there? It still won’t pass the pub test.

Yesterday I was sat eating my lunch at lifeboat quay, pondering life’s mysteries (thinking about going camping actually but anyway…) when a guy approached and offered me an ice cream.

It was Mars one, he’d bought a pack for him & his girlfriend (at a guess) and had a spare.

Awesome! Free ice cream!!

So my question is this… how do I pay it forward?

I can’t wander the streets giving out ice cream…

Suggestions below, or via twitter:

By popular demand (well, one of my colleagues asked), I’ve added a Pinterest pin this button to the L.U.F.T.A email sharing link making tool thingamyjig.

Enjoy!

As always, thoughts, input, abuse most welcome… well maybe not the abuse so much…

This post is for my own benefit – you’re welcome to read it but I’m posting it here to make it more real for me.

I love holidays. I haven’t had enough of them in the last couple of years… partly through having a RIDICULOUS number of weddings + wedding related things to go to in the last couple of years… anyway… I just got back from a great little break to Lanzarote with 2 friends where I spent some of the time surfing, volcano exploring, eating great food and pondering my life to-do list.

The list has been a bit neglected recently, time for a refresh!

So, I sat in the sun and rewrote it.. my first decision being that it will only ever have 10 things on it maximum. This seems like a good round number to me.

I started by thinking about and writing down some of the things I’d like to change/improve and experience – this mission statement of sorts was in 3 parts: health, wealth and happiness.

It’s a very personal list, that I made SMART (Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Time-specific). From this and a few extras I wrote my to-do / bucket list:

1. Go into space & experience weightlessness
2. Own a campervan
3. Travel more (inc. the pyramids, Machu Pichu, Paris, New York, Area 51…)
4. Reach the BSA Silver level 1 in surfing
5. Buy a second property
6. Get married – any single Zooey Deschanel-a-likes out there? get in touch! 🙂
7. Finish and publish the YRNB book
8. Cycle John O’Groats to Lands End
9. Complete the 3 peaks challenge
10. Be a world record holder

Do you have a bucket list?